Today I have seen a video about the partition of Pakistan and India, made by Vox. It talks about the British..'incompetency' or refusal to carefully divide the two states. Why were divided in the first place?

by bronstein212

The video also shows how the colony was very diverse and mixed. It made it very difficult to divide the colony because every district was diverse.

But why were they divided at all? It doesn't seem like the division, or the partition did much good..a lot of people died and chaos ensued.

I do not know much about this topic at all so please forgive me if I said anything that I shouldn't have or if I said it in a wrong way. It would not be intentional.

jar2010

The idea of the partition has a long history, so I will try to keep it simple and to the point. In the lead-up to partition, things came to a head in 1946:

  1. Britain needed to leave India, and Parliament had already set a deadline that wasn't too far away (September 1947)
  2. The Indian National Congress (INC), the political party that had been leading the freedom movement since the late 19th century, and had won a majority of seats in the recent elections wanted a single unpartitioned India (which it would presumably rule based on its electoral performances)
  3. Though the INC had won a majority at the national level, it did not win most of the seats in Muslim constituencies - that honor went to the All-India Muslim League (AIML), which virtually swept them. The AIML was adamant that provinces with a Muslim majority be formed into a separate country called Pakistan.

They went through different plans to prevent partition over many rounds of negotiations, sulking spells and horrible communal riots (incited by the AIML leaders) and eventually agreed to the partition plan. Also called the Mountbatten Plan it was announced on June 3, 1947. So now the parties had hardly three months to partition India before Britain would pull out anyway. This rushed series of events helped make a bad plan worse.

British "incompetency" in the matter must be seen in light of several factors:

  1. Britain had just fought WW-2 and emerged deeply in debt and with greatly pressing domestic issues. India was not foremost of the minds of their leaders.
  2. Events in India during WW-2 had proven that for Britain to hold on to India would not just no longer be profitable but would cost Britain huge amounts that no one except the handful of imperialists like Churchill were willing to pay (who were also currently not in power).
  3. Except for Gandhi most of the INC and AIML leaders appear not to have understood how deadly the effects of partition would be on the ground. Their thoughts seemed to have revolved more around holding power and guiding the destinies of the new nations.
  4. Britain wanted to leave behind a single unified and strong India, that had friendly relations with Britain. The Cold War was already becoming a factor and the Soviet Union had good relations with Afghanistan. A united India would provide a more formidable bulwark than a small and weak (compared to the USSR) nation comprised of a few North Western provinces. In short, Britain did not want the partition.

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References and suggested reading:

  1. Freedom at Midnight (Collins and Lapierre) - among other things it explains why Cyril Radcliffe was chosen and what strict guidelines he operated under
  2. Penguin's History of India - Vol II - Perceival Spear - does a good job of explaining the evolution of the freedom movement and how partition came about, without going into too much detail.