(Washington Post) – NEW DELHI — The massacres began soon after the British announced partition: neighbors slaughtered neighbors; childhood friends became sworn enemies.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the partition of India, an event that triggered one of bloodiest upheavals in human history.
Around 14 million people are thought to have abandoned their homes in the summer and fall of 1947, when colonial British administrators began dismantling the empire in southern Asia. Estimates for the number of people killed in those months range between 200,000 and 2 million.
Hindus and Sikhs fled Pakistan, a country that would be Muslim-controlled. Muslims in modern-day India fled in the opposite direction.