Partition of India

The British Indian Empire shown in the Imperial Gazetteer of India map of 1909.

File:Partition-of-India-Spate-Jan-1948.jpg

Maps of India and Pakistan shown in October 1947, after the partition.

The Partition of India was the partition of the British India which led to the creation, on August 14, 1947 and August 15, 1947, respectively, of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (later Islamic Republic of Pakistan and People's Republic of Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later Republic of India). "Partition" here refers not only to the division of the Bengal province of British India into East Pakistan and West Bengal (India), and the similar partition of the Punjab province into Punjab (West Pakistan) and Punjab (India), but also to the respective divisions of other assets, including the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service and other administrative services, the railways, and the central treasury.

The secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in the 1971 is not covered by the term Partition of India, nor is the earlier separation of Burma (now Myanmar) from the administration of British India, or the even earlier separation of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Ceylon, part of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1795 until 1798, became a separate Crown Colony in 1798. Burma, gradually annexed by the British during 1826–86 and governed as a part of the British Indian administration until 1937, was directly administered thereafter. Burma was granted independence on January 4, 1948 and Ceylon on February 4, 1948. (See History of Sri Lanka and History of Burma.)

The remaining countries of present-day South Asia, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives were unaffected by the partition. The first two, Nepal and Bhutan, having signed treaties with the British designating them as independent states, were never a part of the British Indian Empire, and therefore their borders were not affected by the partition. The Maldives, which became a protectorate of the British crown in 1887 and gained its independence in 1965, was also unaffected by the partition.

Background

Partition of Bengal (1905)

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  The prevailing religions of the British Indian Empire, shown in this 1909 map based on the 1901 Census of India
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  1909 Percentage of Hindus.
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  1909 Percentage of Muslims.
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  1909 Percentage of Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains.

In 1905, Viceroy Lord Curzon who in his first term had built an impressive record of archaeological preservation and administrative efficiency, divided the largest administrative subdivision in British India, the Bengal Presidency, into the Muslim-majority province of East Bengal and Assam and the Hindu-majority province of Bengal (present-day Indian states of West Bengal, Bihār, Jharkhand and Odisha). Curzon's Partition of Bengal—which some considered administratively felicitous, and, which had been contemplated by various colonial administrations since the time of Lord William Bentinck, but never acted upon— was to transform nationalist politics as nothing else before it. The Hindu elite of Bengal, among them many who owned land in East Bengal that was leased out to Muslim peasants, protested fervidly. The large Bengali Hindu middle-class (the Bhadralok), upset at the prospect of Bengalis being outnumbered in the new Bengal province by Biharis and Oriyas, felt that Curzon's act was punishment for their political assertiveness. The pervasive protests against Curzon's decision took the form predominantly of the Swadeshi (“buy Indian”) campaign led by two-time Congress president, Surendranath Banerjee, and involved boycott of British goods. Sporadically but flagrantly, the protesters also took to political violence that involved attacks on civilians. The violence, however, was not effective, most planned attacks were either preempted by the British or failed. The rallying cry for both types of protest was the slogan Bande Mataram (Bengali, lit: "Hail to the Mother[land]"), the title of a song by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, which invoked a mother, who stood variously for Bengal, India, and the Hindu goddess Kali. The unrest spread from Calcutta to the surrounding regions of Bengal when Calcutta's English-educated students returned home to their villages and towns. The religious stirrings of the slogan and the political outrage over the partition were combined as young men, in groups such as Jugantar, took to bombings public buildings, staging armed robberies, and assassinating British officials. Since Calcutta was the imperial capital, both the outrage and the slogan soon became nationally known. While the British claimed that the Partition of Bengal was done to improve efficiency, it was widely seen amongst Indians as the British Divide and Rule policy applied to the Hindus and Muslims of Bengal. The British further replaced Hindu officers in Bengal police and intelligence with Muslims from the United Provinces since they felt that Muslims would be loyal to British Raj, thereby creating suspicion of Muslims in the predominantly Hindu revolutionaries. The only Muslim group that was slightly connected with politics in the late 19th century was the Aligarh party, which supported the British Raj. Later, several graduates of the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University) formed the All India Muslim League.

The overwhelming but predominantly Hindu protest against the partition of Bengal and the fear of reforms favouring the Hindu majority led the Muslim elite in India to meet with the new viceroy Lord Minto in 1906 asking for separate electorates for Muslims. In conjunction, they demanded proportional legislative representation reflecting both their status as former rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This led to the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca in December 1906. Although, by this time, Curzon had resigned his position over a dispute with his military chief Lord Kitchener and returned to England, the League was in favour of his partition plan. The Muslim elite's position, which was reflected in the League's position, had crystallized gradually over the previous three decades, beginning with the 1871 Census of British India, which had first estimated the populations in regions of Muslim majority. Curzon's desire to court the Muslims of East Bengal had arisen from British anxieties ever since the 1871 census over Indian Muslims rebelling against the Crown, given the history of Muslims (along with Hindus) fighting them in the 1857 Mutiny and the Second Anglo-Afghan War.) In the three decades since, Muslim leaders across northern India, had intermittently experienced public animosity from some of the new Hindu political and social groups, largely due to their allegiance to the British Raj. The Arya Samaj, for example, had not only supported Cow Protection Societies in their agitation, but also—distraught at the 1871 Census's Muslim numbers—organized "reconversion" events for the purpose of welcoming Muslims back to the Hindu fold. In 1905, when Tilak and Lajpat Rai attempted to rise to leadership positions in the Congress, and some leaders of the Congress rallied used the slogan of Bande Mataram, Muslim fears increased. Ludden writes that the rallying cry, "Bande Mataram," had first appeared in the novel Anand Math in which Hindus had battled their Muslim oppressors, which was taken suspiciously by some Muslims. Lastly, the Muslim elite, and among it Dacca Nawab, Khwaja Salimullah, who hosted the League's first meeting in his mansion in Shahbag, was aware that a new province with a Muslim majority would directly benefit Muslims aspiring to political power. The then Lt Governor Bamfield Fuller of Bengal went so far to openly declare that the British "government looked upon the Muslim community as its favourite wife", further aggravating the communal divide that they were hoping to achieve.

