Partition of India – what happened in 1947, why was Pakistan created and where is the border between the two ...

India is celebrating its 70th anniversary an event shot through with both national pride and memories of the trauma of the partition that created it. In keeping with that major event which is being celebrated and remembered across the world here are 70 facts to mark the anniversary from its horrifying beginnings to its more stunning achievements. Partition is the dividing line struck to divide India and create the Muslim nation of Pakistan which then included what is now Bangladesh. The decision to divide India came against the backdrop of the Second World War and the drive for Indian independence the Crown was losing control of its jewel. On 20 February 1947 British prime minister Clement Attlee announced British rule would end before June 1948. Nobody really knows why it happened so quickly Lord Louis Mountbatten who had arrived just months before to serve as Britain s last viceroy decided in June 1947 that power would be transferred within a couple of months 10 months earlier than expected. It s thought that the hurry might have been to force the two groups taking part in negotiations to sort themselves out. Both India and Pakistan became new independent states in August 1947. Pakistan celebrates its independence day on 14 August a day before India this timing allowed Lord Mountbatten to attend both ceremonies. On the night of 14 August 1947 as a nation was being split into two Lord Mountbatten was reportedly enjoying a screening of the Bob Hope film My Favourite Brunette. Mounbatten was far from the first viceroy to keep to eccentric habits as India was headed for chaos. Lord Linlithgow who served in the job from 1936 to 1943 liked to walk into dinner each evening to a band playing The Roast Beef of Old England an especially unusual choice in a country that venerates the cow. It took until two days after Partition 17 August for the borders of Pakistan to be drawn up and established. When those borders arrived they were as divisive as they might appear. Following work by a British-led commission the Radcliffe Line was drawn on a map though it was supposed to split the country in such a way as to keep Muslims in Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs in India it crudely cut communities in two and forced families across borders. In 1941 Karachi was nearly half Hindu by the end of that decade almost all of those people had fled. Delhi was designated the capital of India but one one-third Muslim. This soon changed too as Muslims left. That displacement and movement led to horrific outbreaks of violence and death. Governments hadn t been equipped to cope with them and in large parts of both countries the entire population of certain religions were wiped out. British soldiers were stationed in the country but were told not to do anything except act to save British lives. The effects are still being felt today. The border is still difficult to cross and families are left either side of it with no way of reuniting. For all that the Muslim population of India is still huge at 160 million people. That makes India the place with the third largest population of Muslims after Indonesia and Pakistan. And the lines are still unclear. Both countries claim the Himalayan region of Kashmir for instance. The dispute over Kashmir adds tension to the relationship between the two states. They have fought three wars since 1947. Those wars are especially worrying nowadays given the fact that both countries have nuclear weapons. And the borders are still being contested in such wars. In 1971 the two countries fought over East Pakistan which seceded to become Bangladesh. All of that work to decide where the countries would be split was done by Cyril Radcliffe a British lawyer who hadn t actually been to India before the Partition process began. He is one of the central controversial figures of Partition but he just drew a line behind it was the political impetus led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah hailed as a hero in Pakistan the country he created but a villain in India. Partition was shocking in its specifics with individual families being torn apart and separated. But it is shocking in its sheer scale too: more than 10 million people were displaced during the transition making it easily one of the biggest movements of people in history. Up to two million people died during the move. Many of them simply went missing including huge numbers of people who left western India but never knowingly arrived in Pakistan. The movement of communities especially in Punjab and Bengal led to numerous other crimes. People were kidnapped forced to convert and killed and tens of thousands of women were subjected to sexual violence and murder. Partition didn t happen immediately at least not in clear ways. For instance until 1948 Pakistan used Indian bank notes which had the name of the country stamped over them. The Pakistani rupee arrived in 1948. The Indian tricolour represents courage truth and peace and faith and chivalry. Its spinning wheel logo was replaced after Partition by the ashoka chakra a wheel-of-life design connected to the Buddhist dharma chakra. India s other major symbol the Bengal tiger was once seen throughout the country. But they are gradually dying out and there are now fewer than 4 000 of them left in the wild. British filmmaker Gurinder Chadha whose own family was affected by Partition examined its painful effects this year in her film Viceroy s House which was released in March. Chadha s film leaps into the midst of this conflict when Mountbatten was tasked with ensuring a smooth transfer of imperial power. India makes more than 1 100 films per year twice as many as Hollywood. And though Bollywood is famous it s only a small amount of that total: it refers specifically to Mumbai s Hindi film industry which only makes about 200 films a year. Its immense output makes it the world s most productive film industry. The first Indian to win an Academy Award was Bhanu Athaiya in 1983 for designing the costumes in Richard Attenborough s Gandhi. Ravi Shankar was nominated that same year for the film s score but did not win. Satyajit Ray director of 1955 s Pather Panchali is the only Indian to have received an Honorary Academy Award. The ravanahatha is a musical instrument believed by some to be the ancestor to the violin. Its sound box is usually either a gourd a halved coconut shell or a hollowed-out cylinder of wood with a membrane of stretched goat or other hide. The neck is then produced out wood or bamboo with the strings created out of gut hair or steel. India s theatre tradition goes back at least 5 000 years starting out in narrative form comprised of its main elements singing and dancing. The plots were initially based on history folk tales and legends with the emphasis placed on visual representation as opposed to vocal. Its representation of the epic is what