India Pakistan Partition Agreement

The 1951 census in Pakistan recorded 671,000 refugees in East Pakistan, most of whom came from West Bengal. The rest came from Bihar. [144] According to the ILO, half a million Indian Muslims emigrated to East Pakistan between 1951 and 1956. [140] In 1961, the number reached 850,000. After the Ranchi and Jamshedpur riots, the Biharis emigrated to East Pakistan until the late sixties and totaled about a million. [145] Rough estimates suggest that in the two decades following partition, about 1.5 million Muslims emigrated from West Bengal and Bihar to East Bengal. [146] The tragedy of partition is that stories of extreme violence in 1947 have since nurtured opposing perspectives and myths have emerged around the origins of India and Pakistan. As Gandhi said in the summer of 1947, "Today religion is petrified." Many backdated stories were written after the event and are present in textbooks and national media in Asia. This sweeps away any appreciation of the Hybrid Indo-Islamic world that flourished before the British began their conquest in the 18th century. The country where indigenous languages based on Sanskrit were fertilized with Turkish, Persian and Arabic, where Rajput princesses married Mughal rulers, and where musical and artistic styles flourished thanks to the fusion of Central Asian influences and local courtly cultures. Between December 1946 and January 1947, Patel worked with the official V. P. Menon on his proposal for a separate dominion of Pakistan, formed from Muslim-majority provinces.

Communal violence in Bengal and Punjab in January and March 1947 further convinced Patel of the strength of the division. Patel, a fierce critic of Jinnah`s demand to admit the Hindu-majority regions of Punjab and Bengal to a Muslim state, secured the partition of these provinces, blocking any possibility of their admission to Pakistan. Patel`s determination to divide Punjab and Bengal had earned him many supporters and admirers in the Indian public, who were tired of the league`s tactics. Yet he has been criticized by Gandhi, Nehru, secular Muslims and socialists for a perceived zeal for division. A nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, California, The 1947 Partition Archive, collects oral histories of those who experienced the division and consolidates the interviews in an archive. [175] A 2019 book by Kavita Puri, Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, based on the BBC Radio 4 documentary series of the same name, features interviews with about two dozen people who witnessed partition and later emigrated to the UK. [176] [177] However, many argue that the British were forced by events on the ground to accelerate division. [159] Once in power, Mountbatten quickly realized that if Britain avoided participating in a civil war, which seemed increasingly likely, there would be no alternative to partition and a hasty exit from India. [159] Law and order had collapsed several times before partition, with much bloodshed on both sides.

A massive civil war loomed when Mountbatten became viceroy. After World War II, Britain had limited resources,[160] which may not have been sufficient to maintain order. Another view is that while Mountbatten may have been too hasty, he lacked real options and did his best under difficult circumstances. [161] Historian Lawrence James agrees that in 1947 Mountbatten had no choice but to cut and run. The alternative seemed to be involved in a potentially bloody civil war from which it would be difficult to emerge. [162] In the months immediately following partition, there was a massive population exchange between the two newly formed states. There was no idea that population transfers would be necessary because of the division. Religious minorities were expected to remain in the states where they lived.

However, an exception was made for Punjab, where the population transfer was organized due to the communal violence that affected the province, this did not apply to the other provinces. [92] [93] Mountbatten was later criticized for speeding up the partition process and not for failing to combat the migration and communal violence that accompanied the birth of the new nations. Venkat Dhulipala rejects the idea that the British policy of divide and rule was responsible for partition, and explains the prospect that Pakistan was popularly presented as a sovereign Islamic state or "New Medina", as a potential successor to the defunct Turkish Caliphate,[164][165] and as the leader and protector of the entire Islamic world. Islamic scholars have debated the creation of Pakistan and its potential to become a true Islamic state. [164] [165] The majority of Barelvis supported the creation of Pakistan.[166][167] and felt that any cooperation with Hindus would be counterproductive. [168] Most of the Deobandis led by Maulana Husayn Ahmad Madani were against the creation of Pakistan and the two-nation theory. According to them, Muslims and Hindus could be part of one nation. [169] [170] [171] A cross-border student initiative, The History Project, was launched in 2014 to examine differences in perception of British-era events that led to division. The project resulted in a book that explains the two interpretations of the common history in Pakistan and India. [173] [174] Borders and Borders: Women in India`s Division by Menon, Ritu & Bhasin, Kamla (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998) The overwhelming, predominantly Hindu protest against the partition of Bengal, as well as the fear of reforms in favor of the Hindu majority, led India`s Muslim elite to the new Viceroy Lord Minto in 1906, who called for separate constituencies for Muslims. In this regard, they called for proportional legislative representation that reflects both their status as former rulers and their cooperation with the British. .