Partition of India

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Representation of the Indian division with refugee movements and the areas in which there were riots

The division of India is understood to mean the division of the former British India due to religious and ethnic disputes which finally led to the establishment of two independent states between August 14 and 15, 1947: Pakistan and India . Until 1971 Pakistan consisted of two parts: West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh ).

The division of the former British India into two dominions was laid down in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and marked the end of British colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent .

In the course of the process of partition there were civil war-like conflicts that resulted in the deaths of several hundred thousand people. Some authors speak of up to a million victims or more. About 20 million people were deported , displaced or resettled in the course of the division of British India .

overview

The predominant religions in the British Crown Colony of India (1909). Green: areas dominated by Muslims. The political division of 1947 (see map above) was largely determined by the distribution of religions.

The division of British India laid down in the Indian Independence Act 1947 or Mountbattenplan included the division of the province of Bengal into East Pakistan and the Indian state of West Bengal as well as the division of the former province of Punjab : West Punjab came to Pakistan as Punjab Province , East Punjab came to India (this area is today divided between the three Indian states of Punjab , Haryana and Himachal Pradesh ).

The division of the former British colonial empire in India included geographical divisions as well as the redistribution of the Indian railways , the British Indian Army , the administrative apparatus of the former Indian Civil Service and all state finances.

In the course of the division, the so-called princely states, which had previously been self-governing, were free in the Indian Independence Act 1947 to decide which of the two new dominions India or Pakistan they wanted to commit to, or whether they preferred to remain as independent principalities .

The decisions of the principalities of Jammu and Kashmir resulting from this question led to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, which was later followed by further territorial disputes between the two states of India and Pakistan.

The way to division

  • Religions in British India after the 1909 Census

  • Proportion of Muslims

  • Proportion of Hindus

  • Proportion of Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains

Foundation of the Muslim League

In 1906 a number of Muslims in Dhaka founded the All Indian Muslim League (AIML). This became necessary because, according to the founders of the movement, Muslims did not enjoy the same rights as the Hindu majority represented by the Indian National Congress . The new Muslim League initially quickly gained influence among Muslims. Over the years there have been repeated voices from within the Muslim League to create an Islamic-oriented state on Indian soil. Various plans were discussed and rejected again.

A clear demand for the creation of a separate Muslim state was made by the philosopher and writer Allama Iqbal , who in an address to the general assembly of the Muslim League in 1930 stated that a separate Muslim state was essential in a Hindu-dominated India. From 1935 onwards, Iqbal, the Muslim activist Maulana Mohammad Ali and other prominent Muslims tried to inspire the influential former Congress politician Muhammad Ali Jinnah for their project. Jinnah, himself a Muslim, but educated as the son of wealthy parents in Western elite schools, had so far always publicly campaigned for a unity of Muslims and Hindus in the struggle for Indian independence. However, he had long since reached the conclusion that mass movements like Congress were unfazed about the concerns of Muslims.

1932 to 1942

From 1931 onwards, Jinnah, as the new chairman of the Muslim League, tried to reorganize the movement and give it greater influence. In 1940, at the Lahore conference, he made a statement calling for a concrete Muslim nation in India for the first time. However, the declaration did not contain any information about the part of the subcontinent in which he intended to establish this nation and how it should be administered and organized.

Although all other Muslim parties and mass movements at least officially shied away from calling for the partition of India, the idea was nevertheless taken up and increasingly concretized by Muslims, National Socialists and especially by certain Hindu groups over the next seven years . Organizations such as the Hindu nationalist Hindu Mahasabha , although fundamentally against a division of the country, nevertheless assumed that "there were two nations within India - the Hindus and the Muslims".

The majority of the Congress Party leaders were secular and opposed any kind of split in India based on religious beliefs. Gandhi firmly believed that Hindus and Muslims could and should live together in a united India, and declared: “With all my heart and soul I disagree with the idea that Hinduism and Islam should represent two opposing cultures and teachings. To agree to this doctrine is for me a denial of God ”. For years Gandhi and his supporters fought to keep Muslims in the Congress party, although many party members and activists nonetheless left the party from the early 1930s. By working against the idea of ​​division and for the foundation of a single nation in which there was room for followers of both religions, Gandhi created bitter opponents on both sides.