Bertolt Brecht used to evolve his own creative theories surrounding the art form. The highest-grossing Indian film of all time is the Disney-produced Dangal a 2016 biographical sports drama directed by Nitesh Tiwari. The film stars Aamir Khan as an amateur wrestler who trains his daughters to become Commonwealth Games medallists. It s the fifth highest grossing non-English film of all time with takings of around 240m. Television was first introduced into India in September 1959. There was only one national channel for more than 30 years: DD National. This was part of the All India Radio studio in Delhi where it stayed until 1965 and began life as an experimental telecast with just a small transmitter and makeshift studio. It began regular transmission as DD1 Channel in 1982. The people of India are the world s biggest bookworms reading on average 10.42 hours a week almost twice as much time as the average Briton. As a result Indians spend far less time watching TV and listening to radio. Over half the books sold in India are in English making the country the second-largest marketplace for books in English in the world second only to the US. Overall India is the sixth-largest book market in the world it s worth more than 3bn. During the 1800s Indians used theatre as a means to protest the colonial rule. In 1876 the British Raj implemented the Dramatic Performances Act which dictated that each play would have to meet certain criteria set out by the government the main one being that they didn t excite feelings of disaffection towards the law. Even after Independence India partially kept the law the new government keeping some control over the performing arts. However come 1993 the act was labelled obsolete. India s first election took place in 1952 under the auspices of an Electoral Commission that was established just two years after independence. It was a progressive election encouraged by its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He made sure that the election happened as early as possible and that it didn t use systems like the electoral college or exclude women or poor voters. That was a tough ask: the size of the electorate was 176 million. To allow all of those people to vote the country had to build 224 000 polling booths fitted out with a total of two million steel boxes. Now the electorate is four and a half times as big with 814 million people getting a chance to vote. And there are 1.2 billion people in the country in total who live in 29 states and seven union territories. More of those people have access to a phone than they do a toilet. Between them they speak 22 official languages though the national languages are Hindi and English and hundreds of dialects. India marks six seasons: summer autumn winter and spring but also the summer monsoon and winter monsoon. Cricket is the country s most popular support after it was introduced during British rule. But it s not officially the national sport which is actually hockey. The national fruit of India is the mango. (And it s also the national fruit of Pakistan as well as being the national tree of Bangladesh.) The national bird of India is the Indian peacock. It was chosen in 1963. The country even has its own national microbe. It s the lactobacillus delbrueckii and was picked in 2012 during a biodiversity conference that was held in Hyderabad. It was picked out by schoolchildren. India uses the Rupee as its national currency issued by the Reserve Bank of India. The symbol which looks like the letter R is derived from the Devanagari consonant र but Latin letter was adopted in 2010. The Indian economy is 27 times larger than it was at the time of Partition in 1947. India s average annual GDP growth rate since 2006 has been 7 per cent. There were 420 million people in India prior to in 1946. That fell to 350 million at Partition. Today there are 1.3 billion. A sixth of Indians 218 million people are estimated to live in extreme poverty today. India has more individual people in extreme poverty than in China Bangladesh Pakistan Indonesia combined. Indian GDP per capita (at Purchasing Power Parity) in 2016 was 4 900 12 per cent of the UK s GDP per capita. The dollar-value of the Indian economy this year is 2.25 trillion. It is expected by the IMF to overtake the dollar value of the UK economy in 2018. India is the world s biggest tea producer. (Tea is also by a long way its most popular drink.) It may be no surprise that the country produces 70 per cent of the world s spices. London has more Indian restaurants than even the biggest Indian cities. India is the most vegetarian place in the world with the fewest meat-eaters. Despite being so large all of India uses a single timezone. India s rail network is the fourth largest in the world with more than a million employees. The country has the world s second-biggest road network only the US s is larger. Exhaust fumes make New Delhi s air the most polluted in the world. Just breathing it for one day during Diwali is reportedly like smoking 113 cigarettes. India has the most post offices in the world: nearly 155 000 including a floating post office on Dal Lake in Srinagar. The country is known for the heights it has climbed in international cricket. India s Himachal Pradesh region is home to Chail a hill station that was once the summer retreat of the Maharaja of Patiala. There sits the highest cricket ground in the world at 2 250 metres. Howzat! And that s not the only claim that India has to being very very tall. Khardung La a pass that can be found in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is also said to be the tallest motorable road in the world. But unfortunately that doesn t appear to be true: satellite observations show the pass to be slightly less high than previously thought and that another Indian road might in fact be the tallest one. India is home to the man with the world s biggest family Ziona Chana with around 180 people including 39 wives and 94 children. The game today known as snakes and ladders began in India and was originally called moksha patam. Inside its rules can be seen some of the philosophies that are part of Indian thought to this day particularly in its emphasis on destiny and karma. (When it was imported into England the Victorians changed some of the virtues and vices to suit what they suggested were more western values.) Played around the 7th century AD the Indian game chaturanga is regarded as the precursor to chess. The Kumbh Mela is a huge Hindu religious festival that s held every 12 years in India. It is regularly referred to as the biggest gathering of people in the world though it can be very difficult to actually work out the size of such a huge gathering. As such it s not clear how many people attend but it s in the tens of millions. World news in pictures 100 show all World news in pictures 1/100 14 August 2017 The Chattrapathi Shivaji Terminus railway station is lit in the colours of India s flag ahead of the country s Independence Day in Mumbai. Indian Independence Day is celebrated annually on 15 August and this year marks 70 years since British India split into two nations Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan and millions were uprooted in one of the largest mass migrations in history AFP/Getty 2/100 13 August 2017 A demonstrator holds up a picture of Heather Heyer during a demonstration in front of City Hall for victims of the Charlottesville Virginia tragedy and against racism in Los Angeles California USA. 