Britain is about to leave the greatest territory in its empire: India. But with the clock ticking towards independence, neighbours become mortal enemies in a fight for land and power. India 1947: Partition in Colour, Channel 4 2022
Colourised archive and private documents will tell the story of the personal rivalries between the key players at the centre of partition: Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten. ibid.
Mountbatten’s wife was having an affair with Nehru. ibid.
In March 1946 the British sent a team to agree terms with the leaders of India’s biggest political parties. ibid. caption
It takes five days for enough British troops to be deployed to quell the violence. ibid.
So essentially the Indians are set free to kill each other. ibid. historian
The appointment of a new viceroy, a decision that would affect the lives of millions: Lord Louis ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India. ibid.
1947: Mountbatten leaves Britain to take up his new appointment as Viceroy. ibid.
The Mountbattens’ own unconventional marriage would soon come to have a profound impact on political events. ibid.
I regard Jinnah as a psychopathic case. ibid. Mountbatten
Plan Falcon as it’s known is approved in London; it has not been discussed with any of the Indian leaders. ibid.
He did bully Jinnah into agreeing to the partition plan. ibid. historian
The way that partition is announced sent a shockwave throughout India … 73 days to create two new countries with two different identities. It sounds insane because it is insane. ibid.
India will be divided creating a new nation of Pakistan. But Jinnah, leader of the Muslim league, is left dismayed that his new country will be in two parts separated by a thousand miles. Then Mountbatten makes the extraordinary announcement that partition will take place not in a year but in ten weeks’ time. India 1947: Partition in Colour II
19 days after Mountbatten’s broadcast, Lahore, capital of the Punjab, is the first city to erupt into violence. ibid.
Trust between Mountbatten and Jinnah hits a new low. ibid.
‘It was a dreadful example of gerrymandering, it was deceitful, it was hugely dangerous.’ ibid. Son of boundary team member
The exact location of the partition boundary lines are finally announced resulting in a huge upsurge in violence. ibid.
It’s now estimated that during Partition between 1 and 3 million people lost their lives. Between 12 and 18 million people were displaced in the largest migration in human history. ibid. captions
Korea was partitioned at the 38th Parallel by the Soviet Union and United States at the end of World War II. Secrets of War s4e10: Korea – Stalin’s Secret Air War, History 1998
The 38th Parallel: still a world divided. Hostility and land mines continue to separate the ever watchful North and South Koreans. Secrets of War s8e4: Korea, History 1998
In 1953 after a brutal war Korea lay divided between the Capitalist South backed by the Western powers and the Communist North under Kim Il-Sung allied to the Soviet Union and China. The two sides were left facing each other across the most heavily armed border in the world. Locked in a tense military stand-off, they began to compete by other means. Storyville: North Korean Kidnap: The Lovers and the Despot, caption, BBC 2017
The demilitarised zone divides the Korean peninsula into North and South at the 38th Parallel. The armies of both sides face each other along the border. This stand off has continued since the end of the Korean War in 1953. It’s a precarious balance of power that’s often been threatened. The Kim Dynasty, 2018
North Korea: a highly militarised state dominated by one family for half a century. The product of a conflict reinforced by nuclear threat that still endures today. It began with the Korean War fought between 1950 and 1953. A war that left a deep ideological and physical division between North and South and reverberated across the world. Nearly 70 years on, this unresolved conflict continues to pose a serious threat to America and her allies. The Korean War was one of the bloodiest chapters in the country’s history. A civil war that nearly ignited World War III. It took the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and millions of Koreans. Korea: The Never Ending War, BBC 2019
The 38th Parallel was simply a line on a map. It followed no physical features … ‘It was a 30-minute decision.’ ibid.
In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement was signed, brokering a peace deal between Republicans and Unionists in Northern Ireland. Nearly a decade later Al Jazeera visited Belfast to explore ongoing divisions in the city. Walls of Shame: Northern Ireland’s Troubles, Al Jazeera 2016/2007
The modern history of Northern Ireland has been dominated by one thing: the Troubles. ibid.
What Northern Ireland has now is not so much peace as an absence of conflict. ibid.
Today there are believed to be 41 deliberate barriers across Belfast. ibid.
We have to stop being divided and ruled by the fault-lines of religion and class and income-bracket and culture and country ... What we need is to stop cooperating with our own enslavement. David Icke
It may seem like the odds are stacked against us, but this is mere illusion. Great efforts have been made to suppress us, and to stifle out true power and potential, in order to control us. We’ve been conditioned into a state of perpetual apathy, distraction, fear and ignorance. We’ve been dumbed-down, brainwashed and misled. There has been an ongoing assault on our perception of reality, on our boundaries of possibility, and on our collective sense of self. Most importantly though, we have been divided. The oppression of the many by the few has only been possible because we’ve been manipulated into fighting amongst each other, over trivial differences such as race, gender, age and religion, to divert us from the fact that we’re all in the same boat – a boat which is rapidly sinking, and will continue to at an ever-increasing rate until we abandon our petty differences and preconceptions of each other, realise that we have the same enemy and start working together to take back responsibility and control of our own lives. John Nada, Wake Up Call
Neither political party is clean when it comes to tactics that divide our people. Roy Barnes
With respect, this referendum is a really dumb idea. Referendums are quite literally the worse way to decide anything. They’ve divisive; they pretend that complex choices are simply binaries. Brexit: The Uncivil War, Channel 4 2018, Cummings before inquiry
In 2016 Donald Trump pledged to build a wall between the US and Mexico. The issue has divided America and deeply offended its southern neighbour. Trump’s War on the Border, Channel 4 2017
The US/Mexican border spans 2,000 miles of rivers, mountains and inhospitable desert. Half a million illegal immigrants cross into the US every year. 46,000 border agents have the job of trying to stop them. ibid.
There are currently over 600 miles of fence, much of it running through border towns leaving families divided either side. ibid.
Arizona Border Recon – a group of vigilantes who defend the border. ibid.
Since 2001 over 2,500 human remains have been recovered from the desert. ibid.
We are more divided than ever and in ways that are fundamental and impossible to compromise on. The Capitol Riot Explained, Trump, Youtube 31.13, Second Thought 2021
35 years ago an economic experiment in the US & UK was supposed to provide a better life for all. Today, in both countries, inequality is at its highest level since 1928. The Divide, caption, Netflix 2015
Income differences started widening rapidly from the mid-80s onwards. The weaker trade unions are, the more inequality there is. ibid. Richard Wilkinson
People are seen as units for sale, sold to the lowest bidder. ibid. zero-hours carer
Now of course because of a growing body of research people know that unemployment and poverty have health consequences. ibid. Wilkinson