Partition of India
In this paper I will look at the historical events of what happened decades before the partition and what caused the partition to take place
The Mughal Empire (ME) ruled most of India and Pakistan in the 16th and 17th centuries. Muslims had arrived in India since the 8th century but ME ruled a country with a large Hindu Majority which would cause controversy later on (BBC, 2002). The British first arrived at India as early as 1627 to start businesses after receiving permission from the ME. They started to sell goods such as gold, arts, and clothes, from the UK. They started establishing themselves by setting up all over the Sub-continent and were known as East India Company. After a period of time, East India Company became successful and prominent and felt they needed the aid of the British government because of the lack of security (Richards 1996). The government responded by sending out the navy and army. It is believed that the whole aim of stepping onto sub-continent soil was to takeover the ME, a plan which had been prepared before entering East India. The British Empire (BE) felt India had great potential in terms of growing economy and if their plan was to eventually take control then the BE were very tactical in their approach. They began to ease there way through the ME by setting up navy at all ports which meant that not only did it make things easier but also more secure. The Empire’s activities were done under the eyes of the ME who had an unperturbed outlook on life and saw the British as merely businessmen and therefore were not concerned with their movements (Khan, 2007). The British Empire took advantage of this by setting up more companies across the sub continent, agreeing with ME that they would pay taxes on profits. Gradually BE started to dominate East India in terms of economically and politically and once their status was big enough they started to conquer small states. Along with the British other religions, Sikh and Maratha’s were began setting up their own political parties (World Civilizations, 1996). Once the ME realised that the BE had become so powerful economically and as organised as they were there was little they could do. Not only it was too late solve any issues with the British but other smaller parties began an uprising. ME couldn’t uphold the pressure of all parties and eventually BE took over all states (Rai,1965) In order of retaliation the two religions joined, which equated to the majority of the Indian population, together and planned on fighting against the BE. This eventually happened in 1857, War of Independence where the coalition was unable to triumph against a much more advanced and organised BE. The majority of the sufferers were Muslims and were left with blame of starting the war as Hindus later denied any involvement (Eteam, 2003). This was a key point which caused the relationship between Muslims and Hindus to diminish. BE had completely wiped away ME except for the last king Badr Shah Zafar who was deported and eventually died in Yangon, Burma.