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REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins Reuters 24/100 2 August 2017 People in the village of Gabarpora carry the remains of Akeel Ahmad Bhat a civilian who according to local media died following clashes after two militants were killed in an encounter with Indian security forces in Hakripora in south Kashmir s Pulwama district August 2 2017. REUTERS/Danish Ismail Reuters 25/100 2 August 2017 - Incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame gestures as he arrives for the closing rally of the presidential campaign in Kigali on August 2 2017 while supporters greet him. Rwandans go the polls on August 4 2017 in a presidential election in which strongman Paul Kagame is widely expected to cruise to a third term in office. AFP 26/100 30 July 2017 Soldiers of China s People s Liberation Army (PLA) get ready for the military parade to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the army at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region China. REUTERS 27/100 29 July 2017 Cyclists at the start of the first stage of the Tour de Pologne cycling race over 130km from Krakow s Main Market Square Poland EPA 28/100 28 July 2017 Israeli border guards keep watch as Palestinian Muslim worshippers pray outside Jerusalem s old city overlooking the Al-Aqsa mosque compound Ahmad Gharabli/AFP 29/100 28 July 2017 A supporter of Pakistan s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif passes out after the Supreme Court s decision to disqualify Sharif in Lahore Reuters/Mohsin Raza 30/100 27 July 2017 Australian police officers participate in a training scenario called an Armed Offender/Emergency Exercise held at an international passenger terminal located on Sydney Harbour Reuters/David Gray 31/100 27 July 2017 North Korean soldiers watch the south side as the United Nations Command officials visit after a commemorative ceremony for the 64th anniversary of the Korean armistice at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas Reuters/Jung Yeon-Je 32/100 26 July 2017 Bangladeshi commuters use a rickshaw to cross a flooded street amid heavy rainfall in Dhaka. 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Eastern India s hill resort of Darjeeling has been rattled at the height of tourist season after violent clashes broke out between police and hundreds of protesters of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) a long-simmering separatist movement that has long called for a separate state for ethnic Gorkhas in West Bengal. The GJM wants a new separate state of Gorkhaland carved out of eastern West Bengal state of which Darjeeling is a part. Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images 36/100 23 July 2017 Demonstrators clash with riot security forces while rallying against Venezuela s President Nicolas Maduro s government in Caracas Venezuela. The banner on the bridge reads It will be worth it Reuters 37/100 22 July 2017 The Heathcote river as it rises to high levels in Christchurch New Zealand. Heavy rain across the South Island in the last 24 hours has caused widespread damage and flooding with Dunedin Waitaki Timaru and the wider Otago region declaring a state of emergency. Getty Images 38/100 22 July 2017 A mourner prays at a memorial during an event to commemorate the first anniversary of the shooting spree that one year ago left ten people dead including the shooter in Munich Germany. One year ago 18-year-old student David S. shot nine people dead and injured four others at and near a McDonalds restaurant and the Olympia Einkaufszentrum shopping center. After a city-wide manhunt that caused mass panic and injuries David S. shot himself in a park. According to police David S. who had dual German and Iranian citizenship had a history of mental troubles. 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The demonstration was organized by Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD). Members and supporters of the KOD and opposition parties protested against changes in the judicial law and the Supreme Court EPA 53/100 16 July 2017 People prepare to swim with a portrait of late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong on the bank of the Yangtze River in Yichang Hubei province China to celebrate the 51st anniversary of Chairman Mao swimming in the Yangtze River. REUTERS 54/100 15 July 2017 A woman takes a selfie picture with her mobile phone next to the statue of Omer Halisdemir in Istanbul in front of a memorial with the names of people killed last year during the failed coup attempt . AFP/Getty Images 55/100 14 July 2017 French President Emmanuel Macron gestures next to US President Donald Trump during the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris. 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Some 15 000 liters of acetic acid often mixed with heroin were destroyed by counter narcotics police Hoshang Hashimi/AFP 62/100 10 July 2017 Police from the anti-terror squad participate in an anti-terror performance among Acehnese dancers during a ceremony to commemorate the 71st anniversary of the Indonesian police corps in Banda Aceh AFP/Getty Images 63/100 11 July 2017 Residents stand amid the debris of their homes which were torn down in the evicted area of the Bukit Duri neighbourhood located on the Ciliwung river banks in Jakarta Bay Ismoyo/AFP 64/100 11 July 2017 Boys play cricket at a parking lot as it rains in Chandigarh India Reuters/Ajay Verma 65/100 10 July 2017 Turkey s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks at the 22nd World Petroleum Congress (WPC) in Istanbul AFP 66/100 10 July 2017 New Mongolia s president Khaltmaa Battulga takes an oath during his inauguration ceremony in Ulaanbaatar Mongolia Reuters 67/100 10 July 2017 US army 1st Division US air force US Navy and US Marines march down the Champs Elysees with the Arc de Triomphe in the background in Paris during a rehearsal of the annual Bastille Day military parade AFP 68/100 9 July 2017 Participants run ahead of Puerto de San Lorenzo s fighting bulls during the third bull run of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona northern Spain. Each day at 8:00 am hundreds of people race with six bulls charging along a winding 848.6-metre (more than half a mile) course through narrow streets to the city s bull ring where the animals are killed in a bullfight or corrida during this festival immortalised in Ernest Hemingway s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises and dating back to medieval times and also featuring religious processions folk dancing concerts and round-the-clock drinking. 