section_path: History/Political advancement/Partition of India
section_name: Partition of India
paragraph_text: Partition of India
  
  Sikhs participated and contributed to the decades-long Indian independence movement in the first half of the 20th century. Ultimately when the British Empire recognized independent India, the land was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan (East and West) in 1947. According to Banga, the partition was a watershed event in Sikh history. The Sikhs had historically lived in northwestern region of Indian subcontinent on both sides of the partition line (" Radcliffe Line "). According to Banga and other scholars, the Sikhs had strongly opposed the Muslim League demands and saw it as "perpetuation of Muslim domination" and anti-Sikh policies in what just a hundred years before was a part of the Sikh Empire. As such, Sikh organizations, including the Chief Khalsa Dewan and Shiromani Akali Dal led by Master Tara Singh, condemned the Lahore Resolution and the movement to create Pakistan, viewing it as inviting possible persecution; the Sikhs largely thus strongly opposed the partition of India. During the discussions with the colonial authorities, Tara Singh emerged as an important leader who campaigned to prevent the partition of colonial India and for the recognition of Sikhs as a third community.
  
  When partition was announced, the newly created line divided the Sikh population. Along with Hindus, Sikhs suffered organized violence and riots against them in West Pakistan. As a result, Sikhs moved en masse to the Indian side, leaving behind their property and holy sites. However, the anti-Sikh violence was not one-sided. As Sikhs moved to the eastern side of the partition line, they engaged in reprisals against Muslims there, forcing them into Pakistan. Before the partition, Sikhs constituted about 15% of the population in West Punjab, the majority being Muslims (55%). The Sikhs were the economic elite in West Punjab, however. They had the largest representation in West Punjab's aristocracy, and there were nearly 700 Gurdwaras and 400 educational institutions that served the interests of the Sikhs. Prior to the partition, there were a series of disputes between the majority Muslims and minority Sikhs, such as on the matters of jhatka versus halal meat, the disputed ownership of Gurdwara Sahidganj in Lahore which Muslims sought as a mosque and Sikhs as a Gurdwara, and the insistence of the provincial Muslim government on switching from Indian Gurmukhi script to Arabic-Persian Nastaliq script in schools. During and after the Simla Conference in June 1945, headed by Lord Wavell, the Sikh leaders initially expressed their desire to be recognized as a third community, but ultimately relegated these demands and sought a United India where Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims would live together, under a Swiss-style constitution. The Muslim League rejected this approach, demanding that the entire Punjab should be granted to Pakistan. The Sikh leaders then sought the original partition instead, and the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution in support of partitioning Punjab and Bengal.
  
  Between March and August 1947, a series of riots, arson, plunder of Sikh and property, assassination of Sikh leaders, and killings in Jhelum districts, Rawalpindi, Attock and other places led to Tara Singh calling the situation in Punjab a "civil war", while Lord Mountbatten stated "civil war preparations were going on." The riots had triggered the early waves of migration in April, with some 20,000 people leaving northwest Punjab and moving to Patiala. In Rawalpindi, 40,000 people became homeless. The Sikh leaders made desperate petitions, but all religious communities were suffering in the political turmoil. Sikhs constituted only 4 million out of a total of 28 million in Punjab, and 6 million out of nearly 400 million in India; they did not constitute the majority, not even in a single district.
  
  When the partition line was formally announced in August 1947, the violence was unprecedented, with Sikhs being one of the most affected religious community both in terms of deaths, as well as property loss, injury, trauma and disruption. Sikhs and Muslims were both victims and perpetrators of retaliatory violence against each other. Estimates range between 200,000 and 2 million deaths of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. There were numerous rapes of and mass suicides by Sikh women, they being taken captives, their rescues and above all a mass exodus of Sikhs from newly created Pakistan into newly independent India. The partition created the "largest foot convoy of refugees recorded in history, stretching over 100 kilometer long", states Banga, with nearly 300,000 people consisting of mostly "distraught, suffering, injured and angry Sikhs". Sikh and Hindu refugees from Pakistan flooded into India, Muslim refugees from India flooded into Pakistan, each into their new homeland.