India's liberation from British colonial rule in 1947 led to a bloody clash of unrestrained hatred between Hindus and Muslims, with bodies from both sides littering the streets.

India's liberation from British colonial rule in 1947 led to casualties in bloody clashes of unrestrained hatred between Hindus and Muslims. Bodies of both sides littered the streets. Bloody conflicts erupted everywhere during the partition of India and Pakistan.

　　In 1947, with the signing of the India-Pakistan Partition Treaty, India, a British colony since 1858, was dismantled and the Union of India and Pakistan were established on August 16 and August 15, respectively. After India's independence, the Indian Congress party chose the policy of establishing a secularist state and enshrined in its constitution many provisions on freedom of religion, prohibition of religious discrimination, and freedom of religious education. Pakistan, on the other hand, declared Islam to be the state religion. However, the conflict between Hindus and Muslims did not end; rather, a new cycle of suffering and sacrifice began. Millions of Muslims headed for West and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), while millions of Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction. Massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and savage sexual violence were particularly intense in the Indian states of Punjab and Bengal, which border West and East Pakistan.

　　At the time of the partition of India and Pakistan, there was a Muslim majority in what is now Pakistan and a Hindu majority in India. In fact, the phenomenon of miscegenation had been going on in both countries for thousands of years. The sudden partition caused unprecedented migration of people from India and refugees. The partition plan was hastily announced and the borders between the two countries were announced only on the day of independence. More than 500,000 people lost their lives in the conflict, and more than 12 million were forced to flee their homes. It created an unhealed rift between Hindus and Muslims in modern India. Even Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the independence movement respected by millions of Indians, was assassinated on January 30, 1948, by radical Hindu nationalist extremists simply because he advocated harmonious coexistence between the two in the midst of this bloodshed.