Partition of India Was a Mini-Holocaust- ‘Pakistan X-Rayed*’

Only five years after the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were annihilated by Nazi Germany, the Partition of British India in 1947 unleashed a massive wave of communal violence in South Asia. Around one million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were killed by members of their own communities in one of the largest episodes of mass killing and displacement in modern history. In that sense, the Partition can be described as a mini-Holocaust.

Out of this bloodshed, Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947, as a state founded on the idea of a homeland for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.

It is often said that there are two countries in the world founded in the name of religion: Pakistan, in the name of Islam, and Israel, in the name of Judaism. There are also striking coincidences in their dates of independence: Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947, while Israel was established on May 14, 1948.

Thank heavens Israel was founded after Pakistan had separated from India; otherwise, some Pakistani extremists might have called Partition an “Israeli conspiracy.”

Despite these historical parallels, one-sided hostility toward Israel has continued in Pakistan, at times accompanied by violence. I have visited Israel twice and found nothing there directed against Pakistan or Pakistanis by Israelis. On the contrary, the Israelis I encountered—many of whom were meeting a Pakistani for the first time—were curious, friendly, and hospitable.

A large number of Jews lived in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Quetta, and Peshawar in present-day Pakistan before the Partition of India. Large numbers of Pakistan’s Jewish population migrated and settled in Israel and other parts of the world during and after Partition. Remains of their synagogues, graveyards, abandoned houses and shops still somehow exist in these cities and towns of Pakistan.

Moreover, there is little in common between Pakistan and Israel beyond the fact that both were established as states with a strong religious dimension.

Israel has maintained a functioning democracy despite having no single written constitution. Pakistan, by contrast, has spent roughly half of its 78 years of independence under direct military rule, and another several decades under indirect military or quasi-civilian rule—what is now commonly described as “hybrid” rule. One might jokingly ask: was Pakistan supposed to be an electric car?

Interestingly, one of Pakistan’s most publicized army chiefs, General Asim Munir, once described Pakistan as a heavy-duty truck and other countries as sophisticated Mercedes cars. He reportedly warned that if forced into confrontation, Pakistan’s truck could hit those Mercedes, leaving them with no option but to bring their own heavy-duty truck into the confrontation. He was speaking about Pakistan’s status as a nuclear-armed country at a closed-door gathering of wealthy Pakistani expatriates in Miami, Florida. The remarks were subsequently leaked.

After 78 years of its so-called independence, Pakistan can certainly point to two highly publicized achievements: its nuclear weapons program and Rooh Afza, the sweet rose-flavored drink fondly consumed by Pakistanis, especially at iftar during the holy month of Ramadan.

Pakistan is the only Muslim-majority nuclear-armed state, but its nuclear program has also been associated with allegations of nuclear proliferation. The most prominent figure in that controversy was the late Abdul Qadeer Khan, widely known as A. Q. Khan, who was accused of operating an international nuclear technology network involving countries including Iran, Libya, and North Korea. During General Pervez Musharraf’s rule, Khan was publicly disgraced, arrested, and placed under house arrest for much of the remainder of his life.

A dark joke about Pakistan’s alleged nuclear proliferation network calls it “Nukes R Us.”

There is another, far more disturbing, chapter in Pakistan’s military history. The same military establishment that presided over one of the world’s most sensitive nuclear programs was also responsible for security arrangements in Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden—the world’s most wanted terrorist—lived for years in a compound remarkably close to the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul.

The history of Pakistan’s relationship with the military goes back to the colonial period. “Pakistan is nothing but the sacrifice of the blood of those Punjabi soldiers who laid down their lives to protect the throne of the British,” Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, then Prime Minister of Punjab, was quoted as saying.

Punjab at the time was governed by the pro-British Unionist Party, which had little to do with the movement that led to the creation of Pakistan. It was Sindh and Bengal whose elected assemblies first passed resolutions supporting the creation of Pakistan—a separate Muslim homeland in the Muslim-majority regions of British India.

In Sindh, the resolution was moved by G. M. Syed, who would later spend much of his life in prison or under house arrest after Pakistan came into being.

Yet Punjab became the epicenter of the bloodbath that accompanied Partition. The province was torn apart by mass killings and mass migration. Neighbors turned against neighbors. Women were raped and abducted; some women, driven by fear and desperation, were reportedly thrown into wells or took their own lives to avoid sexual violence and dishonor. Thousands of women were subjected to forced conversions, while others converted under circumstances that remain difficult to disentangle from coercion. Much of the human cost of Partition in Punjab—including many individual stories and the full scale of the violence—has yet to be adequately documented and brought to the surface.

Punjab itself was bifurcated: East Punjab became part of India, while West Punjab, with Lahore as its capital, became part of Pakistan.

In the decades that followed, Punjab emerged as the center of political and military power in Pakistan and was increasingly associated by critics with ethnic majoritarianism, military authoritarianism, and Islamic fundamentalism. Many Pakistanis from the other provinces have accused the Punjabi-dominated state and military establishment of usurping their rights and resources.

The demands of people in Pakistan’s other provinces for their political rights, autonomy, and share of resources have repeatedly been met with repression—at times reaching the level of mass atrocities—by the military and successive civilian governments operating under its influence.

The military establishment did not stop with the disintegration of the country in 1971, when East Pakistan, the country’s former majority province, broke away and emerged as independent Bangladesh after a war of national liberation. Nor did the Pakistani military appear to learn the lessons of that catastrophe. Repressive policies against Pakistan’s own people continued.

Prime ministers themselves have rarely been spared. Some were hanged or assassinated; others were imprisoned, removed from office, or forced into exile.

The military has repeatedly deployed troops and paramilitary forces against Balochistan, including during the insurgency of 1973–1976 and again from 2005 onward. Sindh witnessed major military and paramilitary operations, particularly in 1983 and 1986. Karachi’s Mohajir population faced a prolonged security crackdown beginning in the early 1990s and continuing in various forms for years. Pashtun communities have endured decades of conflict, militarization, and the rise of the Taliban, which many critics have viewed as a consequence of policies aimed at suppressing Pashtun secular and nationalist politics. Today, tensions also extend to Afghanistan and Kashmir.

As I write this blog, reports of violence and repression continue to emerge from Pakistani-administered Kashmir and Balochistan. There have also been reports of airstrikes in the Surab district of Balochistan, even as state officials celebrate Pakistan’s seventy-ninth Independence Day.

Pakistan has also fought multiple wars and military conflicts with India, with China often providing political and military support, yet the country has failed to achieve the strategic outcomes it sought through these confrontations.

All of this makes Pakistan increasingly resemble a country at war with itself.

The question is no longer simply how Pakistan confronts its external adversaries, but how long it can survive its internal contradictions: a full-scale conflict in Balochistan, growing disenchantment in other provinces, continuing unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and a widening crisis of trust between the state and its own citizens.

How long can a country remain intact when so many of its wars are being fought within its own borders?

*Pakistan X-Rayed is borrowed from Hashoo Kevilrsmani’s book title.