Partition built two nations—and a million dead in months
At midnight of 14–15 August 1947, British India split into independent India and Pakistan. Between fourteen and eighteen million people fled across new borders; excess deaths are usually put near one million. Nehru took office; Gandhi refused any post.
The Indian Independence Act dissolved the Raj and divided Bengal and Punjab by religious majority, along with the army, navy, air force, civil service, railways, and treasury. Hindus and Sikhs streamed toward India; Muslims toward Pakistan. An estimated 3.5 million Hindus and Sikhs left western Pakistan provinces and East Bengal for India amid communal killing that destabilized Calcutta, Delhi, and Lahore until leaders on both sides—and Gandhi's fasts—helped quiet the violence by early September. Relief camps and army aid followed, yet hostility over the trauma still shapes relations. Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948, blaming him for partition and alleged Muslim appeasement; more than a million people lined Delhi streets for the funeral.
British India had held seventeen provinces beside 565 princely states whose rulers could join India, join Pakistan, or try independence. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon coaxed accession with guaranteed privy purses and privileges, sometimes backed by force. Junagadh's Muslim nawab tried to join Pakistan against a Hindu majority; a December 1947 plebiscite returned about 99% for India. Hyderabad's nizam was deposed in Operation Polo (13–29 September 1948). Jammu and Kashmir's Hindu maharaja over a Muslim-majority state sparked the 1947–49 war; a UN ceasefire from 1 January 1949 left India controlling roughly two-thirds of the region.
The Constitution, adopted 26 November 1949 and effective 26 January 1950 (Republic Day), replaced the 1935 Act, repealed British parliamentary acts under Article 395, and declared a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic with universal adult suffrage, Westminster-style parliaments, an independent judiciary, and reserved quotas for socially and educationally backward citizens. Framers including Patel, Nehru, and Gandhi insisted the document be secular. Early years also absorbed Hindu refugees from East Pakistan in 1949 and a short-lived Nehru–Liaquat pact on minority protection—before Kashmir froze the thaw.
Source: History of India (1947–present)
