File talk:Partition of India-en.svg

Problems with this map

This is a very misleading map.

1. The red line claiming to show the "boundary of British India (1939)" in fact shows, with minor errors, the boundary of the Indian Empire. Geographically British India was much smaller.
2. The solid grey colouring claiming to show "states not included in the partition plan" supposes that there was a "partition plan" for the princely states which had some kind of official status. There was no such plan. The grey colour shows only Hyderabad and Jammu & Kashmir, both of which resisted acceding to either India or Pakistan. It would be more useful for it to show all of the princely states, all of which had to decide whether to accede to India, Pakistan, or neither.
3. Most of the gold stars claiming to show "border conflicts" show tensions with China which have nothing to do with the partition of India, although they followed Indian independence.
4. There were riots, but the "areas of riot" are too big - for instance, it is wrong for the map to show the whole of Bengal as an "area of riot".
5. The solid darker green colour is claimed to show "East/West Pakistan (1947)". In fact, it shows only part of West Pakistan.
6. The solid purple colouring claimed to show "Union of India" does not show the whole of the Union of India at any particular date.
7. The arrows showing movements of refugees give a very simple impression of the truth but are far too "broad brush".

There are other faults. Even the separation between land and sea is inaccurate. Moonraker (talk) 11:49, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The map is very simple, so I don't think perfect border precision was what it was going far, rather an overview of the situation. Anyway, most of these are easily fixable

1. British India is often used in to describe this area, but it can be replaced with "British Raj"
2. Easily solved by changing the caption to "Princely states not acceding to either country upon their independence" or something similar.
3. The China stars could be removed
4. This one is more difficult, any suggestions?
5. Easily solved by adding light green to the legend such as in the current riots box
6. Ditto with above
7. Like with borders, I think broad brush was the point, as there's only so much that can fit on a map fo this scale. What else would you suggest? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Moonraker and Chipmunkdavis, while I didn't make the original version of this map, I'd be happy to help correct it with you, unless of course, you're able to edit the SVG yourself - in which case, please go ahead. Chimpunk's suggestions seem reasonable to me. Other thoughts? - Themightyquill (talk) 03:40, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

And where is Goa?--134.21.55.76 13:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Themightyquill and Chipmunkdavis, this is certainly improved, but I do still have some real quibbles with it.

1. "British Indian Empire" would be far better than "British Raj", which is a hopelessly vague term, usually used by writers on India because it carries a rather glamorous overtone. Whatever it was, the "British Raj" was not a country nor an identifiable geographical area, so it defies mapping. Of the few writers who give "British Raj" a geographical meaning, some are writing about the whole of the Indian Empire, while others mean only British India, not including the princely states. (The border shown here is still far from accurate for the Indian Empire, see for instance this map)
2. The term "East/West Pakistan 1947" has two faults, and for the areas coloured solid green here the term "Pakistan 1948" would be much better. I say that because many of the princely states of Pakistan, including four of them which covered a huge area in Baluchistan, were not part of Pakistan at all in 1947, as they did not accede to it until March 1948. Also, the terms "West Pakistan" (which was in fact the name of temporary province of part of the western part of the country) and "East Pakistan" (which in 1947 was called "East Bengal") were much later developments.
3. At first sight "Princely states not acceding to either country upon independence" looks like an improvement on what we had before, but the areas coloured solid gray can only properly be called "Hyderabad and Jammu & Kashmir". If you wanted to keep the present wording you would need to show about another fifteen states, including all but one of the future princely states of Pakistan, which also did not accede upon independence. Hyderabad and Kashmir were the largest exceptions but far from the only ones.
4. Instead of "Border conflicts" I suggest "Inter-communal conflict". "Border conflicts" suggests confrontation between Indian and Pakistani armed forces at the borders, but that wasn't what was going on.
5. Other faults are quite minor. The coast-line is still wrong in places, but I don't think that matters at this scale. Moonraker (talk) 05:24, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry that took me so long to accomplish. Does the hedge of "large princely states" work ? Further comments and suggestions welcome. - Themightyquill (talk) 19:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi @Moonraker: , I noticed that you're still contributing to Wikimedia Commons, which is great. I'm going to translate this map to portuguese, so I would just like to know if the borders are mostly correct. I'll take in consideration to rename "India" and "Union of India" to "British Raj", to maintain consistency in naming. I think I can make small fixes to the current map in english too. Tetizeraz. Send me a ✉️ ! 22:50, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

@Tetizeraz: , it's much improved. The worst remaining fault is in the description, in the legend, that applies to the solid grey colour. As explained above, there were other large princely states which did not join either India or Pakistan at the time of independence, which was in August 1947. So for that description to be accurate, you would need to colour a lot of West Pakistan solid grey, and also some other states that later joined India, such as Travancore. You have partly dealt with that problem by saying the solid green is Pakistan as of 1948, and of course that means the map does not show the position at the time of independence. I would suggest you now need to change the description of the grey colour so that it says something like "Hyderabad and Kashmir, two of the states which chose not to accede to either India or Pakistan in 1947." Another fault is that the area shown for Kashmir is not very accurately drawn, but perhaps that is not a great problem in a very small simple map like this. Moonraker (talk) 20:19, 10 February 2018 (UTC)