The clash of religion (1): how India was partitioned
This year is the 60th anniversary of the partition of India in 1947 (the actual date is 14-15 August) and this week Channel Four television ran a one and half hour drama documentary on the momentous events of that period.
It was good that the new post-war Labour Government immediately recognised the need to grant India independence and that they appointed someone of the calibre of Lord Mounbatten to do the job, but the rushed execution of the exercise was a disaster. Mountbatten was unable to persuade the Muslim leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah to agree to India as a whole being made independent and instead was compelled to create a separate Muslim state of Pakistan.
The division was impossible from the start because Hindus and Muslims had lived side by side in every corner of the sub-continent for centuries, but separation was especially fraught in the Punjab where there were many Sikhs as well as Hindus and Muslims.
The border between India and Pakistan was determined by the London lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had previously never travelled further east of Gibraltar. He was given just 30 days to do the job in secret and had not finished when partition took effect.
In the utter chaos which ensued, Muslims and Hindus slaughted men, women and children of the other religion and there was massive migration by people to the country where their faith represented the majority. The precise figures will never be known, but most estimates of the death toll are around half a million, while the numbers displaced were about 14.5 million.
Partition never solves sectarian issues but simply redefines them (see Ireland and Palestine). India still has 143 million Muslims, making it the country with the third largest number of Muslims in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. India has sustained 60 years of democracy, even if it is a flawed version, while Pakistan lost its eastern component (to become Bangladesh) and is today a military dictatorship. The disputed region of Kashmir has been the cause of three wars between India and Pakistan which today are both nuclear powers.