Two self governing countries legally came into existence at the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947. 14 August, 1947, saw the birth of the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan. At midnight the next day India won its freedom from colonial rule, ending nearly 350 years of British presence in India. The British left India divid ed in two. The two countries were founded on the basis of religion, with Pakistan as an Islamic state and India as a secular one.
India’s Independence Day is celebrated on August 15 to commemorate its independence from British rule and its birth as a sovereign nation on that day in 1947. The day is celebrated all over the country and by a growing diaspora around the world. Pakistan became independent on the previous day. What is sometimes forgotten is that the period signifies the single largest human migration of people in modern history. Till today, there is no institutional memory of Partition: the State has not seen fit to construct any memorials, to mark any particular places – as has been done, say, in the case of Holocaust memorials, or memorials for the Vietnam War.
There is nothing at the border that marks it as a place where millions of people crossed, no plaque or memorial at any of the sites of the camps, nothing that marks a particular spot as a place where Partition memories are collected.
Between 12-14 million people who had homes that their families had occupied for decades (often centuries) became ‘political’ refugees to take up residence across the border. Estimates of how many people died vary immensely, hovering in the half to one-half million ranges. Most scholars and observers round it to a million for convenience.
The Partition of British India in 1947, which created the two independent states of India and Pakistan, was followed by one of the cruelest and bloodiest migrations and ethnic cleansings in history. The religious fury and violence that it unleashed caused the deaths of some 2 million Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus. An estimated 12 to 15 million people were forcibly transferred between the two countries. At least 75,000 women were raped. The trauma incurred in the process has been profound.
