The most lasting effect of the partition and subsequent creation of Pakistan was the devastation of the Indian people – Hindu, Muslim and Sikh - who were mere pawns in a cynical game of power politics. Division, the physical, psychological and spiritual breakup of the nascent Indian nation, meant the destruction of families, the ruin of businesses and an end to a way of life that the subcontinent’s countless villages had followed for centuries. The political alternative was decades of social upheaval and a politically unacceptable instability in South
Asia. The establishment of Pakistan may have been a desirable outcome from a purely political ...
