Tell about Partition of India ?

At least 15 million people were uprooted and displaced in one of the largest human migrations in recorded history.

Around one to two million people were killed during the implementation of the partition.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the man behind the creation of Pakistan as a separate country, was a secularist

Bangladesh was called East Pakistan, located over 1700 kilometres away from West or present-day Pakistan.

August, 1947, the subcontinent was divided into parts lying in 4 different countries, some of which are still under dispute after 70 years, most notably the state of Kashmir.

During the iconic pre-independence speech by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of free India, in Delhi, the viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, was watching the Bob Hope movie ‘My Favourite Brunette’ with his wife.

Kingsway Camp, Delhi’s largest refugee camp at the time, was home to about 300,000 people, when at its maximum.

Disney films were screened in some of the refugee camps, with as many as 15,000 people watching

As Hindu, Muslim and Sikh vigilantes hurt all sides killing and maiming at all sides, British soldiers were confined to their barracks. They had been ordered by Mountbatten to save only British lives.

There were trains of only corpses going to and fro the new countries – bodies of people who were killed or died on the way to their new homes.

On August 14, just hours before Nehru’s speech, a great riot had broken out in the streets of Lahore. The main Sikh temple or ‘gurudwara’ was in flames, while around 100,000 people were trapped in the burning city without water or medical help.

Gandhi was absent from all proceedings during this time; he was in Calcutta, the city was torn by riots. Bengal had been divided into two parts – one that would be part of free India and had Calcutta, while the other that had become East Pakistan.

Over 25 films have been made set in the partition of India and Pakistan, while many others allude to the migration, displacement, communal tension and revolts of the time.

The independence and partition was originally planned to be before June 1948

The first capital of independent Pakistan was Karachi.

1857 saw the first war for independence when the nation revolted as one against the British Empire.

British India had 17 provinces before partition.

The partition was announced in India by Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy General of India.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer, drew up the borders for the newly independent Pakistan, completed on August 17, 1947.

Clement Atlee was the British Prime Minister who oversaw the withdrawal of the Empire from the sub-continent.

Yet another book on India’s Partition might appear doomed to déjà vu. Worry not, however. This racy, well-written, carefully documented account by a retired general-turned-historian, Barney White-Spunner, offers fresh insights into the politics of Partition and its devastating human impact

Until 1948, Pakistan used Indian currency bank notes, over-stamped with 'Pakistan' on the notes. New coins and banknotes of Pakistani rupees were circulated in 1948.

The former commander of British forces in southern Iraq, White-Spunner’s analysis is all the better for being free of the usual preconceptions of more specialist historians.

This book sensibly dispels the notion that Partition was in any way the result of imperial policies of divide and rule.

Almost all its British protagonists emerge as deeply committed to the unity of the subcontinent, which the Raj, more than any other Indian empire, had forged over two centuries