1938), a leading Indian intellectual, past presi-
dent of AIML, and close associate of Jinnah. In
the election’s aftermath, Jinnah claimed to be the
“sole spokesman” for India’s Muslims, but he was
still undecided about whether that state would be
within the boundary of an Indian nation or out-
side it. Most Muslims, in fact, were not calling for
a two-state partition but a self-governing Muslim
entity in a united India. Hindu-Muslim commu-
nal rioting and the inability to find a compromise
solution with INC leadership, particularly with
its chairman, Jawaharlal Nehru (d. 1964), even-
tually convinced Jinnah that a separate Muslim
state in areas where Muslims were in the majority
was indeed necessary. Such an entity would have
to consist of grouped provinces, not fragmented
states scattered across India as some were propos-
ing. The two provinces that would form the new
Muslim state were the Punjab in the west and
Bengal in the east.
The British realized that in their weakened
postwar position they could no longer hold
nationalist forces at bay in India or anywhere
else in the world where they still had colonies
or mandate territories. In March 1946, there-
fore, they sent a high-level delegation to India
to try to mediate the differences between the
contending Indian nationalist parties, hoping
to prevent a two-state partition. This is what
Gandhi desired, too, and he even proposed that
Jinnah be named India’s first prime minister, an
idea that was ignored. Hindu nationalists assas-
sinated him in January 1948 because of their
anger over his efforts to achieve reconciliation
between Muslims and Hindus. In the end, the
British delegation failed, and Lord Mountbatten,
the Crown’s last viceroy, was appointed in Feb-
ruary 1947 to oversee the drawing of political
boundaries and the smooth transfer of power to
the leaders of India and Pakistan no later than
June 1948.
The Punjab region straddled the western bor-
der between the two newly created countries and
became the site where intercommunal hatreds
exploded in a frenzy of mass murder, rape, and
flight during the summer of 1947. Terrified Sikhs
and Hindus fled eastward to India, and terrified
Muslims fled westward to Pakistan. Although
statistics in such turbulent conditions are often
imprecise, it is widely accepted that as many as
10 million were uprooted and 1 million died in
the violence. The reverberations of this painful
moment in Indo-Pakistani history can still be
felt in the streets and byways of both countries.
Pakistani Muslims remember this event as a hiJra,
recalling the Hijra of mUhammad from mecca to
medina in 622.
On August 15, 1947, India’s first prime minis-
ter, Jawaharlal Nehru, stood before a large crowd
and proclaimed India’s independence. It was a
bittersweet moment, because it combined the
thrill of independence with the pains of parti-
tion. Nehru chose to raise India’s new flag that
day in front of Old Delhi’s Red Fort, the former
seat of the Mughal rulers. The previous evening,
speaking before the Constituent Assembly in New
Delhi, he had declared, “The past clings on to us
still.” The choice of the site and Nehru’s words
indicate that the founding of the new republic was
done with a keen awareness of how it had taken
shape during a long history of Hindu, Muslim,
and British interaction. It is also worth noting
that not all Indian Muslims migrated to Pakistan.
About half of them stayed, declaring that India
was their true home.
On August 15, 2007, India celebrated its 60th
anniversary. The intervening years were ones
that saw Muslim participation in Indian politics,
including three Muslims who served as president.
They were also a time marked by several conflicts
and near-conflicts with Pakistan. The two coun-
tries still have not reached a settlement on the
question of Kashmir, a borderland Muslim major-
ity state that was officially made part of India at
the time of partition. Nevertheless, Indians and
Pakistanis continue to share a common history
and culture, including a love for romantic poetry,
popular music, curried foods, Bollywood films,India 357 J