World War I, Lucknow Pact1914-1918

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  Indian medical orderlies attending to wounded soldiers with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia during World War I.
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  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (seated in carriage, on the right, eyes downcast, with black flat-top hat) receives a big welcome in Karachi in 1916 after his return to India from South Africa.
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  Muhammad Ali Jinnah, seated, third from the left, was a supporter of the Lucknow Pact, which, in 1916, ended the three-way rift between the Extremists, the Moderates and the League.

World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. 1.4 million Indian and British soldiers of the British Indian Army would take part in the war and their participation would have a wider cultural fallout: news of Indian soldiers fighting and dying with British soldiers, as well as soldiers from dominions like Canada and Australia, would travel to distant corners of the world both in newsprint and by the new medium of the radio. India’s international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s. It was to lead, among other things, to India, under its own name, becoming a founding member of the League of Nations in 1920 and participating, under the name, "Les Indes Anglaises" (British India), in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. Back in India, especially among the leaders of the Indian National Congress, it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians.

The 1916 Lucknow Session of the Congress was also the venue of an unanticipated mutual effort by the Congress and the Muslim League, the occasion for which was provided by the wartime partnership between Germany and Turkey. Since the Turkish Sultan, or Khalifah, had also sporadically claimed guardianship of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, and since the British and their allies were now in conflict with Turkey, doubts began to increase among some Indian Muslims about the “religious neutrality” of the British, doubts that had already surfaced as a result of the reunification of Bengal in 1911, a decision that was seen as ill-disposed to Muslims. In the Lucknow Pact, the League joined the Congress in the proposal for greater self-government that was campaigned for by Tilak and his supporters; in return, the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims in the provincial legislatures as well as the Imperial Legislative Council. In 1916, the Muslim League had anywhere between 500 and 800 members and did not yet have its wider following among Indian Muslims of later years; in the League itself, the pact did not have unanimous backing, having largely been negotiated by a group of “Young Party” Muslims from the United Provinces (UP), most prominently, two brothers Mohammad and Shaukat Ali, who had embraced the Pan-Islamic cause; however, it did have the support of a young lawyer from Bombay, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was later to rise to leadership roles in both the League and the Indian freedom movement. In later years, as the full ramifications of the pact unfolded, it was seen as benefiting the Muslim minority élites of provinces like UP and Bihar more than the Muslim majorities of Punjab and Bengal, nonetheless, at the time, the “Lucknow Pact,” was an important milestone in nationalistic agitation and was seen so by the British.

Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms: 1919

Montagu and Chelmsford presented their report in July 1918 after a long fact-finding trip through India the previous winter. After more discussion by the government and parliament in Britain, and another tour by the Franchise and Functions Committee for the purpose of identifying who among the Indian population could vote in future elections, the Government of India Act of 1919 (also known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) was passed in December 1919. The new Act enlarged both the provincial and Imperial legislative councils and repealed the Government of India’s recourse to the “official majority” in unfavorable votes. Although departments like defense, foreign affairs, criminal law, communications, and income-tax were retained by the Viceroy and the central government in New Delhi, other departments like public health, education, land-revenue, local self-government were transferred to the provinces. The provinces themselves were now to be administered under a new dyarchical system, whereby some areas like education, agriculture, infrastructure development, and local self-government became the preserve of Indian ministers and legislatures, and ultimately the Indian electorates, while others like irrigation, land-revenue, police, prisons, and control of media remained within the purview of the British governor and his executive council. The new Act also made it easier for Indians to be admitted into the civil service and the army officer corps.

A greater number of Indians were now enfranchised, although, for voting at the national level, they constituted only 10% of the total adult male population, many of whom were still illiterate. In the provincial legislatures, the British continued to exercise some control by setting aside seats for special interests they considered cooperative or useful. In particular, rural candidates, generally sympathetic to British rule and less confrontational, were assigned more seats than their urban counterparts. Seats were also reserved for non-Brahmins, landowners, businessmen, and college graduates. The principal of “communal representation,” an integral part of the Minto-Morley reforms, and more recently of the Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact, was reaffirmed, with seats being reserved for Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, and domiciled Europeans, in both provincial and Imperial legislative councils. The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms offered Indians the most significant opportunity yet for exercising legislative power, especially at the provincial level; however, that opportunity was also restricted by the still limited number of eligible voters, by the small budgets available to provincial legislatures, and by the presence of rural and special interest seats that were seen as instruments of British control.

