India or Pakistan

But somehow the Hindus have been mysteriouly vanishing from both these countries. From around 20% minorities as percentage of population, the ratio has now dwindled to around 2% in both.



Partition was demanded by Muslims (and not by Hindus) on the pretext that the two religions can not live together. However religion could not bind East and West Pakistan when West Pakistan massacred hundreds of thousands of EPakistanis due to racial reasons.

Indian leaders were left with no choice but to accept the partition of their country for which they fought for due to the communal tension and killings by people who were not exactly big figures in the independence movement.

07s--

Good to have your views here.

Wasn't Nehru present at the ...series of meetings that divided the region? I actually agree with what you say, but I knew it would be considered one-sided to say the Muslims demanded it, so since the Hindu Indians were represented, and since they eventually took part in the negotiations, I gave them equal responsibility for it.

I shouldn't have.

Facts are facts, whether people like it--or believe it--or not.

The Muslim leaders are the ones who demanded the Partition. The Hindus accepted it.

The Hindus, IMO, weren't completely innocent in the whole thing--but again, IMO, they exhibited much more restraint for much longer than most other 'heterogenous' people would. A leader like Gandhi wouldn't hold sway with most societies.

I guess that's a racial comment.

Lash, let me try to summarise it in as few words as possible:

An organisation called Muslim League tabled its demand for the partition. The partition demand was not acceptable to the Congress leaders (main avenue for the India's freedom movement - included all major leaders irrespective of their religion). However as the British decision to leave India became clearer, communal tensions flared up.

Indian leaders (note not Hindu since many major Muslim leaders were also against partition) including Gandhi had to agree to partition because of the communal violence.

Welcome 07s, thanks for sharing. Although it would be more useful if instead of insults you linked to articles or provided facts just like you suggest to others. I am no expert. If I see you're right, I have no reason not to believe you.

Here is just one account from http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Part.html. Just googled it. Comments on the contents of the article below welcome. Keep them to the contents though. Not to me.

Reasons for Partition

By the end of the 19th century several nationalistic movements had started in India. Indian nationalism had grown largely since British policies of education and the advances made by the British in India in the fields of transportation and communication. However, their complete insensitivity to and distance from the peoples of India and their customs created such disillusionment with them in their subjects that the end of British rule became necessary and inevitable.

However, while the Indian National Congress was calling for Britain to Quit India, the Muslim League, in 1943, passed a resolution for them to Divide and Quit. There were several reasons for the birth of a separate Muslim homeland in the subcontinent, and all three parties-the British, the Congress and the Muslim League-were responsible.

The British had followed a divide-and-rule policy in India. Even in the census they categorised people according to religion and viewed and treated them as separate from each other. They had based their knowledge of the peoples of India on the basic religious texts and the intrinsic differences they found in them instead of on the way they coexisted in the present. The British were also still fearful of the potential threat from the Muslims, who were the former rulers of the subcontinent, ruling India for over 300 years under the Mughal Empire. In order to win them over to their side, the British helped establish the M.A.O. College at Aligarh and supported the All-India Muslim Conference, both of which were institutions from which leaders of the Muslim League and the ideology of Pakistan emerged. As soon as the League was formed, they were placed on a separate electorate. Thus the idea of the separateness of Muslims in India was built into the electoral process of India.

There was also an ideological divide between the Muslims and the Hindus of India. While there were strong feelings of nationalism in India, by the late 19th century there were also communal conflicts and movements in the country that were based on religious communities rather than class or regional ones. Some people felt that the very nature of Islam called for a communal Muslim society. Added to this were the memories of power over the Indian subcontinent that the Muslims held on to, especially those in the old centers of Mughal rule. These memories might have made it exceptionally diffficult for Muslims to accept the imposition of colonial power and culture. They refused to learn English and to associate with the British. This was a severe drawback for them as they found that the Hindus were now in better positions in government than they were and thus felt that the British favored Hindus. The social reformer and educator, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who founded M.A.O. College, taught the Muslims that education and cooperation with the British was vital for their survival in the society. Tied to all the movements of Muslim revival was the opposition to assimilation and submergence in Hindu society. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was also the first to conceive of a separate Muslim homeland.

Hindu revivalists also deepened the chasm betweent he two nations. They resented the Muslims for their former rule over India. Hindu revivalists rallied for a ban on the slaughter of cows, a cheap source of meat for the Muslims. They also wanted to change the official script form the Persian to the Hindu Devanagri script, effectively making Hindi rather than Urdu the main candidate for the national language.

