Identity mobilization driving the Partition of India

These two maps present the partition of the British colonial empire into two independent states (the dominions of India and Pakistan, divided into two regions that were very distant from one another) following the Indian Independence Act of 1947, and the redrawing of these countries’ boundary lines from 1949 to the present day. These territorial changes were produced by a hodgepodge of internal factors (mobilization of ethnic or religious representatives by political entrepreneurs like Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League, food crises, massive displacements of people); confrontations between the new states (Indo-Pakistani wars over Kashmir, separation of Pakistan into two states); and the interventionism of outside states (China, United States).