Why was India split into two countries.

In August 1947, India gained independence after 2 hundred years of British rule.

What observed become considered one of the largest and bloodiest forced migrations in history.

An envisioned a million human beings misplaced their lives.

before British colonization,

the Indian subcontinent turned into a patchwork of nearby kingdoms

known as princely states populated by using Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains,

Buddhists, Christians, Parsis, and Jews.

every princely kingdom had its own traditions,

caste backgrounds, and leadership.

starting in the 1500s, a sequence of eu powers colonized India

with coastal buying and selling settlements.

by way of the mid-18th century, the English East India organization

emerged as the number one colonial strength in India.

The British ruled some provinces at once, and ruled the princely states indirectly.

underneath indirect rule, the princely states remained sovereign

however made political and monetary concessions to the British.

within the 19th century, the British began to categorize Indians with the aid of religious identification—

a gross simplification of the communities in India.

They counted Hindus as “majorities”

and all different spiritual groups as wonderful “minorities,”

with Muslims being the largest minority.

Sikhs had been taken into consideration part of the Hindu network via all people but themselves.

In elections, humans may want to handiest vote for candidates

of their very own non secular identification.

these practices exaggerated variations,

sowing distrust among groups that had formerly co-existed.

the 20 th century began with a long time of anti-colonial movements,

in which Indians fought for independence from Britain.

within the aftermath of global war II,

underneath giant economic pressure from the battle,

Britain in the end caved.

Indian political leaders had differing perspectives

on what an independent India need to look like.

Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru represented the Hindu majority

and desired one united India.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who led the Muslim minority,

notion the rifts created through colonization had been too deep to repair.

Jinnah argued for a two kingdom division

where Muslims would have a fatherland referred to as Pakistan.

Following riots in 1946 and 1947, the British expedited their retreat,

making plans Indian independence behind closed doors.

In June 1947, the British viceroy introduced that India

could benefit independence with the aid of August,

and be partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan—

however gave little explanation of how precisely this would manifest.

using previous maps, faulty census numbers and minimum understanding of the land,

in a trifling 5 weeks, the Boundary Committee drew a border

dividing three provinces below direct British rule:

Bengal, Punjab, and Assam.

The border took into account where Hindus and Muslims had been majorities,

but also elements like vicinity and population possibilities.

So if a Hindu majority region bordered every other Hindu majority location,

it'd be protected in India—

however if a Hindu majority location bordered Muslim majority regions,

it would come to be a part of Pakistan.

Princely states on the border had to pick out which of the new international locations to enroll in,

dropping their sovereignty in the procedure.

whilst the Boundary Committee worked on the new map,

Hindus and Muslims started shifting to regions

wherein they notion they’d be a part of the religious majority—

but they couldn’t be sure.

households divided themselves.

Fearing sexual violence, dad and mom sent younger daughters and other halves

to regions they gave the impression to be safe.

the brand new map wasn’t discovered until August seventeenth, 1947—

two days after independence.

The provinces of Punjab and Bengal became

the geographically separated East and West Pakistan.

The relaxation became Hindu-majority India.

In a period of two years, hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs living in Pakistan

left for India,

at the same time as Muslims dwelling in India fled villages

wherein their households had lived for hundreds of years.

The cities of Lahore, Delhi, Calcutta, Dhaka, and Karachi

emptied of old citizens and packed with refugees.

inside the energy vacuum British forces left at the back of,

radicalized militias and local companies massacred migrants.

a whole lot of the violence happened in Punjab, and women bore the brunt of it,

struggling rape and mutilation.

round one hundred,000 women had been abducted and pressured to marry their captors.

The problems created via Partition went far past this on the spot deadly aftermath.

Many households who made brief actions have become completely displaced,

and borders remain disputed.

In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became the new u . s . a . of Bangladesh.

meanwhile, the Hindu ruler of Kashmir decided to enroll in India—

a decision that turned into to be finalized by a public referendum

of most people Muslim populace.

That referendum nonetheless hasn't befell as of 2020,

and India and Pakistan were warring over Kashmir on account that 1947.

more than 70 years later,

the legacies of the Partition remain clear inside the subcontinent:

in its new political formations and within the recollections of divided families.