The Lahore Resolution: 1940

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  Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and Maulana Azad at the 1940 Ramgarh session of the Congress in which Azad was elected president for the second time.
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  Chaudhari Khaliquzzaman (left) seconding the 1940 Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim League with Jinnah (right) presiding, and Liaquat Ali Khan centre.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared war on India’s behalf without consulting Indian leaders, leading the Congress provincial ministries to resign in protest. The Muslim League, in contrast, supported Britain in the war effort; however, it now took the view that Muslims would be unfairly treated in an independent India dominated by the Congress. On March 24, 1940, on the last day of its three-day general session in Lahore, the League passed, what came to be known as the Lahore Resolution, demanding that, "the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." Although there were other important national Muslim politicians such as Congress leader Ab'ul Kalam Azad, and influential regional Muslim politicians such as A. K. Fazlul Huq of the leftist Krishak Praja Party in Bengal, Sikander Hyat Khan of the landlord-dominated Punjab Unionist Party, and Abd al-Ghaffar Khan of the pro-Congress Khudai Khidmatgar (popularly, "red shirts") in the North West Frontier Province, the British, over the next six years, were to increasingly see the League as the main representative of Muslim India.

Cabinet Mission, Direct Action Day, Plan for Partition 1946–1947

In January 1946, a number of mutinies broke out in the armed services, starting with that of RAF servicemen frustrated with their slow repatriation to Britain. The mutinies came to a head with mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay in February 1946, followed by others in Calcutta, Madras, and Karachi. Although the mutinies were rapidly suppressed, they had the effect of spurring the new Labour government in Britain to action, and leading to the Cabinet Mission to India led by the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence, and including Sir Stafford Cripps, who had visited four years before.

Also in early 1946, new elections were called in India. Earlier, at the end of the war in 1945, the colonial government had announced the public trial of three senior officers of Subhas Chandra Bose's defeated Indian National Army who stood accused of treason. Now as the trials began, the Congress leadership, although ambivalent towards the INA, chose to defend the accused officers. The subsequent convictions of the officers, the public outcry against the convictions, and the eventual remission of the sentences, created positive propaganda for the Congress, which only helped in the party's subsequent electoral victories in eight of the eleven provinces. The negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League, however, stumbled over the issue of the partition.

Jinnah's acrimonious speech to the Muslim League called for Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946 in Calcutta, in which more than 5,000 people were killed and many more injured, starting a series of unending communal riots across the country. Margaret Bourke-White who witnessed his speeches, "delivered in an icy voice, which was forecast of fiery events to come" writes:

"We are forced in our own self-protection to abandon constitutional methods." His thin lips slit into a frigid smile. "The decision we have taken is a very grave one." If the Muslims were not granted their separate Pakistan they would launch "direct action." The phrase caught all of us. What form would direct action take, we all wanted to know. "Go to the Congress and ask them their plans," Mr. Jinnah snapped. "When they take you into their confidence I will take you into mine."

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the cooing of pigeons, hopping over Jinnah's manicured lawn. Then he added in the same toneless voice, so strangely unmatched to his words: "Why do you expect me alone to sit with folded hands? I also am going to make trouble."

Bourke-White further writes that the next day Jinnah changed out of his double-breasted suit and put on Muslim dress and fez for the Muslim masses and while standing on a platform liberally decorated with enlargements of his portrait, he announced August 16 as "Direct Action Day" with vituperation against the Congress being acidly explicit:

"If you want peace, we do not want war," he declared. "If you want war we accept your offer unhesitatingly. We will either have a divided India or a destroyed India." And the Muslim Leaguers jumped up on their seats and tossed their fezzes in the air.

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the Muslim League Chief Minister of Bengal gave a three day break to all civil servants during this period and the army was instructed to stay in barracks. Although the Government of India and the Congress were both shaken by the course of events, in September, a Congress-led interim government was installed, with Jawaharlal Nehru as united India’s prime minister. As public order broke down all across northern India and Bengal, the pressure increased to seek a political partition of territories as a way to avoid a full-scale civil war.

Later that year, the Labor government in Britain, its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948. As independence approached, the violence between Hindus and Muslims in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal continued unabated. With the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for an mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines in stark opposition to Gandhi's views. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal.

Geographic partition, 1947

Mountbatten Plan

Mountbatten with a countdown calendar to the Transfer of Power in the background

The actual division of British India between the two new dominions was accomplished according to what has come to be known as the 3 June Plan or Mountbatten Plan. It was announced at a press conference by Mountbatten on 3 June 1947, when the date of independence was also announced – 15 August 1947. The plan's main points were:

• Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims in Punjab and Bengal legislative assemblies would meet and vote for partition. If a simple majority of either group wanted partition, then these provinces would be divided.
• Sindh was to take its own decision.
• The fate of North West Frontier Province and Sylhet district of Bengal was to be decided by a referendum.
• India would be independent by 15 August 1947.
• The separate independence of Bengal also ruled out.
• A boundary commission to be set up in case of partition.

The Indian political leaders accepted the Plan on 2 June. It did not deal with the question of the princely states, but on 3 June Mountbatten advised them against remaining independent and urged them to join one of the two new dominions.

The Muslim league's demands for a separate state were thus conceded. The Congress' position on unity was also taken into account while making Pakistan as small as possible. Mountbatten's formula was to divide India and at the same time retain maximum possible unity.

Within British India, the border between India and Pakistan (the Radcliffe Line) was determined by a British Government-commissioned report prepared under the chairmanship of a London barrister, Sir Cyril Radcliffe. Pakistan came into being with two non-contiguous enclaves, East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, separated geographically by India. India was formed out of the majority Hindu regions of British India, and Pakistan from the majority Muslim areas.

On 18 July 1947, the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act that finalized the arrangements for partition and abandoned British suzerainty over the princely states, of which there were several hundred, leaving them free to choose whether to accede to one of the new dominions. The Government of India Act 1935 was adapted to provide a legal framework for the new dominions.

Following its creation as a new country in August 1947, Pakistan applied for membership of the United Nations and was accepted by the General Assembly on 30 September 1947. The Union of India continued to have the existing seat as India had been a founding member of the United Nations since 1945.

