India- Pakistan:
False Optimism and Foreign Fueling
Marsha Patel
G-Block
March 28, 2008
India became independent in 1947 amidst the trauma of partition. The nationalist movement, led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, aimed to gather what was then British India along with the 562 princely states under British dominant into a secular and democratic state. But Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a leader of the Muslim League, feared that his coreligionists, who made up almost a quarter of the country’s population, would find themselves a permanent minority in a Hindu-dominated land. For Jinnah, India was two nations, Hindu and Muslim, and he was determined that Muslims should secure protection in an Islamic state of Pakistan, made up of the Muslim majority areas of India. In the violence that accomplished partition, approximately half a million people were killed, while eleven million Hindus and Muslims crossed the newly created borders as refugees. But even all this......
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Approximate Word Count: 3495
Approximate Pages: 14 (260 words per double-spaced page) |