Map of the partition of India in 1947 for Wikipedia “Partition of India” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(17) INDIA & PAKISTAN – INPEPENDENCE & PARTITION

(1942-1947)

Moving closer to the focus of my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars fought in Asia after the Second World War but which took definitive shape during that war – in this case, in south Asia or the Indian subcontinent.

India may have been fortunate in it did not have to fight a war of independence and Britain effectively ceded independence to it in 1947, but that independence was on the basis of partition into two independent states along religious lines – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan (the latter as west and east Pakistan, with the latter subsequently seceding as Bangladesh).

Independence may have been relatively bloodless but partition brought with it displacement and violence on a large scale – with the former estimated as 12-20 million people displaced or as refugees, and the latter estimated as anywhere between 200,000 and two million people killed by sectarian violence, with the most common estimate as a million.

Both independence and the idea of Hindu-Muslim partition originated well before the Second World War. Indian independence movements arguably originated from resistance or revolts at the very outset of British imperialism in India by the British East India Company. However, the First World War “would prove to be the watershed of the imperial relationship between Britain and India” – as Indian independence movements hoped India’s contribution to that war would be repaid by British political concessions. Indian independence movements took even more definitive shape in the Second World War and India’s contribution to it – particularly with the Quit India Movement in 1942, hence my choice of 1942 as the starting date for this special mention.

My choice of 1947 as the end date for this special mention of course derives from the year of independence for the two new nations of India and Pakistan – with all the displacement and sectarian violence that this partition involved. The former persisted until at least 1951 and while the latter may have largely subsided by 1948, it laid the foundations for hostility and subsequent wars between Indian and Pakistan as well as the 1971 secession of the former east Pakistan as Bangladesh.

While the independence and partition of British India were probably inevitable, at least from the First World War onwards, it became inevitable on an almost immediate basis from the end of the Second World War due to Britain’s inability and unwillingness to maintain its former imperial or global commitments.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)