Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Forgotten Voices in the Partition Debate

Introduction

The Partition of India in 1947 is often narrated as a binary conflict between Hindus and Muslims, represented by the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. However, this framing omits a vast spectrum of other voices—religious minorities, regional actors, leftist groups, women, and caste-based movements—that were either marginalized in decision-making or actively opposed the dominant narratives. This article brings those perspectives to the fore, arguing that Partition was not only a communal and political rupture but also a moment of erasure for multiple identities and aspirations that refused to fit the two-nation mould.

1. Sikhs: Between Two Nations, Without a Homeland

Nowhere was the trauma of Partition more acute than for the Sikh community. Numbering around 6 million in 1941, the Sikhs were a small but disproportionately affected group. Their historical homeland in Punjab was bifurcated, with Lahore and the fertile western regions going to Pakistan. Unlike the Congress or the Muslim League, the Shiromani Akali Dal—the primary Sikh political party—had long advocated for autonomy within a federal India, or at times for a Sikh state called “Azad Punjab” or “Khalistan” .

Master Tara Singh, a dominant Akali leader, initially opposed Partition, warning that Sikhs would be “butchered” if left in Pakistan. Yet his late support for Congress’s acceptance of Partition in 1947 came as a strategic calculation, not out of principle . The Sikhs were never invited to the high-level negotiations between Mountbatten, Nehru, and Jinnah. The Radcliffe Line, drawn in haste, tore through Sikh communities and sacred sites, leaving Amritsar in India and Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, in Pakistan.

The violence that followed was apocalyptic. It is estimated that one-third of all Partition casualties were Sikh, and around 75% of Sikhs in West Punjab were displaced . The community’s experience of betrayal and survival would seed future demands for political autonomy, and eventually the separatist Khalistan movement decades later.

2. Dalits: Caught Between Communal Nationalisms

Dalits—then referred to as “Depressed Classes” or “Untouchables”—represented around 16% of India’s population, yet had little say in the terms of Partition. Their leader, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, was deeply critical of both Hindu casteism and Muslim separatism. In Thoughts on Pakistan (1940), Ambedkar acknowledged Muslim grievances but opposed Partition, arguing it would neither solve the caste problem nor end religious intolerance .

Ambedkar proposed a more radical restructuring of Indian society—a secular, egalitarian democracy—far removed from the Congress’s soft-Hindu nationalism or the League’s communalism. Yet Dalit political representation was systematically co-opted. The Poona Pact of 1932 had already diluted their electoral independence, and in the 1946 elections, most seats reserved for Dalits went to Congress-backed candidates.

While Congress projected Dalit votes as part of the “Hindu mandate,” Ambedkar himself remained ambivalent. In Pakistan or the Partition of India (1945), he warned:

“If Muslims must have Pakistan because they are a nation, then the Untouchables must have their own separate state.”

Yet this vision was ignored. Dalits became part of “Hindus” for census and electoral purposes, erasing their distinct political voice. Post-Partition, Dalits would suffer in both India and Pakistan, often excluded from refugee aid, rehabilitation efforts, and political leadership.

3. Women: Partition’s Silent Victims

The Partition unleashed gendered violence on an unprecedented scale. Estimates suggest over 75,000 women were abducted, raped, forcibly converted or trafficked across the new borders . These atrocities were often committed by men of the same religious communities claiming to “protect their honour” through control or elimination.

Women were made into symbols of communal purity: Hindu and Sikh women were abducted by Muslim mobs, and vice versa. Many were killed by their own families to prevent “dishonour.” The Indian and Pakistani states later signed a treaty to recover abducted women, but many resisted repatriation, having formed new identities and relationships. Scholar Urvashi Butalia has documented how some women refused to return to the families that had tried to kill them .

The voices of these women were systematically erased. Their trauma was buried under narratives of national independence and masculine sacrifice. Neither Nehru nor Jinnah ever directly addressed the mass sexual violence in their public speeches.

4. Leftists and Secular Nationalists: The Unheeded Critics

Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, left-wing groups—including the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Congress Socialist Party, and Revolutionary Socialists—consistently opposed the communalization of Indian politics. They viewed Partition as a bourgeois diversion from class struggle.

