The millions of people who had to flee their homes and were killed in the partition lasts as one of the century's most brutal crimes. As an American Indian activist and reader of many genocidal books I examined and read a book about the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947. Author Yasmin Khan wrote a book called "The Great Partition" but there was nothing really great about this division and creation of Pakistan out of India.
The geographical divide brought great divide and disruption for people caught on the wrong side as for generations before state-creation of d- colonialization people of various ethnicities and religions lived side y side. There was just some correlation of the death and destruction of World War II that had to eventually sweep India with this same brutal and extreme conflict between peoples. This era seemed to highlight tribalism and hatred between people and the formation of Muslims into wanting separation from a independent India finally free from Britain. Khan covers the increasing hostility and divisive rhetoric between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League and the eventual unraveling of India and the various diverse population of the Sub-continent despite the hope of a more democratic institutional rule. women were granted greater freedom and the vote but the coming calamity of partition is something Khan writes was inevitable for this region. 
The escalating tension is vividly drawn by Yasmin and this was resulting in ore encounters that would eventually lead to major rioting mainly between Hindu and Muslim on the streets killing one another in a tit for tat actions very reminiscent of the American frontier between White and Indian. Clearly the British had long suppressed this division and created lull of warfare that was common in this regions history. the thugs returned as criminal gangs and militias took advantage of a societal breakdown that occurred by partition and women were mass raped on a scale never before seen in history.
The Muslim awakening and feeling of a unique culture based on religion is clearly the cause of this division and one has to wonder if the creation of Israel and displacement of Muslims from the holy land led to a more intense identity and demand for separation and self-rule for the creation of modern day Pakistan. This state couldn't have been created without incitation of violence that eventually did spill out and help set the stage for conflict between groups of people which India still faces as potential further partition to this day from various groups including more than a hundred thousand dissatisfied Muslims who remained.
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