Partition of India - Introduction
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were all part of the Indian subcontinent before India’s independence from the British in 1947. After the British rule was over, Pakistan became a separate nation on August 14th, 1947, and India became a separate nation on August 15, 1947. This separation was based upon religious identity alone. Pakistan was predominantly a Muslim majority state and India was predominantly Hindu. Right after independence, there was no such country as Bangladesh, and it was known as “East Pakistan” and what is today’s Pakistan was known as “West Pakistan.” Although both Bangladesh and Pakistan were and continue to be mostly Muslim, they are very different ethnically. The Pakistanis are fair-skinned and taller Muslims, and the Bangladesh Muslims are dark-skinned and shorter Bengalis. This ethnic difference played a huge role in the separation of Bangladesh. Bangladesh declared its independence on March 26, 1971, and soon after the war of 1971, became a nation.
Ultimately, the desire of Muslims in India to have their own homeland created the state of Pakistan. At the same time, most of the Muslims in Pakistan were Hindus and Buddhists several centuries before and were converted to Islam forcibly after the successive invasions of several Islamic invaders. This is a very important aspect of the history of Pakistan and is often ignored by western historians and Indian historians alike. Since Pakistan is an Islamic state, to understand why it evolved to its present state, one needs to have at least a basic understanding of the multitudes of invasions from the Islamic invaders from Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and other parts of Central Asia.
The kings and generals who lead these invasions came to India for different reasons. India was one of the richest countries in the world at that time and with poorly defended and porous borders on the Northern side, it was a magnet for invaders. The invaders came to India not just to pursue wealth, but also to spread Islam forcibly and killed thousands of people who refused to convert and died by the sword, often in the most brutal and gruesome manner. The Hindus who were converted to Islam began to enjoy special patronage under the Moghul rule in India, and the remaining Hindus had to live in fear of persecution by the Moghul emperors and learned to change with the time just to survive. It should be noted that these massive large-scale forced conversions and the destructions of the culture (such as the Hindu temples) took place mainly in Northern India. This is a well-established fact as most of the ancient Hindu temples are still intact in the Southern states such as Tamil Nadu.
The conversion to Islam was a long process and took several centuries to fructify. The last major invasion from an Islamic king was by Ahmad Shah Abdali who invaded India 9 times and these invasions took place in the 1700s. The Moghul empire was already in decline at this time. Another factor that influenced the Hindus to convert to Islam was the egalitarian nature of Islam where no caste is involved. Although fair-skinned Muslims (such as Persians ) enjoy more clout and influence compared to Muslims of darker color ( Bangladeshi Muslims). With the presence of the East India Company, Christianity was spreading in India, and Hindus, especially those born in the lower caste could still raise beyond the caste structure by embracing another religion that didn’t have the caste structure (Christianity), although white-skinned European Christians enjoyed more privilege compared to darker-skinned Christians. While the Europeans in India converted Hindus and Muslims to Christianity, at least, for the most part, the conversion was not forceful (it was not ‘Convert or you die”). With all these, Islam lost its charm as the only viable alternative to a “universal brotherhood”. This was the situation during the mid-1800s.
In the next blog, we will provide a brief summary of the Islamic invasions that took place since the 1600s.
