Ahead of the Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked the ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’ and said that the day honours the grit and ability to face unimaginable loss and still find the strength to start afresh of countless people who witnessed the Partition of India and Pakistan.
Ahead of the Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday marked the ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’.
In a post on X, Modi said that the day honours the grit and ability of the witnesses and victims of the Partition to face unimaginable loss and still find the strength to start afresh.
“Many of those affected went on to rebuild their lives and achieve remarkable milestones. This day is also a reminder of our enduring responsibility to strengthen the bonds of harmony that hold our country together,” Modi further said.
Modi had announced August 14 in 2021 as the ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’ with the stated objective to commemorate the victims and the suffering of the Partition. The day is meant to remind present and future generations about the episode.
The day would keep “reminding us of the need to remove the poison of social divisions, disharmony and further strengthen the spirit of oneness, social harmony and human empowerment”, Modi said at the time.
In 1947, the independence of India was accompanied by the partition of the British India into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, sparking one of the largest human migrations in history as Muslims moved to Pakistan and non-Muslims moved from to India. The Partition led to widespread rioting and killings that killed hundreds of thousands.
Around 8 million non-Muslims moved from Pakistan to India and around 7.5 million Muslims moved from India to Pakistan (both West and East Pakistan; East Pakistan got independence from Pakistan in 1971 and became Bangladesh), according to Government of India’s estimates.
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Some estimates say that up to 1 million people were killed in the violence.
“The estimate of those killed has varied from 5,00,000 to over 10,00,000. The generally accepted figure stands at around 5,00,000,” the GoI noted in a document at the time.
The Partition of India was a result of the Pakistan movement waged by was rooted in the demand for a separate country for Muslims, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League on the basis of ’two-nation theory’ that said that Hindus and Muslims were two nations and could not live together in one country.
However, the idea of Pakistan or at least a separate country for Muslims had been there for decades before 1940s when Jinnah ratchetted up the campaign.
The Partition Museum has said, “The demand for a separate nation for Muslims had been raised by various Muslim leaders in the previous decades, most famously by Allama Iqbal at a Muslim League conference at Allahabad in 1930 where he articulated the idea of a Muslim nation within India. The term ‘Pak-Stan’ had been coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali in the 1930s while he was studying at Cambridge University.”