India and Pakistan Relations: History, Conflict, and Rivalry

Introduction

Ever since the partition of the subcontinent more than fifty years ago, India and Pakistan have been arch rivals. Their animosity has deep roots in religion and history, and over time it has fueled a deadly arms race. There have been many attempts to resolve outstanding issues, but in spite of these efforts relations remain tense. With recent changes in the region, there is growing concern about escalating hostility between the two countries — hostility that many observers fear could eventually lead to war.

India gained its independence from Britain on 15 August 1947, forming a Hindu-dominated state. Pakistan, established as a Muslim state, gained its independence one day earlier, on 14 August 1947. The partition did not settle peacefully with the people of the subcontinent; it was followed by massive rioting and enormous human displacement as Muslims and Hindus struggled to reach the correct side of the newly drawn border.

British Colonization and Its Legacy

The partition is remembered as a period in which nearly half a million people died in widespread violence and communal rioting. The death toll was highest in Punjab, largely because the state was divided equally between India and Pakistan.

With partition came the deeply contested issue of the Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistanis believe strongly that Kashmir should have become part of Pakistan in 1947 because the majority of its population were — and remain — Muslim. Numerous United Nations resolutions have suggested that the people of Kashmir should have the right to vote in a plebiscite to decide whether to join India or Pakistan. India, however, maintains that Kashmir belongs to it on the basis of the Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharaja in October 1947, which transferred to Delhi powers over defense, communications, and foreign affairs.

In 1950, Kashmiris were granted an extraordinary status in the Indian constitution, affording them greater autonomy than other Indian states. Under that constitution, Jammu and Kashmir was recognized as a constituent state with the right to hold elections. It is also believed that under the terms of the Simla Agreement of 1972, both countries agreed to resolve the Kashmir issue through bilateral talks rather than through international forums.

Before the British came to power in India, there was no concept of privately owned land. Self-governing village communities handed over a share of their produce to the ruler or his representative annually. With the establishment of the East India Company, this revenue system was dismantled and two new forms of land ownership were created: landlordism and individual peasant proprietorship. The most immediate consequence was a reduction in agricultural incomes by approximately 50%, which discouraged the agrarian economy and undermined self-governing villages. Fields fell out of cultivation, land became overgrown, and famine and depopulation followed.

While India grew poorer and suffered from recurring famine, Britain grew wealthier. The British recognized that India was not only an agricultural country but also a manufacturing one, with a prosperous textile industry, skills in iron working, and a shipbuilding industry in cities including Calcutta, Daman, Surat, Bombay, and Pegu. Other significant industries included the enameled jewelry and stone carving of Rajputana, as well as filigree work in gold and silver, ivory, glass, tannery, perfumery, and papermaking. The British deliberately destroyed the Indian textile industry because it was a commercial competitor. Shipbuilding was restricted by legislation, and India's metalwork, glass, and paper industries were abolished by the colonial government.

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote that those parts of India that had been longest under British rule were the poorest: Bengal, once so rich and flourishing, was after 187 years of British rule "a miserable mass of poverty-stricken, starving and dying people." India became a country defined by hunger and poverty during the colonial period. Britain's profits in the nineteenth century cannot compensate for the estimated 28 million Indians who died of starvation between 1814 and 1901.

The Fight for Independence and Partition

The British had been dividing Muslims and Hindus since the nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century the nationalist movement turned against British rule. Former rulers and wealthy Indians sought to end the colonial regime as poverty and starvation claimed increasing numbers of lives among the poor.

In 1905, the British announced the partition of the province of Bengal on administrative grounds. The plan provoked widespread protest and gave rise to the first mass movement against British rule. One important outcome was the formation of the Muslim League in 1906, an organization dedicated to promoting loyalty to the British government, protecting the political rights and interests of Muslims in India, and representing Muslim needs to the government. The League believed the partition of Bengal was beneficial to Muslims and dismissed boycotts and protests as counterproductive.

The British held elections in 1909 to win the support of a larger segment of the Indian population, introducing separate electorates for Muslims and Hindus at the provincial level. Income and educational qualifications for Muslim voters were set lower than for other groups, effectively placing "Muslim" and "Hindu" into distinct political categories.

In practice, Muslims and Hindus were divided by class, religion, and language. Muslim peasants faced a Hindu gentry in East Bengal; Moplah Muslim cultivators faced Hindu landlords in Malabar; Muslim talukdars ruled over Hindu tenants in parts of the United Provinces; and Hindu moneylenders and merchants faced Sikh or Muslim peasants in the Punjab. The Muslim community itself was far from uniform — Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Pashtu-speaking peasants had little in common with the wealthy Urdu-speaking landlords of upper India. These divided class structures produced many conflicts, even though the long history of coexistence meant that Hindus and Muslims shared many cultural practices.

The policy of division contributed to eruptions of conflict during the First World War. Increased taxation to fund Britain's war effort in Europe and the Middle East, combined with inflation, drove up food prices and lowered living standards for Indians. The Khilafat Movement, following Turkey's defeat by Britain, caused distress among Hindu leaders such as Gandhi, who chose to support Muslim demands. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, mass agitation against British legislation culminated in the Amritsar Massacre in Punjab, where the extraordinary sight of Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh unity saw people of different faiths drinking from the same cups publicly.

The movement for Indian independence passed through difficult periods in 1905–1908, 1919–1922, 1928–1934, 1942, and 1945–1946, but Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity was a consistent feature. The political goals of the Indian National Congress, however, meant it was unable to appeal to Hindu and Muslim workers and peasants on the basis of class — arguably the most durable foundation for communal unity.

Local Muslim elites found little to attract them in the Muslim League, so the League drew its support primarily from provinces where Muslims were a minority. Its weakness was exposed in the elections of 1937, when the British consolidated power at the center. Following this setback, the League reappraised its strategy and began seriously working to build a mass base through an overtly communal appeal to Muslims. It increasingly equated the Congress with a "Hindu Raj," associating it with the majority religion in order to stoke fears among Muslims. Even British officials acknowledged that the League was deliberately stoking communal tension. The governor of the United Provinces, Sir Harry Haig, wrote to Viceroy Linlithgow in 1938: "Finding themselves unable to effect much by parliamentary methods, they are inevitably tempted to create unrest and disturbance outside the legislature, and there is no doubt that the Muslim League have set themselves quite deliberately to this policy." [Imperial Nostalgia, review of The Raj: India and the British 1600–1947]

Under these circumstances the League passed its famous 1940 Lahore Resolution, which embraced the "two nations theory" — the position that Muslims and Hindus constituted separate nations — and called for the establishment of an independent state of Pakistan.

It was not until after the Second World War that the League could actually win Pakistan. In the 1945–1946 elections, held to frame a new constitution, the League campaigned across provinces to win Muslim support. In Bengal and Assam it presented the demand for Pakistan as a call for provincial autonomy, promising Muslim prosperity and the abolition of zamindari without compensation. The League won 76% of the Muslim reserved seats, yet partition was still not inevitable.

The British were ultimately forced out by a massive rebellion from late 1945 through 1946 that surpassed even the Quit India Movement. In 1945, the British authorities put on trial Indian National Army prisoners — a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Sikh — together in a symbolic first trial. This triggered nationwide protests marked by remarkable inter-communal unity, especially in Calcutta, where strikes and riots continued for months.