Adding on, but what was the process for partition? Did at some point the British look at all the previous states that existed there and consider giving each their independence? When and why did they decide to lump them all into super-states?

The thing about partition is that it was never the British’s plan. No one on the British side really wanted partition and many saw it as a great tragedy. Partition was not a calculated effort by the British to cut up the subcontinent in along ethnic lines in such a way that the Sikh's ought to get their own state. Instead, partition was the demand of the Muslim League and their leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah and designed primarily to deal with tensions between India's Muslim and Hindu populations.

To take a step back, if we are to understand partition, we have to understand Jinnah and his plans. Jinnah was nervous that, in an independent India, the Hindu majority would be in a position to oppress the Muslim minority. As Jinnah put it ‘Brother Gandhi has three votes and I have only one’. While many now see Gandhi as a saint-like figure, to Jinnah and many contemporary Muslims, he was a strict Hindu nationalist and someone to be feared. In the early years of the independence movement, Jinnah advocated quotas for the number of muslims in an Indian government and later the idea of a federal system with muslim areas having independence within traditionally muslim provinces. But, as Jinnah grew disillusioned with the Hindu dominated Indian National Congress, he began to push for a separate state as the most certain means of protection for India’s muslims. This state was Pakistan.

Now, in your question, you talk about the historic basis of a Sikh kingdom. The thing about Partition is that the state that it did create, Pakistan, had no historic basis. The name itself was only coined in 1933. It’s an acronym of the key provinces in the North West that would make up a potential Pakistan: Punjab, Afghan (the North-West frontier region), Kashmir, Indus and Sind. The "Tan" is said to represent Baluchistan. Pakistan was created as a new country to house India's muslim population. This isn’t even to mention that what we now know as Bangladesh was, at the time of partition, East Pakistan and the same country but with a really big gap in between. It was only created and twinned with Western Pakistan because both areas had substantial Muslim populations. Definitely no historic precedent for that. So, when the British partitioned Pakistan from India, it was not for historic reasons but more in order to keep the peace. The theory was that Muslim majority areas of the country would form their own Muslim state and this would protect them from Hindu domination. Further, so long as Pakistan contained some Hindus and India contained some Muslims, these ‘hostages’ would mean that each country treated the other’s coreligionists with respect. That was the theory.

As British obfuscations against independence grew and nationalist politics became more divisive, tensions blossomed between the Muslim and Hindu populations. Mass violence like the Great Calcutta Killings were less than rare. And so, when the British were planning to withdraw from the subcontinent, they had to consider the transfer of power. If they gave all power to the Hindu dominated National Congress, then the Muslims would surely rise up and the result would be civil war. Ultimately, the British decided that it would be best to separate the two populations - at least temporarily. Before partition, it was in no way certain that the borders would stay that way forever. Jawaharlal Nehru - the first Indian Prime Minister - even kept his country house across the border in Pakistan with the expectation he could just come and go.

The big take away here is that the Partition of Pakistan seemed the only way to keep the peace. The British did not aim to divide the country along ethnic lines and only did so to keep violence from escalating.

So, where does that leave the Sikhs?

The Sikhs were in a sticky situation for a bunch of reasons. They weren’t a strong political force. The Sikh population of India was no where near as large as the Muslim population. The Sikhs were broadly located in the North West of the country but primarily in the Punjab. While the Punjab had strong Sikh representation before the 1940’s, after the death of SIkandar Hyat Khan - a unionist politician who represented all the Punjab’s land holders no matter they’re religion - Jinnah and the Muslim League took over Punjabi politics. Afterwards, the Sikh’s were politically divided and no political force. During the time of Partition, Master Tara Singh (master here being school master rather than anything exciting) emerged as their leader but was broadly ineffective.

There were some suggestions of a Sikh province. The idea was, for a time, taken up by Leo Amery, the British Secretary of State for India but shot down by Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy. Master Tara Singh brought up the idea later but was again shot down. The Sikhs were seen as minor nuisances. Even their substantial radicalism and terror campaigns were seen as minor and locking up Master Tara Singh seen as causing more trouble than it was worth. Considering how difficult it was to simply partition Pakistan and deal with the Muslims, no one found time for the Sikhs.

Second, Even if there was political will for a Sikh state, the borders would be impossible to reconcile with any potential Pakistan. The Sikhs were mostly based in the Punjab, primarily in the East with a few large pockets in the West. But the Punjab, which made up the P of Pakistan, was the centre of any potential Pakistan. Jinnah wanted all of the Punjab for his Pakistan but, when it came to Partition itself, the British decreed that the province would be divided between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. The lines were drawn so the central Sikh areas were included in India - particularly the sacred city of Amritsar and the surrounding territories - but still many Western Sikhs were left in Pakistan.

A Sikh memorandum to the boundary commission was put forward in July 1947 that would keep 90% of Sikh’s within India but such a division would leave only a fraction of the Punjab inside of Pakistan and so was politically untenable. Already Jinnah was mad that he’d been handed a ‘moth eaten Pakistan’ once half the Punjab was bitten off by India. He was not prepared to concede any more territory.

Broadly, any concessions to providing Sikhs their own territory - whether sovereign or within India - would be wholly unacceptable to Pakistan. Sikhs were so entwined throughout Pakistani territory that it was impossible to provide them their own state.

TLDR; the Sikhs were never big enough political players for the British to worry about them. Worries were reserved for the Muslims and the Hindus and partition was only undertaken to try and avoid a civil war between the two of them. Further, because most Sikhs were in territory the Muslims wanted for Pakistan, giving them any more land than necessary would upset the Muslims and cause more damage than it was worth.

Another Question: Were the ethic divides between present day Pakistan and India a contributing factor to the borders?

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