Although politicians and dignitaries on both sides tried again and again in the 1940s to suppress mutual suspicion and scare tactics, there were repeated violent clashes between Muslims and Hindus. The so-called Direct Action Day of August 1946, organized by the Muslim League, stands out from these events. This led to the riots in Calcutta in 1946 , which led to severe pogroms and riots, in the course of which between 5,000 and 10,000 people were killed, around 15,000 injured and around 100,000 people were homeless.

After public order collapsed throughout northern India and Bengal later in August , pressure increased to seek a political solution to prevent the outbreak of civil war .

1942 to 1946

By 1946, the definition of a Muslim state in India was flexible enough to include both a state within a federal India and an independent nation of Pakistan.

Some historians take the view that Jinnah only used the partition of India as a threatening gesture in order to negotiate more independence for the predominantly Muslim provinces in the west compared to the Hindu-dominated areas of central India.

Other historians believe that Jinnah's vision for Pakistan was broader and extended to the Hindu-dominated regions of eastern Punjab and western Bengal , including Assam , which was populated by a clear Hindu majority.

In any case, Jinnah campaigned resolutely to integrate Kashmir , which was populated by a Muslim majority but ruled by Hindus, into the new state of whatever kind, Pakistan. But he also insisted on integrating Hyderabad and Junagadh , predominantly Hindu but Muslim-ruled areas in Pakistan.

The British colonial government did not rule the entire Indian subcontinent , but had made various political agreements in the course of the British Raj , which secured its influence, but did not allow direct power to rule, so that some provinces were under direct self-government , while others, such as the so-called Princely States or princely states that had declared themselves loyal to the British crown, but only allowed themselves to be represented by it in certain areas such as foreign policy, while they continued to govern themselves internally.

The British colonial administration, consisting of the Secretary of State for India , the India Office , the Governor General of India and the Indian Civil Service , initially preferred a solution that saved India from partition. The parliamentary commission, which had been sent from London to India in 1946 , accordingly tried to reach a compromise between the Congress and the Muslim League. This should consist in creating a decentrally governed federal Indian state in which there would have been room for both Muslims and Hindus. At first this plan seemed to meet with acceptance, but ultimately Jawaharlal Nehru contradicted the concept of such a decentralized state, whereupon Jinnah quickly returned to his demand for an independent Pakistan.

The Mountbatten Plan

The actual separation into the two new Dominions Pakistan and India took place according to the June 3rd Plan (1947), which has also become known as the Mountbatten Plan and in which Nehru , Jinnah and Mountbatten refer to the fundamental division of British India into two independent ones Dominions had agreed.

This was preceded by an earlier draft for the partition of India, made under Mountbatten's predecessor Sir Archibald Percival Wavell , which was later specified and expanded under Mountbatten.

The final course of the new borders was determined in accordance with a report commissioned by the British government , drawn up by the London attorney Sir Cyril Radcliffe and later known as the Radcliffe Line .

The Radcliffe Line assigned the new Dominion Pakistan two areas, which were separated from each other by the territory of India about 1,600 km. This is how East Pakistan and West Pakistan came into being , with what was later to emerge from East Pakistan, today's Bangladesh and from West Pakistan today's Islamic Republic of Pakistan .

The Dominion India consisted of the regions of British India populated by a Hindu or Sikh majority, and the Dominion Pakistan of those areas populated by a Muslim majority.

According to the Radcliffe Line, the princely states that had previously enjoyed at least partial independence from the British Crown were left to decide which of the two new states they wanted to join.

After the exact course of the border was announced, Sir Cyril Radcliffe's decisions on this matter were sharply attacked by both the Hindus and the Muslims, but were ultimately accepted by Nehru and Jinnah.

On July 18, 1947, the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which finally confirmed the division of British India into two states.

