Wikipedia, incidentally, is incredibly indirect in its description of this whole process: “the Government of India, through a combination of diplomatic and military means, acquired de facto and de jure control…” well, that’s one way of putting it.

You’re referring to Goa? or something directly connected to Partition? (or do you want to play 20 Questions?)

Hence, for example, one of the very few cases of completely successful post-war aggressive warfare and annexation – Tibet and the Aksai Chin being about the only other ones I can think of offhand – and I think the only one ever conducted by a democratic country.

Indian federalism: the form of the state, as foreseen in the 1935 Act and then in the proposals of the Cabinet Mission, was intended to be even more federal than it ended up being, to the point of being neo-medieval. The Indian Union, as it was styled up until a few years after independence, was getting on for being a confederation rather than a federation. One way to look at it was that neither Nehru nor Jinnah was willing to have that degree of federation in their India, and partition was the price of India and Pakistan being centralised states within their borders.

Would be interesting to know the names of the other few. Not, obviously, Joe Kennedy.
Nor Roosevelt?

Would be interesting to know the names of the other few. Not, obviously, Joe Kennedy.

Th Grmn stt s cnstttd bfr r ftr WW, r nw, shld nt xst.
nd th nw Jrslm shld by ll rghts b n th Rhn.

I wouldn’t say they were wrong, either, in the late 1940s.

I just wanted to point out that things have evolved since; I think that’s interesting. National and ethnic, religious or linguistic identities, and associated political organization, are dynamic and develop over time, interacting with (small-c) constitutions.

Was it genocide? It clearly meets the legal definition, but equally clearly doesn’t correspond to the colloquial understanding of the term.

NB Zayas really shouldn’t be read these days. He’s a radical right winger with close ties to the most extreme elements of the German expellee movement. Fifteen years ago there was little better available, but plenty of stuff has come out over the past decade or so.

Evidently the Muslims did not find that a sufficient safeguard against Hindi majority rule. I can’t say they were mistaken.

Partition virtually ensured that there would be war between India and Pakistan. Maybe, a civil war would have ensued, given a single federation, but it is not clear why there would be a series of civil wars, as there has been a series of clashes between India and Pakistan.

One of the interesting things about the political evolution of the Indian Federation has been the plasticity of its component states. Most Federal states rarely tamper with state boundaries — the U.S. has done so in only a handful of cases. And, Indian states have evolved in the direction of uniting linguistic groups. I don’t know if this increases centrifugal tension or not.