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AFP 77/100 5 July 2017 A member of the Iraqi security forces runs with his weapon during a fight between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul Iraq. 78/100 5 July 2017 A U.S. MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile is fired during the combined military exercise between the U.S. and South Korea against North Korea at an undisclosed location in South Korea A.P 79/100 4 July 2017 North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un looks on during the test-fire of inter-continental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 Reuters 80/100 4 July 2017 Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony following the talks at the Kremlin Reuters 81/100 3 July 2017 Belarussian servicemen march during a military parade as part of celebrations marking the Independence Day in Minsk Belarus Reuters 82/100 3 July 2017 Ambulance cars and fire engines are seen near the site where a coach burst into flames after colliding with a lorry on a motorway near Muenchberg Germany Reuters 83/100 28 June 2017 An aerial view shows women swimming in the Yenisei River on a hot summer day with the air temperature at about 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) outside Krasnoyarsk Siberia Russia June 28 2017 Reuters 84/100 2 July 2017 Protesters demonstrating against the upcoming G20 economic summit ride boats on Inner Alster lake during a protest march in Hamburg Germany. Hamburg will host the upcoming G20 summit and is expecting heavy protests throughout. Getty Images 85/100 27 June 2017 Investigators work at the scene of a car bomb explosion which killed Maxim Shapoval a high-ranking official involved in military intelligence in Kiev Ukraine June 27 2017 Reuters 86/100 1 July 2017 Protesters carry a large image of jailed Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo as they march during the annual pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong. Thousands joined an annual protest march in Hong Kong hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up his visit to the city by warning against challenges to Beijing s sovereignty. AP 87/100 30 June 2017 Jockey Andrea Coghe of Selva (Forest) parish rides his horse during the first practice for the Palio Horse Race in Siena Italy June 30 2017 Reuters 88/100 30 June 2017 A man takes pictures with a phone with a Union Flag casing after Chinese President Xi Jinping (not pictured) inspected troops at the People s Liberation Army (PLA) Hong Kong Garrison as part of events marking the 20th anniversary of the city s handover from British to Chinese rule in Hong Kong China June 30 2017 Reuters 89/100 29 June 2017 A protester against U.S. President Donald Trump s limited travel ban approved by the U.S. Supreme Court holds a sign next to protesters supporting the ban in New York City U.S. June 29 2017 Reuters 90/100 29 June 2017 Israeli Air Force Efroni T-6 Texan II planes perform at an air show during the graduation of new cadet pilots at Hatzerim base in the Negev desert near the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva AFP/Getty Images 91/100 28 June 2017 A woman gestures next to people spraying insecticide on a vehicle during a mosquito-control operation led by Ivory Coast s National Public and Health Institute in Bingerville near Abidjan where several cases of dengue fever were reported AFP/Getty Images 92/100 27 June 2017 A Libyan coast guardsman watches over as illegal immigrants arrive to land in a dinghy during the rescue of 147 people who attempted to reach Europe off the coastal town of Zawiyah 45 kilometres west of the capital Tripoli on June 27 2017. More than 8 000 migrants have been rescued in waters off Libya during the past 48 hours in difficult weather conditions Italy s coastguard said on June 27 2017 AFP/Getty Images 93/100 26 June 2017 A man leaves after voting in the Mongolian presidential election at the Erdene Sum Ger (Yurt) polling station in Tuul Valley. Mongolians cast ballots on June 26 to choose between a horse breeder a judoka and a feng shui master in a presidential election rife with corruption scandals and nationalist rhetoric AFP/Getty Images 94/100 26 June 2017 People attend Eid al-Fitr prayers to mark the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan at a play ground in the suburb of Sale Morocco REUTERS 95/100 25 June 2017 A plain-clothes police officer kicks a member of a group of LGBT rights activist as Turkish police prevent them from going ahead with a Gay Pride annual parade on 25 June 2017 in Istanbul a day after it was banned by the city governor s office. AFP/Getty Images 96/100 25 June 2017 Pakistan army soldiers stands guard while rescue workers examine the site of an oil tanker explosion at a highway near Bahawalpur Pakistan. An overturned oil tanker burst into flames in Pakistan on Sunday killing more than one hundred people who had rushed to the scene of the highway accident to gather leaking fuel an official said. 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More about: India Reuse content The partition of India led to one of the largest mass migrations in modern history with millions seeking sanctuary from violence in ancient tombs and forts which were transformed into sprawling refugee camps. More than 15 million people were displaced after India gained independence from Britain in 1947 with Muslims heading towards the newly formed Pakistan as Hindus and Sikhs moved in the opposite direction. New Delhi Queen s Road near Lothian Bridge Queen s Road near Lothian Bridge in New Delhi Shacks where refugee families lived on a pavement along Queen s Road near Lothian Bridge in September 1950 and an auto rickshaw on the same road in June 2017.Photographs: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting/Prakash Singh/AFP Amritsar Chowk Bijli Wala Chowk Bijli Wala area of Amristar Indian soldiers walk through the debris of a building in the Chowk Bijli Wala area in August 1947 and a bustling scene at the same location in June 2017.Photographs: Stringer/Narinder Nanu/AFP New Delhi Kamla Market Kamla Market in New Delhi A few people gather in Kamla Market in November 1951 and traders pile up their wares at the same location in June 2017.Photographs: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting/Prakash Singh/AFP New Delhi Humayun s Tomb Humayun s Tomb in New Delhi Displaced Muslims camp in front of the tomb in around 1947 and a man and a woman explore the same location in June 2017.Photographs: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting/Prakash Singh/AFP Amritsar Khalsa College Khalsa College in Amritsar Sikhs eat at a relief camp in around 1947 following unrest during the partition and labourers have lunch at the same location in June 2017.Photographs: Stringer/Narinder Nanu/AFP