India Pakistan heating up.
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I think it's fair to say the Brits made a bit of a mess of things. If you look at the map in the 60's, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan look absolutely ridiculous. I had some friends who were Kashmiri Pakistanis, and they would regularly harangue me about this as though I was personally responsible.
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Some friends.
I wonder how much cultural blindness had to do with many of the partitions of de-colonization. Seems like a great idea to the admittedly ethnocentric Brits, never considering whether it would be accepted by the partionees.
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Some friends.
I wonder how much cultural blindness had to do with many of the partitions of de-colonization. Seems like a great idea to the admittedly ethnocentric Brits, never considering whether it would be accepted by the partionees.
@Mik said in India Pakistan heating up.:
Some friends.
I wonder how much cultural blindness had to do with many of the partitions of de-colonization. Seems like a great idea to the admittedly ethnocentric Brits, never considering whether it would be accepted by the partionees.
Well, they tried the same thing with Ireland in 1921, and that worked a treat, so what could possibly go wrong?
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The Pakistan line was drawn through Punjab. Punjab was the location of the last independent Indian empire that fell to the British.
About 12-20 million people were displaced and some estimate up to 2 million deaths from resulting violence and deprivation.
The line was so ineptly drawn that the founding temple of the Sikh faith ended up in Pakistan. (Sikhism comes from Punjab).
The apocryphal story is that Lord Mountbatten couldn't take the Indian summer heat and just drew a line through villages and cities as fast as he could.
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I thought a good book about the "partition" was Freedom at Midnight.
It has been few years since I have read it, but I remember that it seemed to give a good overlook of the events.
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Great top comment. "Ziplining while staring into your device. The faint sounds of bombs going off in the distance. This is 2025."
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