People have dividing opinions on the Partition but it really was a disaster from modern perspective. An estimate of the number of people who died in riots varies but many say it was at least a million. A good book that would give you an eye to the events that unfolded is Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.

India has a large Muslim population - the figure is comparable to the populations of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Very simple explanation for why India was divided - Hindus and Muslims in South Asia have a long and complicated history - Islam came by invasion but never dominated the population. When the British ruled India they saw the tensions between the two groups and wanted to make use of it to further a divide and rule policy. This they did by first dividing Bengal into West and East - west for Hindus and East for Muslims. During the independence struggle there was a political party named the Muslim league who felt that the other major parties could not represent the aspirations of the Muslim people. They facilitated the creation of Pakistan.

I'd say the statement 'unity was possible but ruined by political aspirations' seems a bit nonsensical - just another way of saying 'if no-one wanted a partition, it wouldn't have happened'.

I guess the questions that lie underneath it are whether the partition was imposed from the top-down - either by the British, the Muslim League or some combination of the two, and whether a united India could have been successful.

While I can't speak to the hypothetical history of a united India, I will note that the immediate context provides some reasons as to why the partition appeared inevitable, or the best option excluding widespread civil war. The Cabinet Mission of 1946 couldn't find any way to satisfy both the Congress and the Muslim League and was immediately followed by the 'Direct Action Day' in August 1946 which left several thousand dead in religious and communal riots. At this point there looked like a potential civil war in Northern India.

1947 saw a whole series of drafts of possible successor states, including a British Dominion with the interim (Congress dominated) government as the Cabinet, self-determination across all the provinces and partition. That doesn't look like a planned, imposed solution, just the easiest practicable option for a British government that lacked the resources to secure stability.

For a book that looks at the independence movement as a more bottom-up movement (and therefore perhaps more inevitable because it was based in deeper social conflicts than solely outside manipulation), look at 'The Partition of India' by Ian Talbot and Guharpal Singh.

To be honest I think it was not needed. At the same time as an Indian it was a good thing in hindsight since we don't have to deal with the instability caused by Afghanistan and Pakistan taliban and muslin extremism that occurs west of the Indus river.

The whole 2 nation theory was flawed from the start though. If nationality is based on religion (as the Muslim league priclaimed) then there were and still are a ton of Muslim Countries already in existence that south Asian Muslims could move to. Ie. Afghanistan and Iran. Partition was complete bakwas.