I vaguely remember a college history class with the instructor discussing the Partition. There was one comment that stuck with me. He said...in order to reach their new “homeland”, the Muslims were traveling on one direction, the Hindus in the opposite direction...often on the same road....and killing each other along the way.
Gandhi was killed because he was thought to be soft on Muslims.
Hindus fled the emerging Pakistan because of violence. Now Pakistanis flee Pakistan because of the violence. A few years ago some jihadist 'hole was found guilty of murder (I think it was one of those so-called honor killings) but wasn't taken straight to prison. He killed the judge out in the street and was cheered by his supporters. Yeah, it's a Happy Place.
He oversimplified it.
When India was partitioned the north-west and eastern Bengal became “Pakistan”.
But there were huge numbers of Muslims in Hyderabad and in Kerala (among other places).
the population transfers occured mainly in two “states” (really nations) which were split religiously
Bengal — this is an ancient nation with a language dating back (in written texts) 2000 years and a very distinct culture. This was split into east and west — the eastern part is now Bangladesh.
punjab is where the biggest mess happened and what your professor described - because this was a heavily integrated state. hindus AND Sikhs moved east and Muslims moved west.
This was like Yugoslavia in the 1990s - the opening up of a 1000 years of tensions