BBC NEWS | South Asia | Flashback to Indian partition

Astrologers could not decide on an auspicious day for the independence of India so it fell at midnight between 14 and 15 August 1947.

The British colony was divided along religious lines and two nations were born - the secular but Hindu-dominated India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Pandit Nehru campaigned with Gandhi to achieve Indian independence

But even as the celebrations were getting under way it was questioned whether partition could lead to peace among the subcontinent's different groups. ...

The first ceremonies to symbolise the transfer of power from Britain to one of the new dominions took place in Karachi on the morning of 14 of August.

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will wake up to life and freedom Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

British Viceroy Louis Mountbatten and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who at midnight was to become governor general of Pakistan, addressed the Constituent Assembly. ...

After the ceremony in Pakistan, Lord and Lady Mountbatten flew to Delhi, where special events to mark the transfer of power took place. He was to stay on as Governor General of India, while Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the country's first prime minister. ...

As soon as the new borders were known some 10 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fled from their homes on one side of the newly demarcated borders to the other side.

About one million people were killed during the exodus, and to this day many families are separated by the border.