Independence Day

The Indian civilization has been on this earth for over 3,500 years but today it celebrates only its 60th birthday. August 15 is the day that India gained her independence from Britain, and became a sovereign nation. The story of the journey to Indian independence is a dramatic one and, like any good story, filled with interesting characters as well as a great deal of tragedy. I have been reading a very good book called “Freedom at Midnight” which documents the enormous undertaking that was Indian Independence. Unlike our independence, India’s was not won at gunpoint, but was rather earned in greatest part by the non-violent efforts of Gandhi which wore down British rule the way that water will eventually wear down even the hardest of stone. Of course the Freedom Fighters and politicians like Nehru and others were also critical in Indian independence, but by all accounts that I have read, independence would not have come to India without the great Gandhi Ji.



I think that I will tell a bit of the story of Indian independence because it is such an interesting story, and one that if it hadn’t actually happened, would be the stuff of fiction. The story is very long and complex, and I certainly can’t do it justice here, but I wanted to share just a taste, especially about the partition of India, which certainly is on the mind of all Indians as they celebrate their Independence, because it came at such a high cost.



In 1947, the British had finally submitted to India’s cry for Independence, and appointed a new Viceroy and Governor-General of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, to oversee Indian independence and work with the Indian politicians to sort out the details of the hand-over of power. The Muslim League, a political party in India, led by the very shrewd Jinnah, saw the impending departure of the British as the perfect opportunity to demand that a separate Muslim state be carved from India. Jinnah argued to Mountbatten that the Hindu majority in India would persecute its Muslim minority after the British withdrew, and in effect issued an ultimatum that the British could partition India into two states, one Hindu and the other Muslim, or else India would erupt in a violent civil war and Britain would leave behind an India in flames. Jinnah claimed that India would be “divided or destroyed.” The atmosphere in parts of India was very volatile and the British felt a great deal of pressure to withdraw quickly in the hopes that their departure would quell some of the violence that was whipping through parts of the country (riots during the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day of August 1946 in Calcutta resulted in over 5000 deaths in just a single day). The British had little choice but to submit to The Muslim League’s demand for an independent Muslim state so it was decided that each of the 565 princely states that made up India at the time would choose which country to join, either India or Pakistan. Those states whose princes failed to choose either country or chose a country at odds with their majority religion, such as Kashmir, became the subject of much dispute. Kashmir was eventually annexed by India, but India and Pakistan continue to do battle over this idyllic piece of earth as a result of the poor decision of one prince. The result of partition was the division of the Punjab, the Northwest section of India, into two halves, the western-most part became West Pakistan and the eastern section became the western border of India. Additionally, in the east of India, Bengal was to also be divided into two, with the eastern-most section becoming East Pakistan and the western section becoming India’s eastern border. So Pakistan, as Palestine is today, was a country with discontinuous borders, the two halves separated by the massive India. This is, of course, an untenable situation and East Pakistan eventually declared its independence from Pakistan and after the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, became what is today known as Bangladesh.



At midnight between August 14 (Pakistan’s Independence Day) and August 15 (India’s Independence Day) both countries were freed from British rule. There was little time for jubilation as those individuals who found themselves within a country that they did not wish to live began a mass migration where 14.5 million people crossed the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. Based on a 1951 Census of displaced persons, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after partition. The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths range around roughly 500,000, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at 1,000,000.



Okay, now time for the color commentary. First of all, the idea that one country could almost completely withdraw from another after about 350 years of occupation within the span of a few months is flabbergasting. Additionally, not only did the British have to hand over power and withdraw in only 2 months, they also had to oversee the separation of said country into two parts (three really when you consider that Pakistan was geographically split in two). That means that every single thing that India possessed had to be divided, as fairly as possible, between the two countries: her army, her treasury, her government, even the inkwells in her government offices has to be divvied up. And all in two months’ time. It must have been mad. There is much debate to this day concerning Partition, those in India generally feel very strongly that the British made a terrible decision in submitting to Jinnah’s demands. Additionally, it is thought that they are largely responsible for the debacle following Partition due to their haste in leaving and thus left the business of public order up to the two fledgling governments which were ill prepared to deal with the migration and violence. Others would argue that India and Pakistan wanted the British out as soon as possible without considering the implications that it might have on the ability to enforce law and order and that the British felt that their presence in India was fanning the flames of Hindu/Muslim violence (sound familiar anyone?). My personal feeling is that the British were between the proverbial rock and hard place. I feel that the similarities between the British presence in India and the U.S. presence in Iraq are a little sickening. As in, why is it that we cannot learn from history? The British would not have found themselves in such a terrible position if they had never involved themselves in Indian affairs to begin with. They became so entrenched in the country that they could not effectively extricate themselves when it became apparent that their presence was no longer welcome (not that it ever really was). And now the story is playing out again in Iraq, and if we believe that America will be remembered lovingly by Iraqis when Iraq’s Independence Day rolls around, I just think of how the Indians remember England on their day of Independence and I am not so convinced.



Happy Independence Day India.