India Independence Day: What the partition means to young south Asians like me, 75 years on

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. From the 1600s, Britain’s East India Company – a trading corporation later taken over by the British empire – stood as the primary colonial power, and with its rule came the beginning of the end for India as it once was. It categorised Indians by religious identity, a gross oversimplification of the richly diverse communities that existed within India, and oversaw atrocities like the Bengal famine, in which as many as 4 million people died as food and resources were diverted from those in modern-day Bangladesh and east India and given instead to the British. The British government announced in June 1947 that it would depart by August, and that the country would be separated into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, as requested by Muslim leaders who felt that the religious divides stoked by Britain couldn’t be repaired. Whether it’s in the region of Kashmir, where a humanitarian crisis is taking place now, or in India, where Muslim minorities are subjected to violence and political discrimination, or in Pakistan, where religious minorities are also targeted – the colonial legacies of the partition live on in the suffering experienced in these nations, and in the hatred that exists despite the fact that many of these people were once neighbours, relatives, and members of intertwined communities.