Congress made several mistakes in their policies which further convinced the League that it was impossible to live in a undivided India after freedom from colonial rule because their interests would be completely suppressed. One such policy was the institution of the "Bande Matram," a national anthem which expressed anti-Muslim sentiments, in the schools of India where Muslim children were forced to sing it.

The Muslim League gained power also due to the Congress. The Congress banned any support for the British during the Second World War. However the Muslim League pledged its full support, which found favour form them from the British, who also needed the help of the largely Muslim army. The Civil Disobedience Movement and the consequent withdrawal of the Congress party from politics also helped the league gain power, as they formed strong ministries in the provinces that had large Muslim populations. At the same time, the League actively campaigned to gain more support from the Muslims in India, especially under the guidance of dynamic leaders like Jinnah.

There had been some hope of an undivided India, with a government consisting of three tiers along basically the same lines as the borders of India and Pakistan at the time of Partition. However, Congress' rejection of the interim government set up under this Cabinet Mission Plan in 1942 convinced the leaders of the Muslim League that compromise was impossible and partition was the only course to take.



Impact and Aftermath of Partition

"Leave India to God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy." --Gandhi, May 1942

The partition of India left both India and Pakistan devastated. The process of partition had claimed many lives in the riots. Many others were raped and looted. Women, especially, were used as instruments of power by the Hindus and the Muslims; "ghost trains" full of severed breasts of women would arrive in each of the newly-born countries from across the borders.

15 million refugees poured across the borders to regions completely foreign to them, for though they were Hindu or Muslim, their identity had been embedded in the regions where there ancestors were from. Not only was the country divided, but so were the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, divisions which caused catastrophic riots and claimed the lives of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike.

Many years after the partition, the two nations are still trying to heal the wounds left behind by this incision to once-whole body of India. Many are still in search of an identity and a history left behind beyond an impenetrable boundary. The two countries started of with ruined economies and lands and without an established, experienced system of government. They lost many of their most dynamic leaders, such as Gandhi, Jinnah and Allama Iqbal, soon after the partition. Pakistan had to face the separation of Bangladesh in 1971. India and Pakistan have been to war twice since the partition and they are still deadlocked over the issue of possession of Kashmir. The same issues of boundaries and divisions, Hindu and Muslim majorities and differences, still persist in Kashmir.



Literature and Film Dealing with the Partition of India

Bhalla, Alok, ed. Stories About the Partition of India. 3 vols. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1994.

Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day. New York: Penguin, 1980.

Garam Hawa ('Hot Air'). Dir. M.S. Sathyu. With Balraj Bahni, Geeta Siddarth, Jalal Agha, and Farouque Shaikh. Unit 3 MM, 1973.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Kesavan, Mukul. Looking Through Glass. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1995.

Manto, Sadaat Hassan. Best of Manto. Ed. and Trans. Jai Ratan. Lahore: Vanguard, 1990.

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Sahni, Bhisham. Tamas. New Delhi: Panguin, 1974.

Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1991.

Singh, Khushwant. Train to Pakistan. New York: Grove Press, 1956.



Related Websites

Brittanica Online: India. http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/4/toc.html

History Today: India and the British http://www.historytoday.com/today/0997/main.stm

Itihaas: Chronology-Modern India-1757 AD to 1947 AD http://www.itihaas.com/modern/index.html

Celebrating 50 Years of Freedom http://www.indiaconnect.com/freedom/jun0347.htm

Indolink Analysis: The Ideology of Pakistan http://www.indolink.com/Analysis/pakIdlgy.html

TIME Essay: Hurrying Midnight http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1997/int/970811/spl.midnight.html

Hindu and Muslim: The Gospel of Hate http://electron.rutgers.edu/~myadav/war71/wall/dec6c.html

The Salt Lake Tribune: Train to Pakistan deals with Early days of Indian Independence http://www.sltrib.com/97/aug/081097/arts/31245.htm

India at Five-O http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~sonali/rushdie.html

Light at a Half Century's End? http://archive.abcnews.com/sections/world/indiapak814/index.html

Fragments of Imagination: Rethinking the Literary in Historiography through Narratives of India's Partition http://152.1.96.5/jouvert/issue2/Didur.htm

Contemporary Conflicts: Kashmir http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/wars/kash.html

BBC News Online: World Analysis Arab-Israeli Partition: a Middle East Milestone http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/analysis/newsid_35000/35484.stm



Print Sources

Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam. India Wins Freedom. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1960.

Hasan, Mushirul, ed. India's Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.

Kanitkar, V.P. The Partition of India. East Sussex: Wayland, 1987.

Lord Birdwood. India and Pakistan: A Continent Decides. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954.

