PARTITION

Narendra Singh Sarila on the Inevitability of Partition

That Indian Independence and unity were irreconcilable and neither the Indians nor the British are to blame for the partition of India, is the view taken by several commentators in the soul-searching that has gone on during India's 50th anniversary celebrations. Since in democracies, various sections of the population have to settle their political differences among themselves, the hidden fissures in society - as here between Muslims and Hindus - come to the surface, as the election processes advance.

Nevertheless, one may wonder whether unity could not have been preserved if, only if:

* In 1934 the British had not decreed the Communal Award giving extraordinary weightage to Muslim voters in elections and later Churchill's government had not so doggedly supported to Mr. Jinnah's separatist demands, ("Hindoostan, Muslimstan and Princesstan", as Churchill used to say).

* In 1939 the Congress Party governments that then held power in eight of the elevan British Indian provinces had not resigned, thereby reducing the British need to depend on the Congress Party's help to mobilise Indian resources for the war and in return pay heed to its demands.

* In 1942 Mahatma Gandhi had not launched the Quit India movement which was taken in Britain as a stab in the back at the moment of their direct peril and turned them decisively against Mr. Gandhi and towards Mr. Jinnah, who was quick to promise that he would try to ensure the loyalty of Muslim troops -nearly 40% of the British-Indian Army - in the war;

* In the post-war negotiations for Independence, the Congress Party had on the one hand given a clear indication to a weakened and insecure British that their government of a free India would cooperate on issues of British's vital interests in the world e.g. in the Middle East and remain in the Commonwealth provided they abandoned ideas of partition; and to threaten them with a general revolt which Britain had neither the resources nor the will to suppress, if they did not; and refused to enter the Viceroy's Executive Council till the matter was clarified; and

* By 1946 the Congress Party had abandoned the creed of passive resistance and prepared the masses to resist partition.

The problem of Muslim separatism was not the result of economic factors or capable of being solved by socialism or secularism; it had to be tackled politically in the run-up to independence, not least with the help of the third party, Britain. After all, this was the track finally adopted in 1947 with Mountbatten. And it was through British cooperation that four-fifths of India was saved as one unit and the Indian princely states brought in.

It is a mistaken view expressed by some commentators that any policy of 'give and take' with Britain during the period 1939 to 1946 would have alienated the people from the Congress Party, because the masses trusted Mahatma Gandhi and would have followed him. After all the Congress did not fracture when finally in 1947 a policy of compromise with Britain and even partition and membership of the Commonwealth were agreed to.

The problem was our leaders' sensitiveness that compromises with the colonial power would be demeaning to India's so called "self-respect" and their impatience to start remoulding India economically and socially.

It is also not correct that the acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan, because it denied Pakistan, would have ensured Indian unity. Under this plan there was a built - in option for the whole of Punjab, Sindh, the NWFP and Baluchistan on the one side and the whole of Bengal and Assam on the other, which were then under Muslim League governments, to secede after British withdrawal.

I am convinced that if these two groups of provinces had broken away the Congress Party at the Centre would have shunned to suppress the secession for fear of a civil war.                      

(Source: The Times of India, 10 September, 1997)

Jinnah and the Two Nation Theory

Jinnah was influenced by the liberal Balkrishan Gokhale and defended Lokmanya Tilak when the British made him stand on the dock. There were few who could match his secularism. He refused to call Gandhi Mahatma. He opposed Gandhi for supporting the Khilafat movement and told him not to encourage the Maulanas and avoid the use of religion in politics. He ate consumed and his sister Fatima, who mostly accompanied him, did not observe purdah. He offered namaz more as a political weapon than for his own spiritual needs.

From a secular position in the earlier phase of his political career, Jinnah used religion in a negative way for the creation of Pakistan. He was representative of the weak Muslim business classes who could not see their future in a united India as the Hindu business class was comparatively strong.

The day he won Pakistan he threw away the two-nation theory like a used.               

 (Lajpat Rai in The New Age, 31 August - 6 September, 1997)