Independence of India and Pakistan. On August 15, 1947, the Mughal Empire was partitioned between the independent nations of India and Pakistan. Mohandas Gandhi fought decades of peaceful resistance before Britain accepted Indian independence. Self-government had been promised during World War II, but trilateral negotiations between Gandhi, the British, and the Muslim League stalled over the religious aspects of India’s partition. Eventually, Lord Mountbatten, the British viceroy of India, forced a compromise. Gandhi called the agreement “the noblest gesture of the British nation,” but religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims soon dampened his optimism. Before subsiding in 1949, the fighting claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, including Gandhi himself.
