The drawing of a line on a map can have apocalyptic consequences. When the two self-governing countries of Pakistan and India legally came into existence at midnight on 14th August and 15th August 1947, between 10 and 12 million people were displaced along religious lines, creating an overwhelming refugee crises accompanied by large-scale violence. It is estimated that up to two million people lost their lives in this process.

The line of partition that created the two nations continues to reverberate through and shape their contemporary politics.

Join event chair Yasmin Khan with Politics and International Relations Professor, Dibyesh Anand, and Pakistani High Commissioner, Ibne Abbas, for a reflection on the historical and current ramifications of the partition on India, Pakistan and the wider region.

About The Speakers

Dibyesh Anand

Professor Dibyesh Anand is the Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster in London. He is the author of monographs Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination and Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear and has published on varied topics including Tibet, China-India border dispute, Hindutva and Islamophobia, identity politics in Tanzania, and nationalism.

Syed Ibne Abbas

His Excellency Syed Ibne Abbas assumed the charge of the office of the High Commissioner for Pakistan to the United Kingdom in 2014. Prior to this, he served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Islamabad as the Additional Foreign Secretary.  Ambassador Abbas also served as the High Commissioner for Pakistan to New Zealand from 2010 to 2013. He was the Consul General of Pakistan at Los Angeles, California from 2006 to 2010.

About The Chair

Yasmin Khan

Yasmin Khan is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oxford. She was born in London and educated at Oxford. The Great Partition, her first book, was the winner of the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize and has been translated into Urdu and Hindi. She is also the author of The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War (2015). She regularly contributes to BBC radio and news and has written for the Guardian, Prospect magazine and BBC History magazine.