By Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal
It was once said that the sun never sets on the British Empire — a statement of both pride and irony, for while the empire’s reach spanned continents, so too did the shadows it cast. Two decisions taken under the British Crown, sowed the seeds of unrest in South Asia and the Middle East — regions that continue to bleed under the weight of those choices. The partition of British India in 1947 was a pivotal event that betrayed the borders it established, especially concerning Kashmir. The other was the Balfour Declaration of 1917.Each decision, presented as a step toward peace or justice, proved instead to be a prelude to enduring conflict.
In South Asia, the partition of India and Pakistan was presented to the world as an act of independence and self-determination. Yet, behind the hurried lines of Sir Cyril Radcliffe lay a web of intrigue and manipulation. The most glaring example was the fate of the Gurdaspur district, which, despite its Muslim majority, was awarded to India. This single decision altered the destiny of Kashmir. Gurdaspur provided India the only land access to the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, enabling Indian forces to move in and occupy it within months of partition. Lord Mountbatten’s role, often questioned by historians, has never been fully absolved of bias. Official British records later revealed that last-minute alterations to the boundary were made under direct influence from the Viceroy’s office, ensuring India’s strategic upper hand.
Across the globe, Kashmiris solemnly observe October 27, 1947, as Black Day and the beginning of India’s unlawful occupation extending unparalleled human rights violations, perpetuated under the cloak of oppressive and draconian laws. The tragedy that began with a manipulated boundary has since evolved into one of the world’s longest-standing conflicts, where justice and humanity remain imprisoned behind barbed borders.
The partition itself was marked not by orderly transition but by chaos and carnage. More than a million people were killed, and nearly fifteen million were displaced in one of the largest forced migrations in human history. Whole villages were wiped out; trains crossed the new borders carrying corpses instead of passengers. The British exit from India was not an act of careful decolonization but of calculated haste — a withdrawal that left behind a trail of bitterness and division. The aftershocks of those decisions still define relations between Pakistan and India, with Kashmir remaining the unhealed wound of partition.
A similar betrayal, albeit under a different guise, unfolded three decades earlier in the Middle East. On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour issued a letter to Lord Lionel Rothschild, a prominent figure in the British Jewish community. Known to history as the Balfour Declaration, it stated that His Majesty’s Government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” At that time, Palestine was home to an overwhelming Arab majority — Muslims and Christians who had lived there for centuries in relative peace. Yet, without consulting the inhabitants of the land, Britain promised their homeland to others.
The declaration was not born of moral conviction but of political expediency. Britain sought Jewish support during World War I, particularly from influential communities in the United States and Europe. The promise to the Zionists was therefore a wartime tactic, designed to serve imperial interests rather than the cause of justice. What followed was the systematic displacement of Palestinians, beginning under the British Mandate (1920–1948) and culminating in the Nakba of 1948, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.
Official British archives, including the Peel Commission Report (1937) and the White Papers of 1939, acknowledge that Britain failed to maintain fairness between Arabs and Jews. British historian Sir Arnold Toynbee described the Mandate as “a betrayal of both conscience and civilization.” The consequences are tragically visible today — a century later, Palestinians still live under occupation, their land divided, their lives bound by checkpoints and blockades.
Thus, both in South Asia and the Middle East, British policies created artificial borders and lasting conflicts. In both cases, the empire departed, leaving behind nations consumed by wars it had sown. The British justification was always cloaked in legality and diplomacy — the Mountbatten Plan in one case, the Balfour Declaration in the other — but history has stripped away those veneers. What remains is a record of decisions made without moral foresight, driven by strategic self-interest.
The Qur’an reminds humanity: “And do not let hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness” (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:8). Justice, denied at the birth of these nations, has yet to be restored. When men draw lines on maps without understanding the souls that live within them, they draw also the outlines of future wars.
The British Empire may have prided itself on its global dominion, but its twilight left behind more darkness than light. The partition of India and the promise of Palestine are not merely historical episodes — they are living tragedies that continue to shape the destinies of millions. In Lahore and in Gaza, in Srinagar and in Jerusalem, the echoes of imperial decisions still resound.
Empires rise and fall, but their legacies often outlive them. The sun may have set on the British Crown, yet the shadows it cast on South Asia and the Middle East remain long and deep. True peace will come only when the injustices of history are acknowledged, and when humanity learns, at last, that no empire can ever be built upon the ruins of another people’s home.