Radcliffe Line

Further information: Radcliffe Line

A map of the Punjab region ca. 1947

File:Partition-punjab-spate.jpg

The claims (Congress/Sikh and Muslim) and the Boundary Commission Award in the Punjab in relation to Muslim percentage by Tehsils. The unshaded regions are the princely states.

File:Upper-bari-doab-prevailing-religions1947a.jpg

The communities in the disputed regions of the Upper Bari Doab in 1947.

The Punjab – the region of the five rivers east of Indus: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — consists of interfluvial doabs, or tracts of land lying between two confluent rivers. These are the Sind-Sagar doab (between Indus and Jhelum), the Jech doab (Jhelum/Chenab), the Rechna doab (Chenab/Ravi), the Bari doab (Ravi/Beas), and the Bist doab (Beas/Sutlej) (see map). In early 1947, in the months leading up to the deliberations of the Punjab Boundary Commission, the main disputed areas appeared to be in the Bari and Bist doabs, although some areas in the Rechna doab were claimed by the Congress and Sikhs. In the Bari doab, the districts of Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Lahore, and Montgomery (Sahiwal) were all disputed.

All districts (other than Amritsar, which was 46.5% Muslim) had Muslim majorities; albeit, in Gurdaspur, the Muslim majority, at 51.1%, was slender. At a smaller area-scale, only three tehsils (sub-units of a district) in the Bari doab had non-Muslim majorities. These were: Pathankot (in the extreme north of Gurdaspur, which was not in dispute), and Amritsar and Tarn Taran in Amritsar district. In addition, there were four Muslim-majority tehsils east of Beas-Sutlej (with two where Muslims outnumbered Hindus and Sikhs together).

Before the Boundary Commission began formal hearings, governments were set up for the East and the West Punjab regions. Their territories were provisionally divided by "notional division" based on simple district majorities. In both the Punjab and Bengal, the Boundary Commission consisted of two Muslim and two non-Muslim judges with Sir Cyril Radcliffe as a common chairman.

The mission of the Punjab commission was worded generally as the following: "To demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab, on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so, it will take into account other factors."

Each side (the Muslims and the Congress/Sikhs) presented its claim through counsel with no liberty to bargain. The judges too had no mandate to compromise and on all major issues they "divided two and two, leaving Sir Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of making the actual decisions."

Independence, population transfer, and violence

Massive population exchanges occurred between the two newly formed states in the months immediately following Partition. Once the lines were established, about 14.5 million people crossed the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. Based on 1951 Census of displaced persons, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 7,250,000 Sikhs and Hindus moved to India from Pakistan immediately after partition.

About 11.2 million or 78% of the population transfer took place in the west, with Punjab accounting for most of it; 5.3 million Muslims moved from India to West Punjab in Pakistan, potentially 3.8 million Hindus and Sikhs could have moved from West Pakistan to East Punjab in India but 500,000 had already migrated before the Radcliffe award was announced; elsewhere in the west 1.2 million moved in each direction to and from Sind.

A crowd of Muslims at the Old Fort (Purana Qila) in Delhi, which had been converted into a vast camp for Muslim refugees waiting to be transported to Pakistan. Manchester Guardian, 27 September 1947.

The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths range around roughly 500,000, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at 1,000,000.

Punjab

The Indian state of East Punjab was created in 1947, when the Partition of India split the former British province of Punjab between India and Pakistan. The mostly Muslim western part of the province became Pakistan's Punjab province; the mostly Sikh and Hindu eastern part became India's East Punjab state. Many Hindus and Sikhs lived in the west, and many Muslims lived in the east, and the fears of all such minorities were so great that the partition saw many people displaced and much intercommunal violence.

Lahore and Amritsar were at the centre of the problem, the Boundary Commission was not sure where to place them – to make them part of India or Pakistan. The Commission decided to give Lahore to Pakistan, whilst Amritsar became part of India. Some areas in west Punjab, including Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, and Gujrat, had a large Sikh and Hindu population, and many of the residents were attacked or killed. On the other side, in East Punjab, cities such as Amritsar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, and Jalandhar had a majority Muslim population, of which thousands were killed or emigrated.

Bengal

Main article: Partition of Bengal (1947)

The province of Bengal was divided into the two separate entities of West Bengal belonging to India, and East Bengal belonging to Pakistan. East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan in 1955, and later became the independent nation of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.

While the Muslim majority districts of Murshidabad and Malda were given to India, the Hindu majority district of Khulna and the majority Buddhist, but sparsely populated Chittagong Hill Tracts was given to Pakistan by the award.

Sindh

Hindu Sindhis were expected to stay in Sindh following Partition, as there were good relations between Hindu and Muslim Sindhis. At the time of Partition there were 1,400,000 Hindu Sindhis, though most were concentrated in cities such as Hyderabad, Karachi, Shikarpur, and Sukkur. However, because of an uncertain future in a Muslim country, a sense of better opportunities in India, and most of all a sudden influx of Muslim refugees from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajputana (Rajasthan) and other parts of India, many Sindhi Hindus decided to leave for India.

Problems were further aggravated when incidents of violence instigated by Muslim refugees broke out in Karachi and Hyderabad. According to the census of India 1951, nearly 776,000 Sindhi Hindus moved into India. Unlike the Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs, Sindhi Hindus did not have to witness any massive scale rioting; however, their entire province had gone to Pakistan thus they felt like a homeless community. Despite this migration, a significant Sindhi Hindu population still resides in Pakistan's Sindh province where they number at around 2.28 million as per Pakistan's 1998 census while the Sindhi Hindus in India as per 2001 census of India were at 2.57 million. However Some bordering Districts in Sindh was Hindu Majority like Tharparkar District, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar and Badin, but number is reducing, in fact Umerkot, still has majority Hindu in district.

