Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Nesbitt Eleanor

Author:Nesbitt, Eleanor [Nesbitt, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2005-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

1947 Partition

16. In World War I, Sikh soldiers in the Mesopotamia campaign march into battle behind the Guru Granth Sahib, held aloft

Despite the mounting Indian opposition to British rule, in both 1914–18 and 1939–45 the Akalis supported the British war effort, at a cost of over 83,000 soldiers’ lives and with over 109,000 wounded. But when India achieved its independence from British rule in 1947, Sikhs received no tangible acknowledgement of their disproportionately great sacrifice. Instead, India was divided into two states, the secular state of India, with its massively Hindu majority, and the newly created Islamic state of Pakistan. Sikh negotiators had in 1940 and 1944 raised the possibility of having a separate Sikh state, but this cause was not pursued with passion until the 1980s. India’s Partition was in fact the dissection of just two states, Punjab and Bengal. The cost was what a later generation calls ‘ethnic cleansing’, involving in Punjab alone the dislocation of some 12 million people – among them many Sikhs – and the deaths of another 500,000, as well as the loss to Pakistan of some 140 Sikh shrines. The one gain for Sikhs – and it was considerable – was that they were more geographically concentrated than they had ever been in the undivided Punjab. The Akalis realized the opportunity this presented for protecting Sikhs’ religious and cultural traditions as well as the Punjabi language.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.