Peaceful subcontinent? Are you sure you from around here?
Partition was not a concept that was drawn from thin air either by the British, the Congress or the Muslim League. It is derived from much of the Muslim thought after the collapse of the Mughal Empire. Shah Walullah who was the premier Sunni theologian & intellectual in the 18th century had proposed a theory of distance & protection of Islamic purity as the prescription for a Muslim community that was now threatened by the cultural & military power of the "infidel". While he had pride in his own blood being "pure & arab", he recognised that the majority of Muslims in India were converts from Hinduism & that there was enormous cultural similarities in their habits & behaviour. His fear was that there would be a lapse into Hindu practices in the absence of religious leadership that had been preserved by political power that he saw as now being lost (Being Sunni, he regarded the Shia rulers of Awadh,the premier muslim principality as being of a deviant sect that could not be trusted with preservation of Islam & who were in his eyes worse than the Infidel .Didn't help matters that the marauder from Persia, Nadir Shah who destroyed Mughal credibility completely was a Shia).He argued that Islam could survive in India only if Muslims maintain physical, ideological & emotional distance from Hindus, He urged Muslims to live so far from Hindus that they would not even be able to see the smoke from their kitchens. Shah Waliullah's seminary played a vital part in the shaping of the north Indian muslim thought. Mistrust of Hindus which was fundamental to the theory of distance became the basis on which Muslim politics rested and the reason for insistence much later that Muslims must be elected only by fellow Muslims - the very concept of separate electorates.(Jinnah incidentally opposed the demand stating that separate electorates would lead to destruction of Indian unity, which did happen, ironically by a movement led by Jinnah himself).
History did not begin in 1947, partition was merely a culmination of a thought whose seeds were sown much, much before.[/QUOTE]
Thats a briliant posts + above given facts there were i should say 2 more angels to the equation
#1 : mjority of supporters of two nation theory(muslim) were basicaly nawabs & jageerdars& jameedars who could not even think of living without there ancesstrol land holdings which were threttened by congresses stand on land reforms .
#2 : British themselfs had a huge interests in trade routes(through afghanistan & pakistan)from central asia & knew that if they go ahead with partition it would be more easy for them to control pakistani eliet than say highly nationalistic indian eliete(at that time) ,Thanks .