1947: The partition of India
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The partition of India: I
1947 Partition
Dawn April 29, 2007
REVIEWS: The play of forces
Reviewed by Shahid Javed Burki
There is no other subject in the history of the South Asian subcontinent that has attracted more analytical and historical interest than that of the British decision to partition their Indian empire into two parts, a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan. What was extraordinary about that decision was not that the British were made to recognise that the India they had ruled for almost two centuries could not be kept united. What made the move by London in response to the unrelenting pressure by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League such a historic event was the acceptance that religion could be the basis of partition. Both the Hindu-dominated Congres Party and the British administration operating out of New Delhi had advanced secularism as the basis for governance. A secular state that protected the rights of all religious communities was the ideology pursued by the Congres although some of the political idiom used by Mahatama Gandhi had deep Hindu overtones. The British also believed that they could bring peace to the potentially divisive population over which they ruled by keeping religion out of politics as well out of statecraft.
Jinnah and his Muslim League stood these arguments on their head. They demanded the recognition of India’s large Muslim community as a separate entity since their faith distinguished them from the rest of India. This concept, developed over time in response to the campaign by the Congres to keep India united, eventually took the form of a two-nation theory. Not only were Muslims distinct from all other religious groups, argued Jinnah, they were, in fact, a separate nation that deserved a state of its own.
Much of the existing literature on the Indian independence movement and the partition of British India, accordingly, looks at the fateful events leading up to the creation of two states in what was once a colony administered by London from three very different angles. The British writers have focused on how London attempted to keep India united while recognising that minorities had political, social and economic rights that should not be overwhelmed by the majority. The Indian historians have examined the events from the perspective of a movement led by some extraordinary men who were able to challenge the once powerful British administration without shedding much blood. In a century that had witnessed some extremely bloody convulsions, the Indian Independence Movement was surprisingly peaceful. When blood was eventually shed, it was not to expel the colonialists but in sectarian violence among the subcontinent’s different religious groups.
The Muslim examination of the independence movement is understandably focused on how this particular community organised itself politically and successfully challenged two more powerful forces — the Hindu-dominated Congres Party and the British administration. The Muslim League’s success in creating the state of Pakistan could not have been anticipated in the early 1940s when Jinnah raised the demand for the creation of an independent Muslim state. But the political acumen of this man, the honesty of purpose he displayed, his extraordinary charisma, his ability to keep a fractious people under one political umbrella, all contributed to the success of the movement he launched to procure a separate state for the Muslims of British India. In examining the creation of Pakistan as a historical event of great significance, the Pakistani historians have understandably focused on Jinnah’s role, his personality and his character.
Narendra Singh Sarila’s book — the subject of this review — is a very different account of the events that led to the departure of the British from India and their decision to leave the country divided not united. Sarila brings many credentials to his book. As a young diplomat he was appointed to serve on the staff of Lord Louis Mountbatten, India’s last Viceroy and the man given an enormous amount of power and freedom to determine the future of the land the British had once ruled. In some of the more recent writings of foreign historians — for instance the recent book by Stanley Wolpert — Mountbatten does not emerge as an attractive character. He seems to have been motivated in his actions by several flaws and weaknesses in his character. These led to the decisions that were to hurt Pakistan and benefit India. While Sarila’s Mountbatten is also not an attractive historical figure, the reasons for some of his actions are found in the play of forces that had considerable historical content. As suggested by the title of the book, the author believes that the British decision to partition India was not the result of a brilliantly conceived and articulated programme of action by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Instead, it was the outcome of the ‘great game’ that the British and other western powers continued to play in the region that was to become first West Pakistan and later Pakistan.
Sarila is obviously influenced in his thinking by the 9/11 event and the ensuing conflict between the West, led by the United States, and radical Islam. He sees the growth of radicalism among the Muslims of the northwestern areas of South Asia — parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan — as an outcome of the game the British played. The chain of events and motives behind the British move in the 1940s as seen by Sarila was the product of a simple logic. By the time Mohammad Ali Jinnah raised his demand for the creation of Pakistan, the western powers had already brought much of the Muslim world under their political control. The British and the French had carved out the remnants of the Ottoman Empire into their spheres of influence. By extending them to South Asia by creating a Muslim state they could also dominate what were then India’s northwestern areas. This was an attractive proposition and was behind their push for the creation of Pakistan. In this story, Jinnah comes out as a pawn of the imperial powers rather than as an independent operator working to secure political freedom for the community of which he was a member.
