{"id":18726,"date":"2022-08-07T03:41:52","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T03:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=18726"},"modified":"2022-08-07T03:41:52","modified_gmt":"2022-08-07T03:41:52","slug":"why-the-partition-of-india-and-pakistan-still-casts-a-long-shadow-over-the-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2022\/08\/07\/why-the-partition-of-india-and-pakistan-still-casts-a-long-shadow-over-the-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Partition of India and Pakistan Still Casts a Long Shadow Over the Region"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>INDIA, August 3, 2022 (National Geographic): The end of British colonial rule birthed two sovereign nations\u2014but hastily drawn borders caused simmering tensions to boil over. 75 years later, memories of Partition still haunt survivors. Wiithin hours, the long-awaited transition of power\u2014and the partition of India into two nations, majority-Hindu India and majority-Muslim Pakistan\u2014had become a nightmare as simmering secular tensions, stoked by divisive colonial rule, boiled over. Hundreds of thousands of Indians and Pakistanis&#8217; lives were disrupted\u2014or ended\u2014during what is now known as Partition. On its surface, the August 1947 creation of two self-governing nations was a victory for those who longed for self-determination. But simmering secular tensions and a severely mismanaged transition turned Britain\u2019s historic exit from the colony into a bloodbath.<br><br>Partition\u2019s roots date back to the 17th century, when the British East India Company, a private company that traded in Indian riches like spices and silks, began acquiring Indian land, taking over local governments, and making laws that flew in the face of longstanding cultural traditions. As Britain drained India of its wealth and profited from its natural resources, it subdivided 60 percent of the nation into provinces and recognised a patchwork of hundreds of pre-existing &#8220;princely states,&#8221; autonomous entities overseen by local rulers. To preserve its dominance, the British Raj deliberately emphasized differences between religious and ethnic communities. As geographer A.J. Christopher explains, colonial administrators used traits like religion and skin color to segregate and isolate their subjects. They eventually established a limited political role for Indians\u2014but the process for getting those positions often pitted Hindus and Muslims against one another. What Britain cast as a triumph was actually the beginning of the largest human migration in history and one of humanity\u2019s most brutal episodes. Uncertain about where the borders had been drawn\u2014and which country they currently lived in\u2014as many as 18 million people packed up their belongings and set out to reach the \u201cright\u201d country.<br><br>Read this lengthy report on Partition from India\u2019s point of view at source.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.co.uk\/history-and-civilisation\/2022\/08\/why-the-partition-of-india-and-pakistan-still-casts-a-long-shadow-over-the-region\n\">https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.co.uk\/history-and-civilisation\/2022\/08\/why-the-partition-of-india-and-pakistan-still-casts-a-long-shadow-over-the-region<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>INDIA, August 3, 2022 (National Geographic): The end of British colonial rule birthed two sovereign nations\u2014but hastily drawn borders caused,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18737,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18726\/revisions\/18737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}