The purpose of this blog is to present material related to the Partition of India. This blog will cover the period 1857 to 1950, and perhaps a little beyond.
The starting point, 1857, is chosen because I think this is when the ruling class Muslims had to come to terms with the fact that they were permanently displaced, and the seeds of Partition lie here.
The unity of India might have been preserved if the parties involved could come to an agreement about a constitution; and so the natural end point of this story is when independent India adopted its constitution, or perhaps a little beyond that, to the failure of constitution-writing in Pakistan - these end-points help clarify what we might otherwise only guess about the intentions and plans of the various parties.
Of course, the struggle for independence is also central to this story. There might have been a sort-of-united India, ruled by the British, but for the independence movement. Moreover, it was the apprehensions of Muslims (justified or not) about the political order of an independent India that spurred them on to demand Partition.
I will update this post as I refine the scope of what I want to include here.
The starting point, 1857, is chosen because I think this is when the ruling class Muslims had to come to terms with the fact that they were permanently displaced, and the seeds of Partition lie here.
The unity of India might have been preserved if the parties involved could come to an agreement about a constitution; and so the natural end point of this story is when independent India adopted its constitution, or perhaps a little beyond that, to the failure of constitution-writing in Pakistan - these end-points help clarify what we might otherwise only guess about the intentions and plans of the various parties.
Of course, the struggle for independence is also central to this story. There might have been a sort-of-united India, ruled by the British, but for the independence movement. Moreover, it was the apprehensions of Muslims (justified or not) about the political order of an independent India that spurred them on to demand Partition.
I will update this post as I refine the scope of what I want to include here.
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