Editing Religious segregation (section)

==Partition of British India==
{{POV section|note=This should also include the violence against Muslims inside India during partition|date=November 2023}}
[[File:Population density map of British India according to 1911 Census.jpg|thumb|300px|Map of [[colonial India]], which was [[partition of India|partitioned]] to create Pakistan as a homeland for [[Islam in India|Indian Muslims]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Haqqani |first1=Hussain |title=Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military |date=2010 |publisher=Brookings Institution Press |page=4 |language=en |quote=Coalescing in the All-India Muslim League and led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, these Muslim nationalists asserted that India's Muslims constituted a nation separate from non-Muslim Indians and subsequently demanded a separate homeland in areas with a Muslim majority.}}</ref>]]
The [[partition of India]] entailed creating two countries - India and Pakistan - on the basis of religion,<ref name="Sinha2014">{{cite book |last1=Sinha |first1=Jai B. P. |title=Psycho-Social Analysis of the Indian Mindset |date=2014 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-81-322-1804-3 |page=190 |language=en |quote=The partition of the Indian subcontinent was based on the formula of religious segregation. Many Muslims migrated to Pakistan, but many more also decided to stay back. The country had an obligation to protect Islamic interests as Muslims in India tied their destiny with the rest. There were also Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and other communities which were living mostly in peace for centuries.}}</ref> as demanded by [[Muhammad Ali Jinnah]] and the [[All India Muslim League]], though not without [[opposition to the partition of India|significant opposition]].<ref name="Ashraf2017">{{cite web |last1=Ashraf |first1=Ajaz |title=India's Muslims and the Price of Partition |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/india-muslims-hindus-partition.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=17 August 2017|quote= Many Indian Muslims, including religious scholars, ferociously opposed the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan.}}</ref><ref name="Ahmed2016">{{cite web |last1=Ahmed |first1=Ishtiaq |title=The dissenters |url=https://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/the-dissenters/ |publisher=[[The Friday Times]] |language=en |date=27 May 2016|quote=However, the book is a tribute to the role of one Muslim leader who steadfastly opposed the Partition of India: the Sindhi leader Allah Bakhsh Soomro. Allah Bakhsh belonged to a landed family. He founded the Sindh People's Party in 1934, which later came to be known as ‘Ittehad’ or ‘Unity Party’. ... Allah Bakhsh was totally opposed to the Muslim League's demand for the creation of Pakistan through a division of India on a religious basis. Consequently, he established the Azad Muslim Conference. In its Delhi session held during April 27–30, 1940 some 1400 delegates took part. They belonged mainly to the lower castes and working class. The famous scholar of Indian Islam, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, feels that the delegates represented a ‘majority of India's Muslims’. Among those who attended the conference were representatives of many Islamic theologians and women also took part in the deliberations.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Asia and the Americas |journal=Asia and the Americas |date=1946 |volume=46 |page=212 |publisher=Asia Press |language=en |quote=Many Muslim organizations are opposed to it. Every non-Muslim, whether he is a Hindu or Sikh or Christian or Parsi, is opposed to it. Essentially the sentiment in favor of partition has grown in the areas where Muslims are in a small minority, areas which, in any event, would remain undetached from the rest of India. Muslims in provinces where they are in a majority have been less influenced by it; naturally, for they can stand on their own feet and have no reason to fear other groups. It is least evident in the Northwest Frontier Province (95 per cent Muslim) where the Pathans are brave and self-reliant and have no fear complex. Thus, oddly enough, the Muslim League's proposal to partition India finds far less response in the Muslim areas sought to be partitioned than in the Muslim minority areas which are unaffected by it.}}</ref>

In the colonial Indian province of [[Sind Province (1936–55)|Sind]], the historian [[Ayesha Jalal]] describes the actions that the All India Muslim League used in order to undermine the government of [[Allah Bakhsh Soomro]], which [[opposition to the partition of India|stood for a united India]]:<ref name="Jalal2002">{{cite book |last1=Jalal |first1=Ayesha |title=Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam Since 1850 |date=2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781134599370 |page=415 |language=en}}</ref>
{{blockquote|Even before the 'Pakistan' demand was articulated, the dispute over the Sukkur Manzilgah had been fabricated by provincial Leaguers to unsettle Allah Bakhsh Soomro's ministry which was dependent on support from the Congress and Independent Party. Intended as a way station for Mughal troops on the move, the Manzilgah included a small mosque which had been subsequently abandoned. On a small island in the near distance was the temple of Saad Bela, sacred space for the large number of Hindus settled on the banks of the Indus at Sukkur. The symbolic convergence of the identity and sovereignty over a forgotten mosque provided ammunition for those seeking office at the provincial level. Making an issue out of a non-issue, the Sind Muslim League in early June 1939 formally reclaimed the mosque. Once its deadline of 1 October 1939 for the restoration of the mosque to Muslims had passed, the League started an agitation.<ref name="Jalal2002"/>}}

