Partition and the independence of India and Pakistan

At the stroke of midnight on 14/15 August 1947, India and Pakistan gained their independence from Britain. The last British viceroy (and the first governor-general of independent India) Lord Mountbatten attended the ceremonies for the transfer of power in Karachi and Delhi on successive days. As a consequence, Pakistan celebrates Independence Day on 14 August, India on 15th.

The freedom movement

Independence for India and Pakistan was the culmination of a long struggle against British rule. Many historians see the 'Indian mutiny' of 1857 as part of this struggle. Nevertheless, until the late-nineteenth century the Indian freedom movement was largely inchoate and unorganized. Indeed the Indian National Congress (INC) was founded in 1885 through the agency of a Scotsman, Allan Octavian Hume, and with the encouragement of the then viceroy, Lord Dufferin. Its aim was to increase the involvement of educated Indians in the government of their country.

By the early twentieth century, however, the Congress had shifted in favour of opposition to British rule. Two factions now emerged within the INC: the Naram Dal (or 'Moderates'), led by G.K. Gokhale, advocated engagement with the British to bring about constitutional reform; the Garam Dal (or 'Extremists'), led by B.G. Tilak, favoured more direct methods of confrontation.

The political and economic dislocation caused by the First World War, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919) and, above all, the the khilafat movement, and the organizing genius and charisma of Mahatma Gandhi, transformed the Congress into a mass movement against British rule. Thereafter through a series of non-cooperation movements led by Gandhi—promoted overseas by supporters like Sarojini Naidu—British were forced to recognize the strength of Indian nationalist opinion, and to offer increasingly significant concessions.

Indeed, even Winston Churchill, a vocal opponent of the Government of India Act (1935), was persuaded in 1942 to authorize a mission under Sir Stafford Cripps to offer 'dominion status' (i.e. the same degree of self-government as Canada) in return for India's cooperation during the war. Cripps's mission failed, in part because of Gandhi's pacifism, in part because Congress demanded immediate self-government, and in part because of fears that the British would divide India. Even so, from this point, Indian independence became a question of 'when' not 'if'.

Partition

The Congress had always claimed to represent all religious groups in British India, and included a number of prominent Muslims, notably Choudhry Khaliquzzaman and Mohamed Ali Jinnah—the latter described by Gokhale as the 'best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.' Nevertheless prominent Muslim leaders, such as Sir Saiyid Ahmad Kahn and Saiyid Ameer Ali, viewed the Congress with suspicion, as a vehicle for Hindu hegemony. Such suspicions were reinforced with the emergence of Hindu nationalist groups led by K.B. Hedgewar and V.D. Savarkar; the latter—leader of the Hindu Mahasabha—argued that Indian Muslims were incapable of Indian patriotism.

Tensions between Hindus and Muslims increased as the prospect of self-government drew nearer. Jinnah, now the acknowledged leader of the Muslim League, shifted towards the idea of partitioning India, a policy confirmed in 1940. The allocation of seats at the 1945–6 elections clearly illustrated the religious division with the Indian populace. Moderate Muslims such as Sir Khizr Hayat Tiwana rapidly found themselves marginalized.

Historians remain divided as to whether the partition of India could have been avoided, and the extent to which it was the result of a British policy of 'divide and rule'. It was a solution acceded to only very reluctantly by Gandhi and Javaharlal Nehru, the secularist first prime minister of India. In any event, the partition—overseen by the British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe—was a humanitarian disaster. At the most conservative estimate 250,000 people were killed and the same number of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs displaced.

The successor states

The independence of India and Pakistan did not end British rule in south Asia, though it hastened it, with Burma granted independence in January 1948 and Ceylon in the following month.

Nor did independence result in a final re-drawing of the frontiers on the sub-continent. Some 562 princely states initially remained outside the Indian Union and were only brought in by some able diplomacy (and in the case of Junagarh and Hyderabad the use of force) by Nehru's deputy Vallabhbhai Patel. Pondicherry was ceded by the French in 1954 and Portuguese Goa occupied in 1961. East Bengal, initially part of Pakistan, gained independence (with military support from India) as Bangladesh in 1971. The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir continues to this day.

Read on?

You can learn more about people associated with the history of the Indian sub-continent using these 'quick reference lists' and 'feature essays':

• Colonial administrators and post-independence leaders in India
• Colonial administrators and post-independence leaders in Pakistan
• Colonial administrators and post-independence leaders in Bangladesh
• Colonial administrators and post-independence leaders in Sri Lanka
• Eighteenth-century India, by Professor P.J. Marshall
• Britons in south-east Asia, by Professor A.J. Stockwell

These and hundreds more lists and guides are available in the Themes area for people with access to the complete ODNB. If you'd like to see more why not try your local public library, many of which provide free remote access to home.