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
Political warfare in British colonial India as the ultimate goal. In the 1857–58 Indian Mutiny of native soldiers serving in the armed forces of the East India Company, many British suspected Russian or Persian agents of having a hand in spreading rumours that sparked the conflict; the core of the rumours were that the British had smeared pig and cow fat on the ammo cartridges used by the sepoys. The fat on the cartridges, which would have to be opened by mouth prior to being loaded into a rifle, would have spiritually desecrated the Muslim or Hindu soldiers. Political warfare in British colonial India Political warfare