Decline
As the demand for Pakistan grew more intense, political loyalties in the Punjab were reshaped on religious lines. The Direct Action Day campaign brought the downfall of Sir Khizar's ministry, which depended on Congress and Akali support; inter-community relations were effectively destroyed as communal violence across India claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. With the partition of the region of sub-continent in August 1947 into the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan, Punjab was itself partitioned between the two new countries, with the Muslim-majority West Punjab forming part of Pakistan, and the Hindu/Sikh-majority East Punjab forming part of independent India. The Unionist Party's diverse pan-provincial organisation was destroyed, with Muslim Unionists integrating themselves into the Muslim League; the party ceased to exist in independent Pakistan.
Read more about this topic: Unionist Party (Punjab)
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
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“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)