Wow 5-10 million muslims left for pakistan, so my familie weren`t the only one your implying. your right I just found an article that verifies what you say, there might be a connection between people after my familie there and the events of mass migration your talking about. Man today is the best day of the year , merci for that, looks like i am going to be up all night reading up about this this. Thanks so much, thank lord that i stumble upon this thread, you saved me hours of researching.
Why don't you ask your Grandma or Mama instead, surely my friend they'd know about all of this ?
Okay in a nut-shell :
Muslims in India had degenerated from a once ruling class with their own scholarship, bureaucracy & military presence to a disgruntled & disjointed lot of has-beens after the death of the last strong Mughal Emperor (a Turkic Muslim dynasty that ruled India for centuries & other Muslims dynasties had ruled before that) Aurangzeb in '1703 !
By this time the Muslim power was on a wane & in the next 100 years the Muslims went from one bad condition to another till they had lost almost all of their power, scholarship & collective consciousness to the British presence in India whereby India was now a part of the British Empire. The Muslim reaction to that was even more extreme - Instead of learning from their mistakes & learning from the British they shunned modern education & day dreamed about their past glories.
In 1857 a War of Independence was fought between the British & the Indians to free India but was brutally crushed ! In the backdrop of the War the Muslims were the most affected party because they had fought under the banner of re-instituting the last Mughal Emperor Bhadur Shah Zafar back on to the throne & rule India. The Muslims were persecuted, were stripped of whatever measly place they enjoyed in the Indian bureaucracy, their remaining institutions of learning were closed down, their language (Persian before & then Urdu) was replaced with English & many of their ranks were brutally suppressed ! Including Muslims who fought against the Muslims for the British Empire in putting down the rebellion.
In the meantime the Hindus of India had an awakening whereby they recognized the benefits of modern education & of constituting themselves into a community with their traditions & customs, their own heroes & villains & their own glorious past ! They learned from the British, they worked hard to build themselves up into a strong Nation.
All of this was happening when the Muslims were falling behind in almost everything & this naturally created a disparity between the two communities with the Hindus, being smarter in their response to the British, worked tirelessly to move forward & the Muslims taking one step back after another.
At this time when this gulf had widened did the Muslims realize that they've lagged so much behind that they won't be able to keep up & at the same time Hindu-Muslim relations had worsened to such an extent that there were many incidents of blood shed between the two communities.
At this time the biggest political party in India, the Indian National Congress seemed, to the Muslims, to be fighting for the rights of Hindus & not all Indians & so another party took root - the Muslim League. In the beginning the Muslim League was a sorry excuse for a party infested by land lords & industrialists without any significant grass root support but over the years when the common Muslim started feeling a sense of discrimination against him in a United India did it start gaining some support.
In time a leader was born in India, who was both un-corruptable & un-purchaseable & who placed Indians before anything else ! He started his career as a barrister qualifying from Lincoln's Inn (London) before he moved into politics & joined the Indian National Congress where he worked tirelessly, within the bounds of the law, to bring about the betterment of Indians irrespective of their religious or ethnic affiliations. For that he was dubbed as the Greatest Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. He was called Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah & is the guy in my avatar.
In this time a theory, that was born in the 1800s started taking root, called the Two Nation Theory whereby it was argued that Muslims & Hindus are too distinct Nation each with their own customs & traditions, laws & standards of propriety, outlook on life & about life & hence should be treated as two different communities not as one !
In this same time a poet-philosopher was born who worked tirelessly & with his beautiful & heart gripping poetry started to awaken the Muslims of India as the Hindus, perhaps a 100 years before them, had been. He told them about their glorious past, their religion, their traditions, their laws, their heroes, their failings, their customs, their economic systems, their regulations, their purpose in life & what the future held for them; in essence he galvanized them into a Nation ! He was called Dr.Muhammad Iqbal.