Using the idiom of counterfactual history, the author carries forward his argument to the present times. He strongly implies that 9/11 would not have occurred had the British not played the great game by creating Pakistan. Had India been left united, New Delhi would have been able to absorb Islamic militancy within its political, economic and social structures and not allow it to parade so aggressively on the world scene. This is an important book and needs to be read in Pakistan since it puts clearly an argument that has begun to be made by the Indian establishment in its dialogue with the West. ________________________________________
The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition
By Narendra Singh Sarila
HarperCollins
320pp. $26.95
The partition of India: II
1947: Partition II
Dawn December 20, 2007
REVIEWS: Behind the scenes
Reviewed by A.R. Siddiqi
The story of Partition is an elegy without end. It is black with the congealed gore of the dead and resonant with the desperate yells of those in throes of death waiting for a saviour.
It was on the whole a weird combination of the shocking ignorance of the masses about the distinction between ‘freedom’ and ‘Partition’ and the hugely misplaced vision of the Indian (Hindu and Muslim) leadership to equate the end of the British Raj with independence. As the author would put it, while words like ‘Pakistan’, ‘Swaraj’ and ‘Partition’ acquired ‘concrete’ meaning ‘freedom’ itself was not clearly defined.
The ‘meanings’ of Pakistan had been ‘deliberately and conveniently avoided and ignored’ for the Muslims of South Asia by the Muslim League’s ‘elected’ legislators who gathered in Delhi in April 1946, to demand a single state instead of two (or more) sovereign autonomous states.
The ‘talismanic’ word, Pakistan was used ‘strategically’ to ‘rally’ the gullible, unwary masses round a cause little understood and still less explained. When an eccentric British member of the Indian Civil Service, Malcolm Darling, during his long equestrian journey through the north Indian countryside asked a village herdsman about Pakistan, he answered: ‘sanu kutch patta nahien!’ (we know nothing about it).
What Pakistan really meant was even more ‘opaque’. Was it the territorial quest for a new, sovereign Muslim country or a political interpretation of a ‘wildly improbable millenarian dream?’ Pakistan meant ‘myriad things’ to different people. The proposition could be interpreted either way to suit the pragmatic or Utopian perceptions of the Muslim League leadership.
Meanwhile ‘the issue of territory was repeatedly fudged’. Rehmat Ali, the young Cambridge scholar who coined the acronym Pakistan in the early ’30s, had a ‘pan-subcontinental’ view of Pakistan based on doctrinaire rather then physical borders regardless of demographic and communal (Hindu-Muslim) ratios of the respective areas or the zones. His was virtually a formula for the Balkanisation of India with the territorial and administrative balance titled heavily in favour of the Muslim minority.
Rehmat Ali’s notional map showed a ‘fragmented patchwork of the subcontinent’ including such largely princely states as Hyderabad and Bhopal and cities like Aligarh and Delhi with predominantly Hindu population as independent entities outside India’s body politic and parts of Muslim Pakistan. Rehmat Ali’s Pakistan was ‘an imaginary nationalistic dream as well as a cold territorial reality.’ The dream was dominated by wishful thinking or an ecstatic vision of a Utopia sans cartography — almost a heaven on earth. One is irresistibly reminded here of the ‘Cloud-Cuckoo Land’ of Aristophanes in The Birds, one of his best surviving plays, ‘where the birds are kings and gods’: a Utopian sort of a commonwealth.
Imagine a land mass as big as India being divided ‘against the clock’ in some five weeks. Radcliffe arrived in India on July 8, 1947, and by August 17 his Boundary Commission award was out in its absolute finality beyond any question.
The ‘open-ended, conveniently ambiguous Pakistan demand’ came ‘crashing into territorial realities of population ratios and land usage’. The border drawn was little more than an ‘unknown border line’ open to endless mutually conflicting, antagonistic interpretations, endangering the cross-border peace and harmony of the two neighbours, born out of a huge trust deficit. The June 3 plan had been ‘so rushed’ and ‘inadequately’ thought out, that it had been difficult to decide ‘who was a rightful Pakistani and who was a rightful Indian.’ At the stroke of midnight on August 14, 1947, centuries old fellow citizens, even families, stood divided without a tangible thought about their status as to which state and society they actually belonged.Was it a casual leave taking or a traumatic farewell for ever? How on earth could such a catastrophic metamorphosis — from one of a compatriot to a foreigner — take place overnight? None of the leadership on either side of the divide had prepared the people, even remotely, to mentally accept the wages of the holocaust and lessen its stunning impact.
