New Delhi: Partition did not only displace millions of people but it also affected the generations to come. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that plagues their relationship to this day.

A fact of the partition was that both sides promised each other that they would return women abducted and raped during the communal riots in the aftermath of the partition. India claimed that 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted and Pakistan said that 50,000 Muslim women were abducted.

“By 1954, there were 20,728 Muslim women recovered from India and 9,032 Hindu and Sikh women recovered from Pakistan. Most Hindu and Sikh women from Pakistan refused to go back to India, fearing that they would never be accepted by their families, a fear mirrored by Muslim women. It was a grim fact of partition yet both countries decided to move on,” says Pakistani-British author Kamila Shamsie.

By the early 1960s a political rapprochement was reached between leaders of the two countries — only to be disturbed by the 1965 war on Kashmir.

Then the worst came in 1971 when India backed Mukti Bahini forces to dismember Pakistan’s eastern flank from its western part, and Bangladesh came into existence.

May 18, 1974 inflicted another blow to relations when India conducted its first nuclear test, putting Pakistan again under pressure from its five-times bigger neighbour.

It was then that Pakistani PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto promised: “We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one [nuclear bomb] of our own [for our survival].”

The race for nuclear armament was on. When India carried out its second nuclear test, Pakistan followed with its own tests in 1998.

The two nations continue to trade shelling and firing across the Line of Control.

However, despite differences and disputes, the people of both countries hope to develop a working relationship. Both countries are moving towards their individual goals.

“The boundary demarcating India and Pakistan, known as the Radcliffe Line, also involved the division of British Indian Army, Royal Indian Navy, Indian Civil Service, railways, and central treasury, between the two new dominions. It meant losses for both nations. But now they have no option but to let bygones be bygones and look ahead,” says political commentator Rajiv Malik.