Decolonisation, Independence & Partition in India
India World History Week 2: Citizenship and Nation Building after Independence
In May 2025 India and Pakistan fought a short war, instigated by the Pahalgam terror attack in the Jammu-Kashmir area. This war has its origins not in “ancient hatreds” going back a thousand years, as the USA President reported. Its immediate cause was a response to terrorism. Its deeper roots were the Partition of 1947 that compromised the first great act of post-1945 decolonisation, the Independence of India and Pakistan.
The 1947 Partition was one of the largest refugee crises in world history. India commemorates Partition Horrors Remembrance Day on 14 August. The legacy and lessons of this seminal event of the twentieth century are the focus of the India World Power World History Tour this week. Our guide is Joya Chatterji, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century.
Content Catch-up
You might also want to catch up on my content over the last week.
I did a video on Australian Prime Minister Albanese’s foreign policy speech and its rhetoric of “Progressive Patriotism” - Is "Progressive Patriotism" real change or another trick? A WARNING from Australia
Live stream on the new META of Geopolitics - How is the India-China relationship changing geopolitics? Geopolitics & History E1. I am going to trial a new series of weekly live streams (Wednesday 4 pm, AEST) on geopolitics and history, informed by a long and deep cultural view of world history.
I did an interview with Jamarl Thomas, Jeff Rich: Trump's Version Of Multpolarity Is NOT Multipolarity - Will Australia Fight China For US?
On Friday I released American Nihilism. How the USA became the MONSTER it fought abroad, in which I explained the concept of nihilism used by Emmanuel Todd in his critique of the social and political crisis driving the USA's aggression around the world, The Defeat of the West.
I began the Slow Read Re-run via Notes, with week one, the Prologue.
Also check out my earlier post on India After the Post-War World Order from late 2024.
A quick reminder for regular readers. I am integrating my book recommendation and deep dive posts into a single email on Saturday. My aim is to give you each weekend a whole week’s deep reading into history, without overloading your in-box.
Partition and the World Power of India
India today is a great power. It is the fourth largest economy by GDP and will surpass Germany to become the third largest economy within three years. It still suffers much poverty and ranks 130th out of 193 countries in the UN Human Development Index. Yet over the last 30 years India has lifted approximately 400 million people out of poverty. Its developmental status and history of colonial exploitation has established India as a more credible diplomatic voice of the Global South than its rising rival Asian sister, China, as shown by India’s Presidency of the G20 in 2023. Over the next year, India will chair the BRICS in what may be a very consequential year for multilateral institutions in the world.
India’s partitioned twin, Pakistan, has not been so fortunate. With a population of 247 million, Pakistan ranks 44th in the GDP league table and 168th in the UN Human Development Index. The IMF has bailed out the country 24 times since 1958. There were military coups in 1958, 1977, 1999 and a more discreet American-backed coup that displaced and jailed Imran Khan in 2022. Its generals and intelligence services exercise political power and are reported to collaborate with China, the USA, and terrorist organisations. On 30 June 2025 at a United Nations exhibition on the Human Cost of Terrorism, Indian External Affairs Minister, Dr S Jaishankar referred to India’s assessment of Pakistan as a state-sponsor of terrorism, following the United Nations Security Council’s condemnation of the act of terrorism in Pahalgam.
"When terrorism is supported by a state against the neighbour, when it is fuelled by the bigotry of extremism, when it drives a whole host of illegal activities, it is imperative to call it out publicly and one way of doing so is to display the havoc that it has wreaked on global society."
Dr S Jaishankar 30 June 2025
India has suffered many terror attacks over decades, including the Mumbai attack in 2008, for which there is some evidence of Pakistani involvement. India has also responded to terror and guerilla groups on its Eastern front with Bangladesh and Myanmar. In 2024 there was significant communal violence against Hindus in Bangladesh, reminiscent of Partition, after a constitutional crisis or July Revolution or coup d’état (depending on your perspective), in which Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, was replaced by Muhammad Yunus. India feels threatened by the fragility of its neighbouring states created by the post-1945 post-colonial world order, the violence spawned by that instability, and the involvement in these conflicts of both China and the USA.
These events have reopened the wounds of Partition and led to challenges to the borders of the states created by Partition. There is a movement to declare independence for the southern province of Balochistan, which also borders on Iran. This movement has conducted attacks on Pakistani military targets in recent months, and other civilian targets over several years. In India, the events have stirred ideas of akhand Bharat (undivided Bharat). Retired Indian Generals have redrawn maps of Pakistan to imagine a new security arrangement in South Asia, which is not designed by the fleeing British Empire or its American global successors.
