open Democracy News Analysis - India and Pakistan: partition lessons, Ravinder Kaur - Comments

Shahul on "India and Pakistan: partition lessons"

Shahul — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:02:42 +0100

Did Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Mountbatten and Jinnah, all or any of them might have avoided this genocide by anyway !

Where ever i read ! partition looks like an last and lost option !

z.ali on "India and Pakistan: partition lessons"

z.ali — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:29:29 +0100

The great loss of life during partition was due to the wreckless lack of care shown by the British government, the South East Asian leaders that encouraged the violence and the individuals that committed the crimes. We should not forget that as well the terrible atrocities that were committed there were also individual acts, from Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, of compassion and heroism. Perhaps this terrible event speaks to us in part about the human condition. Some who hate the other while some who look for the common bonds of humanity. We cannot know what would have happened if partition had not occured. It is possible that even greater loss of life would have occured through communal violence within the Indian State. We should not forget that large numbers of Muslim Indians felt sufficiently threatened by a Hindu majority to vote for the Muslim League who made clear there goal to create Pakistan. We cannot wish away the trepidation that Muslims will have felt. There has been a great deal of hostility between the two states. Many in Pakistan have felt a threat to the existence of their state and a feeling of inequity of the partition settlement. A more stable, confident and secular Pakistan could have been created had there been a corridor connecting East and West Pakistan and had the Hindus and Sikhs within Pakistan felt that they would have had a secure future. The cloud of colonial rule and end of empire plays such a dominant role within the India / Pakistan partition story that we should be careful in drawing too many lessons from this to current conflicts. There is, however, perhaps some merit in considering the partition of Czechoslavkia or the case of the Scottish National Party which campaigns for an independent Scotland and is now the majority party in the Scottish Parliament. These stories remind us about the interests of people and the impact that has on the movement of borders. In the last couple of decades India has made great economic strides and remains a sufficiently robust democratic and secular society. Pakistan has straggled somewhat behind but this is not surprising given the long running problems in Afghanistan and the poor governance from both politicians and the military. As far as possible, Pakistan needs to disengage from armed conflict and focus on economic growth and providing justice for the people. It is encouraging that, in recent years the economic metrics have improved, media outlets flourish and there is a greater willingness for reconciliation with India. European nations are working together on a more federal basis through the European Union. Perhaps one day we will see the South East Asian states working in a similar way.

adam_14 on "India and Pakistan: partition lessons"

adam_14 — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:05:07 +0100

One of the most ignored pieces of factual evidence regarding the partition of Palestine from Israel can be found by examining DNA of both Arabs and Sephardic Jews, both of whom are descended from the original Canaanites who inhabited the region before the time of Christ . These groups are directly related to each other, like close but distant cousins. It wasn't until the massive emigration of Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, beginning in the early part of the 20th century, that Jews and Arabs even began to seriously consider themselves as members of separate races (not just different religions). Since the Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a people known as the Khazars, who originally inhabited the area just east of the Caucasus before Europe's "middle ages," and migrated into Europe thereafter, it can be proven, by this same DNA evidence, that their ancestors were in fact not descended from people from this region of the Middle East. Therefore, the UN's partition plan of 1948, which created the state of Israel and placed the Ashkenazi Jews in power, was erroneous to the core. This division has metastasized today into the world's longest military occupation ever seen, with bitter and hateful division deeply entrenched between two peoples who, until the time of enforced separation had largely lived in peace with each other, conducting trade and going about life in close proximity. Thus, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a direct and possibly the world's best example of one of the Western powers' largest imperial blunders in enforced partition (as deeply-flawed as the division of Hindustan), where the answer should have been assimilation and recognition of each group's ties to the land they'd called home for millennia in a shared environment. Today, as the possibility of a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine keeps retreating on the horizon, we see that the ultimate answer to this conflict is to help create one, bi-national, democratic state that represents all of its inhabitants, regardless of race or religion. We can undo the damage done.

India and Pakistan: partition lessons, Ravinder Kaur

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:58:55 +0100

The sixtieth anniversary of the independence of Pakistan and India on 14-15 August 2007 has prompted official celebration in both countries, as well as an ocean of commemorative coverage in the world's media. The terrible violence that accompanied the birthpangs of the two states from the ashes of empire is an inevitable theme in much commentary. What is being less addressed amid the profusion of human stories - and what this article considers - is whether the problems of communal division in the sub-continent were or are best addressed by the partition of territory.

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