It was intended to be a peaceful severance from
Britain that brought freedom from colonial rule
to one-fifth of mankind. The massed bands of
the Indian army and the Scottish Highlanders on
parade side by side first played ‘God Save the
King’ and then when the saffron, green and white
flag of free India was raised, with Gandhi’s
spinning-wheel at its centre, the bands together
struck up the Indian national anthem. It was
symbolic of the new relationship, Prime Minister
Nehru asked Lord Mountbatten to stay as inde-
pendent India’s first governor-general. But
independence solved only one problem, the rela-
tionship with imperial Britain. Daunting tasks
faced the new rulers; they had to maintain law
and order when the cauldron of ethnic and reli-
gious animosities turned to murderous violence;
they had to define and to secure the new national
frontiers in the vacuum of power left by the
British which had not been completely filled by
the agreements reached at independence; and
they had to find ways of raising the standard of
living of the hundreds of millions surviving at
subsistence level in rural India and in its teeming
cities. All these things had to be tackled simulta-
neously. Ever since independence, the combina-
tion of poverty, the fervour of ethnic-religious
minorities and the manipulation of politics by the
wealthier elites has resulted in a cycle of violence
that has continued for more than half a century.
Gandhi’s vision of an India where all its inhabi-
tants would be brothers was not to be realised.Before 1947 it seemed only natural to suppose
that British India would be replaced by the one
Commonwealth of India. But the deep divisions,
never healed during the century of British rule,
proved stronger. Only by force and bloodshed
was it possible to create two states in 1947. Ten
million people fled and half a million perished.
Ethnic conflict and nationalism continued to
threaten the cohesion of the two successor
nations, India and Pakistan. In 1971, Bengal, the
eastern region of Pakistan, rose in rebellion and,
with India’s help, gained independence from West
Pakistan. The new state was called Bangladesh.
Now there were three nations.The Republic of India and the Islamic Republic
of Pakistan, though facing many similar problems
of poverty and of ethnic conflicts within their
states and though inheriting the same British
imperial traditions and institutions, have devel-
oped very differently. With hardly a break since
independence, Pakistan has been ruled by a
bureaucratic–military alliance under an authori-
tarian military ruler, while India has preserved a
democratic framework of government. In India
the politicians have allied with the civil service to
exclude the military from decision-making. The
commander-in-chief of the Indian army is not a
member of the Cabinet, is subject to the orders
of the prime minister and defence minister and,
to make doubly certain that he can build up no
personal power in the army, is replaced every two(^1) Chapter 58
FREEDOM AND CONFLICT IN THE INDIAN
SUBCONTINENT
INDIA, PAKISTAN AND BANGLADESH