Movement.

This is coolbert:

The Britisher Michael Wood is narrating another episode of his public television series entitled: "The Story of India"!

Speaking in this particular case of the partition of British India [the Raj] into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan [East & West].

A partition [1947] requiring what was described by Michael Wood as perhaps: "the greatest migration of persons in the history of mankind!"

14 million persons having been on the move more or less simultaneously. Hindu and Sikh moving one way [to India], Muslim moving the other [to West & East Pakistan]!

With about 1 million persons having perished during the fighting that occurred during the various population disruptions accompanying partition!

Michael Wood - - however, is not exactly correct when he asserts that this was : "the greatest migration of people in the history of mankind!"?

* In those immediate months following the end of World War Two [WW2], by one estimate, at least 14 to 15 million ethnic Germans were forcibly relocated from all over eastern Europe and returned to Germany proper [those territories that eventually became west and east Germany and today the Federal Republic]! That enormous figure of German refugees at least equaling the number of persons on the move during the partition of the Raj, and not including those other [non-German] displaced persons [DP's], ex-prisoners of war [POW], forced laborers, etc., also simultaneously being returned to their homelands or settled to some degree in DP camps [many millions of tens of millions in addition]!

* That estimate of 1 million persons perishing during Indian Partition is "low-ball", as they say? 1 to 2 million deaths is generally accepted as a more accurate figure? THOSE DEATHS OCCURRING AS PART OF THE LAST "WAR" FOUGHT WITH PRIMITIVE WEAPONRY!! War not necessarily in the traditional sense, "two groups of persons using weapons, each seeking to impose their will upon the other!" In the case of Indian Partition, no real "imposing of will" was present here, the fighting consisting more or less of inter-communal rioting and violence - - perhaps better described as gratuitous vengeance mostly?

[primitive weaponry to include standard household and farm implements. Spears, swords, knifes, hatchets, axes, mattocks, etc.]

* It is reputed that the forcible evacuation and removal [ethnic cleansing, if you will have it] of ethnic Germans from all over eastern Europe, post-WW2, resulted in about 1 to 2 million deaths also. NOT a figure, generally agreed upon?

There is always three distinct stages to any "war" 1. What led up to the war. 2. The actual fighting of the war - - the armed combat. 3. The aftermath of the war.

NO ONE specific "stage" of a war can be undestood unless the other two stages are taken into account. NO one stage exists in a vacuum, the understanding of the totality being most important!

coolbert.