ResearchPro International Multidisciplinary Journal

Tracing the causes, course, and consequences of the 1947 Partition of India, the paper argues that division emerged from the interaction of colonial divide-and-rule, constitutionally entrenched communal electorates, and competitive strategies pursued by the Congress and the Muslim League amid Britain’s postwar retrenchment. Key milestones included the Lahore Resolution (1940), failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946), Direct Action Day violence, and the Mountbatten Plan incorporated into the Indian Independence Act (18 July 1947). The process quickly reconfigured administrative, military, and civil institutions and culminated on 15 August 1947 with the creation of India and Pakistan and the partition of Punjab and Bengal. Immediate outcomes were catastrophic: one to two million deaths, mass sexual violence, and the forced migration of roughly fifteen million people, reshaping demography, property regimes, and urban space. Government rehabilitation—land allotments, credit, and employment—varied by region; migrant skills sometimes catalyzed sectoral shifts, as in the expansion of jute cultivation near Calcutta. Refugee entrepreneurship reconfigured labor markets in several cities. Long-term effects include hardened religious identities, recurrent communal riots, border insecurities, and durable shocks to trade, finance, and transport networks that encouraged state-led industrialization. The political legacy persists in debates on minority protections, federal design, and citizenship. Integrating political, social, and economic perspectives, the study shows how contingent colonial decisions, institutional incentives, and mass mobilizations produced irreversible outcomes whose afterlives continue to shape South Asia’s states and societies.