While the areas that Radcliffe had assigned to the Hindus when Dominion India became its legal successor after the end of the British Raj and therefore automatically took a seat in the United Nations , the Dominion Pakistan was accepted as a new member of the UN.

The independence day

At midnight on August 15, 1947, with the end of British colonial rule, two new independent states emerged.

In order not to snub either of the two new nations, the handover ceremony in Karachi , the then capital of Pakistan, took place on August 14th, so that the last British viceroy Lord Mountbatten attended both the ceremony in Karachi and the day after was able to attend the ceremony in Delhi , the new capital of the Republic of India.

Since then, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has celebrated its Independence Day on August 14, while India has celebrated its on the following day.

Resettlements and fatalities

Overcrowded refugee train, Punjab, India 1947

In the weeks preceding the announcement of the definitive border lines between Pakistan and India, pogroms and outbreaks of violence among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had flared up, especially in the Punjab, but also in other provinces, which led to large areas of both India and Pakistan's public order also collapsed.

After the independence of the two now sovereign states India and Pakistan, there was a massive exchange of people along the new borders. However, many people stayed in their hometown and hoped to be able to protect themselves by gathering their entire extended family at home.

The newly formed governments in both countries were overwhelmed by the extent of the resettlement. During the population exchange on both sides of the border, violence continued to increase between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, killing between 200,000 and 500,000 people. Other estimates even amount to 1 million deaths. In addition, hundreds of thousands of women were raped, kidnapped, forced into marriage or forced into prostitution. In December 1947, India and Pakistan agreed to look for abducted women in their countries and bring them to their relatives in the refugee country. Many of them were not accepted by their families when they returned because they were considered unclean.

As a direct result of the partition of British India , around 14.5 million people left their original homeland to find a new home in either India or Pakistan. Another 4 to 5 million Hindus , Muslims and Sikhs left their homeland over the next few months.

Together with the people who left their homeland in the years following independence, it is now assumed that a total of 20 million people were either resettled, deported or driven out in the course of the partition of India, with the majority of resettlements in the Punjab Region took place where about 11 million people lost their homes.

Ongoing debate

The Indian subcontinent today

The partition of India has remained a subject of heated debate in India and Pakistan, but above all in Great Britain . The main point of contention is the Radcliffe line and the role of Mountbatten and his staff in their creation.

On the one hand, Mountbatten and his administration are accused of influencing Cyril Radcliffe while he was working on the border in favor of India, since Mountbatten's staff and the British government secretly assumed that the new sovereign state of India had a much better perspective than Jinnah's Islamic dominion Pakistan .

Above all, however, Mountbatten is criticized for having made the final decision about the border lines under enormous time pressure, which prevented a really balanced solution to the problem.

In defense of Mountbatten and his staff, it is argued that because of the civil war-like conditions in the weeks and months that preceded the partition, he had no choice but to act as he did.

Mountbatten is also accused of having acted naively when he assumed that the two new states India and Pakistan would be able to adequately handle the immense population exchanges that followed immediately after independence.

On the other hand, Great Britain found itself in a tense economic situation shortly after the end of the Second World War and would hardly have been able to dedicate further resources in order to suppress the civil war that would be imminent without the partition decision in India and thus to gain time to work towards a more balanced solution .

However, it is not only the historian Lawrence James who has come to the conclusion that Mountbatten's staff had no choice but to divide British India and then withdraw from the colony as quickly as possible.

There is relative consensus that with the end of British rule in India, Britain reverted to the status of a secondary power.

The Indian Partition Museum in Amritsar has been commemorating the events since 2017 .

See also

literature

  • Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre: Gandhi. At midnight freedom. 1975, ISBN 3-442-06759-6 .
  • John Zubrzycki: The Last Nizam: An Indian Prince in the Australian Outback . Pan Macmillan, Australia 2006, ISBN 0-330-42321-5 .
  • Patrick French: Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division . HarperCollins, 1997.

