I’ve watched and listened to a number of programmes related to the partition of India into two separate states during August 1947…
The haste at which this was carried out, particularly the drawing over a few weeks of the two new borders between India demarcating the two areas which were to become Pakistan, beggars disbelief! India had been clamouring for independence for years with Britain refusing to act, then suddenly after WW2, with Britain now broke and India requiring money for re-investment and modernisation, Britain led by Churchill and aided by Mountbatten, dropped India like a hot potato. Indian politicians, in particular Jinnah, and to a degree Nehru also carry a fair amount of blame for the eventual Partition and the ensuing bloodshed.
Britain seem to just want to forget about the rising tide of religious tension, under investment and the fact that thousands of men from India had fought and died for Britain in two World Wars. The ensuing slaughter of perhaps a million civilians along religious lines in the ensuing division of land, the five million displaced people, is truly shocking.
I know it’s easy with hindsight to judge events of some 70 years ago but it again makes me recoil from being proud of some aspects of what Britain and the Union Jack have done for the World, colonialism – exploitation and meddling in other peoples affairs, (include here Iraq, Palestine, Africa).