Perspectives

File:TIME Magazine October 27 1947 cover.jpg

TIME magazine 27 October 1947 cover Boris Artzybasheff depicting a self-hurting goddess Kali as a symbol of the partition of India. The caption says: "INDIA: Liberty and death."

Refugees on train roof during Partition

The Partition was a highly controversial arrangement, and remains a cause of much tension on the Indian subcontinent today. The British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten of Burma has not only been accused of rushing the process through, but also is alleged to have influenced the Radcliffe Line in India's favour. However, the commission took so long to decide on a final boundary that the two nations were granted their independence even before there was a defined boundary between them. Even then, the members were so distraught at their handiwork (and its results) that they refused compensation for their time on the commission.

Some critics allege that British haste led to the cruelties of the Partition. Because independence was declared prior to the actual Partition, it was up to the new governments of India and Pakistan to keep public order. No large population movements were contemplated; the plan called for safeguards for minorities on both sides of the new border. It was a task at which both states failed. There was a complete breakdown of law and order; many died in riots, massacre, or just from the hardships of their flight to safety. What ensued was one of the largest population movements in recorded history. According to Richard Symonds: At the lowest estimate, half a million people perished and twelve million became homeless.

However, many argue that the British were forced to expedite the Partition by events on the ground. Once in office, Mountbatten quickly became aware if Britain were to avoid involvement in a civil war, which seemed increasingly likely, there was no alternative to partition and a hasty exit from India. Law and order had broken down many times before Partition, with much bloodshed on both sides. A massive civil war was looming by the time Mountbatten became Viceroy. After the Second World War, Britain had limited resources, perhaps insufficient to the task of keeping order. Another viewpoint is that while Mountbatten may have been too hasty he had no real options left and achieved the best he could under difficult circumstances. The historian Lawrence James concurs that in 1947 Mountbatten was left with no option but to cut and run. The alternative seemed to be involvement in a potentially bloody civil war from which it would be difficult to get out.

Conservative elements in England consider the partition of India to be the moment that the British Empire ceased to be a world power, following Curzon's dictum: "the loss of India would mean that Britain drop straight away to a third rate power."

Refugees settled in India

Many Sikhs and Hindu Punjabis migrated from Western Punjab and settled in the Indian parts of Punjab and Delhi. Hindus migrating from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) settled across Eastern India and Northeastern India, many ending up in close-by states like West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura. Some migrants were sent to the Andaman Islands where Bengali today form the largest linguistic group.

Hindu Sindhis found themselves without a homeland. The responsibility of rehabilitating them was borne by their government. Refugee camps were set up for Hindu Sindhis. Many refugees overcame the trauma of poverty, though the loss of a homeland has had a deeper and lasting effect on their Sindhi culture. In 1967, the Government of India recognized Sindhi as a fifteenth official language of India in two scripts. In late 2004, the Sindhi Diaspora vociferously opposed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India which asked the Government of India to delete the word "Sindh" from the Indian National Anthem (written by Rabindranath Tagore prior to the partition) on the grounds that it infringed upon the sovereignty of Pakistan.

Delhi received the largest number of refugees for a single city – the population of Delhi grew rapidly in 1947 from under 1 million (917,939) to a little less than 2 million (1,744,072) during the period 1941–1951. The refugees were housed in various historical and military locations such as the Purana Qila, Red Fort, and military barracks in Kingsway (around the present Delhi University). The latter became the site of one of the largest refugee camps in northern India with more than 35,000 refugees at any given time besides Kurukshetra camp near Panipat. The camp sites were later converted into permanent housing through extensive building projects undertaken by the Government of India from 1948 onwards. A number of housing colonies in Delhi came up around this period like Lajpat Nagar, Rajinder Nagar, Nizamuddin East, Punjabi Bagh, Rehgar Pura, Jungpura and Kingsway Camp. A number of schemes such as the provision of education, employment opportunities, and easy loans to start businesses were provided for the refugees at the all-India level. The Delhi refugees, however, were able to make use of these facilities much better than their counterparts elsewhere.

Refugees settled in Pakistan

In the aftermath of partition, a huge population exchange occurred between the two newly formed states. About 14.5 million people crossed the borders, including 7,226,000 Muslims who came to Pakistan from India while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan. About 5.5 million settled in Punjab, Pakistan and around 1.5 million settled in Sindh.

Most of those migrants who settled in Punjab, Pakistan came from the neighbouring Indian regions of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh while others were from Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan. On the other hand, most of those migrants who arrived in Sindh were primarily of Urdu-speaking background (termed the Muhajir people) and came from the northern and central urban centres of India, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan via the Wahgah and Munabao borders; however a limited number of Muhajirs also arrived by air and on ships. People who wished to go to India from all over Sindh awaited their departure to India by ship at the Swaminarayan temple in Karachi and were visited by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

Later in 1950s, the majority of Urdu speaking refugees who migrated after the independence were settled in the port city of Karachi in southern Sindh and in the metropolitan cities of Hyderabad, Sukkur, Nawabshah and Mirpurkhas. In addition, some Urdu-speakers settled in the cities of Punjab, mainly in Lahore, Multan, Bahawalpur and Rawalpindi. The number of migrants in Sindh was placed at over 540,000 of whom two-third were urban. In the case of Karachi, from a population of around 400,000 in 1947, it turned into more than 1.3 million in 1953.