Philips and Wainwright, eds. The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1970.

Sharma, Kamalesh. Role of Muslims in Indian Politics (1857-1947). New Delhi: InterIndia, 1985.

Oh, and for the riots:

1969: Ahmedabad

1992: Follow up after the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya

2002: Godhra train incident, Best Bakery, Gujarat carnage

there were of course others: in 1970 an 71, 1985, but those i know very little about.

on the last (02) much can be found on www.sabrang.com

all are easily google-able, i don't know who is who online and don't want to link to sources that may not be credible. plus i'm tired. i have some books (s. kakar: colors of violence, mostly a case study on identity, religion, and conflict in Hyderabad, omprakash mishra on internal migration in india, communalism combat reports...) but online sources i do not know. i would most welcome suggestions.

[/QUOTE]Welcome 07s, thanks for sharing. Although it would be more useful if instead of insults you linked to articles or provided facts just like you suggest to others. I am no expert. If I see you're right, I have no reason not to believe you. [/QUOTE]

If someone is implicating the whole religion or nation, then they better have some idea of what they are talking about. Sweeping remarks about the characteristic of such a large group are hardly respect deserving.



Anyone who wishes to read about Indo-pak conflict can easily find millions of pages which simply can not be archived in one thread. When i was asking for facts, my only motive was to ask the writer to have a look at the instances they were commenting at.

And as about the congress's responsibility:

a- Interim government : If it would have gone through, Constitution of India would not have been written by Indians but by Indians and British. Muslim League contested the right of Congress to appoint Muslim ministers. These are some of the major reasons.

b- Hindu Nationalistic movement: Then why was Congress which was considered to be Muslim appeasing party was elected for four decades. Where is this Hindu nationalism which i keep on hearing about and yet pro-Hindu parties keep on biting the dust not only in Center but at State level.

c- National Song: Only possible problem was that India is considered as a goddess or mother. The unreasonable behavior of some lead to communalisation of this song. By 1930s congress sub committee actually proposed some other songs which could be used instead of Bande matram as deemed fit. Besides Tagore himself proposed that parts which offended muslims could be skipped.

This is the best i could do. If someone wants links etc, google is always the best repository of data.

i could not agree more. that's why i dislike when all muslims and all hindus are thrown into one bag. there are different groups within each. all i'm trying to say. goes for every religion, of course.

As i said, I have some idea of the subcontinent history. These links would better serve the "Equal-equal" croud.

1969 - precipitated because of muslim attack on hindu temple
1992 - attributed to hindus
2002 - burning of hindus in train by mob.

The detailed riots or communal instances from 1713 to mid 1970s have been published in POLITICS OF COMMUNALISM (by Zenab Banu). Somehow the "equal equal" theory bites dust.

And in that article there was one more reason attruibuted to Congress

Insistence to use Hindi instead of Urdu- India has more than dozen major languages which dont even share the same script. Logically the langauge used by most would become the national langauge (aka hindi). Urdu was forced on Indians (hindus) by muslims as administrative langauge. Hardly makes sense for a self governing country to use language which most people dont understand and have no natural affinity to.

equal -equal is just about what i was after.

in 2002 the train was just a start of a more mass scale violence. both hindus and muslims died, in the end there were more muslims dead. which does not mean muslims were innocent victims. there were victims and perpetrators on both sides. full report (well over 100 pages) available at sabrang.com, there should be a link to the court investigation published recently. the court report concludes that the setting of the fire was caused by an accident. not that it matters, for it was just a trigger used to spark the violence. i also have some documentary films, maybe some of them are available online, i will take a look when i'm at work.

india has 19 official languages from what i remember, and many many more spoken languages. forcing one of them on people is most often not a wise idea. backfired in many other countries as well.

Going by your logic, the person who is being mugged is as responsible as the one who is mugging if the person who is mugging gets injured or gets caught. Sorry but it does not make any sense to me.

The report you are referring to (Banerjee report) is just an interim report of a non legally binding commissions report started by the Railways minister. The criminal proceedings are going on and the kelkar report, which would be legally binding are yet to be submitted.

With dozens of languages, there certainly is a need to choose an official (and national) language. With equal status to all languages, can you imagine the implications. Will each state be provided with official documents in the local langauge? What if the people in that state belong to different linguistic backgrounds? Will the official proceedings be recorded in all the languages? The issue has more to do with day to day working of the government at the state and central level rather than some nationalistic reasoning.

*there are 22 languages recognized by Indian constitution.

I don't understand why there is a movement that refuses to dissect a conflict between groups and assign responsibility to who bears the responsibility, based on evidence.

