Similarly, although the conquests themselves were marked by carnage and by the destruction of Hindu and Buddhist sites, India soon embraced and transformed the new arrivals. Within a few centuries, a hybrid Indo-Islamic civilization emerged, along with hybrid languages—notably Deccani and Urdu—which mixed the Sanskrit-derived vernaculars of India with Turkish, Persian, and Arabic words. The Sufi mystics associated with the spread of Islam often regarded the Hindu scriptures as divinely inspired.
Some even took on the yogic practices of Hindu sadhus, rubbing their bodies with ashes, or hanging upside down while praying.
In village folk traditions, the practice of the two faiths came close to blending into one. Hindus would visit the graves of Sufi masters and Muslims would leave offerings at Hindu shrines.
Sufis were especially numerous in Punjab and Bengal—the same regions that, centuries later, saw the worst of the violence—and there were mass conversions among the peasants there.
The cultural mixing took place throughout the subcontinent. In medieval Hindu texts from South India, the Sultan of Delhi is sometimes talked about as the incarnation of the god Vishnu. Not all Mughal rulers were so open-minded. In the nineteenth century, India was still a place where traditions, languages, and cultures cut across religious groupings, and where people did not define themselves primarily through their religious faith.
A Sunni Muslim weaver from Bengal would have had far more in common in his language, his outlook, and his fondness for fish with one of his Hindu colleagues than he would with a Karachi Shia or a Pashtun Sufi from the North-West Frontier.
Many writers persuasively blame the British for the gradual erosion of these shared traditions. Other assessments, however, emphasize that Partition, far from emerging inevitably out of a policy of divide-and-rule, was largely a contingent development. As late as , it might still have been avoided. All three men were Anglicized lawyers who had received at least part of their education in England. Jinnah and Gandhi were both Gujarati. Potentially, they could have been close allies.
But by the early nineteen-forties their relationship had grown so poisonous that they could barely be persuaded to sit in the same room.
At the center of the debates lies the personality of Jinnah, the man most responsible for the creation of Pakistan. In Indian-nationalist accounts, he appears as the villain of the story; for Pakistanis, he is the Father of the Nation. He was certainly a tough, determined negotiator and a chilly personality; the Congress Party politician Sarojini Naidu joked that she needed to put on a fur coat in his presence.
Yet Jinnah was in many ways a surprising architect for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. A staunch secularist, he drank whiskey, rarely went to a mosque, and was clean-shaven and stylish, favoring beautifully cut Savile Row suits and silk ties.
Significantly, he chose to marry a non-Muslim woman, the glamorous daughter of a Parsi businessman. She was famous for her revealing saris and for once bringing her husband ham sandwiches on voting day. Indeed, he had spent the early part of his political career, around the time of the First World War, striving to bring together the Muslim League and the Congress Party.
Throughout the nineteen-twenties and thirties, the mutual dislike grew, and by Jinnah had steered the Muslim League toward demanding a separate homeland for the Muslim minority of South Asia.
Hindus and Muslims had begun to turn on each other during the chaos unleashed by the Second World War. In , as the Japanese seized Singapore and Rangoon and advanced rapidly through Burma toward India, the Congress Party began a campaign of civil disobedience, the Quit India Movement, and its leaders, including Gandhi and Nehru, were arrested.
While they were in prison, Jinnah, who had billed himself as a loyal ally of the British, consolidated opinion behind him as the best protection of Muslim interests against Hindu dominance. From that point on, violence on the streets between Hindus and Muslims began to escalate. Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day. New York: Penguin, Unit 3 MM, Ghosh, Amitav.
The Shadow Lines. New York: Oxford UP, Kesavan, Mukul. Looking Through Glass. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, Manto, Sadaat Hassan. Best of Manto. Jai Ratan. Lahore: Vanguard, Rushdie, Salman. Sahni, Bhisham. New Delhi: Panguin, Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India.
Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, Singh, Khushwant. Train to Pakistan. New York: Grove Press, India Wins Freedom. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Hasan, Mushirul, ed. Kanitkar, V. The Partition of India. East Sussex: Wayland, Lord Birdwood. India and Pakistan: A Continent Decides. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, In August , the Great Calcutta Killing left some 4, people dead and a further , homeless.
By March , a new viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, arrived in Delhi with a mandate to find a speedy way of bringing the British Raj to an end. On June 3, he announced that independence would be brought forward to August that year, presenting politicians with an ultimatum that gave them little alternative but to agree to the creation of two separate states.
Pakistan — its eastern and western wings separated by around 1, kilometres of Indian territory — celebrated independence on August 14 that year; India did so the following day. The new borders, which split the key provinces of the Punjab and Bengal in two, were officially approved on August They had been drawn up by a Boundary Commission, led by British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe , who later admitted that he had relied on out-of-date maps and census materials.
Partition triggered riots, mass casualties, and a colossal wave of migration. Millions of people moved to what they hoped would be safer territory, with Muslims heading towards Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs in the direction of India.
As many as m people may have been eventually displaced, travelling on foot, in bullock carts and by train. Estimates of the death toll post-Partition range from , to two million.
Between and , British and Indian soldiers undertook a series of punitive expeditions against the fiercely independent tribesmen of this wild and mountainous region. Robert Clive's victory at Plassey on 23 June led to the British becoming the greatest economic and military power in India. Artworks created by Indian artists for the British soldiers serving on the subcontinent provide a fascinating insight into early Anglo-Indian relations.
The rising was the biggest threat to Britain's colonial power during its rule of the Indian subcontinent. In , Indian soldiers rose up against their British commanders.
The reasons behind the rebellion stretch back to the origins of British involvement in Indian affairs. A courageous, resourceful and ruthless military commander, Major-General Robert Clive helped secure India for Britain. But he was also seen as a greedy speculator who used his political and military influence to amass a fortune.
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National Army Museum 10am - 5. Toggle navigation. View this object. Map briefing for Sikh recruits, Self-government The long campaign for Indian independence, which had begun with the Indian Mutiny , grew in intensity following the Second World War Mahatma Gandhi and other members of the Indian National Congress, Partition Eventually, the British concluded that partition was the only answer.
Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, talking to Indian soldiers, Nehru visiting the Khyber Rifles at Jamrud,
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