Former President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, was of Urdu-speaking background and born in the Nahar Vali Haveli in Daryaganj, Delhi, India. Several previous Pakistani leaders were also born in regions that are in India. Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan was born in Karnal (now in Haryana). The 7-year longest-serving Governor and martial law administrator of Pakistan's largest province, Balochistan, General Rahimuddin Khan, was born in the predominantly Pathan city of Kaimganj, which now lies in Uttar Pradesh. General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who came to power in a military coup in 1977, was born in Jalandhar, East Punjab. The families of all four men opted for Pakistan at the time of Partition.

Aftermath

Rehabilitation of women

See also: Rape during the partition of India

Both sides promised each other that they would try to restore women abducted during the riots. The Indian government claimed that 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted, and the Pakistani government claimed that 50,000 Muslim women were abducted during riots. By 1949, there were governmental claims that 12,000 women had been recovered in India and 6,000 in Pakistan. By 1954 there were 20,728 recovered Muslim women and 9,032 Hindu and Sikh women recovered from Pakistan. Most of the Hindu and Sikh women refused to go back to India fearing that they would never be accepted by their family; similarly, the families of some Muslim women refused to take back their relatives.

• 
  Rural Sikhs in a long ox-cart train headed towards India. 1947. Margaret Bourke-White.
• 
  Two Muslim men (in a rural refugee train headed towards Pakistan) carrying an old woman in a makeshift doli or palanquin. 1947.
• "With the tragic legacy of an uncertain future, a young refugee sits on the walls of Purana Qila, transformed into a vast refugee camp in Delhi." Margaret Bourke-White, 1947.
  "With the tragic legacy of an uncertain future, a young refugee sits on the walls of Purana Qila, transformed into a vast refugee camp in Delhi." Margaret Bourke-White, 1947.
• 
  A refugee train on its way to Punjab, Pakistan.

• Photo of a railway station in Punjab. Many people abandoned their fixed assets and crossed newly formed borders.
  Photo of a railway station in Punjab. Many people abandoned their fixed assets and crossed newly formed borders.
• Train to Pakistan steaming out of New Delhi Railway Station, 1947.
  Train to Pakistan steaming out of New Delhi Railway Station, 1947.
• 
  Train to Pakistan being given a warm send-off. New Delhi railway station, 1947
• 
  Muslim couple and their grandchildren by the roadside: "The old man is dying of exhaustion. The caravan has gone on,"-Bourke-White.

Treatment of minorities by Pakistan and India

Further information: Hinduism in Pakistan

Further information: Persecution of Muslims § Communal violence in India

1971 newsreel film about the partition and its aftermath

Before independence, Hindus and Sikhs had formed 20 per cent of the population of the areas now forming Pakistan, presently the percentage has "whittled down to one-and-a half percent". M. C. Chagla, in a speech at the UN General Assembly said that, Pakistan solved its minority problem by the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus, resulting in "hardly any" Hindu minority population in West Pakistan. India suspected Pakistan of ethnic cleansing when millions of Hindus fled its province of East Pakistan in 1971. Hindus remaining in Pakistan have been persecuted. Yasmin Saikia writes that "although a large number of Muslims migrated to Pakistan in 1947, the bulk of the Muslim population chose to stay in their homelands in India". According to Azim A. Khan Sherwani, the Hashimpura massacre case is "a chilling reminder of the apathy of the (Indian) state towards access to justice for Muslims", he writes that the case demonstrates that it is not just the Hindutva lobby, but also the Congress-Left and the socialists that are apathetic, and that Muslim "leaders" are more concerned with their personal ambitions and not with "issues afflicting the community". In Pakistan, Hindus have been facing discrimination and often forced to convert to Islam.

Pakistan tried preventing Harijans (untouchables etc.) from leaving Pakistan so that they stayed to clean toilets and other things. To this effect, the Government there passed the Essential Services Maintenance Act barring their emigration. Eagerness to woo the Harijans was shown by India by instituting constitutional reforms for their upliftment and setting up of various institutions for their rehabilitation.

Integration of refugee populations with their new countries did not always go smoothly. Some Urdu speaking Muslims (Muhajirs) who migrated to Pakistan have at certain times complained of discrimination in government employment. Municipal political conflict in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, often pitted native Sindhis against Muhajir settlers. Sindhi, Bengali, and Punjabi refugees in India also experienced poverty and other social issues as they largely came empty-handed. However, fifty years after partition, almost all ex-refugees have managed to rebuild their lives. The repression of minorities in Pakistan remains a global concern but Pakistani politicians have largely ignored the issue. Those who have attempted to lobby or campaign on this issue have been threatened and murdered like Sherry Rehman, and Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti.

[[]]==Artistic depictions of the Partition==

Main article: Artistic depictions of the partition of India

The partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many creative minds in India and Pakistan to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition.

