In August 1947 the British left the Indian subcontinent after two hundred years of colonial rule. In the process of decolonizing, they divided the subcontinent into two nations: India and East-West Pakistan. East Pakistan would later become Bangladesh. In the process of this partition, nearly one million people were killed.
For hundreds of years Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus had lived harmoniously alongside each other. Partition aimed to divide them. Pakistan would be a Muslim nation; the Punjab region of India would belong to Sikhs; India would be for Hindus. Almost overnight, once partition was announced, the killing began. Ever since, historians have since tried to explain the reason for the bloodshed.
As many historians have agreed, the lines of partition were crudely and hastily drawn by a man with little knowledge of the regions he was dividing. Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer tasked with the job, divided the Muslim and Sikh regions nearly in half, leaving 14 million people on given sides of borders designated for those of a different religion. People forced each other out of villages and cities where their families had lived for generations. People who had lived as neighbors turned on each other out of fear. Trainloads of Muslims heading into the new Pakistan were murdered by Hindus and Sikhs. Sikhs murdered Hindus, and vice versa. Each group retaliated. Britain, washing its hands of colonial responsibility, looked on.
One common explanation for the cause of the bloodshed has to do with the haste of Britain’s withdrawal from India. Indian independence was declared in July 1947. The plan was for the transfer of power to happen gradually, over the proceeding year, with Britain ultimately handing over power in 1948. But Britain was hugely in debt after the Second World War and it would have been expensive for them to maintain rule in India for another year. On top of this, the British viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, was upset with the British Labour Party, who were in power at the time and who’d made the agreement to leave India. Mountbatten wanted out, and decided that he would leave in August of 1947. Thus it happened that the British abruptly pulled out, a mere month after independence had been declared. Leaving a vacuum of power, they drew hasty lines, and the violence of partition began.