Amritsar Katra Jaimal Singh Katra Jaimal Singh area of Amritsar A destroyed building in the Katra Jaimal Singh area in August 1947 and a busy street full of shops and adverts in June 2017.Photographs: Stringer/Narinder Nanu/AFP New Delhi Humayun s Tomb Humayun s Tomb New Delhi A view of a refugee camp near the tomb and the same grounds empty of people in June 2017.Photographs: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting/Prakash Singh/AFP Humayun s Tomb New Delhi Muslim boys look out from their camp in front of the tomb in around 1947 and the tomb pictured in June 2017.Photographs: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting/Prakash Singh/AFP New Delhi Minto Bridge Minto Bridge New Dellhi Displaced Muslims including a family on a cart pass under Minto Bridge on their way to camps at Purana Qila and Humayun s Tomb and somewhat heavier traffic at the same location in June 2017.Photographs: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting/Prakash Singh/AFP Seventy years have passed since the partition of India and Pakistan. But its imprint on my life and how I think persists taking different forms as time moves on. Strangely I don t think it bothered me so much when I was young and its memory was fresher. My parents had lost everything but they rarely wanted to talk about the break the partition had caused in their lives. That was the general mood during the 1950s. Follow Al Jazeera s coverage of the 70 years of India-Pakistan partition The partition must have cast a shadow over Jawaharal Nehru the then Indian prime minister and his government as well. But national reconstruction was all that we the children of that era heard about. Our nation-building was focused on the distant future and didn t include teaching the young about the then-recent history of our country. Filmmakers and song writers had spotted the great value of neighbourly hostility and suspicion. Bollywood picked up the idea of gaddars (the unfaithfuls) and continues to cash in on it. So when war broke out with Pakistan in 1965 nobody was supposed to be surprised or upset. Endangered liberal values Our countries post-independence histories are mutually ignored while the partition is no more than a memory poster featuring gory details and little else. Understanding it and moving beyond it is nobody s priority. Neither the leftist nor the rightist view permits you to accept the partition. In neither Punjab nor Bengal - two states directly and brutally affected by the partition - is the history of it taught in schools in any depth. In other states it has been reduced to a piece of information passed from one generation to the next with a bunch of statistics about rapes and murders. In Pakistan school children are taught about the thousand-year-old roots of the partition and how Indian leaders tried to stop Pakistan from being born. A flat narrative centred on the inevitability of the partition is followed by melodramatic stories of wars with India and the sacrifices Pakistan made to protect itself. UPFRONT: India and Pakistan: Forever rivals? (25:21) Children studying in high-end elite schools have the advantage of better-quality textbooks so are somewhat protected from the heady brew served to those attending government schools. Joint declarations were made in the early days of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) about the importance of examining textbooks but no major effort has been made in that regard. As Pakistani researcher author and columnist Rubina Saigol has shown in her work the nationalist fervour instilled in Pakistani schools is imbued with masculine militarism. Until recently India has done better in shaping its nationalism around the humanist vision of the writer composer and artist Rabindranath Tagore who condemned political nationalism worldwide. But in some parts of the country that ethos is changing. Of late it has changed a great deal in the north. Attempts to imbue nationalism with militaristic fervour are currently in fashion. One example is the decision by M Jagadesh Kumar the vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru Universty (JNU) to install a tank on the campus. He argues that it will enable students to overcome the effects of the critical pedagogy they have been subjected to for years. The idea of displaying an old battle tank at JNU sits well with the current wave of majoritarian politics. It is the outcome of many decades of propaganda against secular liberalism. This is not the first time that Hindu majoritarian ideology has met political success. But each time it regains dominance it triggers anxiety about the future of liberal values like tolerance for diversity and minority rights. This animated map shows how the borders of India Pakistan and Bangladesh have evolved since partition https://t.co/LaQGoVFsDV pic.twitter.com/1RSEqvyp1z Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 10 2017 Moral objectivity The partition remains relevant as a moral reference point in popular memory in India and Pakistan. It enables each to essentialise and stereotype the other. The images of the two fit nicely together thereby keeping both stuck in the past. In India Pakistan is seen as a culturally monolithic society based on fanatic religiosity. That image is nicely scaffolded by the term communal which has a specific meaning in South Asia conveying religious separatism as opposed to liberal secularism. As an ideology secularism also has a specific South Asian connotation. It means respect for all religions and at the same time serves as a quasi-religion among the older English-educated elites. They see themselves as secular and view others particularly the rural population as a mass steeped in religiosity and superstition. The English language serves as a watershed between the two blocking the circulation of ideas including the idea of secularism itself. What is politically more significant in this context is that the English-educated elites lack the linguistic repertoire to counter the appeal of Hindu revivalist majoritarian propaganda. An English-educated elite is common to both countries but the space available for liberal deliberation is more narrow in Pakistan. