15 Minute History – Colonial & Post-Colonial South East Asia + Inside the Indian Independence Movement
- Indian ‘Congress’ (nationalist movement party) withdraws support for Britain in war
- Leaders rounded up and put in jail
- The Muslim League – work w/ british as way to increase influence
- Royal Indian navy & airforce go on mutiny at tail end of WW2 – nationalist movements – Ghandi
- British had set up religious groups at odds with each other in terms of politics (divide and create in-fighting so your subjects can’t unite against you)
- 1940’s – ideas of Hindu & Muslim homelands starts floating around
- 1919 – Ghandi returns to India from South Africa, where had worked as a lawyer for Indian community there
- Joins ongoing nationalist movement – turns a constitutional movement into a social movement
- Uses Indian languages, religious symbols
- Britain withdraws after WW2 as the new world powers are now making the rules – new labour party comes to power in Britain- India divided between Hindus and Muslims, India & Pakistan – done too quickly, considered a blunder
- Borders drawn quickly, people on either side only had a few days to get on the right side of the border – massive ethnic cleansing
- 14th & 15th August – India & Pakistan gain independence
- Pakistan gets no real agricultural advantages or systems that India had from British rule
- Pakistan as a name – P – Punjab, A – Afghanistan, K-Kashmir, Balustan (Land of the Pure)
- Kashmir & other contested regions were forcefully annexed into states created by British
- Punjab – divided between Pakistan & India, heavily Seikh population
- Bengal – Muslim population but far away
- Princely states to cast vote over whether to join India or Pakistan
learn it all 