The first partition of India, championed by Viceroy Lord Curzon, took place in 1905 when the Bengal Presidency was divided into Muslim-majority East Bengal and Hindu-majority West Bengal. The division was an attempt to curb the nationalist movement that was flourishing there. It was met with widespread resistance across India, and led to the Swadeshi Movement which boycotted British goods and mobilised for political self-determination.

While resistance led to the reunification of Bengal in 1911, India was split into two nations when it gained independence in 1947 following the Second World War which contributed to Britain’s weakening as a colonial power. The Partition of India, which cut across both Bengal and Punjab, took place in August 1947: Pakistan became an independent nation on 14 August and India gained its freedom the following day. In London, Indians gathered at India House, Aldwych, to salute the flag of a newly independent India, while Pakistanis gathered in celebration at Lancaster House. Habib Ibrahim Rahimtoola was appointed the first High Commissioner for Pakistan and V K Krishna Menon for India. 

As Indian communities began to develop, so too did legislation restricting the settlement of newcomers from South Asia as well as other British colonies. 1919 saw outbreaks of rioting, whereby white people targeted racially minoritised workers in Britain’s major seaports in the context of widespread unemployment following the First World War. In the same year, the Aliens Restriction Act extended the powers of the wartime Aliens Restriction Act 1914 which targeted ‘enemy aliens’ resident in Britain. It stipulated that foreign nationals should register with the police, enabled their deportation, restricted where they could live and work, and made it illegal for them to promote industrial action. An amendment the following year, in the 1920 Aliens Order, required all ‘aliens’ seeking housing or employment to register with the police to avoid deportation. While South Asians were not ‘aliens’ but British subjects, many were targeted and harassed because of this legislation, including seamen who did not have passports so could not prove their status. The Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order of 1925 explicitly racialised the legislation, requiring 'coloured' seamen who did not possess documentary proof of their status as British to register as ‘aliens’. Enforced rigidly by state officials, the law led to the wrongful deportation of numerous Indian, Black and Chinese men, not all of them seamen. It was revoked in 1942 following protest including by the Indian Seamen’s Union.  

Many South Asian migrants to Britain experienced the Partition of India either firsthand or through their parents, and almost all British South Asian family histories have been shaped by those events of 1947. Just as Partition led, either directly or indirectly, to some migration to Britain, so too did the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. While the majority of Bangladeshis fleeing the conflict sought refuge in India, some joined their relatives in east London or elsewhere in Britain. Before the outbreak of war, British Bengali communities came together to mobilise for an independent Bangladesh. In London, members of the Bangladesh Liberation Movement marched to the Pakistan High Commission and Hyde Park, declaring 23 March 'Resistance Day'; while the Bangladesh Women's Association galvanised grass-roots activism among Bengali women. In Birmingham, the East Pakistan Liberation Front was formed and took similar action. A UK branch of the Awami League raised funds and ferried Bengalis from Bradford to join demonstrations in London. Some members of the Bengali diaspora in Britain decided to return to the subcontinent to fight in the war. 

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Credit: Remaking Britain team (Rehana Ahmed, Aleena Din, Sumita Mukherjee, Susheila Nasta, Maya Parmar, Florian Stadtler, Rozina Visram).

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