The evolution of psychiatry as a discipline, and the idea of self-awareness as a subject of medical and psychological inquiry, has been relatively recent. The development of psychological concepts about the individual psyche coincided with the development of 'nationalism' in the political sphere. Events of the recent past (the Holocaust, the Israel-Palestine conflict and other so-called 'clashes' of civilisation) are often debated in the battlefields of the mind as much as in physical territories. The notion of modernity – a multi-nuanced, multifaceted persona – at times gets hijacked by traumatic events, trapped in roles and identities that are at odds with an overall understanding of 'humanity'.
In the Southasian context, a complex, interdependent social structure was torn apart with Partition. In recent history, Partition was second only to the Holocaust in the number of dead, with the essential difference being that while the Holocaust occurred over a period of five years, the cataclysm of Partition occurred within five weeks. This fact in itself perhaps demonstrates the social-psychological impact of Partition.
By the time of Partition, the departing British were hardly in the proper mindset to apply themselves to the onerous task at hand. As Major-General Shahid Hamid noted in his Partition memoirs Disastrous Twilight, "The British are a just people. They have left India in exactly the same state of chaos as they found it." A piece of meat is generally carved with more patience than what was exhibited in the subsequent cutting-up of the huge, throbbing Subcontinent, then populated by half a billion people. Cyril Radcliffe, a barrister with no cartographic experience, was given six weeks to complete the task. He worked on the basis of an imperfect population count that had been conducted in 1943, and with an advisory panel that was already disastrously divided along religious lines. During World War II, Radcliffe had been the Director-General of the Ministry of Information in London, and his first duty in the new assignment was to preserve the interests of the colonial power. Nonetheless, Radcliffe was so afraid of the ramifications of his work – worried even that Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs would kill him – that he hastily left India, destroyed all of his records, and stayed far from the Subcontinent for the rest of his life.
The British were not only impatient to leave, but also callous; now that they had nothing to gain from the Subcontinent, they proved indifferent. Much worse is the possibility that they saw the riots coming, and still did not care. How else can one explain the withdrawal of 14,000 British servicemen in such unseemly haste just before Partition, at a time when they were not needed back home, with the war having ended two years earlier? Churchill himself admitted, referring to the decision to accelerate the British withdrawal: "A hasty exit will bring a terrible name to Britain. The shameful flight could result in chaos and carnage. Would it not be a world crime that would stain our name forever?"