The Partition of 1947

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• The Partition of 1947
• Photo courtesy abro

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Main questions

• What was the Partition
• Why did the Partition of India occur?
• What were its major consequences?
• How did it affect relations between ordinary
  citizens? How did it change their everyday
  existence?
• Did it fulfill the promises it made to the people
  who now became Indians and Pakistanis

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More questions

• Is Kashmir a consequence of the Partition?
• Given the history of Partition, is peace possible
  in South Asia?
• Is it simply history? Or does it affect us
  today?

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August 15, 1947

• India achieves independence and incorporates
  West Bengal and Assam
• Pakistan is created incorporates East Bengal
  (the East Wing, or East Pakistan) and territory
  in the northwest (the West Wing, or West
  Pakistan)
• Jinnah becomes governor general of Pakistan
  Nehru, the PM of India

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The Map Territory Community
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What was the Partition?

• Violence and dislocation
• Erasure of history, creation of new history
• A negotiated political arrangement
• The Partition of India or the Independence of
  Pakistan?

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Why did the Partition occur?

• British design? What did the British have to gain
  from it? What would have happened if they left it
  intact? (Note a very similar question is raised
  now re Iraq and Afghanistan)
• Orientalist understandings
• Divide and rule
• Negotiations between the ruling classes
• Communal conflict
• Incompatibility of cultures?

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Iqbal Two Nation theory

• First articulated in the Presidential address to
  the All India Muslim league in 1930 by Allama
  Iqbal, the famous poet, philosopher and
  politician.
• Argued that the aspirations of two different
  communities, especially when one was a minority,
  and the other a majority, could be addressed
  within one state
• Was in disagreement with both Nehru and Gandhi
• In Indias nationalist discourse this came to be
  known as Muslim separatism.

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Savarkar and Hindutva

• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was the President of the
  Hindu Mahasabha
• Advocated the idea of Hindu Rashtra and supported
  the two-nation theory
• His famous article Who is a Hindu? argued that
  more than a religion, Hindus were ethnically and
  territorially connected to India

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Impact and Aftermath

• Large-scale communal slaughter
• Women were used as instruments of power both by
  the Hindus and the Muslims
• 15 million refugees
• Division of of Punjab and Bengal, divisions
  claimed the lives of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs
  alike.
• Creation of a Muslim majority state

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Kashmir What is at issue?

• Self-determination and independence
• Secularism versus religion as a basis for states
• Territory
• Dislocation and loss of lives
• Identity

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Kashmir timeline

• 1925 Hari Singh ascends the throne of Kashmir
• August 1947 he is asked to choose between
  India and Pakistan he remains undecided.
  Mountbatten suggests plebscite, which has never
  been held.
• October 1947 Jammu and Kashmir was attacked by
  militants from the Northwest. Hari Singh signed
  an Instrument of Accession (in return for
  military support from India).

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Kashmir timeline(2)

• 1947-48 First Indo-Pak War
• 1949 Hari Singh was asked to hand over Kashmir
  to Sheikh Abdullah
• 1971-2 Bangladesh and Indo-Pak war
• 1972 Simla agreement and Line of Control
• 1989 Armed resistance to Indian rule

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Kashmir Today

• Call for Independence from India
• Presence of Indian army
• Institutional failure
• communal politics
• Instability in Pakistan
• Militancy
• Possible scenarios
• But questions remain

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Kashmir

• Can another negotiated settlement create a
  community?
• What does the Partition experience tell us?
• Is religion a good basis for creating
  communities?

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Dawn of Freedom (August 1947)Faiz Ahmed Faiz,
translated by Agha Shahid Ali
These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light
This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with
freedom, we had set out in sheer longing, so sure
that somewhere in its desert the sky harbored a
final haven for the stars, and we would find
it.We had no doubt that nights vagrant wave
would stray towards the shore that the heart
rocked with sorrow would at last reach its
port. Friends, come away from this false light.
Come, we must search for that promised Dawn.