Studying this  map, it is pretty amazing to see  how much progress India and to some degree Pakistan has made in the 69 years after partition.  After 300 years, Britain finally left two independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947.  This division or partition of the sub-continent set off one of the greatest migration of  humans in the history of the world and all  based on religion.  The Muslim people went to the east or to the west  to divided Pakistan, and the;Hindus and Sikhs went in opposite directions.

The English were in a hurry to leave due to the financial difficulties they are in because of a huge debt from WWII.  In their hurried exit, they left a mess in what was once called ” the jewel of the crown” of the English Empire.   The map maker who drew up the new boundaries never even visited to see the culture and dynamics of the people he uprooted. Many repercussions are evident even today. To give a slightly more current example, think of the on-going problems in the Middle East with the boundaries drawn up by the West after WWI.  We have  lived, suffered, and fought  with the aftermath of all these hastily drawn borders, even to  this very day !

In 1947 in the subcontinent, 15, 000,000  souls were uprooted.  1-2 million died in transit. For Indians, it was their “Holocaust.”  Sadly, Gandhi’s  vision of a peaceful non-communal India didn’t survive. Instead  two countries now remain  , one based on religion, and  the other secular. In place of  one country where all the different religions and cultures had lived together for centuries, more or less peacefully, now  cousins, friends, neighbors, and even brothers  were  turned into deadly, envious neighbors.

This film  “Earth”, is about the city of Lahore, once a center of learning and sophistication  that is turned into a place of hatred ,  distrust and anger. The characters  in the film are Parsee, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh. . . . all friends or they used to be!

It is particularly sad, that after so many years ‘in country,’ the English had so little insight into the lives of the Indians.  Or could it be that after all their  enjoyment in the subcontinent  and service from the Indian people, that  the English  just didn’t care?