Punjab

Punjab An area divided between Pakistan and India. It became a Sikh kingdom in 1799, but was subjected to British rule after the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1846 and 1848. Towards the beginning of the twentieth century, it was already experiencing considerable communal tensions between the Muslim majority comprising around 50 per cent of the population, the Hindus forming around 38 per cent of the population, and the Sikhs, who made up around 12 per cent of the population. These tensions were underlined by different cultural and linguistic identities. Matters were complicated by the fact that the different religious communities were riven by tensions amongst themselves. As religious, economic, and cultural competition between the various groups intensified, sporadic unrest burst out into open rebellion (1913–15). It was suppressed by the British, but led ultimately to the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. Tensions continued, and inevitably flared up with the partition of India into a Muslim and a Hindu state, in the process of which the Punjab was also formally divided in 1947. Millions of Muslims moved west to Pakistan, while millions of Hindus moved east to the the Indian areas of the Punjab. In 1970, the Pakistan areas became a separate province, as Punjabis were increasingly influential in public life. In the Indian areas of Punjab, despite an administrative reform in 1966 whereby Punjab was divided into the Punjabi-speaking state of Punjab in the north, and the Hindi-speaking state of Haryana in the south, competition between Hindus and Sikhs demanding an autonomous state continued. A militant Sikh movement developed, which in 1984 assassinated the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The partition of Punjab has remained bitterly resented by both India and Pakistan, and was the main subject of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. It was also the scene of heavy fighting in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War. The government of the Province was normally controlled by the Congress Party, but between 1997 and 2002 it was governed by a Hindu-Sikh nationalist alliance led by the Bharatyia Janata Party.