Dividing The Nation

India was broken with a line drawn by blood. The dignitaries and representatives showed a green flag to a horrific plan devised by Mountbatten on ThisDay in 1947.

Mountbatten plan; Source: The Hindu Center

All the decisions were made. The wretched line was drawn on the country and it was divided into two parts. Mountbatten had done his job, not very neatly though. He had handed over independence to the colony and drew away from the hands of Britain far from the mess. For generations to come, the country will remember the horrors it suffered when India was parted into two but no one will remember how and why it happened in the first place.

On 14 June 1947, the Congress Session in Delhi headed by Dr Rajendra Prasad hit the hammer on the nail. The resolution was passed. India was divided into two parts officially. Mountbatten's plan of dividing the country into two pieces so that all the sections of the society could stay happy was accepted.

The next day, the All-India Congress showed the green flag to the Plan. The horror was unleashed. What unfolded past this acceptance was something that no one had anticipated. On the subcontinent, Partition remains to this date, the most tragic and violent event in the past century. Nothing as horrific as it has happened since.

India was divided. Not for geographical or political reasons but because two religions refused to live together as one unit. Separately, they became the Sovereign States of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India (later the Republic of India). Many Muslims went to Pakistan and many Hindus came to India. However, the exchange was one of the bloodiest events in the history of the world.

The states on the borders were given the option to vote and choose their country of being. The Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims of Punjab and Bengal were supposed to vote in favour of or against Partition. Based on these votes some provinces were split in half thus breaking the cultural integrity of many places.

Some decided their own destiny while others were pulled along through referendums. Those who couldn't decide which side to go are suffering to this date, being pulled from both sides in an endless bloody battle.

A few years down the line, Pakistan was parted again into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. In the initial Mountbatten's plan, the idea of a separate Bengal was ruled out but fate gave shape to Bangladesh.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, India and Pakistan found their independence, but the Radcliffe line took away the freedom of thousands who were forced out of their homes to save their lives. Carrying everything they could, people left their ancestral lands to find life in some unknown country that was theirs now because a few people in Delhi had decided so.

Millions were broken and uprooted from their homeland. Women were raped and their genitalia tattoed to mark the dominance of another religion. The womb suffered another Partition altogether. Thousands were murdered and assaulted in the violence that was unleashed. Around ten million people travelled miles on bullock carts, trains and on foot in the hope of finding their promised homeland.

Those who had decided this fate sat cosily in their homes trying to erase their name from the mess. It won't be too much to say that they were, to an extent, successful in doing that!