[I promise. A brief history of India ends here!]
Here Come the British!
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive as usual. They set up permanent shop in Goa in southwestern India. And as I learned watching “Life of Pi”, the French were also able to wrangle some coastal territory. The Dutch came and went as they do. But you no doubt know what European power made the biggest splash in India.
As the story often went in these situations, British presence in India didn’t begin with the British Empire. It began with the British East India Company in 1617. And you know what they say about the British East India Company. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a subcontinent.
Ultimately, the British didn’t cause the fall of the Mughal Empire. They just took advantage of it. The Mughals had always been strongest in North India. All of the fantastic Mughal architecture in North India is evidence of that. Eventually, Hindus from West India known as the Marathas started forming an empire of their own in southern areas. In the 18th century, they became a thorn in the side of the Mughal Empire. They began reclaiming much of the Indian subcontinent from the Mughals for Hindus. This gradual decline of the Mughal Empire led to the rise of other regional powers.
All of this internal conflict throughout South Asia allowed the British to slip in and take charge while no one was looking. By the middle of the 18th century, Indians of all cultures and religions looked around saw that British traders had taken over. Finally, in 1857, widespread rebellion broke out among Indians who had been serving in the army of the British East India Company. (Yes, the foreign traders had their own army staffed by locals.) Many of the reasons for the rebellion would have been familiar to residents of the 13 British-American colonies in 1776. Just add ethnic insensitivities on the part of the British for extra seasoning.
The rebellion caused much bloodshed across India. It also led to disease and famine. Outrageous atrocities against civilians were carried out by both sides. Folks back in London were monitoring the madness and put an end to it the best way they knew how. They declared India to be officially British territory. This ended the British East India Company’s control over India. It also formally brought an end to what was left of the Mughal Empire. Thus began the nine-decade reign of the British Raj–the rule of the British Empire in India.
There Go the British (and the Muslims, too)
You probably know most of the story from here, especially if you’ve seen “Gandhi”. The British did their best to make India British. The locals resented it. A leader like no other arose to inspire and unite the nation. Let’s call him Mahatma, the “Great One”. Then World War II broke out. The British won the war but lost the empire. The Great One convinces the British their work here is done. But there’s just one problem. Well, two actually. The Hindus have decided that they hate the Muslims, and the Muslims have decided that they hate the Hindus.
There are many reasons for the growing hostilities between Indians Hindus and Muslims in the 1st half of the 20th century. Some were brought about inadvertently by British bureaucratic decisions, such as redrawing internal boundaries. Sometimes the British intentionally stoked ethnic animosity. The old divide-and-conquer thing. Interestingly, as the British gave Indians more rights of home rule, and as independence grew more and more possible, Muslims began to fear domination of India by Hindus. (This is perhaps somewhat ironic as the Muslims were originally invading foreigners who dominated native Hindus for centuries.) Many Indian Muslims began to envision their own homeland. Many Indian Hindus suggested that the Muslims not let the doorknob hit them on the way out.
By 1947, an expectant India went into a very difficult, painful, violent labor. The independence of India occurred simultaneously with the Partition of India. Against the Great One’s wishes, hopes, and dreams for his nation, the infant India was split in two. Inconveniently, one of the baby-halves, given the name Pakistan, was itself split in two. West Pakistan and East Pakistan were separated by, I don’t know, let’s say about 1,500 miles.
(Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. I didn’t. The name of Pakistan is an acronym named after its constituent provinces: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan, with an “I” thrown in to smooth things out. Afghania itself was a name never actually used for North-West Frontier Province. The acronym forms a word that means “land of the pure” in Urdu. Interestingly, Bengal, i.e, East Pakistan, is left out of the acronym.)
Out of fear for safety, millions were on the move. Millions of Muslims moved from India to West Pakistan. Millions of Hindus and Sikhs moved from West Pakistan to India. In the east, migration was largely made up of Hindus leaving East Pakistan for India. That’s not to say that hundreds of thousands of Muslims didn’t flee India for East Pakistan. The mass migrations were met with ethnic violence all along the way. Such violence was of course just what the refugees were hoping to avoid by fleeing. As many as 2 million died in the violence. The Hindus of India and the Muslims of Pakistan have hated each other since.
As you probably know and likely would have expected anyway, things didn’t go so smoothly between the 2 disparate parts of Pakistan either. East Pakistan didn’t like being dominated by West Pakistan, so far away. And I’m sure it didn’t help that a “B” for Bengal didnt find it’s way into the national acronym, certainly a cause for acronym acrimony. The 2 parts of Pakistan fought a bloody war in 1971. It got to the point where George Harrison had to intercede. You know things have gotten bad when a Beatle has to come in and solve your national crisis. By the end of the year, East Pakistan was Bangladesh and West Pakistan was just plain old Pakistan. What began decades earlier as a dream for a new independent nation had very violently turned into the reality of 3 restless nations.
And they lived unhappily ever after.
[Historical information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]
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