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Violence and Riots at Partition in 1947 - Were avoidable?


To see those migration videos and photos, it’s really painful and full of grief. That's why, One question is mostly raised through social media; 

Is it true that this Pakistan India partition and then migration steps were proceeded in a unplanned way and every thing was done in urgency for no reason. 

If leaders from both sides could have waited little longer and thought properly about the consequences of this kind of unplanned migration, they could have saved this mass murdering, slaughtering of millions of human beings, and rapes of women ? 

With proper planning and procedure, people could have moved / migrated from one place to another in a much more peaceful, protected and safe mode for both Hindus and Muslims. 
This mass murdering could not have happened at all or may be in a less ratio. 



Comment / Views.
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The communal riots at the time of Partition of India in 1947 is a dark chapter of human history, a catastrophe, worst example of ethnic cleansing, which could have been be minimized if not avoidable completely. 
Since British were in charge hence they share the major responsibility and blame, while Hindu leadership provided tacit and active sanction (also RSS). Some other reasons are:-
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1. Partition was not the first solution , it was major demand a bargaining position to secure freedom of Muslims from Hindu hegemony after independence ( looks strange , but here is proof ) ... 

2. Partition  was imposed and became a necessity... when Cabinet Mission Plan  ( United India with safeguards for #Muslims ) accepted by Muslims on 6 June 1946, also accepted by Congress with some If n Butts but  Nehru rejected it publicly on  10 July 1946... 

3. Very short time was left ... Brits were in hurry to leave ...  

4. The riots also started ... becoming uncontrollable day by day ...

 5. Qaid e Azam interpreted Nehru's speech as another instance of treachery by the Congress. With Nehru's speech on groupings, the Muslim League rescinded its previous approval of the plan on 29 July 46.

6. On 2 September 1946, Nehru's cabinet was installed by Brits. Opposed by Muslims who were sidelined , ignored. 

7.  In the context of the worsening situation, Wavell drew up a breakdown plan that provided for a gradual British exit, but his plan was considered fatalistic by the Brits Cabinet. When he insisted on his plan, he was replaced with Lord Mountbatten... rest is history ... 

So blaming Muslims for unplanned , hurried Partition is against historic facts ... 

We may read... Books by Indian ex FM  Jaswant Singh, Ayesha Jalaal,  Molana  Azaad to know more ... 
Some information,  I gathered .... here 》》》
Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence is a book written by Jaswant Singh, a former Finance Minister of India and an External Affairs Minister, on Pakistan's founder Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the politics associated with the Partition of India. It is currently the latest book written by an Indian politician on the life of Jinnah.The book was released on 17 August 2009 and soon became the subject of controversy, subsequently leading to Singh's expulsion from the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). It contains controversial opinions of Singh, claiming that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's centralised policy was responsible for partition, and that Jinnah was portrayed as a demon by India for the partition. 

Jaswant Singh was expelled by the BJP following a party meeting chaired by L.K. Advani on 19 August 2009 stating that they will not "compromise on matters of ideology or disciple". 
The government of the Indian state Gujarat banned the book for allegedly having defamatory references towards India's first home minister Vallabhbhai Patel. However, Gujarat lifted the ban on 4 September 2009 after a court struck it down.

 The Indian newspaper The Hindu claimed "Mark Tully, Meghnad Desai, Ram Jethmalani, Natwar Singh and Hameed Haroon said a new appraisal of Jinnah’s role was needed and Mr. Singh had done a commendable job."
#Partition #Pakistan

British in Hurry to leave India

After the end of WW II, the government of Mr. Clement Atlee had no interest to continue to rule British India. The disagreements between Congress and Muslim league was unmanageable for the Viceroy and the British government. It was not possible for them to reconcile the differences between the two. 

After rejection of Cabinet Mission Plan ,  the atmosphere had become highly vitiated.

As Balaji Viswanathan wrote the new Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten announced a timeline for their departure and afterwards everything was rushed through in haste.

