Seen from the lens of 2007, the partition of British India seems like a big mistake. Back in 1947, it forced a two-way migration of 10 million people, while half a million more died as victims of racial and religious hatred. Since then, Pakistan and India have fought several wars and their rivalry has escalated to the brink of nuclear attack. Both countries are now living a cold war based on atomic deterrence.
The India-Pakistan borders drawn in 1947 by Radcliffe have been a cause for conflict rather than a solution to it. Pakistan, drawn as a single state comprising two territories separated by thousands of kilometers of India, was far from a pragmatic choice. (In 1971, the eastern part became today’s independent Bangladesh.)
Let's go back to 1947: imagine, for a moment, a united and independent India. Religious tensions would have easily degenerated into a bloody civil war. Mohamed Ali Jinnah's idea of a separate state for Muslims had such strong support at the time that other solutions were unacceptable to many Muslims. No chance? Well, just look at what happened in the heart of Europe at the end of the 20th century: Serbs, Croatians and Bosnians fought a cruel war after living together since 1945, in relative peace, in a single state called Yugoslavia.
In 1947, London was relishing its final days as an imperial capital. British and European minds have been forged in the "cuius regio, eius religio" principle. This Latin phrase – which literally means “whose religion, his religion,” or the idea that common people follow the King’s religion – represented the idea of building homogeneous nations. At the time, the United States was a rare exception – though it was still mainly a "WASP" country.
Partition was a bad idea, but it was probably better than none. Pakistan and India have evolved differently since then. Democracy is relatively new to Pakistan; it has been the rule in India. Freedom and respect for minorities are rare in Pakistan but standard (though both are challenged at times) in India. Globalization has given a leg up to India, whose annual GDP is $3,800 compared with Pakistan's $2,600.
India has become the most plural state in the world. There are 33 official languages; different races live in (more or less) reasonable harmony; religious minorities of Muslims (14%), Christians (2.3%), and Sikhs (2%) pray to different Gods than the 80.5% Hindu majority. This is the big irony: after trying to build two homogenous states, the more successful is the heterogeneous one.
Partition might have been a bad idea, but don't you think some Pakistani citizens would (secretly) have preferred to live in a prosperous and democratic united India that embraced all religions?
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