Refugee crisis after partition
- India had to deal with a pretty huge refugee problem after Partition in 1947.
- After independence, around 8 million refugees came to India.
- Around 300,000 people in a refugee camp in Kurukshetra.
- 500,000 refugees in Delhi
- 500,000 refugess in Bombay
- 1.7 million people migrated to West Bengal from East Pakistan in 1950.
- These people (most of them farmers) left their land behind and so needed massive amounts of support from the Indian government.
- The Indian government redisributed millions of hectares of land left over by people who migrated to Pakistan to these refugees.
- Around 12,500 women who had been abducted during the Partition were tracked down, one by one and restored to their families.
- There was a large communist uprising in Hyderabad as a result of the partition. The communists destroyed palatial homes of landlords and redistributed land among the peasants. The poor were told not to pay land revenue. The Communist Party won the elections in Andhra Pradesh in 1952.
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