In the few years before the partition, the Muslim League "monetarily subsidized" mobs that engaged in communal violence against Hindus and Sikhs in the areas of Multan, Rawalpindi, Campbellpur, Jhelum and Sargodha, as well as in the [[Hazara District]].<ref name="Abid2014"/><ref name="Chitkara1996">{{cite book |last1=Chitkara |first1=M. G. |title=Mohajir's Pakistan |date=1996 |publisher=APH Publishing |isbn=9788170247463 |language=en |quote=When the idea of Pakistan was not accepted in the Northern States of India, the Muslim League sent out its goons to drive the Hindus out of Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi and appropriate their property.}}</ref><ref name="Bali1949">{{cite book |last1=Bali |first1=Amar Nath |title=Now it can be told |date=1949 |publisher=Akashvani Prakashan Publishers |page=19 |language=en |quote=The pamphlet 'Rape of Rawalpindi' gives gruesome details of what was done to the minorities in the Rawalpindi Division. No such details have been published for other towns but the pattern of barbarities committed by the Muslim League goondas was the same everywhere.}}</ref> The Muslim League paid assassins money for every Hindu and Sikh they murdered.<ref name="Abid2014">{{cite web |last1=Abid |first1=Abdul Majeed |title=The forgotten massacre |url=https://nation.com.pk/29-Dec-2014/the-forgotten-massacre |website=The Nation |date=29 December 2014 |quote=On the same dates, Muslim League-led mobs fell with determination and full preparations on the helpless Hindus and Sikhs scattered in the villages of Multan, Rawalpindi, Campbellpur, Jhelum and Sargodha. The murderous mobs were well supplied with arms, such as daggers, swords, spears and fire-arms. (A former civil servant mentioned in his autobiography that weapon supplies had been sent from NWFP and money was supplied by Delhi-based politicians.) They had bands of stabbers and their auxiliaries, who covered the assailant, ambushed the victim and if necessary disposed of his body. These bands were subsidized monetarily by the Muslim League, and cash payments were made to individual assassins based on the numbers of Hindus and Sikhs killed. There were also regular patrolling parties in jeeps which went about sniping and picking off any stray Hindu or Sikh. ... Thousands of non-combatants including women and children were killed or injured by mobs, supported by the All India Muslim League.}}</ref> As such, leaders of the pro-separatist Muslim League, including Muhammad Ali Jinnah, issued no condemnation of the violence against Hindus and Sikhs in the Punjab.<ref name="Ranjan2018">{{cite book |last1=Ranjan |first1=Amit |title=Partition of India: Postcolonial Legacies |date=2018 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=9780429750526 |language=en |quote=In the evening of 6 March Muslim mobs numbering in the thousands headed towards Sikh villages in Rawalpindi, Attock and Jhelum districts. ... According to British sources, some two thousand people were killed in the carnage in three rural district: almost all non-Muslims. The Sikhs claimed seven thousand dead. Government reports showed that Muslim ex-service persons had taken part in the planned attacks. The Muslim League leaders, Jinnah and others did not issue any condemenation of these atrocities.}}</ref>
{{blockquote|Amid a terrible slaughter in which all main communities were both aggressors and victims, somewhere between half a million and a million people were killed. Tens of thousands of women were abducted, usually by men of a different religion. In Punjab in particular, where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had lived together for generations and spoke the same language, a stark segregation was brought about as Muslims headed west to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs fled east to India. —[[British Broadcasting Corporation]]<ref name="BBC2017">{{cite web |title=Partition 70 years on: The turmoil, trauma - and legacy |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40643413 |publisher=[[BBC]] |access-date=11 June 2020 |language=en |date=27 July 2017}}</ref>}}