The legacy of Partition is, of course, no excuse for violence. Yet there is also no excuse for Western or Eastern ignorance or arrogant assumptions (including in the online geopolitics commentariat) that the catastrophic, violent compromises of 1947 should share the glorious permanence of the rules-based order. As Joya Chatterji writes:
“The partition was a catastrophe of such magnitude that it is still difficult for me to comprehend how the rest of the world - even Britain - knew so little about it. The joys of independence and the agonies of partition make 1947, rather than 1945, a key milestone in South Asian History.”
Chatterji, Shadows at Noon, p. xviii
Chatterji’s Shadows at Noon has helped me comprehend with deep imaginative engagement how South Asians created, suffered, and responded to the joint events of Independence and Partition. The thematic structure of her book will give many perspectives on this central event of world history over coming weeks. But it is also useful to read a simpler account of these chaotic events that shape the historical imagination of one in six people on this planet.
Weekly Book Recommendation: A New History of India (2023)
The book I am recommending this week to learn the joint story of Decolonisation, Independence and Partition also provides a comprehensive introduction to the whole history of India.
It is Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Shobita Punja, Toby Sinclair, A New History of India: From Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2023).
This complete, accessible, and illustrated history is written by a Professor of History at Ashoka University and a former CEO of the National Culture Fund of India. The authors succeed in their aim to bring India’s rich history and diverse heritage alive, “without being superficial or inauthentic.” Their summary of Independence and Partition is:
“India became free of British rule on 15 August 1947. But this independence came with the terrible price of Partition. A new nation state called Pakistan was carved out of India. This division affected the lives of millions of people who because of decisions made by political leaders lost their homes, their properties, their jobs, and their sense of belonging. Partition also resulted in violence in which thousands were killed, injured, and raped.”
(A New History of India, p. 386)
I learned from their narrative how much unrest there was in India from 1945 and how the Indian people fought for their Independence. It was not a parting gift of a benevolent British Empire. There had been an uprising in August 1942, in the depth of the strategic abyss of the empire. Through 1945 and 1946 similar uprisings, protests and strikes occurred across communal and political divides, which the authors describe as the “last war of independence.” The leadership of Congress and the Muslim League were the principal organisations negotiating with the British. But they could not control these events and later popular uprisings, communal violence, and rearguard actions by princely states, such as Hyderabad, Kashmir or indeed Bhutan and Tibet. They did, however, avoid the more Machiavellian schemes of the British empire.
“One of the proposals that the British were seriously considering was to break up or Balkanize India. Though this was formally rejected by the Congress, it was becoming evident that some sort of partition would have to be accepted. The Congress was eager to avoid more communal violence and popular militancy outside its control. Under the Mountbatten Plan, hurriedly worked out, after what was code-named Plan Balkan (a plan to transfer power to separate provinces or confederations) was rejected, it was decided that power would be transferred to two central governments—India and Pakistan.”
(A New History of India, p. 395)
The story of Plan Balkan is told in this recent Indian magazine article.
The whole convoluted process of Independence and Partition is narrated clearly in twenty minutes in this video designed for entrants to the civil service exam in India.
If you want a more in-depth academic study of Partition itself you can also read Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition : the making of India and Pakistan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), which I read online through the State Library of Victoria.
Deep Dive: Nations, Partitions & Refugees
Partition was one of the largest refugee crises in world history. It flowed from the original flawed act of decolonisation. As such, these events are not just part of India’s story. They are central to the story of the “post-war world order.” They hold lessons for forthcoming crises, including in Europe as the Ukraine war approaches its end.
I discussed in this video - The end of the Ukraine war and the start of Europe's next refugee crisis - how we may see a similar refugee crisis as people flee and are displaced in response to the messy compromises that will follow the partition of the former state of Ukraine. I discussed this in this video - Ukraine End Game: Arestovych Predicts the Russian Plan for Ukraine After the War - on the likely division of Ukraine into three states. It may be simple on a map. It will be messy in real life. South Asian leaders learned that lesson in 1947. Let us hope world leaders learn it - before it is too late - for all the people who are suffering in the NATO-Ukraine-Russia war.
Below the line for paid subscribers, I give you some deeper insights into Partition and its impact on Indian citizenship and nation-building.
A timeline of the events of Partition sourced from the leading scholarly work, Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition
Joya Chatterji’s discussion of Refugees, Violence and Parallel Citizenship and how the events developed in ways beyond anyone’s ability to control.
Embedded audio voiceover of the remainder of this post
Many thanks to all my subscribers, paid and unpaid, for supporting me in this fantastic journey through history. I hope it helps you to live in tune with a changing world. Please consider upgrading your subscription to get more from my guides, deep dives, and slow reads.