Most of the historians considered World War-II as one of the major reasons behind the creation of Pakistan. According to them if World War-II would have not fought, it is possible that British may rule over India even today and if not two to three decades and so Muslims of the sub-continent may not have gained their independence. It was bloody war that compelled British to withdraw its forces from sub-continent and freed India and Pakistan. So, they, in a way are considering World War-II as a plus point to the creation of Pakistan but they, however, failed to realize the critical impacts of WW-II for Pakistan Movement and its creation. Before making any mind about WW-II for Pakistan Movement and its creation, it is pertinent to analyze its negative impacts on Pakistan’s creation as well.
The critical impacts of WW-II on Pakistan Movement are those that are raging from boundaries demarcation to the division of military and economic assets between Pakistan and India.
World War-II left British and her allies with devastated social, political and economic conditions. United Kingdom at the point of time was not in a position to even manage her own economic expenses. In such difficult circumstances holding and managing as big colony as India was totally impossible for Britain. To quickly retire themselves from the control of sub-continent, the Kingdom took most of the decisions in hurry. The result of such hasty decisions was it severely affected the lives of millions of Muslims of the sub-continent. One example of such devastating impacts was the lack of proper rules and regulations about the merger of princely states in newborn states.
Due to population strength of Hindus in sub-continent, Britishers from day one were favoring Hindus in social, political and economic affairs of the states. WW-II added a new momentum to the sentiment of favoritism of Britain for the Hindus. Reason was participation Indian soldiers in a large number in the war support of the Kingdom and her allies. In the division process of India then, after WW-II, we see that British payback Hindus much bigger rewards for their participation in the war in the form of allocating more resources and even those areas to India whose inhabitants were not ready to become a part of the Hindustan.
Owing to poor economic conditions the kingdom was unable to leave economic resources for the newly born states. India with much bigger population than Pakistan, was not ready at any cost to handover the due economic shares of Pakistan to her. The impact of such actions of both India and Britain for Pakistan was that the country faced grave shortage of economic resources during its early days to even run the government machinery properly. Pakistan even today owns to India that unpaid economic shares.
Another severe impact of WW-II on Pakistan’s creation was the provision of insufficient military resources to the country. The war had consumed almost all of military and economic assets of Great Britain. Due to this reason Britain had to handover only very limited resources to both Pakistan and India.
Furthermore, Kashmir issues between Pakistan and India is one of the major blunders of Britain that she had did while dividing and demarcating boundaries between the two states. The issues of Kashmir is solely due or the hasty decision of United Kingdom.
After the war due to economic problems the Kingdom was not anymore in a position to maintain the control over India. So, she decided to hand over the control of sub-continent to local political leaders of India and get rid of its burden as quickly as possible. In such hurry they left many matters unresolved. For instance, such unresolved matter is the division of water between the two states.
These are some major negative impacts of WW-II on Pakistan Movement. It is possible that both the position and structure of Pakistan would be quite different today if the war has not been fought. May be today, Pakistan would be a more stable state with all those princely states as its part, who at the time of division had voted in the favor of Pakistan.
