Violent Punjab, quiescent Bengal, and the partition of India

ABSTRACT

Why did the Punjab bear the brunt of the mass violence and the migration that accompanied the partition of India? This paper makes the case for analytical eclecticism by showing that the following three explanations – centred respectively on democratisation, nationalism, and ideas; the commitment problem; and the security dilemma – account for the violence/migration in the different stages in the run-up to the partition of India. Instead of arguing that ‘everything mattered’, this paper elucidates the complex causality at work by demonstrating how these factors interacted with one another during the different stages leading to India’s partition.

Keywords:

• Partition
• India
• Punjab
• Bengal
• mass violence
• mass migration
• analytical eclecticism

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions of Jack Snyder, William Thompson, David Fidler, Nicolas Blarel, and Emily Metzgar on earlier versions of this manuscript. Thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Sometimes ‘primordialism’ is included as a fourth approach, but it is generally believed that it cannot provide an explanation by itself (Van Evera, 2001).

2. We are grateful to Jack Snyder for pointing this out to us.

3. For recent examples of eclectic approach, see Chandra (2001) and Posner (2005).

4. Most of the 562 princely states of the subcontinent merged with India.

5. According to an important recent study, approximately 14.5—17.9 million people crossed the borders between India and Pakistan (Bharadwaj, Khwaja, & Mian, 2008).

6. We are thankful to an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

7. However, this bellicose rhetoric was not yet matched by material or organizational preparation by the Sikhs.

8. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this observation.

9. A lakh is 100,000 while a crore is 10,000,000.

10. See Tanwar (2006) for other examples.

11. Rationalist arguments have been criticised for being empirically weak. For their critique in explaining ethnic violence, see Kaufmann (2005).

12. This is the assessment of Jenkins and S. Shahid Hamid who was the private secretary to Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian Army. See (Carter 2003: 46) and Hamid (1986).

13. See the relevant sections in Ahmed (2012).