Literature describing the human cost of independence and partition comprises Bal K. Gupta's memoirs "Forgotten Atrocities(2012), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), several short stories such as Toba Tek Singh (1955) by Saadat Hassan Manto, Urdu poems such as Subh-e-Azadi (Freedom’s Dawn, 1947) by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Bhisham Sahni's Tamas (1974), Manohar Malgonkar's A Bend in the Ganges (1965), and Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy Man (1988), among others. Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children (1980), which won the Booker Prize and the Booker of Bookers, weaved its narrative based on the children born with magical abilities on midnight of 14 August 1947. Freedom at Midnight (1975) is a non-fiction work by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that chronicled the events surrounding the first Independence Day celebrations in 1947. There is a paucity of films related to the independence and partition. Early films relating to the circumstances of the independence, partition and the aftermath include Nemai Ghosh's Chinnamul (Bengali) (1950), Dharmputra (1961) Lahore (1948), Chhalia (1956), Nastik (1953)<ref. Gupta, Bal K.>Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara (Bengali) (1960), Komal Gandhar (Bengali) (1961), Subarnarekha (Bengali) (1962); later films include Garm Hava (1973) and Tamas (1987). From the late 1990s onwards, more films on this theme were made, including several mainstream films, such as Earth (1998), Train to Pakistan (1998) (based on the aforementined book), Hey Ram (2000), Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), Pinjar (2003), Partition (2007) and Madrasapattinam (2010),. The biopics Gandhi (1982), Jinnah (1998) and Sardar (1993) also feature independence and partition as significant events in their screenplay. A Pakistani drama Daastan, based on the novel Bano, also tells the tale of young Muslim girl during partition. The novel "Lost Generations" (2013) by Manjit Sachdeva describes March 1947 massacre in rural areas of Rawalpindi by Muslim League, followed by massacres on both sides of the new border in August 1947 seen through the eyes of an escaping Sikh family, their settlement and partial rehabilitation in Delhi, and ending in ruin (including death), for the second time in 1984, at the hands of mobs after a Sikh assassinated the prime minister.

See also

• List of Indian Princely States
• Indian independence movement
• Pakistan Movement
• History of Bangladesh
• History of India
• History of Pakistan
• Indo-Pakistani War of 1947
• India (disambiguation)

Further reading

Textbook histories

• Bandyopādhyāẏa, Śekhara (2004), From Plassey to partition: a history of modern India, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, ISBN 978-81-250-2596-2, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (2004), Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political economy: second edition, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-39715-0, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Brown, Judith Margaret (1994), Modern India: the origins of an Asian democracy, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-873112-2, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Judd, Denis (2010), The lion and the tiger: the rise and fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-280579-9, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (2004), A history of India, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-32920-0, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Ludden, David (2002), India and South Asia: a short history, Oneworld, ISBN 978-1-85168-237-9, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Markovits, Claude (2004), A history of modern India, 1480-1950, Anthem Press, ISBN 978-1-84331-152-2, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Metcalf, Barbara Daly; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006), A concise history of modern India, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-86362-9, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Peers, Douglas M. (2006), India under colonial rule: 1700-1885, Pearson Education, ISBN 978-0-582-31738-3, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Robb, Peter (2011), A History of India, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-34549-2, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Spear, Percival (1990), A history of India, Volume 2, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-14-013836-8, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Stein, Burton; Arnold, David (2010), A History of India, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 978-1-4051-9509-6, retrieved 5 November 2011
• Wolpert, Stanley (2008), A new history of India, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-533756-3, retrieved 5 November 2011

Monographs

• Ishtiaq Ahmed, Ahmed, Ishtiaq. 2011. The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First Person Account. New Delhi: RUPA Publications. 808 pages. ISBN 978-81-291-1862-2
• Ansari, Sarah. 2005. Life after Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh: 1947—1962. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 256 pages. ISBN 0-19-597834-X.
• Butalia, Urvashi. 1998. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 308 pages. ISBN 0-8223-2494-6
• Butler, Lawrence J. 2002. Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World. London: I.B.Tauris. 256 pages. ISBN 1-86064-449-X
• Chakrabarty; Bidyut. 2004. The Partition of Bengal and Assam: Contour of Freedom (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004) online edition
• Chatterji, Joya. 2002. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932—1947. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 323 pages. ISBN 0-521-52328-1.
• Chester, Lucy P. 2009. Borders and Conflict in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7899-6.
• Gilmartin, David. 1988. Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press. 258 pages. ISBN 0-520-06249-3.
• Gossman, Partricia. 1999. Riots and Victims: Violence and the Construction of Communal Identity Among Bengali Muslims, 1905–1947. Westview Press. 224 pages. ISBN 0-8133-3625-2
• Gupta, Bal K. 2012 "Forgotten Atrocities: Memoirs of a Survivor of 1947 Partition of India". www.lulu.com
• Hansen, Anders Bjørn. 2004. "Partition and Genocide: Manifestation of Violence in Punjab 1937–1947", India Research Press. ISBN 978-81-87943-25-9.
• Harris, Kenneth. Attlee (1982) pp 355–87
• Hasan, Mushirul (2001), India's Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 444 pages, ISBN 0-19-563504-3.
• Herman, Arthur. Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (2009)
• Ikram, S. M. 1995. Indian Muslims and Partition of India. Delhi: Atlantic. ISBN 81-7156-374-0
• Jain, Jasbir (2007), Reading Partition, Living Partition, Rawat Publications, 338 pages, ISBN 81-316-0045-9
• Jalal, Ayesha (1993), The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 334 pages, ISBN 0-521-45850-1
• Kaur, Ravinder. 2007. "Since 1947: Partition Narratives among Punjabi Migrants of Delhi". Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-568377-6.
• Khan, Yasmin (2007), The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 250 pages, ISBN 0-300-12078-8
• Khosla, G. D. Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of India New Delhi: Oxford University Press:358 pages Published: February 1990 ISBN 0-19-562417-3
• Lamb, Alastair (1991), Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990, Roxford Books, ISBN 0-907129-06-4
• Metcalf, Barbara; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006), A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xxxiii, 372, ISBN 0-521-68225-8
• Moon, Penderel. (1999). The British Conquest and Dominion of India (2 vol. 1256pp)
• Moore, R.J. (1983). Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem, the standard history of the British position
• Nair, Neeti. (2010) Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India
• Page, David, Anita Inder Singh, Penderel Moon, G. D. Khosla, and Mushirul Hasan. 2001. The Partition Omnibus: Prelude to Partition/the Origins of the Partition of India 1936-1947/Divide and Quit/Stern Reckoning. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-565850-7
• Pal, Anadish Kumar. 2010. World Guide to the Partition of INDIA. Kindle Edition: Amazon Digital Services. 282 KB. ASIN B0036OSCAC
• Pandey, Gyanendra. 2002. Remembering Partition:: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge University Press. 232 pages. ISBN 0-521-00250-8 online edition
• Panigrahi; D.N. 2004. India's Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat London: Routledge. online edition
• Raja, Masood Ashraf. Constructing Pakistan: Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity, 1857–1947, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-547811-2
• Raza, Hashim S. 1989. Mountbatten and the partition of India. New Delhi: Atlantic. ISBN 81-7156-059-8
• Shaikh, Farzana. 1989. Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860—1947. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 272 pages. ISBN 0-521-36328-4.
• Singh, Jaswant. (2011) Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence
• Talbot, Ian and Gurharpal Singh (eds). 1999. Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 420 pages. ISBN 0-19-579051-0.
• Talbot, Ian. 2002. Khizr Tiwana: The Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 216 pages. ISBN 0-19-579551-2.
• Talbot, Ian. 2006. Divided Cities: Partition and Its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar. Oxford and Karachi: Oxford University Press. 350 pages. ISBN 0-19-547226-8.
• Wolpert, Stanley. 2006. Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 272 pages. ISBN 0-19-515198-4.
• Wolpert, Stanley. 1984. Jinnah of Pakistan