Up til this point Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had worked so hard for Hindu Muslim Unity, became disappointed & dismayed with how, he & others like him, saw the Indian National Congress becoming a Hindu Party which was there to safeguard the interests of Hindus instead of an Indian Party catering to the needs of Indians irrespective of their religious affiliations. And so he joined the Muslim League side by side with being a member of the Indian National Congress & worked to bring the two of them together.
And yet after years of trying he left India a broken & disgruntled man !
In the meantime the differences & disagreements between the two communities continued to grow with extremist organizations popping up on both sides & it appeared to the Muslims that British Indian would soon turn into Hindu India & they would loose their identity & would be discriminated against in a United India. So there was a call for greater Muslim rights & even for a federating unit within the Union of India where we'd be able to safeguard our interests & our way of life; these were refused by the British & the Indian National Congress alike.
It was then that Dr.Muhammad Iqbal traveled to London to try to convince Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah to come back to India & fight the case for the Muslims of India & the Barrister agreed. From that day forward he worked tirelessly for the Muslims of India as he had also come to agree that in a United India the Muslims would become a minority who would be forever at the mercy of a Hindu majority many of whom didn't like us.
The Barrister worked day & night in trying to build the Muslim League up to face of the Indian National Congress in the elections of 1936 but the League lost & it lost badly with the Congress making governments in most provinces of India. These were tough times for the Muslims of India & many saw the true face of the Indian National Congress & began agreeing that truly Muslims would become a minority in Indian constantly under threat & would loose their identity to cultural assimilation.
So in the next elections the Muslim League sweeped the polls & got all of the Muslim seats in the Indian Parliament & became the sole-spokesmen of the Muslims of India. It was at this time when they offered, yet again, a solution after a solution to bring some sort of an agreement between the Indian National Congress & the Muslim League to arrive at a compromise of sorts so that the grievances of the Muslims of India are addressed, their rights are protected through constitutional guarantees & steps are taken to ensure that they don't loose their identity & their way of life in a Union of India at the hands of militant Hindu organizations & the Indian Parliament where they'd never be able to have a clear cut majority owing to them being out numbered 4 to 1.
But all of this was to no avail & no such compromise could be achieved ! And in the light of this the Muslim League under the leadership of Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had now come to be known as Quaid-e-Azam or the Great Leader, asked to be separated from Indian & be granted a country of our own where we could make our own laws, protect our own culture, our traditions & teach our own history to our children without prejudice.
After a lot of struggle & a lot of blood shed between the two communities & seeing the indomitable will of the Muslims of India to have a country of their own, the State of Pakistan was born in the 14th of August, 1947.
It was at this time that many Muslims had been left in India instead of the lands which became parts of Pakistan & so many decided to stay & be a part of India. Some because they never agreed for the need to create a separate homeland of the Muslims to begin with whilst others couldn't just up-root themselves & leave for a country that was, said by everyone, wouldn't survive a single year & would collapse & become a part of India again. Whereas others, like your Grandfather, decided to move to the country that was built for them.
In the migration millions died where millions of Muslims were cut down by the angry Sikh & Hindu militant groups & in retaliation angry Muslims massacred Sikhs & Hindus. It is said that anywhere between 1-2 million people died the majority of them being Muslims.
On 14 th of August, 2012 the State that wasn't supposed to survive a year saw its 65th year of Independence.
The Indians, naturally, call the above narrative a farce ! The think that there was no discrimination against the Muslims & that instead it was all concocted by Muslim politicians for their own blind ambitions & that the Muslims of India were taken for a ride & a country called 'Pakistan' was created purely to protect the self-interests of Muslim Landlords & Industrialists !
You be the judge of what really happened by reading up on it !
Watch this movie & it explains much of it :
, I am from la belle province of canada born and bred here. however I am not pasty face french boy, I get pakistanie heritage from my grandpapa, who is 100% pakistanie. I actually am taking urdu classes on the side on top of my studies. I can converse basic urdu and write in roman hehe
