There was a lot of opposition to the partition, it didn't happen easily. The majority of Indians did not want to split up the country. It was forced through by the Muslim League. There were sufficient Muslims around to put substantial pressure, and many Hindu politicians were impatient enough for independence and their chance to rule that they went along.

The plan was never to split India up into little bitty pieces based on religion.

As for Sikhs and the Punjab, you may as well ask why Christians didn't get their own country. There were (and are) more Christians in India than there are Sikhs. Why didn't they get their own country? What about Jains or Buddhists? There are plenty of them too.

The Sikhs were not a majority even in the original Punjab province - it was evenly divided between Muslims and Hindus, with a somewhat smaller number of Sikhs. Even today, when the vast majority of Sikhs moved out of Pakistani Punjab and ended up in Indian Punjab at partition, Sikhs still only make up about 60% of Indian Punjab and Hindus about 40%. If you spread them out through pre-partition Punjab, they would be a minority.

The figures for the 1941 Indian population census show the Punjab as having a Muslim majority; 53.2%, with a large Hindu minority at 29.1% and a significant, but considerably smaller Sikh minority at 14.9%. This was following a considerable Sikh influx in to the region. In a census taken 60 years previously they had only made up about 8%. The Sikhs had never been a majority in the Punjab, even whilst the ruled over it.

Throughout India the only district in which Sikhs were the majority at the time of partition in 1947 was in Ludhiana district, which is a small portion of the Punjab.

Despite not having geographic strongholds in terms of population the Sikh community did have strong claims to the Punjab region due to their legacy as its ruling class prior to British rule and because of the disproportionate role they played in the Indian Independence movement. Although they made up less than 2% of the population over half of those imprisoned or executed by colonial authorities were Sikh.

These claims were put forward following the announcement of Partition and there was an active Sikh nationalist movement in the Punjab, known as the Khalistan movement, until the 1990s.

Initially they did have some success, following the Indo-Pak war of 1965 the Indian government did allow them to form a semi-autonomous State within the Punjab, however, there was constant tension over whether it should be a Sikh majority state (which would have entailed population movements as had been seen during partition) and how much power the central government should have over it versus the local Sikh authorities.

The desire for the Khalistan movement to secure a purely Sikh, or Sikh dominated State should be seen in the context of the overwhelming violence and discrimination they faced during the aftermath of partition.

By the 1970s it had all got very ugly, with several groups turning to militancy and terrorism, the most famous incident being that in which the Primeminister Indira Ghandi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. This political violence effectively de-legitimised the movement, within India and in global public opinion and following crack downs the organised Sikh nationalist movement largely fizzled out.

Today most Sikhs in India and in the Punjab itself live in integrated communities alongside members of other religions, although there are still minor political parties who argue for establishing a Sikh State through non-violent means and they have plenty of support from Ex-patriot Sikhs outside of India, although not so much within India itself.

http://www.global.ucsb.edu/punjab/journal_11_1/6_krishan.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludhiana_district http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Sikhs_%26_Indian_Independence

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That's just a very basic summary of what I think are the key points, I have omitted a great deal of detail and context, especially in regards to inter-communal tensions in both pre- and post-colonial India. I would stress again that the incidences of violence in the region occurred in a wider context which it is important to examine before judgement.

India wasn't "split due to religious differences." This was not a question of each religious group getting its own country. There was a "notional division" of the Punjab, Bengal and Assam in which each district was marked according to whether Muslims there were a majority or a minority. The final border was drawn around it.

http://www.leics.gov.uk/partition-punjab-2.jpg http://www.leics.gov.uk/partition-bengal.jpg