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that Pakistan s electoral democracy has failed to accommodate religious actors and the second is the active involvement of the armed forces in maintaining the civil state. Since the separation of Bangladesh in 1971 a religio-militaristic state ideology has gained dominance in Pakistan. This ideology treats India s secular democracy as a convenient delusion. The essentialised India that lives in Pakistan s nationalist imagination is a majoritarian Hindu country. This image enables the Pakistani state to find continued retrospective justification for the partition as if a justification is still needed. Learn more about the creation of India and Pakistan: #PartitionAt70 Geopolitical factors also contribute to keeping both nations emotionally entangled in their shared past. When other nations equate the two neighbours and talk about the risk of military conflict between them Indian ruling elites dislike this. They treat Pakistan s obduracy with contempt. When Pakistan refers to the unfinished business of the partition the Indian response is shaped by the popular image of Pakistan as a wicked home-wrecker. The political rulers of both countries recognise that war is not an option. But they cannot resist the temptation to use a Cold War ethos to maintain their hold on the popular mind and imagination. In any case neither side has the will to disrupt established continuities in their relations. A glaring example is the show put on every evening at the Wagah border for the entertainment of cheering onlookers on both sides. A few years ago it seemed as though it would be stopped but neither side could sustain the maturity of such a decision. Far too many interests are invested in the maintenance of hostility and suspicion under a teasing veneer of warmth and vernacular conviviality. Both remain respectable customers in the global arms bazaar. The heavy investment they make in military preparedness costs them dearly in a chronic under-funding of crucial social sectors like education and health. Moving on from the past It is difficult to say how much longer it will take for India and Pakistan to put aside the shadow of their past. This kind of assessment is both hard to make and largely pointless because India and Pakistan are not isolated entities. They are members of a complex world in which their competitive military preparedness serves useful objectives for more powerful nations. They need far greater capacities than they have at present for introspection and deliberation. They also need to rebuild their public education systems which have been injured by the effect of neo-liberal economic policies. Ultimately both nations need to inculcate an educated imagination to their children to enable them to make sense of the past and the ways it is shaping the present. The partition cannot be forgotten but it needs to be understood. A small initiative has recently been taken to set up a partition museum in Amritsar India. This is a great step forward. It has already begun to attract contributions from countless people who witnessed the horror of the partition and others like me who were born after that horror was over but who have lived in its shadow. It will not be easy for the museum to maintain its focus on reconciliation and peace while it documents raw violence and brutality. Hopefully it will receive support and participation from the other side of the border. It will add to the fledging effort made by a handful of schools and colleges in India and Pakistan to make partition studies a means of attaining peace with the past. The common tendency is to live in the past while keeping yesterday s battles raging. Professor Krishna Kumar is the author of Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan (Viking/Penguin 2001) and Battle for Peace (Penguin 2007). He is a former director of India s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).The views expressed in this article are the author s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera s editorial policy.Source: Al Jazeera News The scrubby lowlands of Jammu are stuck between the Himalayas and the dusty plains of Punjab and home to 19 000 families stuck in time. West Pakistan no longer exists on world maps but in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir clustered in poor villages along the Tawi river there are still West Pakistanis. Like at least 14 million others they fled their homes during the hasty British retreat from India in 1947 when the division of the subcontinent into one Hindu-majority country and another Muslim-dominated triggered religious violence. Unlike those millions the West Pakistanis and their descendants are still officially refugees: citizens of India but stateless inside its borders barred from local government jobs colleges and welfare and unable to buy property or take out loans. They are living embodiments of the lingering scars of partition 70 years on. Map: Pakistan/India border My home village is 8km from here in Pakistan says Melu Ram perched on a woven cot outside his concrete house on the outskirts of Jammu city. A sheet of paper nearby attests that he is a West Pakistan refugee. He has lived in India for seven decades. In West Pakistan now just called Pakistan after the country s eastern wing became Bangladesh in 1971 he spent just a few horrifying days. We had to leave our houses on 15 August 1947 Ram remembers. The day before Pakistan had come into existence. The violence against Hindus started that evening he says. Empty handed wearing only a shirt and lungi Ram his mother and sisters took shelter with other Hindu families in a nearby village. His father had fled to India earlier carrying their most important possessions in a trunk. His grandfather too frail to make the journey stayed behind. He was not touched Ram says. But our valuables cows and clothes were taken by our neighbours and other villagers. Others among the Hindu refugees were less fortunate. Families had chopped limbs their noses had been cut off or their breasts. Many male family members were killed he says. He saw similar violence once the family crossed the river into Jammu Indian territory. I have walked on dead bodies says Ram 86 his cloudy eyes widening. Whoever tried to cross from Pakistan was killed. Muslims killed Hindus. And hearing the stories of those who migrated from West Pakistan people already living here became angry. Mobs from Hindu villages started killing Muslims. Ram joined the column of refugees gradually making their way south through Jammu and Kashmir state towards Punjab. Trailing them on the path was a man known as the Lion of Kashmir . Sheikh Abdullah a towering politician was by then running an emergency administration in the state. He was going from here to the Punjab border motivating those migrating towards the relief camps in Punjab to stay here Ram says. He assured our family and other migrants that the land was empty no one was cultivating it and we should remain. Ram and his family made the decision to turn back to Jammu. I regret it more than anything he says. Jammu and Kashmir is a unique Indian state. It maintains its own flag and constitution. Successive wars have left it divided between Pakistan India and China. It is India s only Muslim-majority state. Most crucially for refugees from West Pakistan when the state s leaders agreed to join the Indian union in 1947 they demanded special guarantees of autonomy including to restrict other Indians from becoming citizens of the state. Its relationship with the rest of India is still uneasy. In the northern Kashmir region separatist movements and armed militias have fought for 30 years to join Pakistan or become independent. Central governments in Delhi have also spent decades