About This Lesson
This activity has students act as if they are Jawaharlal Nehru or Mohammad Ali Jinnah. They look at three issues surrounding British India at the time of Independence: Religious differences between, population distribution of, and violence between Hindus and Muslims. The question after each issue is whether British India should be one nation or separate nations. After students work out their opinions on their own, I paired each Nehru with a Jinnah and had them try to work out a "decolonization treaty" (the final page of the document). Regardless of whether it was easy or hard to negotiate, I then show them the article (in the Do Now and Exit Ticket handout) that explains what really happened.
