Partition of India 1947 – COLD WAR DOCUMENTARY — Transcript

Explores the complex history of India's partition in 1947 within the Cold War context, highlighting key players and events.

Key Takeaways

The Cold War context influenced but did not fully define the India-Pakistan partition.
The partition was driven by deep religious and political divides between Hindus and Muslims.
Gandhi’s non-violent resistance was pivotal in the independence movement.
British imperial decline and global pressures forced rapid decolonization.
Partition resulted in unprecedented human migration and violence.

Summary

The Cold War is reframed as a conflict between the global North and South rather than just East versus West.
India and Pakistan resisted easy Cold War classification but were significant global players.
British India included modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka until 1937.
The Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi, pushed for Indian independence primarily representing Hindu interests.
The All India Muslim League advocated for a separate Muslim state, leading to Pakistan and Bangladesh.
India’s participation in WWI elevated its international status and fueled nationalist sentiments.
British reforms post-WWI were limited, sparking increased demands for autonomy and independence.
Gandhi’s non-violent civil disobedience became a powerful model for independence and future civil rights movements.
WWII intensified tensions, with Congress opposing British war involvement and Muslim League supporting it.
Post-WWII British exhaustion and U.S. pressure led to accelerated Indian independence and partition in 1947, causing massive displacement and violence.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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While telling the story of the Cold War, it's easy to fall into thinking that it was a two-sided conflict, capitalism versus communism, West versus East. However, more recent scholarship on the period emphasizes a new way of looking at the conflict. Instead of a narrative of East versus West, it was one of the global North against the global South. I'm your host David, and this is The Cold War.

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To break a little from the traditional narrative, today we're going to discuss the origin of the independence of India and Pakistan. These are two countries which resisted easy classification during the Cold War.

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Nonetheless, they were significant players. By the dawn of the 20th century, India had spent centuries as subjects of the British Empire.

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Their conquest began under the East India Company, and by 1858, it had become a direct holding of the British monarch.

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What people called India back then was much more expansive than what we recognize today.

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For the sake of clarity, we refer to India under British rule as containing modern-day Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and of course, India. That is until 1937, when Myanmar, which some of our viewers may know better as Burma, became a separate colony, but still inside the Empire.

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Now, there are a thousand ways to tell the story of the partition of India.

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In centuries of conquest, oppression and domination by the British, there was never a time the Indians weren't resisting their rule in some way.

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But all stories must begin somewhere, and for this one, let's start with the two groups which would be the major players in the final struggle for independence.

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The first is the Indian National Congress. It began in 1885 as a group for educated Indians to have more of a say over their home.

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Congress, throughout the story, act as the leadership behind the struggle to make India independent.

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This is the party of Gandhi, and this group would become a massive movement in the 1920s as the struggle for independence began to grow.

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Also important to mention that while it boasted members from all walks of life, it tended to be most popular and represent the interests of India's Hindus.

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We also can't tell the story without discussing the All India Muslim League.

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This group, in contrast to Congress, proposed a separate independent state for Muslims.

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If Congress is the primary explanation for why there's an India, the Muslim League is the reason that there's a Pakistan and a Bangladesh.

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Now, India would be transformed by its participation in the First World War.

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In this global conflagration, over a million Indian soldiers fought for the British.

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This participation exposed Indians to the world in a way not seen before.

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Indians fought alongside other British citizens and subjects on newspaper stands and in radio reports from the battlefield.

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After the war, India held a much improved status among nations.

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The idea of India as a nation with a distinct identity became much more commonplace.

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This was the age where we saw the beginning of the end of the old colonial empires.

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Examples of this include India being invited, still as British India, to the Olympic Games in 1920.

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And an invitation being extended to be one of the founding members of the League of Nations, the forerunner to the United Nations.

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After the war, the British did make some attempts to give some more power to local governments.

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They opted to keep hard power institutions like the military and criminal justice systems.

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However, they let locals run the education and public health sectors, which were chronically underfunded, by the way.

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These reforms, however, did allow for more native Indians to join the civil service and the officer corps of the military.

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But realistically, to even call these reforms a half measure would be gracious.

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Throughout the 1930s, Indians advocated for more rights, more autonomy, and even full independence.

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One of the leaders was Mohandas Gandhi. He arrived in India in 1915 from South Africa.

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Intending to elevate India's role in the British Empire.

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What made him unique as an activist, and often he'd be chastised for it, was a commitment to non-violent civil disobedience.

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Later, as the world watched in horror on television and newsstands, images of British officers beating and even murdering peaceful Indians.

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His strategy began to bear fruit. Many activists since Gandhi have turned to his model of civil disobedience to their own ends.

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Among the most famous of them was the American Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Throughout this, there was progress. In 1937, Indian elections favored an outcome of less centralized British authority.

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It was looking very good until 1939, when the Indian Viceroy, a term for the representative of the monarch in a colony.

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Victor Hope declared India on the side of the British in the Second World War.

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This declaration created more of a rift between the predominantly Hindu Congress and representatives of Muslims and Sikhs.

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Congress members resigned their government posts over this undemocratic declaration.

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In contrast, Muslim and Sikh representatives supported India's entry into World War II.

