Religious violence in India borders to ensure their safety in an increasingly lawless and communal environment. With British authority gone, the newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border along communal lines. Estimates of the number of deaths range around roughly 500,000, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at one million. Large-scale religious violence and riots have periodically occurred in India since its independence from British colonial rule. The aftermath of the Partition of India in 1947 to create a separate Islamic state of
Colonial India of Wandiwash, after which the British East India Company was the supreme military and political power in southern India as well as in Bengal. In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control. The enclaves of Pondichéry, Karaikal, Yanam, Mahé and Chandernagore were returned to France in 1816 and were integrated with the Republic of India in 1954. Denmark–Norway held colonial possessions in India for more than 200 years, but the Danish presence in India was of little significance to the major European powers as they presented neither a military nor a mercantile threat.