To explain it better, we have had fights/relationships between both communities going all the way back to 6th century. And the people who are Muslims today were of various Religious ethnicities (majority of whom were Hindus, Persian/Zoroastrians etc). So our relationships run way back before Anglo-Saxons entered our shores as traders/merchants. If you pick up our History you will see references to not just trade, politics or wars but also familial relations that spanned from present day Bangladesh all the way to the other corners of Iran. Even our Ancient Scriptures like Ramayana and Mahabharata has references to these regions and the Kingdoms within them. So yes when I say Indian Subcontinent I mean the entire extant region that includes present day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. So even if we fought wars with each other and one Kingdom sometimes reigning over other Kingdoms, we never felt it was some "outsider" who ruled over us.
The reason we blame the Brits is purely because of the Partition of India and the mess they created with drawing the various borders. That does not just include borders between India and Pakistan. It also includes borders between India and China. Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan and Iran. Afghanistan and Iran. They left a huge mess when they left as the lines drawn did not account for natural resource sharing or even towns/cities. In some states, the border lines ran through actual homes. The Partition of India is heavily criticized also because the British Empire decided to divide British-India based on Religious lines. The ones who claimed to talk about "Freedom, Democracy, Rule of Law, Equality, Liberty" etc decided to divide the Country on Religious lines. This resulted in millions dying as they crisscrossed these artificially drawn borders which required them to leave their homes, family, everything on the basis of religious lines. There was absolutely no requirement for the Brits to divide India at all.
The consequences of the division directly resulted in all the crazy stuff that happened after 1947. It was a ticking time bomb. 9/11 attacks, bombing of WTC, Taliban taking over Afghanistan, Iran going towards autocracy, emergence of ISIS and Al-Qaeda... all of this could have easily been prevented if India was not Partitioned. It was not just Indians but the World that paid the price for the British folly. And we Indians were in the right because in the entire Region we are the only prosperous ones as we chose Democracy, Freedom, Liberty, Rule of Law over Religious nonsense. The rest of the region fell apart into chaos after the Partition. Bangladesh is an outlier only because it took the support of India to help it achieve Independence from Pakistan and liberate itself. If not for India, Bangladesh would be in ruins today.
To explain it better, we have had fights/relationships between both communities going all the way back to 6th century. And the people who are Muslims today were of various Religious ethnicities (majority of whom were Hindus, Persian/Zoroastrians etc). So our relationships run way back before Anglo-Saxons entered our shores as traders/merchants. If you pick up our History you will see references to not just trade, politics or wars but also familial relations that spanned from present day Bangladesh all the way to the other corners of Iran. Even our Ancient Scriptures like Ramayana and Mahabharata has references to these regions and the Kingdoms within them. So yes when I say Indian Subcontinent I mean the entire extant region that includes present day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. So even if we fought wars with each other and one Kingdom sometimes reigning over other Kingdoms, we never felt it was some "outsider" who ruled over us.
The reason we blame the Brits is purely because of the Partition of India and the mess they created with drawing the various borders. That does not just include borders between India and Pakistan. It also includes borders between India and China. Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan and Iran. Afghanistan and Iran. They left a huge mess when they left as the lines drawn did not account for natural resource sharing or even towns/cities. In some states, the border lines ran through actual homes. The Partition of India is heavily criticized also because the British Empire decided to divide British-India based on Religious lines. The ones who claimed to talk about "Freedom, Democracy, Rule of Law, Equality, Liberty" etc decided to divide the Country on Religious lines. This resulted in millions dying as they crisscrossed these artificially drawn borders which required them to leave their homes, family, everything on the basis of religious lines. There was absolutely no requirement for the Brits to divide India at all.
The consequences of the division directly resulted in all the crazy stuff that happened after 1947. It was a ticking time bomb. 9/11 attacks, bombing of WTC, Taliban taking over Afghanistan, Iran going towards autocracy, emergence of ISIS and Al-Qaeda... all of this could have easily been prevented if India was not Partitioned. It was not just Indians but the World that paid the price for the British folly. And we Indians were in the right because in the entire Region we are the only prosperous ones as we chose Democracy, Freedom, Liberty, Rule of Law over Religious nonsense. The rest of the region fell apart into chaos after the Partition. Bangladesh is an outlier only because it took the support of India to help it achieve Independence from Pakistan and liberate itself. If not for India, Bangladesh would be in ruins today.