 Most importantly after the RIN mutiny, the British government knew that they couldn't trust the Indian police or the military. So they never used them effectively to stop the violence.

 It was a classic case of British government's cut and run. 
 
The resulting violence on both sides was seen as a collateral damage. In this case he felt the means justified the ends.

The exit of the British was a  chaotic process. Even as late as February 1947, the Attlee's government [UK's PM] was a talking about a date as late as June 1948.

However, the new Viceroy Louis Mountbatten, surprised everyone by announcing on June 3 1947 that India would be free two months from then [on August 15] which later became the Indian Independence Act 1947.

The Congress and Muslim League accepted the early date as they were impatient to get to power. 

British government wanted an early date as India was already a lost cause by then and anything spent on India [to put down the chaos] was just an extra cost for them.

The tragedy of this is the hasty partition. Between June 3 & August 15, the following tasks had to be done:

1, Ask Punjab and Bengal assemblies to meet and vote for a partition.Draw the actual boundary once Punjab and Bengal assemblies vote for a partition.Conduct referendum in NWFP.

2. All of this has to happen while a massive religious bloodshed was engulfing the country and a monsoon that would fail over much of north India.

An expert from UK, Cyril Radcliffe was brought in July and a person who knew little of India was tasked with fairly splitting Punjab and Bengal in just 5 weeks. Most Englishmen of his time took more than 5 weeks to just settle into the country, leave alone understand it deep enough to do such a crucial job.

Once the hasty line was drawn , it shocked a lot of people. A lot of Hindus and Sikhs were caught in Pakistan and a lot of Muslims were caught in India.

Now, they had to lose all their life savings and their life experiences. Many were in anger and showed it on the opposite community. That cascaded quickly, leading to an even hastier population exchange.

Britain also had very limited policing abilities in India and the worst of the Raj was seen in its last few days. The Raj proved incapable to manage the challenge. It was left to the independent governments to control the chaos & bring back the nations to life.

#Partition #Pakistan
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C. R. Attlee, the British Prime Minister declared the Partition of India by June 1948. But the bloodied holocaust particularly in the Punjab pushed the British administration to implement the Partition in August1947, Lord Wavell replaced with Lord Mountbatten who resumed the office as Viceroy in March 1947 with the task to divide India into two; Muslim and non-Muslim majority States.
M.A. Jinnah wanted affiliation of whole Punjab Province with Pakistan because its 57% population was Muslim. The violent agitation of Muslim League against the collative Govt. of Unionist Party hinted out a sense of insecurity to the non-Muslims in Punjab. After the resignation of collative rule of Khizar Tiwana on March 2, 1947 the non-Muslim communities particularly Hindus (26%) and Sikhs (14%) were disturbed and intensely had anti-Pakistan gushes. Even on March 11, 1947 they celebrated anti-Pakistan Day. Non-Muslims mainly Sikhs with the back of Indian National Congress (INC) were not willing to live under Muslim domination, started to demand the maximum land (Jumna to Chenab) for East Punjab 》》》》》https://dailytimes.com.pk/476717/the-bloodied-role-of-rss-in-the-partition-of-punjab-1947/
#Pakistan. 🇵🇰 #Partition
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This partition was not an isolated event in history and hurry was not created by the local leadership. It all happened as a followup of Atlantic charter which was an agreement 
between America(the new super power),Britain and France at the conclusion of WWII. It was main clause of that agreement that Britain and France shall immediately liberate all the colonies under their occupation .......so 45 new countries were added to the world map in next five years. That hurry imposed by America to usher a new era of satellite colonialism forced Britishers to leave in  desperation. Still they could have done it amicably and fairly but they decided to sow seeds of animosity between India and Pakistan by making trecherous decisions on Juna Garh and Kashmir. The massacre during the process of migration was the inevitable consequence of financial disparity between the two populations migrating in opposite direction ....which later infuriated the religious hatred. 
Real tragedy was not the killing of those hundreds of thousands but the fact that we forgot the objective for which we lost all those precious lives.
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