History is a very popular subject among researchers and readers of young age. But as we turn pages of our past, we come across some most horrifying instances and events for humanity. The Mongol invasion, the Holocaust, the Taiping Rebellion, and the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong are some examples of the insanity and cruelty of human minds.
But when we talk of the largest migration and exodus of population, it happened in British India. In 1947, the subcontinent was divided into 2 nations on a communal basis. Muslim majority Pakistan and Hindu majority Indian Republic came into existence. But this transition wasn’t easy at all. It came with the challenge of drawing a border between the people who have spent centuries together. The Partition of India resulted in the death of around 2 million people. Also, about 14 million people were displaced from their motherland.
Probably, most people of this generation can’t even feel or understand the pain and suffrage of being forced to leave your house and city, and leave for an uncertain future, not knowing if you would survive or not. Farmers, traders, teachers, and lawyers all were forced to leave their normal life, lands, homes, belongings, and sometimes even women.
But what were the circumstances and events in Colonial India, which took the nation to the extent of partition? On the 18th of July 1947, The Indian Independence Act 1947 was given royal assent. This bill established India and Pakistan as two separate dominions with the British monarch as sovereign. The two self-governing independent Dominions of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 15 August 1947.
But the 15th of August was not the starting date of violence, nor was it the date of the end of it. The main centers of violence remained Punjab and Bengal which were bifurcated. Amritsar, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Delhi, and Calcutta all these cities that were places of harmony turned into battlegrounds between both communities. It is estimated that about 2 million people were killed in communal violence.
Also, a lot of people, who left their homes for a new destination, never reached there. It is estimated that 1.3 million Muslims who left India never reached Pakistan. Also, 0.8 million Hindus and Sikhs never reached India after leaving Pakistan. “The Big March: Migratory Flows after the Partition of India” published in August 2008, puts the total number of missing at 2.2 million.
A darker and disgusting truth of partition is that anywhere between 75,000 to 1,00,000 women were abducted and raped. Women were paraded naked and raped publicly before being set on fire on roads. Many women suicide by jumping into wells to save their honour and avoid conversion.
We can’t remove the stains of the past. But, were these stains worthy? Was this menace necessary? Cant Hindus and Muslims live together? All these questions are still in eyes of children who turn the pages of his history book to know about the historical blunders committed by its forefathers. The past will always remain guilty in eyes of the present.
One of the most celebrated and prolific writers of undivided India, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote about the partition –
“Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still a slave in both these countries – the slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity.”
– Saadat Hasan Manto
