The Partition, which led to the creation of India and Pakistan as two independent countries, was only one among many partitions linked with the decolonization of the British Empire after World War II. The first major partition of British India took place in 1937 when Burma was constitutionally separated, with native voices calling for political representation and restrictions on the flow of Indian migrants
By 1948, as the great migration drew to a close, more than fifteen million people had been uprooted, and between one and two million were dead. The comparison with the death camps is not so far-fetched as it may seem. Partition is central to modern identity in the Indian subcontinent, as the Holocaust is to identity among Jews, branded painfully onto the regional consciousness by memories of almost unimaginable violence.
The acclaimed Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal has called Partition “the central historical event in twentieth century South Asia.” She writes, “A defining moment that is neither beginning nor end, partition continues to influence how the peoples and states of postcolonial South Asia envisage their past, present and future.”
Hashim Zaidi, a Muslim whose family fled India for Pakistan, fearing repercussions after an uncle killed a Hindu man
If Hashim Zaidi and his family hadn’t left his native town of Allahabad in India, the rioters would never have spared them.His uncle, a Muslim police officer, had killed a Hindu rioter who was trying to enter his house, he said. Violent acts of vengeance had become commonplace in 1947. Zaidi’s family was taking no chances. “We had no choice but to leave India for Pakistan because of incessant attacks by rioters,” he said. Only 10 or 11 years old at the time, Zaidi was taken to Pakistan on a train. The carriages were marked to show which passengers were carrying money or other objects of value, and which ones weren’t.
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