Articles

• Brass, Paul. 2003. The partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab,1946–47: means, methods, and purposes Washington University
• Gilmartin, David. 1998. "Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative." The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(4):1068–1095.
• Jeffrey, Robin. 1974. "The Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of Order, August 1947" – Modern Asian Studies 8(4):491–520.
• Kaur Ravinder. 2007. "India and Pakistan: Partition Lessons". Open Democracy.
• Kaur, Ravinder. 2006. "The Last Journey: Social Class in the Partition of India". Economic and Political Weekly, June 2006. www.epw.org.in
• Khan, Lal (2003). Partition – Can it be undone?. Wellred Publications. p. 228. ISBN 1-900007-15-0. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Mookerjea-Leonard, Debali. 2005. "Divided Homelands, Hostile Homes: Partition, Women and Homelessness". Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 40(2):141–154.
• Mookerjea-Leonard, Debali. 2004. "Quarantined: Women and the Partition". Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24(1): 35–50.
• Morris-Jones. 1983. "Thirty-Six Years Later: The Mixed Legacies of Mountbatten's Transfer of Power". International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs), 59(4):621–628.
• Noorani, A. G. (22 Dec. 2001 – 4 Jan. 2002). "The Partition of India". Frontline (magazine). 18 (26). Retrieved 12 October 2011. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Spate, O. H. K. (1947), "The Partition of the Punjab and of Bengal", The Geographical Journal, 110 (4/6): 201–218
• Spear, Percival. 1958. "Britain's Transfer of Power in India." Pacific Affairs, 31(2):173–180.
• Talbot, Ian. 1994. "Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Committee of the All-India Muslim League, 1943–46". Modern Asian Studies, 28(4):875–889.

Visaria, Pravin M. 1969. "Migration Between India and Pakistan, 1951–61" Demography, 6(3):323–334.

• Chopra, R. M., "The Punjab And Bengal", Calcutta, 1999.

Primary sources

• Mansergh, Nicholas, and Penderel Moon, eds. The Transfer of Power 1942–47 (12 vol., London: HMSO . 1970–83) comprehensive collection of British official and private documents
• Moon, Penderel. (1998) Divide & Quit

Popularizations

• Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre: Freedom at Midnight. London: Collins, 1975. ISBN 0-00-638851-5
• Zubrzycki, John. (2006) The Last Nizam: An Indian Prince in the Australian Outback. Pan Macmillan, Australia. ISBN 978-0-330-42321-2.

Memoirs and oral history

• Bonney, Richard; Hyde, Colin; Martin, John. "Legacy of Partition, 1947–2009: Creating New Archives from the Memories of Leicestershire People," Midland History, (Sept 2011), Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 215–224
• Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam: India Wins Freedom, Orient Longman, 1988. ISBN 81-250-0514-5
• Mountbatten, Pamela. (2009) India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power

Historical-Fiction

• Mohammed, Javed: Walk to Freedom, Rumi Bookstore, 2006. ISBN 978-0-9701261-2-2
• ((Chopra, R.M., "The Punjab And Bengal", Calcutta, 1999.

External links

Bibliographies

• Select Research Bibliography on the Partition of India, Compiled by Vinay Lal, Department of History, UCLA; University of California at Los Angeles list
• A select list of Indian Publications on the Partition of India (Punjab & Bengal); University of Virginia list
• South Asian History: Colonial India — University of California, Berkeley Collection of documents on colonial India, Independence, and Partition
• Indian Nationalism — Fordham University archive of relevant public-domain documents

Other links

• Clip from 1947 newsreel showing Indian independence ceremony
• Through My Eyes Website Imperial War Museum – Online Exhibition (including images, video and interviews with refugees from the Partition of India)
• A People Partitioned Five radio programmes broadcast on the BBC World Service in 1997 containing the voices of people across South Asia who lived through Partition.