Partitioning

Partitioning involves moving populations, dividing and conquering human beings.

The governments of the USA, Canada and Australia historically moved indigenous peoples into reservations, in a version of containing and corralling groups, minimising their cultures and not allowing them to fully participate in the fabric of the nation.

This involved not only physical partitioning, but emotional, social and economic alienation.

During World War 2, Americans of Japanese and German ancestry were interned in specially set up camps, after they were forcibly removed from their homes.

The human pysche of nations can go to extremes in times of war, religious divide or when there is competition for resources.

Partitioning was both a strategy and solution deployed when decolonisation swept the world in the mid 20th century. The worst consequences of such political and socio- religious partitioning was experienced in south Asia in 1947, when the Mountbatten Plan gave rise to the modern nations of India and Pakistan - a million people, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, died in the ensuing mass migration between the two newly formed states, due to man made hunger, inter religious fighting and social violence.

The colonial British deployment of divide and rule to manage diverse ethnic groups
within their colonies also arose in Malaya, which lay the seeds for continuing racial discrimination even today in a nation that is overly conscious and emphatic of racial and religious differences. The Afrikaners imposed apartheid in South Africa, which officially ended late last century, but still casts a shadow on inter ethnic relations in today's Rainbow Nation.

In both the Malaysian Federation and the Republic of South Africa, partitioning of hearts and minds to the exclusion of more significant things has not been optimal or beneficial for both societies.

Ireland saw the partitioning of their island due to religious and political factors intervening from London. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the USA saw the unnatural partitioning of Germany, which recovered and reunited after the fall of Communism in Europe.  

Europe has seen a chequered history of changing boundaries and territorial partitions, think of Yugoslavia before 1990 and new nations arising after 1990 - but Italy was federated on the late 19th century and the EU was created in the late 20th century.

The most intense and yet unresolved conflict resulted from the creation of Israel in 1948 from a partitioned Palestine. The heady mix of entrenched cultures, beliefs and geopolitical interests add to a cauldron of shifting military balances, outside interference and historical alliances and enmity.

Russia remains unpartitioned. Yet Koreans remain separated geographically and politically between North and South. Vietnamese reunited as one nation after the French and American Wars. Thailand was never partitioned and colonised.

Partitioning can mean being reunited, but at what cost?