The CPI, which had earlier supported the Pakistan demand under the Comintern’s doctrine of self-determination, later reversed its stance, calling Partition a betrayal of the working class. In their 1947 statement, they declared:

“Partition is not the will of the masses but the product of imperialist manipulation and elite compromise.”

These groups also warned of the dangers of religious majoritarianism on both sides. Yet their influence waned as Congress gained dominance and as the political narrative hardened into Hindu vs Muslim. The assassination of Gandhi by a Hindu extremist in January 1948 seemed to vindicate their fears—but by then, the space for third-party alternatives had disappeared.

5. Princely States and Peripheral Voices: Neither Here Nor There

At the time of Partition, over 560 princely states existed, covering one-third of India’s territory. Technically, they were not part of British India and were given the choice to join India, Pakistan, or remain independent. While most acceded to India, some resisted.

Hyderabad, a Muslim-ruled state with a Hindu majority, sought independence. Its attempt was crushed by India’s Operation Polo in 1948. Kashmir, ruled by a Hindu king but with a Muslim majority, became the trigger for the first India-Pakistan war. Junagadh, a Muslim-ruled state with a Hindu majority, chose Pakistan but was annexed by India.

These princely state crises show that the binary framework of Partition was insufficient to capture political realities. In many tribal and border regions, communal identities were secondary to loyalty to local rulers or kin networks. For example, many Naga and Mizo groups did not identify with either India or Pakistan and later launched insurgencies demanding autonomy or independence.

6. Religious Minorities Beyond the Binary

Partition also erased or endangered other religious groups:

Christians, many of whom had supported Congress or the British Raj, found themselves suspect in both new nations. Parsis, once among the most politically active and economically powerful communities in Bombay, quietly retreated into political silence, fearing instability. Jains, Jews, and Baháʼís, while numerically small, faced identity confusion as neither Hindu nor Muslim.

In the words of one Christian leader at the time:

“We do not fit the Congress’s Hindu nationalism nor the League’s Muslim nationalism. We are without a nation.”

These groups mostly accepted Indian secularism by default, but their perspectives were rarely consulted in the creation of new constitutions or during negotiations over Partition.

7. The Azad Muslim Conference: The Silenced Majority?

Perhaps the most significant “forgotten voice” of all was the All India Azad Muslim Conference held in Delhi in April 1940. Attended by over 1,400 delegates from across British India—including the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, Majlis-e-Ahrar, and various Muslim landlords and reformers—the conference explicitly opposed the Muslim League’s Pakistan demand.

The Conference declared:

“The Muslims of India do not desire the disintegration of India… They stand for a free, united and democratic nation.”

British officials noted the event drew five times the attendance of the League’s simultaneous Lahore session. Yet the Azad Conference was largely ignored by colonial authorities, who chose to recognize the League as the “sole representative” of Indian Muslims.

Post-Partition, the participants were branded as traitors by Pakistan and often forgotten in Indian nationalist histories. Their vision of a pluralistic Indian nation, in which Muslims remained full participants, was obliterated by the politics of division.

Conclusion: Remembering the Silenced

The dominant narrative of Partition has long centered on two male-dominated, communal power blocs: the Congress and the Muslim League. But India in the 1940s was not a nation of two voices. It was a vibrant, complex society, where Sikhs, Dalits, women, princely states, leftists, and religious minorities all had distinct and often competing visions for the future.

That their voices were silenced or marginalised does not make them irrelevant. On the contrary, revisiting their arguments reveals a deeply pluralist India, where many people rejected the logic of division, and where Partition was not inevitable, but a political decision made by a few, for many.

Today, in both India and Pakistan, recovering these forgotten voices is not merely an act of historical justice—it is essential for understanding how modern South Asia was shaped, and how it might still reimagine itself beyond inherited binaries.

References

Singh, K. (1999) The Sikhs in History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Talbot, I. and Singh, G. (2009) The Partition of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butalia, U. (1998) The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Penguin. Ambedkar, B.R. (1940) Thoughts on Pakistan. Bombay: Thacker. Ambedkar, B.R. (1945) Pakistan or the Partition of India. Bombay: Thacker. Menon, R. and Bhasin, K. (1998) Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Butalia, U. (1998) ibid. Communist Party of India (1947) Statement on Partition. National Archives of India. National Christian Council (1947) Memorandum to the Constituent Assembly, Vol. II. Proceedings of the Azad Muslim Conference, April 1940, Delhi.

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