Editing History of Pakistan (section)

=== Independence from the British Empire ===
{{main|Indian Independence Act 1947|Independence Day (Pakistan)|Partition of India|Pakistan Movement}}
On 14 August 1947, Pakistan gained independence. India gained independence the following day. The two provinces of British India, Punjab and Bengal, were divided along religious lines by the Radcliffe Commission. Mountbatten is alleged to have influenced the Radcliffe Commission to draw the line in India's favour.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.weeklyholiday.net/150202/inret.html |title=K. Z. Islam, 2002, The Punjab Boundary Award, ''Inretrospect'' |access-date=15 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060117062957/http://www.weeklyholiday.net/150202/inret.html |archive-date=17 January 2006}}</ref><ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6926464.stm Partitioning India over lunch, Memoirs of a British civil servant Christopher Beaumont]. BBC News (10 August 2007).</ref> Punjab's mostly Muslim western part went to Pakistan and its mostly Hindu/Sikh eastern part went to India but there were significant Muslim minorities in Punjab's eastern section and likewise there were many Hindus and Sikhs living in Punjab's western areas.

Intense communal rioting in the Punjab forced the governments of India and Pakistan to agree to a forced population exchange of Muslim and Hindu/Sikh minorities living in Punjab. After this population exchange only a few thousand low-caste Hindus remained in Pakistan's side of Punjab and only a tiny Muslim population remained in the town of [[Malerkotla]] in India's part of Punjab.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=KHALIDI|first=OMAR|date=1 January 1998|title=From Torrent to Trickle: Indian Muslim Migration to Pakistan 1947–97|journal=Islamic Studies|volume=37|issue=3|pages=339–352|jstor=20837002}}</ref> Political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmed says that although Muslims started the violence in Punjab, by the end of 1947 more Muslims had been killed by Hindus and Sikhs in East Punjab than the number of Hindus and Sikhs who had been killed by Muslims in West Punjab.<ref name="fairobserver.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/punjab-bloodied-partitioned-and-cleansed/|title=The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed|last=Ahmed|first=Ishtiaq}}</ref><ref name="dawnshafiqbutt">{{cite web|url=https://www.dawn.com/news/1254069|title=A page from history: Dr Ishtiaq underscores need to build bridges|last=Butt|first=Shafiq|date=24 April 2016}}</ref>

More than ten million people migrated across the new borders and between 200,000 and 2,000,000<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.dawn.com/news/1169309|title=Murder, rape and shattered families: 1947 Partition Archive effort underway|date=13 March 2015|work=Dawn|access-date=14 January 2017|quote=There are no exact numbers of people killed and displaced, but estimates range from a few hundred thousand to two million killed and more than 10 million displaced.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yqAGKpOe9xMC&pg=PA36|title=South Asia's Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in Comparative Perspective|last=Basrur|first=Rajesh M.|publisher=Routledge|year=2008|isbn=978-1-134-16531-5|quote=An estimated 12–15&nbsp;million people were displaced, and some 2 million died. The legacy of Partition (never without a capital P) remains strong today&nbsp;...}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Kne87aU7D0C&pg=PA3|title=Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change|last=Isaacs|first=Harold Robert|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1975|isbn=978-0-674-44315-0|quote=2,000,000 killed in the Hindu-Muslim holocaust during the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan}}</ref> people died in the spate of communal violence in the Punjab in what some scholars have described as a 'retributive genocide' between the religions.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://faculty.washington.edu/brass/Partition.pdf|title=The partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47: means, methods, and purposes|first=Paul R.|author-link=Paul Brass|date=2003|publisher=Carfax Publishing: Taylor and Francis Group|pages=81–82 (5(1), 71–101)|quote=In the event, largely but not exclusively as a consequence of their efforts, the entire Muslim population of the eastern Punjab districts migrated to West Punjab and the entire Sikh and Hindu populations moved to East Punjab in the midst of widespread intimidation, terror, violence, abduction, rape, and murder.|last=Brass|work=[[Journal of Genocide Research]]|access-date=16 August 2014|archive-date=14 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150414153300/http://faculty.washington.edu/brass/Partition.pdf}}</ref> The Pakistani government claimed that 50,000 Muslim women were abducted and raped by Hindu and Sikh men and similarly the Indian government claimed that Muslims abducted and raped 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P7a-FuiMcTYC&pg=PA75|title=Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India|last=Daiya|first=Kavita|publisher=Temple University Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1-59213-744-2|page=75|quote=The official estimate of the number of abducted women during Partition was placed at 33,000 non-Muslim (Hindu or Sikh predominantly) women in Pakistan, and 50,000 Muslim women in India.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tmA0DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14|title=Revisiting India's Partition: New Essays on Memory, Culture, and Politics|last1=Singh|first1=Amritjit|last2=Iyer|first2=Nalini|last3=Gairola|first3=Rahul K.|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2016|isbn=978-1-4985-3105-4|page=14|quote=The horrific statistics that surround women refugees-between 75,000–100,000 Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women who were abducted by men of the other communities, subjected to multiple rapes, mutilations, and, for some, forced marriages and conversions-is matched by the treatment of the abducted women in the hands of the nation-state. In the Constituent Assembly in 1949 it was recorded that of the 50,000 Muslim women abducted in India, 8,000 of then were recovered, and of the 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women abducted, 12,000 were recovered.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cm4PBNdaFjYC&pg=PA131|title=Women and the Politics of Violence|last=Abraham|first=Taisha|publisher=Har-Anand Publications|year=2002|isbn=978-81-241-0847-5|page=131|quote=In addition thousands of women on both sides of the newly formed borders (estimated range from 29,000 to 50,000 Muslim women and 15,000 to 35,000 Hindu and Sikh women) were abducted, raped, forced to convert, forced into marriage, forced back into what the two States defined as 'their proper homes,' torn apart from their families once during partition by those who abducted them, and again, after partition, by the State which tried to 'recover' and 'rehabilitate' them.}}</ref> The two governments agreed to repatriate abducted women and thousands of Hindu, Sikh and Muslim women were repatriated to their families in the 1950s. The dispute over Kashmir escalated into the [[Indo-Pakistani War of 1947|first war]] between India and Pakistan. The [[Kashmir conflict|conflict]] remains unresolved.

For the history after independence, see [[History of Pakistan (1947–present)]].