The large Bengali-Hindu middle-class (the Bhadralok), upset at the prospect of Bengalis being outnumbered in the new Bengal province by Biharis and Oriyas, felt that Curzon's act was punishment for their political assertiveness.

[11] The religious stirrings of the slogan and the political outrage over the partition were combined as young men, in such groups as Jugantar, took to bombing public buildings, staging armed robberies,[9] and assassinating British officials.

The principle of "communal representation", an integral part of the Minto–Morley Reforms, and more recently of the Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact, was reaffirmed, with seats being reserved for Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, and domiciled Europeans, in both provincial and imperial legislative councils.

One interpretation argued for sovereign autonomy, including the right to secede, for Muslim-majority areas of the Indian subcontinent, but without any transfer of populations (i.e., Hindus and Muslims would continue to live together).

In 1933, Choudhry Rahmat Ali had produced a pamphlet, entitled Now or Never, in which the term Pakistan, 'land of the pure', comprising the Punjab, North West Frontier Province (Afghania), Kashmir, Sindh, and Balochistan, was coined for the first time.

[47] It did not attract political attention and,[47] a little later, a Muslim delegation to the Parliamentary Committee on Indian Constitutional Reforms gave short shrift to the idea of Pakistan, calling it "chimerical and impracticable".

[49] In Punjab, the Unionist Party of Sikandar Hayat Khan, won the elections and formed a government, with the support of the Indian National Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal, which lasted five years.

[49] The Muslim elite in UP was further alienated, when they saw chaotic scenes of the new Congress Raj, in which rural people who sometimes turned up in large numbers in government buildings, were indistinguishable from the administrators and the law enforcement personnel.

[52] In March 1940, in the League's annual three-day session in Lahore, Jinnah gave a two-hour speech in English, in which were laid out the arguments of the two-nation theory, stating, in the words of historians Talbot and Singh, that "Muslims and Hindus...were irreconcilably opposed monolithic religious communities and as such, no settlement could be imposed that did not satisfy the aspirations of the former.

[57] Not wishing to lose the support of the allies they had already secured—the Muslim League, Unionists of Punjab, and the princes—Cripps's offer included a clause stating that no part of the British Indian Empire would be forced to join the post-war dominion.

[67] Attlee wrote later in a memoir that he moved quickly to restart the self-rule process because he expected colonial rule in Asia to meet renewed opposition after the war from both nationalist movements and the United States,[68] while his exchequer feared that post-war Britain could no longer afford to garrison an expansive empire.

[71] This coincided with the infamous trial of three senior officers—Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal, and Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon—of Subhas Chandra Bose's defeated Indian National Army (INA) who stood accused of treason.

On 10 July 1946, Nehru gave a "provocative speech," rejected the idea of grouping the provinces and "effectively torpedoed" both the Cabinet mission plan and the prospect of a United India.

"[83] On that morning, armed Muslim gangs gathered at the Ochterlony Monument in Calcutta to hear Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the League's Chief Minister of Bengal, who, in the words of historian Yasmin Khan, "if he did not explicitly incite violence certainly gave the crowd the impression that they could act with impunity, that neither the police nor the military would be called out and that the ministry would turn a blind eye to any action they unleashed in the city.

Knowing Gandhi's deep anguish regarding proposals of partition, Patel engaged him in private meetings discussions over the perceived practical unworkability of any Congress-League coalition, the rising violence, and the threat of civil war.

Late in 1946, the Labour government in Britain, its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, with power being transferred no later than June 1948.

With the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence.

Describing the violence that accompanied the partition of India, historians Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh wrote:There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the maiming and mutilation of victims.

Representatives of organisations including Hindu Mahasabha, Jamait-ul-Ulema, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), visited Birla house to pledge communal harmony and the end of violence.

[138] Lawrence James observed that "Sir Francis Mudie, the governor of West Punjab, estimated that 500,000 Muslims died trying to enter his province, while the British High Commissioner in Karachi put the full total at 800,000.

As thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab and North-West Frontier Province fled to the city, upheavals ensued as communal pogroms rocked the historical stronghold of Indo-Islamic culture and politics.

The impetus for this violence was partly due to the "harrowing stories of Muslim atrocities", brought by Hindu and Sikh refugees arriving to Jammu from West Punjab since March 1947.

A Colony consisting largely of Sikhs and Punjabi Hindus was also founded in Central Mumbai's Sion Koliwada region, and named Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar.

[179] Hindus fleeing from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were settled across Eastern, Central and Northeastern India, many ending up in neighbouring Indian states such as West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura.

Jharkhand), Odisha and Andaman islands (where Bengalis today form the largest linguistic group)[180][181] Sindhi Hindus settled predominantly in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan.

A study of the total population inflows and outflows in the districts of Punjab, using the data provided by the 1931 and 1951 Census has led to an estimate of 1.3 million missing Muslims who left western India but did not reach Pakistan.

[234] In August 2017, The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust (TAACHT) of United Kingdom set up what they describe as "the world's first Partition Museum" at Town Hall in Amritsar, Punjab.

This move was criticised by the Congress with Jairam Ramesh saying that the day has been conceptualised with biased intent and its aim is to use traumatic events as "fodder" for Modi's current political fights.

[255] Contemporary Indian artists that have made significant artworks about the partition are Nalini Malani, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, Nilima Sheikh, Arpita Singh, Krishen Khanna, Pran Nath Mago, S. L. Parasher, Arpana Caur, Tayeba Begum Lipi, Mahbubur Rahman, Promotesh D Pulak, and Pritika Chowdhry.

[256][257][258][259][260][261] Project Dastaan is a peace-building initiative that reconnects displaced refugees of the partition in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh with their childhood communities and villages through virtual reality digital experiences.