Besides the great human tragedy accompanying the infamous Radcliffe award, there were a ‘variety of eccentric features’ it ‘bestowed’ on the subcontinent’s political geography. The award created a ‘geographical settlement’ difficult to manage ‘at the best of times, even if all parties were in agreement.’
In Punjab the ‘most contested’ parts were Lahore, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur and Jullundar. In Bengal, Murshidabad and Malda the two Muslim majority districts, notionally conceded to Pakistan were awarded to India. The Pakistan flag raised at the district headquarters in Malda was suddenly replaced by the Indian flag on August 17.
The author candidly highlights the problems involved in the division of the military forces on religious lines and their role in accelerating partition. She writes at some length about the outbreak of the massive naval mutiny in Bombay in February 1946. Thousands of naval staff mutinied against the harsh behaviour of their British officers and ‘low pay and bad food’. The naval mutiny almost coincided with the disbandment of the Azad Hind Fauj of Subhash Chandera Bose after the surrender of the Japanese forces.
The Second World War and Partition ‘bled’ into each other hastening partition. Nearly half a million Indian soldiers had to be ‘cut and pasted into the new national formation’. The task, which Auchinleck had ‘reckoned’ would take five to 10 years had to be completed by March 1948 in all respects.
The author blames the British squarely for their ‘detached and diluted sense of responsibility’ in their ‘shameful flight’ (Stanley Wolpert’s words) from India. The British lost both their ‘manpower and the moral will to continue the Raj at the chalk face of empire…’ Mountbatten’s advancing the transfer of power date from June 1948 to August 1947 at a whim, made it even more incumbent for the British morally and practically to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
Yasmin Khan’s is a wide, all-embracing prism reflecting myriad of real-life characters behind the scenes little known to the outside world and yet contributing significantly to the traumatic epic of Partition. Gandhi, Jinnah, Jawahar, Mountbatten and others of their class, though centre-stage, had a supporting cast of scores prompting from the wings.
Industrial tycoons like Birlas and Dalmias played a significant role in generously funding the loungers and thus affecting the political agenda, no matter in how small a way. Communally-driven militias like the R S S, the Muslim League National Guard, and Zilma Pakhtoon with their ‘rigid, right wing’ ideologies formed the ‘dark underbelly’ of Partition. ________________________________________
The Great Partition: The making of India and Pakistan
By Yasmin Khan
Penguin Books, India
Available with Paramount Books, Karachi
251pp. Rs876
Documenting the partition of India
1947: Documenting partition
Dawn May 27, 2007
REVIEWS: Documenting partition
Reviewed by Rabab Naqvi
ALMost 60 years after partition, historians are still exploring whether it was inevitable and who was really responsible for it. It is commonly believed that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah alone was responsible for the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan. K.C. Yadav has put together a collection of old and new writings which provides an alternative perspective. It is also an opportunity to read excerpts from hard-to-get books such as Rammanohar Lohia’s Guilty Men of Partition, Ambedkar’s Pakistan and others.
The main purpose of the book is to project what is known as the revisionist point of view of the events that led to the creation of Pakistan as opposed to the traditionalist approach: ‘Congres for unity’ and ‘Muslim League for partition’. Running throughout the book is the theme that the division of India was avertable had Congres leadership and other Hindu groups paid attention to valid Muslim demands. Jinnah’s strategy was to protect the rights of the Muslims within a united India. The arrogance of the Congres leadership, chauvinism of the Hindu nationalist and the fear of being dominated by upper caste Hindus in free India, pushed Jinnah, although reluctantly, into adopting an intransigent position.
Under the guise of nationalism, Hindu intellectuals and activists advocated a pernicious ideology. Proponents of Pakistan used the two-nation theory but it was the Hindu supremacist Savarkar, founder of the Hindu Mahasabha, who came up with the term. Lala Lajpat Rai considered Hindu-Muslim unity impossible because according to him Islam did not allow for it. Lala Hardayal believed that the future of the Hindu race lay in the Shuddhi (purification) of Muslims.
In recent years, with the opening up of historical documents to the public, the discovery of new facts, the subsiding of emotions, and passing away of personalities directly involved in the independence and partition of India, intellectuals and historians are in a position to analyse the reasons for this momentous decision more critically and objectively. The traditional approach of holding Jinnah and the Muslim League responsible for the formation of Pakistan is too simplistic. This collection of essays demolishes the myth that the making of Pakistan was the doing of one man. It examines the complex political and economic processes, the power struggle, missed opportunities, and complicities that led to the creation of Pakistan.
