Independence and Partition of India
British rule ends and Pakistan is born
In August 1947 British India became independent and was partitioned into India and Pakistan. Partition brought the mass migration of millions and widespread communal violence. The end of the British Raj accelerated the collapse of colonial empires.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 8 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 2 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — same year
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 1 year later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 2 years later
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 19 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 14 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 11 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 6 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 11 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 6 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 5 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 2 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 10 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 15 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 1 year later
Africa
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 12 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 9 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 11 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 13 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 16 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 18 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 2 years earlier
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — same year
- 1969 Moon landing — 22 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 23 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 11 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 6 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 5 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 7 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 12 years later
Alive at the time
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 78)
- Winston Churchill (aged 73)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 69)
- Albert Einstein (aged 68)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 66)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 58)
- Mao Zedong (aged 54)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 29)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 18)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 17)