1901 Population Density.
Jammu & Kashmir
[edit]Hyderabad
The
Hyderabad State had a majority Hindu population; the Nizam wanted to accede to Pakistan or if that was not possible remain independent. However such a decision was unacceptable to India, so in 1948 Indian Armed Forces engaged those of the State of Hyderabad and ended the rule of Nizam, annexing the state into the Indian Union.
[edit]Junagadh
Nawab Mohammad Mahabat Khanji III of Junagadh, a princely state located on the south-western end of India chose to accede to Pakistan. India asserted that Junagadh was not contiguous to Pakistan and refused to accept the Nawab's choice of accession to Pakistan. Nawab argued that Junagadh could access Pakistan by sea. India cut off supplies of fuel and coal to Junagadh, severed air and postal links, sent troops to the frontier, and occupied the principalities of Mangrol and Babariawad that had acceded to India. Pakistan agreed to discuss a plebiscite, subject to the withdrawal of Indian troops, a condition India rejected and occupied rest of Junagadh by 9 Nov 1947. The Nawab and his family fled to Pakistan and appealed United Nations, where case is still pending.
Restoration of women
Both sides promised each other that they would try to restore women abducted during the riots. The Indian government claimed that 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted, and the Pakistani government claimed that 50,000 Muslim women were abducted during riots. By 1949, there were governmental claims that 12,000 women had been recovered in India and 6,000 in Pakistan.
[27] By 1954 there were 20,728 recovered Muslim women and 9032 Hindu and Sikh women recovered from Pakistan.
[28] Many of the Muslim women refused to go back to Pakistan fearing that they would never be accepted by their family; similarly, the families of many Hindu and Sikh women refused to take back their relatives.
[29]
[edit]India and Pakistan
Since Partition, with the riots and killings between the two religious communities, India and Pakistan have struggled to maintain normal relations. One of the biggest debates occurs over the disputed region of
Kashmir, over which there have been three wars, and the reasons for the wars have related only to the confusion over partition. There have been four Indo-Pakistani wars:
- Indo-Pakistani War of 1947: Pakistani backed tribals-army i.e. Khyber Rifles and troops invaded the princely state of Kashmir by the request of its people, which had just acceded to India by the decision of its ruler, Hari Singh, despite the fact it had a Muslim majority who wanted to join Pakistan. The United Nations established a stalemate and asked for fresh Referendum which was halted by Indian Government still yet.
- Indo-Pakistani War of 1965: Pakistani-backed guerrillas invaded Indian administered Kashmir. India is generally believed to have had the upper hand when a ceasefire was called. Whereas Pakistan believed its air-superiority over army and navy against India in the war to be key achievement and future success if war continued.[30]
- Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: After India announced support for the Bengalis in East Pakistan, Pakistan launched air strikes against India. India eventually captured 13,000 square kilometres of Pakistan's territory (which it later returned on the condition that Bangladesh is created). East Pakistan was partitioned from West Pakistan through the creation of Bangladesh.
- 1999 Kargil Conflict: Pakistani troops and militants invaded Indian administered Kashmir during the winter when high mountain posts were unoccupied. India recaptured all territory lost.[31]
The British-Tibetan border, winding as it did through the Himalayas, had never been definitively surveyed or marked. India, as the inheritor of a long stretch of the British borders, and the People's Republic of China, which invaded Tibet, eventually clashed, leading to the 1962
Sino-Indian War.
[edit]Treatment of minorities by Pakistan and India
1971 newsreel film about the partition and its aftermath
Before independence, Hindus and Sikhs had formed 20 per cent of the population of the areas now forming Pakistan, presently the percentage has "whittled down to one-and-a half percent".
[32]:66 Mahommedali Chagla, in a speech at the UN General Assembly said that, Pakistan solved its minority problem by the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus, resulting in "hardly any" Hindu minority population in West Pakistan.
[33] India suspected Pakistan of ethnic cleansing when millions of Hindus fled its province of
East Pakistan in 1971.
[34] Hindus remaining in Pakistan have been persecuted.
[35][36]Yasmin Saikia writes that "although a large number of Muslims migrated to Pakistan in 1947, the bulk of the Muslim population stayed in their homelands in India".
[37] According to Azim A. Khan Sherwani, the Hashimpura massacre case is "a chilling reminder of the apathy of the (Indian) state towards access to justice for Muslims", he writes that the case demonstrates that it is not just the Hindutva lobby, but also the Congress-Left and the socialists that are apathetic, and that Muslim "leaders" are more concerned with their personal ambitions and not with "issues afflicting the community".
[38] In Pakistan, Hindus sometimes resent the alleged discrimination and forced conversion to Islam.
[39][40]
Integration of refugee populations with their new countries did not always go smoothly. Some Urdu speaking Muslims (
Muhajirs)who migrated to Pakistan have complained that they are discriminated against in government employment. Municipal political conflict in
Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, often pitted native
Sindhis against immigrants. Sindhi,
Bengali, and
Punjabi refugees in India also experienced poverty as they largely came empty handed. However, 50 years after Partition, almost all ex-refugees have managed to rebuild their lives.
All of the three nations resulting from the Partition of India have had to deal with endemic civil conflicts. Inside India, these have been largely due to inter-religious unrest and disruptive far left forces. Civil unrest inside India includes:
The last example of unrest, the terrorism in Kashmir, is related to the ongoing
Kashmir conflict and relates to the both India and Pakistan.
Within Pakistan, unrest is mainly because of ethnicities, with Sindhis, Bengalis, Balochis, all vying for more representation within Pakistan and in some cases, the creation of an independent state.
Aftermath
Current religious demographics of India proper and former East and West Pakistan
Despite the huge
migrations during and after Partition, India is still home to the third largest Muslim population in the world (after Indonesia and Pakistan). The current estimates for India (see
Demographics of India) are as shown below. Islamic Pakistan, the former West Pakistan, by contrast, has a much smaller minority population. Its religious distribution is below (see
Demographics of Pakistan). As for Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan, the non-Muslim share is somewhat larger (see
Demographics of Bangladesh):
India (2006 Est. 1,095 million vs. 1951 Census 361 million)
- 80.5% Hindus (839 million)
- 13.10% Muslims (143 million)
- 2.31% Christians (25 million)
- 2.00% Sikhs (21 million)
- 1.94% Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and others (20 million)
Pakistan (2005 Est. 162 million vs. 1951 Census 34 million)
- 98.0% Muslims (159 million)
- 1.0% Christians (1.62 million)
- 1.0% Hindus, Sikhs and others (1.62 million)
Bangladesh (2005 Est. 144 million vs. 1951 Census 42 million)
- 86% Muslims (124 million)
- 13% Hindus (18 million)
- 1% Christians, Buddhists and Animists (1.44 million)
Both nations have to a great extent assimilated the refugees.
An aged and abandoned Muslim couple and their grand children sitting by the roadside on this arduous journey. "The old man is dying of exhaustion. The caravan has gone on," wrote Bourke-White.
Two Muslim men (in a rural refugee train headed towards Pakistan) carrying an old woman in a makeshift doli or palanquin. 1947.
"With the tragic legacy of an uncertain future, a young refugee sits on the walls of Purana Qila, transformed into a vast refugee camp in Delhi." Margaret Bourke-White, 1947.
A refugee train on its way to Punjab, Pakistan.
Train to Pakistan steaming out of New Delhi Railway Station, 1947.
Times of india.
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