There are multiple reasons for the division and the Hindu leadership has also come under attack. Rammanohar Lohia writes that the Hindu leadership refused to accept the legitimate demands of the Muslims. In his first hand account of the meeting of the Congres Working Committee, which accepted the scheme of partition, Lohia is very critical of Nehru and Patel. Lohia writes that Nehru and Patel collaborated with Mountbatten and committed themselves to dividing India without even informing Mahatma Gandhi. “Messrs Nehru and Patel were offensively aggressive to Gandhi at this meeting,” he writes. He is particularly critical of Nehru. He paints Nehru as jealous of Subhas Chandra Bose and a neurotic pro-British.
Unlike Nehru, no one can accuse Jinnah of being in the pocket of the British or question his integrity. B.R. Ambedkar writing on Jinnah says, “It is doubtful if there is a politician in India to whom the adjective incorruptible can be more fitly applied.” Ambedkar also writes that Jinnah “could never be suspected of being a tool in the hands of the British by even the worst of his enemies.” How come that the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, an ardent supporter of united India, a constitutional expert, became the architect of Pakistan? According to Ambedkar, the Hindu-Muslim divide was there in the making for a long time, it just culminated in the creation of Pakistan. “The Hindus and the Muslims have trodden parallel paths … But they never travelled the same path,” he writes.
If opportunities were not mishandled, Hindus and Muslims could have travelled the same paths, says B. Shiva Rao. He was close to some of the processes that led to the division of India in 1947. He offers his personal insight into the lack of foresight and bad judgment on the part of the Congres leadership that forced the two communities to follow separate paths. Rao’s assertion is that the partition could have been averted and he calls Jinnah “a late and reluctant convert to the scheme for India’s partition”.
Asim Roy also portrays Jinnah as a reluctant convert. He questions some of the myths about Jinnah and the partition embedded in the Indian history books dwelling on the traditionalist approach. He argues that it was the uncompromising attitude of the Congres and the Hindu chauvinists that led to the demand for Pakistan. In his long and scholarly article, he meticulously goes through the traditionalists’ reasoning and demolishes their assumptions.
V.N. Datta examines the causes for the transformation of both Jinnah and Iqbal from devoted defenders of united India to ardent bidders for a separate state.
No history of partition can be complete without reference to Punjab and Bengal, called the ‘bedrocks’ of partition. Two long chapters separately analyse the situation in each province.
R. Palme Dutt explains British motivation in dividing India and traces the long history of the exploitation of India, and now Pakistan too, at the hands of the British and Americans.
Eight out of the nine essays present a different aspect of the problem and are informative. Some offer a first-hand account of the interplay of situations, processes and personalities. All are analytical and insightful. The article by Margaret Bourke-White seems a little out of place. It has nothing new or enlightening to offer but its inclusion may help sell the book in America.
The book also contains valuable and interesting supplementary material. The section ‘The voices of disunity and division’ includes writings of intellectuals and politicians who propagated Hindu-Muslim differences. In this section it is Lala Hardyal, V.D. Savarkar, Annie Besant and Lala Lajpat Rai that top the list not Jinnah or Iqbal. ‘The Muslim voices for freedom and common destiny’ is a listing of the position of Muslim organisations in favour of united India. Amongst the documents having bearing on the subject is Jinnah’s last will and testament and some letters exchanged between Jinnah and Feroz Khan Noon, just before partition, about the purchase of property by Jinnah in the Hindu-dominated Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh. Feroz Khan Noon himself owned a house in the Kulu Valley of Himachal Pradesh where his wife went to rest after working for the creation of Pakistan.
Jinnah was lucky that the deal did not go through but it also shows how very ignorant the leaders were of the consequences of partition. Jinnah and some others along with him assumed that after partition they would be free to live in any part of India. Nehru is quoted as saying that he did not realise that the judgment of dividing India was irrevocable. He expected partition to be temporary.
The publication should be a worthwhile contribution to the existing literature on partition. It provides the reader not only access to the views of intellectuals, politicians and historians but also to all other pertinent documents that can help common readers and serious researchers delve into the subject deeper without having to dig up each document separately. ________________________________________
India Divided: 1947
Edited by K.C.Yadav
Hope India Publications
415pp. Indian Rs995
