Partition of India

[Revy]

What do you think of the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan?
Although taken place much later, the Bangladeshi Liberation War is also related to the issue.

[Belisarius]

as i've understood it, it was a religious partition. for centuries hinduism and islam have lived side by side in india, but after the independance, some muslim whose name i've forgotten wanted a muslim state. so pakistan was created. of course since both religions have lived side by side, massive migrations were the result. i personally believe just migrating and separating peoples isn't practical nor beneficial on the long run. as we want people to see that they are all equals, we shouldn't separate them in order to create "familiar people" and "strange people". multiculturalism is thus a better solution on the long run, allthough it requires some good will and rationality to see the other as an equal.

[Joe_Germinal]

The partition of India is one of several examples of British imperialists using partition to defend their interests at a time when continued colonialism was becoming political/militarily impossible. Like the partition of Ireland and the partition of Palestine, the partition of India has been a human disaster leading to decades of sectarian hatred and a lack of social progress. India remained a capitalist state after partition, but they did implement some land reform and had some state ownership of the means of production. On the other hand Pakistan, as a semi-colony of Britain and later the US, has primarily seen reactionary dictatorship interspersed with short periods of corrupt and regressive democratic rule. It's no wonder then that India's literacy rate is today 12 points higher than Pakistan's.

That being said, given that partition did take place, I think it's for the best that Bangladesh broke away. During the period of union between East and West Pakistan, the West dominated the East politically, and the Western elite lived richly on wealth extracted from the more economically productive East.

Nevertheless, I think it would have been best for all involved (all except British and American imperialists and the sectarian-nationalists of the Pakistani Muslim League) if Pakistan and Bangladesh would have remained united with India.

[pranabjyoti]

As an Indian, I personally think that the Indian Partition was a result of callousness, lack of vision of the LEADERS(!) of Indian freedom struggle. During the time of partition, the people who would be future rulers of India are more busy with their own future than the future of India. Their first and foremost motto was to grab the power from British.
Basically, if one examine the freedom struggle of India, can see clearly the lack of vision, scientific view of the LEADERS of India of that time.

[Demogorgon]

Britain had been playing divide and rule in India for generations. That kind of behaviour had pretty predictable consequences down the line.

[bricolage]

Sorry if this sounds douchey or doesn't really address what you wanted, I just paraphrased it from an old essay I did, the essay was actually about postcolonial violence not specifically partition but I think these bits (now edited) are relevant.

However I'd also like to add I think what I've written, while addressing the issue partly, is far too structuralist and you also have to take into account the actions/views/objectives of the various independence leaders (which I did not do).

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A lot of people claim partition and subsequent postcolonial violence come from some kind of primordialist feelings of resentment between Hindus and Muslims. This approach argues that ethnic, national, or religious identities are an inherent part of human nature, unavoidable and a continuous source of conflict. The idea was established by Clifford Geertz through the work of Edward Shils but is best summed up by Connor in his view that man is a national, not a rational, animal. With regards to India, primordialists argue that Muslim and Hindu identities have deep historical grounding and contain long established trends of conflict. Examples such as the 1714 riots in Ahmedabad, the site of the 2002 riots, or Hindu-Muslim conflict during the Swadeshi period of 1905-1912 are used to support this. Continuous conflict then ensures that the memory of past conflict remains a constant focal point adding an extra catalyst to communal violence. The primordialist approach was very prominent during the lead up to partition with Jinnah himself proclaiming Hindus and Muslims to be ‘different and distinct social orders’ and that ‘it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality’.

However by arguing in terms of human nature, the primordialist approach relies upon an inherently universal factor, thus leaving it incapable of explaining geographical variation. Additionally, and quite importantly it fails to account for external factors, in this case the actions of the British Empire. Thus, as opposed to being the basis of conflict, it has been more the case that the approach has become justification for conflict itself, with Berenschot pointing to the primordialist rhetoric utilised during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

So then it’s good to take a constructivist approach to identity too (seeing as partition was based on supposed identity. Brass concludes that historians are unclear as to whether Hindu and Muslim identities existed in any meaningful way before the nineteenth century, casting doubt upon Jinnah’s claim that Islam and Hinduism are ‘two different civilisations’. This is not to say that historical identities did not exist, but that they were extremely localised and informal, and were only expanded and institutionalised with the advent of modernity and the capitalist economy. Gellner makes this argument in his seminal study of nationalism arguing that the rise of the industrial society necessitated culturally based economic specialisation and homogenous populations. Yet the primary constructivist claim in regards to postcolonial societies is that the categorisation of people was either fully undertaken by, or exacerbated by, the colonial rulers. Varshney comments on how the colonial administration made use of perceived primordial antagonism to prevent threats to their rule and this is best exemplified by H.H. Risley, a British ethnographer-administrator at the time of the 1905 partition of Bengal, who stated, ‘one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule’. In order to accomplish this, the empire predominantly relied on the ability to manipulate personal religious connections into institutionalised communal identities. The British were subsequently able to propagate these ideas through the power structures they had access to and create categories that have continued into the postcolonial era, leaving severe tension-laden cleavages in Indian society. This idea is epitomised by Prakash of the Subaltern Studies Project who writes; ‘Modern colonialism… instituted ensuring hierarchies of subjects and knowledges… such dichotomies reduced complex differences and interactions to the binary (self/other) logic of colonial power.’

[red cat]

As an Indian, I personally think that the Indian Partition was a result of callousness, lack of vision of the LEADERS(!) of Indian freedom struggle. During the time of partition, the people who would be future rulers of India are more busy with their own future than the future of India. Their first and foremost motto was to grab the power from British.
Basically, if one examine the freedom struggle of India, can see clearly the lack of vision, scientific view of the LEADERS of India of that time.

I think that it was just a redistribution of (semi)colonies between imperialist powers as a result of the power-equation changing after WW2 .

[Uncle Hank]

as i've understood it, it was a religious partition. for centuries hinduism and islam have lived side by side in india, but after the independance, some muslim whose name i've forgotten wanted a muslim state. so pakistan was created. of course since both religions have lived side by side, massive migrations were the result. i personally believe just migrating and separating peoples isn't practical nor beneficial on the long run. as we want people to see that they are all equals, we shouldn't separate them in order to create "familiar people" and "strange people". multiculturalism is thus a better solution on the long run, allthough it requires some good will and rationality to see the other as an equal.
Three quick points (none of them I hope are condescending):

It obviously wasn't just one person. I think it'd be nice if you at least would put forth the effort to look up the founders of the movement.

As other people have said, there was an element of divide and conquer by the British. Before the partition they would play the two communities off against each other. Once they realized they would have to leave, they probably found it easier to play off two hostile states against each other, thus retaining influence.

The congress party that led the independence movement didn't do enough to address the concerns of minority groups (including those of Muslims); that led to the strengthening of the position of the Muslims that argued for a separate state.