eroding the state s political autonomy. In this combustible atmosphere no state government has shown an appetite for integrating hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly Hindu refugees. Among the cruelest consequences of the limbo West Pakistanis inhabit is that it also extends to their children. Roop Lal was 15 when he discovered he was a refugee in the country where he was born and had lived his entire life. I was not allowed to apply for scholarships for my last years of schooling. I asked my parents why. They said we were West Pakistanis he remembers. Until a recent legal change any woman he married would also have become a refugee surrendering her state citizenship. We don t get daughters for marriage from permanent residents he says. Several times families have approached him to marry their daughters. Later they learn about my status and the engagements are broken off. It often happens he says. No West Pakistanis own their homes. Many live on the properties of Muslims who were killed or fled Jammu in 1947 which they rent from the government for a token sum. Moving elsewhere is a constant temptation. Lal and the estimated 19 960 West Pakistan families living in Jammu are Indian citizens and in a state without autonomous status would be granted their complete rights. A few of my relatives are in Punjab he says. There the tag of West Pakistani is forgotten. Only we are still called that. But we have established our house our social circle here. We don t have the finances to move or anywhere to live there. We ve been here for 70 years. Perversely just as in 1947 politicians continue to encourage West Pakistanis to stay. Every election the central government and local politicians of all parties assure us we will soon get our rights says Labha Ram Gandhi the president of the West Pakistan Refugee Action Committee. India and Pakistan prepare for 70th anniversary celebrations Read more It s due to these hollow assurances we ve been suffering. If they just told us clearly we would get no rights we d have thought otherwise about staying. The fate of the refugees is front-page news again. India s supreme court is hearing arguments in favour of scrapping Jammu and Kashmir s political autonomy. In Delhi the official position of the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi is also for extinguishing the state s special status. Gandhi met Modi last year. He says he begged the prime minister to move his community en masse to other states. He told me you have a duty to stay. You are living on the border areas with Pakistan. If you shift these areas will become abandoned. In 1979 West Pakistanis protested for their citizenship by trying to cross the border back into Pakistan. They were stopped by Indian troops. Nearly four decades later Gandhi is threatening another dramatic step. We are hopeful about this government he says. But if they fail to fulfil our wishes we will take up arms. On the outskirts of Jammu Melu Ram is watching his grandchildren arrive home from school. They are still too young to know they are different from their classmates. He hopes never to have to tell them. Before my last breath I want to see my children getting their rights he says. That s my only desire. They used to talk about the Hindu rate of growth . This was the idea that the post-Partition centrally planned Indian economy was destined to eke out a GDP expansion of no more than 3.5 per cent a year due to its stifling bureaucracy and some said the slovenliness of the population. Adjusted for fertile India s population growth this was translated into a miserable 1.5 per cent of economic growth a year. While the economies of other formerly poor Asian Tigers such as South Korea Singapore Taiwan and Hong Kong took off in the 1950s and 1960s the sluggish giant of India seemed destined to remain forever in the slow lane with most of its people languishing in poverty. Read more How the horrors of Partition shaped independent India How Partition happened and why its effects are still felt today Partition 70 years on: the violence that created Pakistan and India Or so it was thought. The Hindu rate of growth is now history another silly stereotype exposed. For the past 25 years the Indian economy has grown at an average rate of 6 per cent. They used to talk of the new emerging market power houses of the BRICs Brazil Russia India and China. But the economies of Brazil and Russia have slumped into crisis in recent years. And even mighty China has faltered at least from its own ultra-high growth rates of recent decades. The IMF estimates that India outpaced China in 2015 (7.9 per cent growth versus 6.9 per cent) and will continue to outstrip the GDP growth rate of its enormous eastern neighbour over the next five years as well. The Fund expects the raw dollar-size of the Indian economy to outstrip that of the UK the old colonial master which delivered Partition in 2018 making it the world s fifth largest economy. And some now talk of the possibility of India rather than China emerging as the world s largest economy later this century. Beating the rest of the BRICS IMF Could it happen? India has unquestionably made great and surprising economic strides in recent decades. The economic reforms of Manmohan Singh first as finance minister in the 1990s and then as prime minister between 2004 and 2014 are the primary reason India finally started to motor. (Singh incidentally was born in in Gah now in Pakistan but migrated to India at Partition.) Unlike in China where the population is ageing rapidly due to the baleful legacy of Deng Xiao Ping s one child policy demography looks likely to provide a powerful tailwind to Indian growth over the coming half century. Around a quarter of all the people entering the global workforce between now and 2025 are projected to be Indian. Read more How the horrors of Partition shaped independent India Inside Cellular Jail: the horrors and torture inflicted by the British There were hopes that Singh s successor as prime minister Narendra Modi (who had a reputation as a friend of business) would take up the baton of liberalisation and take India to the next stage of economic achievement. But the Hindu nationalist s record since 2014 has been disappointing overall. Some fuel subsidies have been scrapped. A major new bankruptcy law introduced last year was welcome and may help the business environment but the jury is still out. A new nationwide sales tax is certainly an improvement on what it replaced but also a major missed opportunity for radical simplification. The elimination of most bank notes overnight was unquestionably bold but has probably done less to rein in the black economy than the government claims. Surpassing the old colonial master IMF Meanwhile the land market remains unreformed. The national labour law is still a brake on hiring. Dominant state-owned banks are sitting on a mountain of bad loans. And despite pockets of quality the education system needs an overhaul. A