A recent escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan has put a spotlight on the violent history of the two countries’ independence that Stanford scholar Priya Satia says continues to haunt the Indian subcontinent to this day.
Priya Satia portrait
Historian Priya Satia has studied the partition of India as part of her work. Her current research examines the work of poets who wrote about partition and its aftermath. (Image credit: Steve Castillo)
The two nations have co-existed uneasily since the 1947 partition of India, which ended almost two centuries of British rule in the region and led to the largest mass migration in human history. The partition created the independent nations of Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, separating the provinces of Bengal and Punjab along religious lines, despite the fact that Muslims and Hindus lived in mixed communities throughout the area, Satia said. Although the agreement required no relocation, about 15 million people moved or were forced to move, and between half a million to 2 million died in the ensuing violence.
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