The Khalistan movement is a Sikh separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing a sovereign state, called Khālistān, in the Punjab region. The proposed state would consist of land that currently forms Punjab, India and Punjab, Pakistan.
The Partition of India of 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India; the Dominion of Pakistan is today the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and Punjab, based on district-wise non-Muslim or Muslim majorities. The partition also saw the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury. The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, or Crown rule in India. The two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 15 August 1947.
Gujranwala is a city and capital of Gujranwala Division located in Punjab, Pakistan. It is also known as "City of Wrestlers" and is quite famous for its food. The city is Pakistan's 5th most-populous metropolitan area, as well as 5th most populous city proper. Founded in the 18th century, Gujranwala is a relatively modern town compared to the many nearby millennia-old cities of northern Punjab. The city served as the capital of the Sukerchakia Misl state between 1763 and 1799, and is the birthplace of the founder of the Sikh Empire, Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
The History of the Punjab refers to the history of the Punjab region, a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, comprising areas of eastern Pakistan and northern India. Ancient Punjab was the primary geographical extent of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which was notable for advanced technologies and amenities that the people of the region had used. During the Vedic period, Punjab was referred to as Sapta Sindhu, or the Land of Seven Rivers. Punjab was historically a Hindu-Buddhist region during this period, known for its high activity of scholarship, technology, and arts. Intermittent wars between various kingdoms was characteristic of this time, except in times of temporary unification under centralised Indian Empires or invading powers. After the arrival of Islamic rule in India, that had managed to rule throughout a long period of the region's history, much of Western Punjab had become a centre of Islamic culture in the Indian subcontinent. An interlude of Sikh rule under the Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his Sikh Empire had seen a brief resurfacing of traditional culture, until the British had annexed the region into the British Raj. Following the end of colonial rule, Punjab was partitioned on religious lines - the Sikh and Hindu majority districts forming East Punjab went to India, while the remaining Muslim districts of West Punjab went to Pakistan.
The Punjabis or the Punjabi people are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group associated with the Punjab region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent presently divided between Indian and Pakistani Punjab. They speak Punjabi, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family. The term Punjab literally means the land of five waters in Persian: panj ("five") āb ("waters"). The name of the region was introduced by the Turko-Persian conquerors of the Indian subcontinent. The Punjabis are the 7th largest ethnic group in the world by total population.
The Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcation line between the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Punjab and Bengal provinces of British India. It was named after its architect, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions for the two provinces, received the responsibility to equitably divide 175,000 square miles (450,000 km2) of territory with 88 million people.
The 1947 Indian Independence Act is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that partitioned British India into the two new independent dominions of India and Pakistan. The Act received the Royal Assent on 18 July 1947 and thus India and Pakistan, comprising West and East regions, came into being on 15 August.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Malik Khizar Hayat TiwanaKCSI, OBE was a Punjabi statesman, army officer, and landowner who served as the Unionist Premier of the Punjab in colonial India between 1942 and 1947.
Baldev Singh was an Indian Sikh political leader, he was an Indian independence movement leader and the first Defence Minister of India. Moreover, he represented the Punjabi Sikh community in the processes of negotiations that resulted in the independence of India, as well as the Partition of India in 1947.
The Unionist Party was a political party based in the Punjab Province during the period of British rule in India. The Unionist Party mainly represented the interests of the landed gentry and landlords of Punjab, which included Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. The Unionists dominated the political scene in Punjab from World War I to the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. The party's leaders served as Prime Minister of the Punjab.
Sikhism in Pakistan has an extensive heritage and history, although Sikhs form a small community in Pakistan today. Most Sikhs live in the province of Punjab, a part of the larger Punjab region where the religion originated in the Middle Ages, with some also residing in Peshawar in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak Sahib Ji, the founder of Sikhism, is located in Pakistan's Punjab province.
The partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many creative minds in India and Pakistan to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition.
Punjabi Hindus are an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic and religious group who primarily originated from the states and territories of Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi in Northern India. While Punjabi Hindus are mostly found in India, they have their roots in the wider Punjab region, a region that is split between India and Pakistan. In India's Punjab state, Punjabi Hindus make up approximately 38.5% of the state's population, and are a majority in the Doaba region of Punjab.
Sikhism is the fourth largest religion in India contributing 1.7% of the population and has existed for 550 years, beginning with the birth of its founder Guru Nanak Dev. The Sikhs are predominantly located in Punjab, but also in many other parts of India. It is also the fifth largest organised religion in the world, with more than 25 million followers worldwide.
Punjab is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian union territories of Jammu and Kashmir to the north, Chandigarh to the east, the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the north and northeast, Haryana to the south and southeast, and Rajasthan to the southwest. It is bordered by Punjab, a province of Pakistan to the west. The state covers an area of 50,362 square kilometres, 1.53% of India's total geographical area. It is the 20th-largest Indian state by area. With 27,704,236 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Punjab is the 16th-largest state by population, comprising 22 districts. Punjabi, written in the Gurmukhi script, is the most widely spoken and official language of the state. The main ethnic group are the Punjabis, with Sikhs (57.7%) and Hindus (38.5%) as the dominant religious groups. The state capital is Chandigarh, a Union Territory and also the capital of the neighbouring state of Haryana. The five tributary rivers of the Indus River from which the region took its name are the Sutlej, Ravi, Beas, Chenab and Jhelum rivers; the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas rivers flow through the Indian Punjab.
It is estimated that the city of Lahore, Pakistan, has a Muslim majority with 95.4% and Christian minority constitute 3% of the population and rest Sikhs and Hindus constitute the remaining 1.6%. There is also a small but longstanding Zoroastrian community
During the Partition of India, violence against women was an extensive issue. It is estimated that during the partition between 75,000 and 100,000 women were kidnapped and raped. The rape of women by males during this period is well documented, with women also being complicit in these attacks.
After the Partition of India, during October–November 1947 in the Jammu region of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, many Muslims were massacred and others driven away to West Punjab. The killings were carried out by extremist Hindus and Sikhs, aided and abetted by the forces of Maharaja Hari Singh. The activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) played a key role in planning and executing the riots. An estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred. Subsequently, many non-Muslims, estimated as over 20,000, were massacred by Pakistani tribesmen and soldiers, in the Mirpur region of today's Pakistani administered Kashmir. Many Hindus and Sikhs were also massacred in the Rajouri area of Jammu division.
Opposition to the partition of India was widespread in India in the 20th century and it continues to remain a talking point in South Asian politics. Those who opposed it often adhered to the doctrine of composite nationalism. The Hindu, Christian, Anglo-Indian, Parsi and Sikh communities were largely opposed to the partition of India, as were many Muslims.
