Introduction

Summary

In August 1947, the British transferred power in India to two separate Dominions. When they established dominion over India, the political map of the subcontinent did not reflect the religious affiliations of its peoples. But by the time of the British withdrawal, rivalries between Hindus and Muslims had come to dominate Indian politics. When the British Raj was dismantled, the frontiers of the new states were drawn mainly along the lines of religion. In the making of Pakistan religion appears to have been the determinant of nationality. The Raj came to its end amidst convulsions in which not only Hindus and Muslims, but also Sikhs and Muslims slaughtered one another, a holocaust unprecedented even in the blood-stained annals of India's past. Within less than a year refugees in their millions had moved both ways between the two wings of Pakistan and India, the largest transfer of populations in recorded history.

There have been various theories to explain these cataclysmic events. The most common argument is that the Indian Muslims were always a separate and identifiable community. India, this theory argues, always contained the seeds of two nations; the Muslims were never wholly assimilated into their Indian environment and had their own distinctive traditions.