Oh the Irony. Abu Graib Prisoners want Americans back

[anonymouse]

Maybe you're right, maybe India (or the land) would have been a few warring states, or a huge country plagued by civil war, or maybe India would perhaps be a country not seperated by religion that actually is better than what exists today as India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.

That's an interesting point you raise, nk. There's still debate as to whether or not the Partitioning in 1947 (1948?) was a good thing or not. The three stakeholders of the time - the Islamic separatists, Hindus and the British were all keen for it to happen (and there was at least 50 years of so of religious tensions leading up to it). Many have said Britain simply abandonned India, just as it did its Middle East interests leading to the creation of Israel at around the same time. The reason for this is Britain felt its capabilities for settling disputes in these regions was greatly diminished after WWII and the pounding taken by its military.

I've read some political commentators suggest that the major sticking point with Israel/Palestine is there is precedence in what happened with India/Pakistan. The argument goes along the lines that to create Palestine as an independent state, just as Pakistan became, can lead to Palestine having all the rights available to every other independent state in the world - ie: the right to assemble armies and to arm them.

The rhetoric around the time of the Partitioning of India was that the creation of Pakistan would end the hostilities of a minority group of militant Muslims against the majority faith of (secular) India - Hindus. It was a rhetoric that history has proved to be completely wrong. Once the lines were drawn (and independence was granted to Pakistan even before the lines were actually drawn) hundreds of thousands of Hindus were butchered trying to flee the knewly created Islamic areas (Pakistan and the region that is now Bangladesh) while similar numbers of Muslims were similarly killed trying to flee from India to Pakistan. It was a catastrophe and left something like 14 million people homeless - millions of whom would subsequently die from malnutrition.

In the sixty years since, India and Pakistan have continued to wage war of disputed territories such as Kashmir. Both Pakistan and India have nuclear capabilities and for a time there (a decade or so ago) they appeared to be on the brink of a nuclear war.

So the bottom line here is the Partitioning of India may well have been the worst thing the British could ever have done. It's impossible to turn back the clock, but it's worth remembering this sort of history in any debates about the Middle East. It's also worth remembering that India, the world's largest democracy, in run for all intents and purposes by an Italian Catholic woman (Sonja Ghandi). I can't imagine such a woman ever elected to run Pakistan or even Britain or the US.

[nk_lion]

So the bottom line here is the Partitioning of India may well have been the worst thing the British could ever have done. It's impossible to turn back the clock, but it's worth remembering this sort of history in any debates about the Middle East. It's also worth remembering that India, the world's largest democracy, in run for all intents and purposes by an Italian Catholic woman (Sonja Ghandi). I can't imagine such a woman ever elected to run Pakistan or even Britain or the US.

Sonja Ghandi isn't the Prime Minister, Manmoham Singh is, Ghandi left due to a lot of death threats and claims that she wasn't a true Indian.

And you're right, the partition was useless.

[Guest91408]

So the bottom line here is the Partitioning of India may well have been the worst thing the British could ever have done.

Don’t get me started on this. The British? Who requested partition? Was it us? NO. Although some of them are still held under wraps, the archives prove interesting reading when it comes to the negotiations regarding independence and partition. And say we had forced an un-partitioned super-India upon the peoples there...how would history look upon us as the authors of the most internally violent nation on Earth...for that is surely what it would have been. Constant, massive civil conflict...bombings, wholesale genocide, constant waves of refugee movements, political deadlock and probable collapse of democracy would have been our legacy.

Partition was a vile horrendous process but to say it was wrong is to ignore the alternatives AND the wishes of the major political figures (Ghandi aside) at the time.

Imagine the genocide of Rwanda/Burundi multiplied by several hundred million.