75 Years Since The Partition

Next year India is projected to become the most populous nation on earth. The world needs more roti and more curry and more tea. I nominate Pakistani-style chapati as the single best food in the world.

Indians should celebrate the western hemisphere. When Christopher Columbus sailed westward he was hoping to find a way to India. The native people of the western hemisphere are mistakenly called "Indians" because Columbus thought that he had landed in India. See the compound posting, "The Western Hemisphere" August 2021, section 3) INDIA AND COLUMBUS DAY.

This week is the 75th anniversary of the Partition of India and Pakistan. The nation of India was divided by religion into Hindu-majority India and Islam-majority Pakistan. Pakistan was in two halves, East and West Pakistan. In 1971 East Pakistan declared independence to form Bangladesh. Hindus that happened to live in what would become Pakistan had the option of moving to what would become India, as did Moslems living in what would become India to move to what would become Pakistan. Not everyone moved, there are still some Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and today there is almost as many Moslems in India as there are in Pakistan. 

In the east the state of Bengal was divided into East and West Bengal, East Bengal became East Pakistan and West Bengal is centered around the Indian city of Kolkata. In the west three states became West Pakistan and the state of Punjab was divided between the two. Sikhs generally chose India, although the Pakistani city of Lahore is important in Sikh history and there are still Sikhs in Pakistan. In the 1980s there was a Sikh movement to separate from India to form a state called "Khalistan".

We all know that Hindus moving in one direction and Moslems moving in the opposite direction were sometimes not very nice to each other, and maybe a million people died in the Partition. Families that were separated by the Partition are avidly using social media to reconnect. This was a monumental event in the history of the Twentieth Century.

There are three postings that I see as very relevant to the Partition.

The reason that this event is so critical is that the border between India and Pakistan is the most active frontier between what I see as the two halves of the world. The world can be divided between the "North And East" and the "South And West".

https://markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/04/understanding-world-in-terms-of-south.html 

At least the Partition of India was done along religious lines. What if religion had been ignored and India hadn't been partitioned? Have you ever contrasted the Partition of India to Yugoslavia or the breakup of the Ottoman Empire? Here is a link to the posting, "How Secularism Leads Us Astray":

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-secularism-leads-us-astray.html?m=0

One thing that occurred to me concerning the contentious relationship between India and Pakistan, since the Partition, is actually how it is an inadvertent repetition of European history. Spain and Portugal were the first European countries to build large empires in the Imperial Age. The Portuguese were the first Europeans in India. Has anyone ever stopped to think that India and Pakistan are replaying the Imperial Age relationship between Spain and Portugal? The same goes for the Middle East after Israel was restored, the year after India and Pakistan became independent.

In the compound posting, "How History Repeats Itself" November 2019, read section 4) THE SEPARATION AND THREE WARS RULE. I find the similarities to be truly amazing.