Navtej K Purewal receives funding from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Eleanor Newbigin receives funding from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

The Conversation UK receives funding from these organisations

This August marks 75 years since the partition of the Indian subcontinent. British withdrawal from the region prompted the creation of two new states, India and Pakistan.

Myths have been established around this history based on false assumptions. Here we examine five of them:

Popular accounts of partition reproduce the British colonial state’s simplistic view of south Asian society just in terms of religious categories – with Hindu and Muslim identities as the

biggest groups. Over the decades scholarship has shown that religious difference doesn’t explain partition.

Simplistic religious categories in most analyses of partition fail to sufficiently understand complex social and political issues that shape south Asian societies. Partition pushed people to

identify as a particular religion, and even to migrate, based on that identity.

Greater focus on oral histories and personal experiences of partition have highlighted how this action did less to provide a political solution than to impose new divides around national and

religious lines.

It ignores huge variation of practices and identities within and across different groups in British India by assuming there was conflict based on religion. Shared cultures based on common

language, literature, music and regional and local traditions challenge this.

The tendency to frame partition in binary Hindu vs Muslim terms has helped to shape the rise of religious majoritarianism in post-colonial south Asia, which is based on a constructed, even

mythical idea of a majority which makes the rules for everyone, and which can most overtly be seen in the vision of a Hindu nation being advanced by the current government in India.

British officials and nationalist leaders saw the violence of this period as the response of an irrational, religious society to complex political negotiations. But there is substantial

evidence to show that the violence of partition was not spontaneous. The violence of 1947 was deeply shaped by earlier colonial policies emphasising separate religious communities and

cultivating some groups over others.

One example of this was the idea of “martial races” who were recruited for the police and army and given land allocations in return for their loyalty to the British Raj. The idea of the

martial races was developed after the uprising of 1857 to identify certain certain communities who were considered ideal for military recruitment based on their ethnicity and

hypermasculinity and, above all, loyalty to the British state. Sikhs, Jats, Punjabi Muslims and Gurkhas were all celebrated “martial races”.

The violence of 1947 saw men attack one another and also women. Women of other communities were raped and killed and some men killed their own female relatives in the name of “purity” and

“honour”, especially in Punjab which was home to many “martial races”. Described by scholars as “genocidal”, the violence in Punjab was shaped by similar notions of racial purity and

aggressive masculinity that had underpinned imperial recruiting policies for years.

Calls for the creation of separate states, which came to the fore in 1947, had mixed and uneven support, including within the Muslim political leadership. But these ideas did not set out

how, or when, such states would be created or where their borders would be drawn. Up until late 1946 the British government was very reluctant to support division of the subcontinent.

The British had planned to transfer power in 1948 but in February 1947 it was announced that Louis Mountbatten would replace Lord Archibald Wavell as viceroy, the British government’s

representative in India, and would transfer power by August 1947. On June 3 1947 Mountbatten, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru (the respective leaders of the two main

pre-independence political parties, the Muslim League and Indian National Congress), announced that the subcontinent would be divided just nine weeks later.

Between June and August political leaders and their lawyers jockeyed to establish borders that ran through the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. These discussions were overseen by Cyril

Radcliffe, a British lawyer who had never visited India. He was given only five weeks to decide the border. While calls for the creation of a new Muslim state had been framed around

religious representation, the legal negotiations of the Boundary Commission focused heavily on securing natural resources and ensuring state security.

The final borders of the new states of India and Pakistan were announced on August 17 1947 – two days after independence. Much of the violence is attributed to the haphazard communication of

the high politics of partition to wider society, and the unnecessary speed with which the process was carried out.

One-third of India was never under formal British rule but comprised more than 550 princely states. The British government had different constitutional and diplomatic arrangements with these

states, all of which required legal negotiation when the British ceded power.

Kashmir was one of these princely states. The maharaja, Sir Hari Singh, signed an Instrument of Accession to place the state under Indian government rule in October 1947 even though the UN

Security Council called for a referendum in 1948. This has never been held – and Kashmir’s status and sovereignty in relation to India and Pakistan has been a source of conflict and unrest

ever since.

The western coastal areas of Goa, Daman and Diu were under Portuguese control until 1961 and the south Indian region of Pondicherry/Puducherry was under French colonial rule until 1954.

Estimates of people who migrated across the borders created in 1947 range between 10 million and 17.5 million. Many people from areas directly affected by partition violence, and the

insecurities that followed from it, have also migrated beyond south Asia to other parts of the world.

Communities from Punjab, Sindh, Kashmir, and Sylhet form sizeable and significant communities in the UK, Canada, the US, and beyond. This is another reminder of the ongoing repercussions and

legacies of colonialism. In spite of the divisions of partition, diaspora communities can be found living alongside one another in different parts of the world.