Halla: Demographic Consequences of the Partition of the Punjab, 1947

Between August 1947 and January 1948, a sudden and unforeseen mass migration occured between the newly created state of Pakistan and India. This was the largest short-term human migration in history. Such was the upheaval that very little reliable demographic information was collected at the time. To recover demographic information, the authors designed a genealogical approach to measuring some of the demographic effects of this reorganization of population in the Punjab state, which underwent the most violent division in 1947. This study is based on recall of relatives, a sample of 5000 Punjabis with birth and death rates, and interviews with 100 informants. A variety of analyses and adjustments of the data allowed a number of conclusions to be drawn and compared with the little information that had existed before the study.