Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Partition of India" in English language version.
There is much in the Musalmans which, if they wish, can roll them into a nation. But isn't there enough that is common to both Hindus and Musalmans, which if developed, is capable of moulding them into one people? Nobody can deny that there are many modes, manners, rites and customs which are common to both. Nobody can deny that there are rites, customs and usages based on religion which do divide Hindus and Musalmans. The question is, which of these should be emphasized
American scholar Allen Mcgrath
But the British still hoped that a self-governing India would remain part of their system of 'imperial defense'. For this reason, Britain was desperate to keep India (and its army) united.
Thus the idea of Pakistan rests on the elite Indian muslim sense of being culturally and historically distinct
... Hindu and Muslim cultures constitute two distinct and frequently antagonistic ways of life, and that therefore they cannot coexist in one nation ...
... strongly and repeatedly pressed for the transfer of the population between India and Pakistan. At the time of partition, some of the two-nation theory protagonists proposed that the entire Hindu population should migrate to India, and all Muslims should move over to Pakistan, leaving no Hindus in Pakistan and no Muslims in India ...
... The partition of the country did not take the two-nation theory to its logical conclusion, i.e., complete transfer of populations ...
... As a Muslim, Hindus, and Muslims are one nation and not two ... two nations have no basis in history... they shall continue to live together for another thousand years in united India ...
... would be completely extinct as a people without any identity. This proposition is the crux of the matter, shaping the Baloch attitude towards Pakistani politics. For Baloch to accept the British-conceived two-nation theory for the Indian Muslims would mean losing their Baloch identity in the process ...
[In the view of G. M. Sayed,] the two-nation theory became a trap for Sindhis—instead of liberating Sindh, it fell under Punjabi-Mohajir domination, and until his death in 1995 he called for a separate Sindhi 'nation', implying a separate Sindhi country.
... Attacking the 'two-nation theory' in Lower House on December 14, 1947, Ghaus Bux Bizenjo said: "We have a distinct culture like Afghanistan and Iran, and if the mere fact that we are Muslim requires us to amalgamate with Pakistan, then Afghanistan and Iran should also be amalgamated with Pakistan ...
Although it was founded in 1909 the League had only caught on among South Asian Muslims during the Second World War. The party had expanded astonishingly rapidly and was claiming over two million members by the early 1940s, an unimaginable result for what had been previously thought of as just one of the numerous pressure groups and small but insignificant parties.
He made a serious misjudgment in underestimating Muslim sentiment before the outbreak of the war. He did not take the idea of 'Pakistan' seriously. After the adoption of the March 1940 Lahore resolution, calling for the creation of a separate state or states of Pakistan, he wrote: 'My first reaction is, I confess, that silly as the Muslim scheme for partition is, it would be a pity to throw too much cold water on it at the moment.' Linlithgow surmised that what Jinnah feared was a federal India dominated by Hindus. Part of the purpose of the famous British 'August offer' of 1940 was to assure the Muslims that they would be protected against a 'Hindu Raj' as well as to hold over the discussion of the 1935 Act and a 'new constitution' until after the war.
Viceroy Linlithgow's 'August Offer,' made in 1940, proposed Dominion status for India after the war, and the inclusion of Indians in a larger Executive Council and a new War Advisory Council, and promised that minority views would be taken into account in future constitutional revision. This was not enough to satisfy either the Congress or the Muslim League, who both rejected the offer in September, and shortly afterward Congress launched a fresh campaign of civil disobedience.
Provincial option, he argued, was insufficient security. Explicit acceptance of the principle of Pakistan offered the only safeguard for Muslim interests throughout India and had to be the precondition for any advance at the center. So he exhorted all Indian Muslims to unite under his leadership to force the British and the Congress to concede 'Pakistan.' If the real reasons for Jinnah's rejection of the offer were rather different, it was not Jinnah but his rivals who had failed to make the point publicly.
At the all-India level, the demand for Pakistan pitted the League against the Congress and the British.
His standing with the British remained high, however, for even though they no more agreed with the idea of a separate Muslim state than the Congress did, government officials appreciated the simplicity of a single negotiating voice for all of India's Muslims.
Virtually every Briton wanted to keep India united. Many expressed moral or sentimental obligations to leave India intact, either for the inhabitants' sake or simply as a lasting testament to the Empire. The Cabinet Defense Committee and Chiefs of Staff stressed the maintenance of a united India as vital to the defense (and economy) of the region. A unified India, an orderly transfer of power, and a bilateral alliance would, they argued, leave Britain's strategic position undamaged. India's military assets, including its seemingly limitless manpower, naval and air bases, and expanding production capabilities, would remain accessible to London. India would thus remain of crucial importance as a base, training ground, and staging area for operations from Egypt to the Far East.
