article on the topic " India before independence"
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India, before 1947, was a country divided by many regions, languages, religions and cultures. On August 14th, 1947, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan became independent. On August 15th, 1947, the jewel of the British Empire, India, was granted independence. India had been divided, primarily along a religious line, into two pieces.
There are many different reasons why partition occurred. When the British oppressed India, they had a divide and conquer policy that exacerbated the religious and cultural rifts that already existed in the society. The Muslim League, believing in the ideology of “Pakistan” actively campaigned to gain more support from the Muslims in India, especially under the guidance of dynamic leaders like Jinnah.
The disjointed countries used to be a nation of people where, for the most part, the differences in religion, culture and language did not destroy peace, however, partition turned the entire subcontinent into an abattoir.
TWO SEPARATE PATHS
At independence, India and Pakistan, alike, saw civil unrest as well as ethnic and religious discord—all of which threatened the stability of the both countries. India was left still in a search for a common identity with its many cultures in the north, south, east and west. Pakistan, primarily a Muslim country, also had its own set of splits within the country itself. The east and west sides were not divided over religion (they were mostly all Muslim), but rather the populations from each side came from a different area in India and thus the two sides were divided by culture and language. In 1971 there was a major war between India and Pakistan and the east side of Pakistan split off into what is today Bangladesh. For the purposes of this essay, we will be focusing on just Pakistan and India.
The people in both countries have very common and even interlocked backgrounds, so how is it that these countries have extremely diverging political atmospheres.