India - Background

The Partition of India: Your Final Internal

For this, your final internal, you prepare a report discussing the different perspectives on the following topic:

Could India have stayed united?

You will need to comment on perspectives both from the time of The Partition of India (1947) and what has been written about this event since.

Here is some handy background information. The page below this one has the perspectives material.

Here's a great overview of the topic:

http://asianhistory.about.com/od/india/f/partitionofindiafaq.htm

A quick video overview of Partition:

A primary source from the British perspective:

And a couple of videos. The first we watched in class (25m), whilst the second goes into much more depth:

Separate everything: During the Partition of India, a librarian divides the books between two piles.

An Interview with Kavita Puri, presenter of the BBC Radio 4 series Partition Voices, which tells the story of the turbulent birth of India and Pakistan through interviews with those who lived through it:

https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/living-through-partition/