By this scheme, the British hoped they could at once preserve united India desired by the Congress, and by themselves, and at the same time, through the groups, secure the essence of Jinnah's demand for a 'Pakistan'.
Its proposal for an independent India involved a complex, three-tiered federation, whose central feature was the creation of groups of provinces. Two of these groups would comprise the Muslim majority provinces of east and west; a third would include the Hindu majority regions of the center and south. These groups, given responsibility for most of the functions of government, would be subordinated to a Union government, would be subordinated to a Union government controlling defense, foreign affairs, and communications. Nevertheless, the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet mission's proposals. The ball was now in Congress's court. Although the grouping scheme preserved a united India, the Congress leadership, above all Jawaharlal Nehru, now slated to be Gandhi's successor, increasingly concluded that under the Cabinet mission proposals the Center would be too weak to achieve the goals of the Congress, which envisioned itself as the successor to the Raj. Looking ahead to the future, the Congress, especially its socialist wing headed by Nehru, wanted a central government that could direct and plan for an India, free of colonialism, that might eradicate its people's poverty and grow into an industrial power. India's business community also supported the idea of a strong central government In a provocative speech on 10 July 1946, Nehru repudiated the notion of compulsory grouping or provinces, the key to Jinnah's Pakistan. Provinces, he said, must be free to join any group. With this speech, Nehru effectively torpedoed the Cabinet mission scheme, and with it, any hope for a united India.
These instructions were to avoid partition and obtain a unitary government for British India and the Indian States and at the same time observe the pledges to the princes and the Muslims; to secure agreement to the Cabinet Mission plan without coercing any of the parties; somehow to keep the Indian army undivided, and to retain India within the Commonwealth. (Attlee to Mountbatten, 18 March 1947, ibid, 972–974)
When Mountbatten arrived, it was not wholly inconceivable that a settlement on the Cabinet Mission's terms might still be secured limited bloodshed called for a united Indian army under effective control. But keeping the army intact was now inextricably linked with keeping India united, this is why Mountbatten started by being vehemently opposed to 'abolishing the center'.
Second, it was feared that if an exchange of populations was agreed to in principle in Punjab, ' there was likelihood of trouble breaking out in other parts of the subcontinent to force Muslims in the Indian Dominion to move to Pakistan. If that happened, we would find ourselves with inadequate land and other resources to support the influx.' Punjab could set a very dangerous precedent for the rest of the subcontinent. Given that Muslims in the rest of India, some 42 million, formed a population larger than the entire population of West Pakistan at the time, economic rationality eschewed such a forced migration. In divided Punjab, millions of people were already on the move, and the two governments had to respond to this mass movement. Thus, despite these important reservations, the establishment of the MEO led to an acceptance of a 'transfer of populations' in divided Punjab, too, 'to give a sense of security' to ravaged communities on both sides. A statement of the Indian government's position of such a transfer across divided Punjab was made in the legislature by Neogy on November 18, 1947. He stated that although the Indian government's policy was 'to discourage mass migration from one province to another.' Punjab was to be an exception. In the rest of the subcontinent migrations were not to be on a planned basis, but a matter of individual choice. This exceptional character of movements across divided Punjab needs to be emphasized, for the agreed and 'planned evacuations' by the two governments formed the context of those displacements.
Notwithstanding the accumulated evidence of inter-communal tension, the signatories to the agreement that divided the Raj did not expect the transfer of power and the partition of India to be accompanied by a mass movement of population. Partition was conceived as a means of preventing migration on a large scale because the borders would be adjusted instead. Minorities need not be troubled by the new configuration. As Pakistan's first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, affirmed, 'the division of India into Pakistan and India Dominions was based on the principle that minorities will stay where they were and that the two states will afford all protection to them as citizens of the respective states'.
Revived by the success of his fast, which also helped bring calm to the rest of India, Gandhi resumed his routine of ending the day with a prayer meeting outside Birla House.
Most scholars now accept that approximately 1 million people died from Partition-related violence.
Undivided India, their magnificent imperial trophy, was besmirched by the creation of Pakistan, and the division of India was never emotionally accepted by many British leaders, Mountbatten among them.