This liberal equivocating is so tiring. The Muslims clearly the bear the responsibility for causing the level of hostility between the two groups.

equal-equal is childish. Nothing is equal-equal, unless you are determined to pretend it is. When did we lose the ability to speak clearly about what is so?

It doesn't mean the more culpable group immediately loses their humanity--or that they are the ONLY ones who did anything wrong--but why ignore the facts--and exert yourself to find an equal culpability with those who were mostly victims in this conflict?

lash, there is.

and no, muslims do not bear responsibility for every singly riot or violence in india. for many. but not for all.

07, i wasn't speaking of Banerjee report. I'll have to go find it, my impression was that the final report was published by the court recently.
official language is a different thing, i was not speaking of that either.i agree that it is a matter of everyday use. just like in other multiethnic countries.

and as for the mugging, no. that comparison doesn't do. in mugging you have one perpetrator and one victim. lines are not so easily drawn when it comes to large groups. i agree that responsibility has to be determined. on both sides.

I am somewhat out of depth here but i think the analogy with mugging is valid here since the "first criminal act" in both is carried out by a person or a group (no matter how big or small) followed by a reaction to it.

If you follow the trail, you would see that when i was clarifying stand of Congress for choosing Hindi and not Urdu, i clearly mentioned it in context of choosing it as "national language". Students throughout India are free to learn their own mother tongue (English happens to be compulsory for most though). It was never a question of forcing everyone to use Hindi alone.

AFAIK, only the interim report was released prior to elections in a hotly contested state.

Obviously not all communal violence can be attributed to Moslems alone but considering they make up a smaller minority and yet able to flare up majority of riots speak volumes (refer to the book for the whole list).

PS: I think time to revert back to Indo-Pak now.

go for it. nothing to argue with in your last post. i agree.

(well, i'm still not on board with mugging, as there isn't one criminal act in riots and causes are multiple and lengthy, but whatever...)

There is the authority of the leadership of a group of people that goes into the equation. Does the leadership promote violence?

Then, does the group follow suggestions to violence? How much is violence perpertrated by a group? Are they responding to violence--or unnecessarily escalating violence with very little or no provocation? How many or what percentage undertake violence under these conditions?

These are questions that deserve to be asked, answered and evaluated.

No one would assert all Muslims or all Hindu are responsible for anything. That's too simplistic to be entertained.

agreed. they have to be asked and evaluated. on both sides.

Do the results have to be equal, dag?

And, 07s-- Are you currently in India? If you have current information, I have a few questions. India is said to be making gains with the US outsourcing of technology jobs, and due to India investing in communications infrastructure.

How would you characterize India's economy and employment? Do you see the improvements we're hearing about? Is there a tangible improvement? Always wondered why India seems to produce such technologically-gifted people. Do you have any opinions or information regarding any of this? Have any ideas why Western schools fail so miserably, while India's (among others) excel?

Thanks.

Sorry I am not living (studying) in India. But due to interaction with a few people involved in the same sector, I think I would be able (to an extent) to answer some of your questions.

India's economy, as you would have heard many times before, is still dependent a lot on agriculture due to the sheer number of people it employs. IT and telecom have been the biggest source of employement for the graduates in recent years (actually fr all the top tier and mid tier engineering colleges, it had never been better). The employement for semi-skilled or unskilled population still requires manufacturing (textiles or gem processing).

The changes in India are more subtle. You would fail to see cities splashing awesome skylines but the infrastructure has been improving. Five years ago, very few in the middle class had a handphone or PC. The situation changed dramatically in 2 years and now atleast in the urban (and semi urban) market, these things are ubiquitous.

But the only revelation that i had recently was that the media hype given to the "yuppies" or the late teens or 20s something working at call centers does not bodes well with the ground reality. They are potrayed as the ones with good disposable income and juggling studies with their overnight work (Btw you should know that in india, its not common to have part time or full time work with studies). However most of the workers at call centers are people from middle class/lower middle class. Thus although they have better employement opportunities than before but its not all hunky dory as press would like you to believe.

In India, till recently, engineering and medical are considered to be the only worthwhile employement choice (besides the civil services). Thus the competition to get into first tier engineering and medical colleges can get quite scary (More than 100,000 students compete for less than 4000 seats in the most coveted IITs for engineering and for smaller number of seats in IIMs for MBA). As you can guess only crème de la crème can make it.Besides I think in US the main focus is on jobs in marketing and law (etc) compounded by a high school system that is not doing any wonders. In India, the high school system coupled with entrance exams for engineering and medical colleges is extremely rigorous and leaves no room for complacency.