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During wartime, India became unstable, marked with riots and revolts.

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During this time, the British jailed many of the prominent members of Congress.

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And the Muslim League, proponents of creating a separate state for Muslims, used this time freely to spread their message.

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They made massive inroads with the Indian Muslim communities across the subcontinent.

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The war would end up accelerating India's march to independence.

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The British spent the war reaching out to the sleeping bear, the United States, to assist in the war effort on their behalf.

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They eventually did, but the Americans made Britain agree to one significant concession.

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After the war, they'd have to begin dismantling their global empire.

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Even if the British intended to renege on that agreement, by the end of the war, Britain was so depleted of resources.

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They couldn't keep their empire together if they tried.

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In 1945, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a proponent of imperialism, lost to the Labour Party leader Clement Attlee.

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Attlee had been a supporter of the Indian independence movement since the 1920s.

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He started a cabinet mission to go to India and prepare for the separation.

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By this point though, the treatment of Congress during the war had ruined British legitimacy among Hindus.

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The first elections after the war saw 91% of non-Muslim voters in India vote for Congress.

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At the same time, the cabinet mission attempted to keep India together as a single state.

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This plan, as I'm sure you can conclude, drew the ire of Muslims who wanted a separate state for themselves.

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The British tried to give some protections for Muslims, especially in the Muslim majority state, but it wasn't enough.

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Muslim activist leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah called for a day of direct action to highlight the dire need for an independent Muslim country.

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The day, while planned to be a peaceful display, descended into violence between Hindus and Muslims.

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British legitimacy was thoroughly beaten in India, and Congress set up its own interim government in this chaos.

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The British appointed India's last Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, with orders to give India independence by June of 1948.

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Tense meetings between Muslim and Hindu representatives would follow days after the day of direct action.

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Despite protests from leaders like Gandhi, they agreed that in the name of preventing a civil war, India would be partitioned into a state for Hindus and a state for Muslims.

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Christian, Sikh, and Buddhist minorities were simply ignored.

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On August 14th, 1947, the British announced the creation of a Dominion of Pakistan.

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The next day, frustrated and financially exhausted, they declared India independent.

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What followed was one of the most massive movements of people in human history and a period of violence and death.

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And an unimaginable scale. The border areas through the province of Punjab in the west.

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And East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, to the east, were a complete mess.

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The borders divided communities and tore people apart.

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The Punjab region, split by the new border and home to many Sikhs, suffered especially badly.

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In the east, the borders of India and Bangladesh are a mess of enclaves, which the two countries are still trying to sort out.

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This is not even mentioning the issue of the northern state of Kashmir.

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It's a region still experiencing violence and tensions between the two powers to this very day.

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More than 14 million people crossed borders from one side to the other during this partition.

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As Muslims in the new Indian state fled to Pakistan, and Hindus in the new state of Pakistan fled to India.

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These refugees completely overwhelmed rail lines and roadways.

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Crucially, this mass migration was not an anticipated event.

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Nobody had a plan in place for what to do with millions upon millions of migrants.

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In areas like Punjab, the violence is referred to as an attempted genocide.

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One in 50 people in one of the most populous countries on Earth was a refugee.

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It would take over a decade for these people to find new homes in their respective new countries.

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The end result was two countries which emerged from this chaos with the scars of a brutal process of independence.

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The mass violence and refugee crisis created a deep tension between India and Pakistan.

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To this day, it remains as one of the tensest geopolitical conflicts on Earth.

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In the context of the Cold War, Pakistan became a close ally of the United States.

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India, however, took a very different path.

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The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, made a declaration of neutrality in the conflict.

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India would become what's called a Third World state, Third World meaning countries which took no stance in the conflict.

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Indians would trade and work with the United States as well as the Soviet Union.

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When Pakistan accepted American military support, India took some from the USSR, but India still maintained friendly relationships with Washington.

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India and Pakistan still have a tense relationship. Every day at the border between them, both militaries hold elaborate displays of power towards the other.

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Oh, and did I mention they're now both powers with nuclear weapons?

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We'll talk more about that in the future, so subscribe to The Cold War channel and press that bell button to get the updates.

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We rely on our patrons to create these videos, so consider supporting us via www.patreon.com/thecoldwar.

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This is The Cold War channel, and we will catch you on the next one.

Topics:Partition of IndiaIndia independence 1947Pakistan creationBritish Empire IndiaIndian National CongressAll India Muslim LeagueGandhiCold WardecolonizationSouth Asia history

Frequently Asked Questions

What were the main political groups involved in the partition of India?

The Indian National Congress, primarily representing Hindu interests and led by Gandhi, pushed for a united independent India, while the All India Muslim League advocated for a separate Muslim state, leading to the creation of Pakistan.

How did World War I affect India's independence movement?

India’s participation in World War I exposed Indian soldiers to global perspectives and increased national pride, which helped foster a stronger sense of Indian identity and fueled demands for independence.

Why did the British decide to partition India in 1947?

Post-World War II British exhaustion, combined with rising Hindu-Muslim tensions and demands for separate states, led British authorities to partition India to prevent civil war and expedite independence.

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