fall in the global oil price (India is a major energy importer) has flattered the country s growth rate in recent years dulling ministers appetite for politically difficult reforms. On the surface India the last BRIC in the wall is standing tall and proud. But beneath the façade a great deal of maintenance and refurbishment more than is commonly perceived is needed if the country is to fulfil its economic potential let alone reach the top spot in the global rankings. More about: Partition India GDP economy growth Narendra Modi Reuse content Written by Divya Goyal | Ludhiana | Updated: August 14 2017 2:32 pm Made in 1915 and 1924 by UK-based company Garrard one of them was gifted by a British man in Toba Tek Singh of Pakistan and the family has made sure that it is in working condition till date. Top News Amit Shah resigns as MLA says Congress will be reduced to half in next pollsToilet: Ek Prem Katha box office collection day 5: Akshay Kumar s film is on the up and upGujarat Fortunegiants Puneri Paltan win first Inter Zone fixtures: Match HighlightsWith the rare sound machines radios gramophones and spool machines at display the city of Ludhiana on Sunday witnessed a musical throwback to the Partition of India and Pakistan which completes 70 years coming Tuesday. Of the most prized possessions at the exhibition organised by The National Numismatic Society were the two gramophones belonging to the Puri family. Made in 1915 and 1924 by UK-based company Garrard one of them was gifted by a British man in Toba Tek Singh of Pakistan and the family has made sure that it is in working condition till date. A gramophone made in 1915 which was the oldest one at the exhibition was in a working condition despite being a 100 years old. The family had turned down all offers to sell the 1924-made machine as they say it is the treasure of their grandfather who shifted from village Sarabha Chak of Toba Tek Singh to Sarabha village in Ludhiana. Bablu Puri 40 his grandson said This is not merely a gramophone for us. It is a treasure that my grandfather Lala Raunaki Puri carried with him as he shifted to India. Later when our family had internal division it is this gramophone which was given to us as a token of his memory. He worked as a haqeem in Toba Tek Singh. He had once treated a Britisher and in return he gave him this gramophone. It also had one record of 1905 in it which plays English songs. No matter how much money is offered to us by antique collectors we will never sell it. My grandmother listened to it till her death. Rare British India half-anna Mint coin from Lahore Seeing the gramophone of my grandfather I developed interest in this field and started collecting colonial-era music machines records and cassettes. I bought 1915 made gramophone in 1995. Till now I have 80 machines and 26 000 records in my collection which also include those of speeches of Jawahar Lal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi said Puri. We have kept my grandfather s gramophone safe since more than 70 years when he got it as gift in 1940s. There is no question of selling it now added Puri who was flooded with the offers to sell it. The family which now runs a tyre shop in Vishal Nagar of Ludhiana has put its partition history collection of gramophones and records at the shop for the visitors to see. Among another rare possession on display was a coin of British India which never got circulated. It has His Majesty Mint half anna Lahore and a crown embossed on it. It came out from coin factory of British India in Lahore and was part of special series of tokens said Narinder Pal Singh who also displayed his rare radio-cum-camera of General Electric Company (GEC) of England. The antique collectors from across Punjab displayed their collections which also included coins of Patiala princely state first radio licenses issued after Independence 30-inch long wooden radio set of Phillips made in Holland among others. For all the latest India News download Indian Express App More Top News PM Narendra Modi reaches out to Valley: Gaali goli can t fix problem embrace Kashmiris Toilet Ek Prem Katha box office collection day 4: Akshay Kumar film earns Rs 63.45 cr No Comments. New Delhi: A collection of horrific and emotional tales of the Partition of India with over 4 300 witness interviews is set to go public for the first time this week it was announced on Sunday.A portion of the complete oral history interviews will be released online on 10 August from Stanford University Library s Digital Repository US-based Guneeta Singh Bhalla founder of The 1947 Partition Archive told IANS.Representational image. Getty ImagesBhalla said the remaining collection deemed too delicate or sensitive for open accessibility would be available to researchers and interested parties only by visiting select university libraries in collaboration with the project including Ashoka University University of Delhi and Guru Nanak Dev University in India; and Lahore University of Management Sciences and Habib University in Pakistan.The archive contains more than 4 300 oral history interviews and over 30 000 digital documents and photographs collected from 12 countries in 22 languages making it the largest oral history archive on any topic in South Asia said the founder of The 1947 Partition Archive.It is among one of the largest video based oral history archives in the world. The end goal is to record at least 10 000 oral history interviews from surviving witnesses. We are excited to be releasing this work into the public domain so that it is accessible to all giving each of us an opportunity to discover our rich history for ourselves Bhalla 37 was quoted in an official statement as saying.Stanford University librarian Michael Keller said the project is tremendously important as part of the historical record and to make readily available for deeper discovery and research.The material is of particular interest to Stanford as research efforts are underway at the Center for South Asia and the Handa Centre for Human Rights and International Justice.According to Bhalla this archive is the world s first and the largest attempt at documenting the people s history and memorialising Partition.A pilot adoption of the collection into the three Indian university libraries is being supported by Tata Trusts. The 1947 Partition Archives of oral histories is of particular interest in this 70th year of India s Independence as time erases direct testimonies so vital in firsthand authenticity Tata Trusts arts and culture head Deepika Sorabjee said.Historian Priya Satia of Stanford University said: It s important because for the last 70 years we have been telling the story of Partition through the lens of high-political negotiations among figures like Jinnah Gandhi Nehru Mountbatten. But none of these political elites foresaw the shape that the Partition would take. We can only understand it by looking at the stories of the people who gave it that shape Satia added. Breaking News