Scientific studies

  • Hermann Kulke , Dietmar Rothermund : History of India. From the Indus culture to today. CH Beck, 2006, ISBN 3-406-54997-7 .
  • Urvashi Butalia : Shared silence. Interior views of the partition of India. Lotos Werkstatt, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86176-055-9 ; English: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1998, ISBN 0-8223-2494-6 .
  • David Gilmartin: Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. University of California Press, Berkeley 1988, ISBN 0-520-06249-3 .
  • Gyanendra Pandey: Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 2002, ISBN 0-521-00250-8 .
  • Stanley Wolpert: Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2006, ISBN 0-19-515198-4 .

Web links

Commons : Partition of India  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Urvashi Butalia: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1998.
  2. ^ Barbara Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf: A Concise History of Modern India. (= Cambridge Concise Histories ). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2006, ISBN 0-521-68225-8 .
  3. ^ Patrick French: Liberty or Death. HarperCollins, London 1997, p. 347.
  4. ^ Text of the law .
  5. ^ Kashmir Alastair Lamb: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990. Roxford Books, 1991, ISBN 0-907129-06-4 .
  6. ^ Nasim Yousaf: Hidden Facts Behind British India's Freedom: A Scholarly Look into Allama Mashraqi and Quaid-e-Azam's Political Conflict .
  7. ↑ Christopher Kremmer: Inhaling the Mahatma. HarperCollins, 2006, p. 79.
  8. ^ A b Louis Fischer: Life of Mahatma Gandhi. HarperCollins, 2007.
  9. ^ A b Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre: Gandhi. At midnight freedom. 1975, ISBN 3-442-06759-6 .
  10. ^ Patrick French: Liberty or Death. HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 360-362.
  11. ^ Judith Brown: Nehru. Longman, 2000.
  12. ↑ Louis Fischer: Life of Mahatma Gandhi. HarperCollins, 2007.
  13. ↑ Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre: Gandhi. At midnight freedom. 1975.
  14. ^ Sikandar Hayat: The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan. Oxford University Press, 2008.
  15. ↑ Stanley Wolpert: Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2006, ISBN 0-19-515198-4 .
  16. ^ Patrick French: Liberty or Death. HarperCollins, 1997.
  17. ↑ Louis Fischer: Life of Mahatma Gandhi. HarperCollins, 2007.
  18. ^ Kashmir Alastair Lamb: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990. Roxford Books, 1991.
  19. ^ Barbara Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf: A Concise History of Modern India. (= Cambridge Concise Histories ). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2006.
  20. ^ Stanley Wolpert: A New History of India. 2006.
  21. ↑ Pamela Mountbatten: India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power. Anova Pavilion, 2007.
  22. ^ A b Peter Lyon: Conflict Between India and Pakistan: An Encyclopedia. ABC-Clio, 2008, p. 135.
  23. ^ John Keay: India: A History. HarperCollins, 2010, p. 480.
  24. ^ John Keay: India: A History. HarperCollins, 2010, p. 490.
  25. ^ Judith Brown: Nehru. Longman, 2000, pp. 79-92.
  26. ↑ a b South Asia | Partitioning India over lunch. In: BBC NEWS. August 10, 2007.
  27. ↑ a b The drama of division. In: Le Monde diplomatique. April 9, 2010.
  28. ↑ Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls and Casualty Statistics for Wars, Dictatorships and Genocides.
  29. ^ Barbara Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf: A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 23.
  30. ^ Patrick French: Liberty or Death. HarperCollins, London 1997, p. 347, picture part p. 4-5.
  31. ^ Barbara Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf: A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  32. ^ A b Stanley Wolpert: Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford University Press, 2006.
  33. ↑ Alex Von Tunzelmann: Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. Picador, 2008, p. 203 ff.
  34. ^ Lawrence J. Butler: Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World. IB Tauris, 2002, p. 72.
  35. ^ Lawrence J. Butler: Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World. IB Tauris, 2002, p. 72.
  36. ↑ Alex Von Tunzelmann: Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. Picador, 2008, p. 343 ff.
  37. ^ John Keay: Last Post: The End of Empire in the Far East. John Murray Publishers, 2005.