In particular, Mountbatten put pressure on the supposedly neutral Boundary Commissioner, Sir Cyril Radcliffe—cruelly mocked at the time by W.H.Auden—to make critical adjustments in India's favor when drawing the frontier through the Punjab.
In the 1940s a solid majority of the Barelvis were supporters of the Pakistan Movement and played a supporting role in its final phase (1940–7), mostly under the banner of the All-India Sunni Conference which had been founded in 1925.
During the 1946 election, Barelvi Ulama issued fatwas in favour of the Muslim League.
For example, the Barelvi ulama supported the formation of the state of Pakistan and thought that any alliance with Hindus (such as that between the Indian National Congress and the Jamiat ulama-I-Hind [JUH]) was counterproductive.
Believing that Islam was a universal religion, the Deobandi advocated a notion of a composite nationalism according to which Hindus and Muslims constituted one nation.
Madani...stressed the difference between qaum, meaning a nation, hence a territorial concept, and millat, meaning an Ummah and thus a religious concept.
Madani makes a crucial distinction between qaum and millat. According to him, qaum connotes a territorial multi-religious entity, while millat refers to the cultural, social and religious unity of Muslims exclusively.
The partition of India figures in a good deal of imaginative writing...
Mountbatten had intended to resurrect the Cabinet Mission proposals for a federal India. British officials were unanimously pessimistic about a Pakistan state's future economic prospects. The agreement to an Indian Union contained in the Cabinet Mission proposals had been initially accepted by the Muslim League as the grouping proposals gave considerable autonomy in the Muslim majority areas. Moreover, there was the possibility of withdrawal and thus acquiring Pakistan by the backdoor after a ten year interval. The worsening communal situation and extensive soundings with Indian political figures convinced Mountbatten within a month of his arrival that partition was the only way to quickly and smoothly transfer power.
The number of casualties remains a matter of dispute, with figures being claimed that range from 200,000 to 2 million victims.
Four thousand Muslim shops and homes were destroyed in the walled area of Amritsar during a single week in March 1947. were these exceptions which prove the rule? It appears that casualty figures were frequently higher when Hindus rather than Muslims were the aggressors.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)In 1947, when Kishan Lal walked next to Dhyan Chand in East Africa in the Indian colours, the legendary field hockey team from 1936 had all but emptied. With 1947 came the Partition and most of the talented players were partitioned too with many moving to Pakistan
Never before or since have so many people exchanged their homes and countries so quickly ... people moved between the new, truncated India and the two wings, East and West, of the newly created Pakistan ... Slaughter sometimes accompanied and sometimes prompted their movement; many others died from malnutrition and contagious diseases. Estimates of the dead vary from 200,000 (the contemporary British figure) to two million (a later Indian estimate) ... despite many warnings, the new governments of India and Pakistan were unprepared for the convulsion: they had not anticipated ...
Mountbatten had intended to resurrect the Cabinet Mission proposals for a federal India. British officials were unanimously pessimistic about a Pakistan state's future economic prospects. The agreement to an Indian Union contained in the Cabinet Mission proposals had been initially accepted by the Muslim League as the grouping proposals gave considerable autonomy in the Muslim majority areas. Moreover, there was the possibility of withdrawal and thus acquiring Pakistan by the backdoor after a ten year interval. The worsening communal situation and extensive soundings with Indian political figures convinced Mountbatten within a month of his arrival that partition was the only way to quickly and smoothly transfer power.
The number of casualties remains a matter of dispute, with figures being claimed that range from 200,000 to 2 million victims.
But the British still hoped that a self-governing India would remain part of their system of 'imperial defense'. For this reason, Britain was desperate to keep India (and its army) united.
Never before or since have so many people exchanged their homes and countries so quickly ... people moved between the new, truncated India and the two wings, East and West, of the newly created Pakistan ... Slaughter sometimes accompanied and sometimes prompted their movement; many others died from malnutrition and contagious diseases. Estimates of the dead vary from 200,000 (the contemporary British figure) to two million (a later Indian estimate) ... despite many warnings, the new governments of India and Pakistan were unprepared for the convulsion: they had not anticipated ...
During the 1946 election, Barelvi Ulama issued fatwas in favour of the Muslim League.
In 1947, when Kishan Lal walked next to Dhyan Chand in East Africa in the Indian colours, the legendary field hockey team from 1936 had all but emptied. With 1947 came the Partition and most of the talented players were partitioned too with many moving to Pakistan
At the lowest estimate, half a million people perished and twelve millions became homeless.