In sharp contrast, Mohammed Ali Jinnah delivered his radio address with a sense of triumph and the hope that the goal of achieving a separate Muslim state was to be realized soon. He appealed for peace and order, particularly to the Muslims in India, as he called for the need to ‘galvanise and concentrate all our energies to see that the transfer of power is assisted in a peaceful and orderly manner’.5 He left it to the Council of the All-India Muslim League to meet and decide on the proposal for a different constituent assembly for Muslims. There was little doubt that Jinnah made all the right noises about peace and orderly behaviour, but at the same time expressed his desire to move on with the creation of Pakistan.
Both addresses praised the manner in which Lord Mountbatten had dealt with the question of addressing the concerns of the people of India while deciding on the crucial question of how power would be transferred to the people of the subcontinent. The differences too were stark. Nehru spoke at length on how India would be guided by the belief and advice of Mahatma Gandhi, but Jinnah made no mention of Gandhi. Jinnah ended his short address with the words ‘Pakistan zindabad’. Nehru ended his address with ‘Jai Hind’. That left nobody in doubt that the transfer of power by the British to India would result in the creation of two independent countries, India and Pakistan.
Two and a half months after the addresses by Nehru and Jinnah, British India was transformed into two independent countries—Pakistan on 14 August and India a day later. The event, by all reckoning, was a hugely disruptive moment in the history of the subcontinent. Writing in the New Yorker in June 2015, William Dalrymple summed up the trauma in these words:
In August, 1947, when, after three hundred years in India, the British finally left, the subcontinent was partitioned into two independent nation states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Immediately, there began one of the greatest migrations in human history, as millions of Muslims trekked to West and East Pakistan (the latter now known as Bangladesh) while millions of Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction. Many hundreds of thousands never made it. Across the Indian subcontinent, communities that had coexisted for almost a millennium attacked each other in a terrifying outbreak of sectarian violence, with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other – a mutual genocide as unexpected as it was unprecedented. In Punjab and Bengal – provinces abutting India’s borders with West and East Pakistan, respectively – the carnage was especially intense, and savage sexual violence. Some seventy-five thousand women were raped, and many of them were then disfigured or dismembered.6
By the time—around early 1948—the two newly created nations settled down after suffering the trauma and disruption of Partition, between one and two million people had been killed in communal violence and as many as fifteen million people reported to have been uprooted.7 Another estimate put the number of people killed in communal riots at between half and one million and those uprooted at over eighteen million people.8
While recounting the large-scale displacement and human misery in the wake of Partition, historian Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar9 mentioned an important issue that Partition had raised. The challenge of Partition was not restricted to the formation of two independent countries, with a transfer of people across the newly created border between India and Pakistan; the more formidable challenge lay in how the nation as community would be transformed into nation as citizens of the two states.
The Role of Gandhi
Partition was not a sudden disruption. The seeds of the idea that the Indian subcontinent could be split into two independent countries had been sown some years before the British transferred power to the leaders of India and Pakistan in August 1947. Who were the likely disrupters? Would Gandhi be considered a disrupter? Or, for that matter, Jawaharlal Nehru or Mohammed Ali Jinnah?
India’s Partition was like no other disruption seen in the seven-odd decades of its existence as an independent country. Gandhi, Nehru or Jinnah may not have seen themselves as active disrupters, but they nevertheless—in different degrees—played roles that led to the disruption. Indeed, some may even argue that Gandhi was not a disrupter as he was firmly opposed to the idea of gaining freedom at the cost of India’s Partition.10
And yet, one of the many ironies of Gandhi’s life is that in spite of his not being a disrupter, history may judge him as having been one. Many argue that he was party to India’s disruption that led to a large-scale dislocation of people and killing of several hundred thousands of people. Gandhi was opposed to the idea of gaining freedom from British rule without a united India. But as Jinnah’s demands were getting more difficult and Partition looked imminent, Gandhi had no option other than to agree to Nehru’s compromise formula. Freedom from British rule with a divided India was a lesser evil than no independence or a deferred date for wresting India free from the clutches of colonial power.
Jinnah’s call for Direct Action Day to be observed by followers of the Muslim League on 15 August 1946 was a clear reminder to Gandhi that Partition had become inevitable. The communal violence and retaliation by both communities in Bengal and other parts of the country led to many deaths. And Gandhi from that date spent much of his time trying to soothe the hurt fabric of the nation severed and torn asunder by Hindu–Muslim communal tension and violence. Indeed, Gandhi was not part of the nation-wide celebrations that the Congress had organized in the wake of the country’s independence from British rule. He was praying for Hindu–Muslim unity.
Yes, Gandhi had an indirect role in the disruption of Partition. Given his stature and the respect he commanded from the entire Congress leadership at the time, it would have been difficult for them to move ahead with the Mountbatten Plan for partitioning the country if only Gandhi had put his foot down. This remains one of the big unanswered questions of the history of the subcontinent. If Gandhi had opposed Partition and insisted on freedom from British rule only if the country remained intact—and there was no mass migration of people and no killing—would the disruption have been avoided?
There is a view that Gandhi’s reluctance to stand in the way of what two of his most senior leaders—Nehru and Patel—were comfortable with was one of the reasons for his giving tacit approval to the Partition plan, even though he knew how disastrous and violent the consequences of the country’s division on religious lines would be. Gandhi’s role as a disrupter, therefore, has to be qualified. He could certainly have prevented the disruption, but his weak-kneed response to the Mountbatten Plan even as his two juniors—Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel—agreed to it, was what led to India’s most violent and costly disruption, one that changed the course of India’s politics. Even seventy years after India’s Independence, the country faces the consequences of that disruption. Writing in 2017, historian Sarah Ansari observed:
Today, the two countries’ relationship is far from healthy. Kashmir remains a flashpoint; both countries are nuclear-armed. Indian Muslims are frequently suspected of harbouring loyalties towards Pakistan; non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan are increasingly vulnerable thanks to the so-called Islamisation of life there since the 1980s. Seven decades on, well over a billion people still live in the shadow of Partition.11
Jinnah the Disrupter
Mohammed Ali Jinnah is an obvious suspect as a disrupter. A strong votary of nationalism, he nursed a deep suspicion about the Congress. He was a firm believer that the Muslim community’s interest would never be protected or preserved in an India led by the Congress after the end of the British rule.
The irony, however, is that Jinnah, a lawyer by training and profession, began his political career as a member of the Congress. After studying at Bombay University and Lincoln’s Inn, London, he started his own career as a lawyer, but also joined the Congress, although he did not occupy any leadership position. In 1913,12 he joined the Muslim League, set up in 1906 as an outfit to voice the interests of India’s largest minority, the Muslims. In just three years, Jinnah became the president of the Muslim League.13 His
first brush with the Congress was when Mahatma Gandhi returned to India and took charge of the party. Under Gandhi’s leadership, the Congress in 1919 launched a movement of non-cooperation, whose chief goal was to mobilize Indians to boycott everything to do with British rule. Jinnah opposed the policy and on this ground resigned from the Congress. Till then, Jinnah had worked towards Hindu–Muslim unity and nurtured his image as one who could strengthen ties between the two communities. But his opposition to Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement pushed him out of the Congress and closer to the Muslim League.
At the start of Jinnah’s political career, there was no inkling that the young lawyer would soon turn so bitterly against the Congress. Inspired by the brand of nationalism that Gopal Krishna Gokhale promoted in Bombay, Jinnah saw himself as someone who could be one day called the Muslim Gokhale. In the few years he was associated with the Congress, Jinnah worked hard to ensure a better deal for the Muslims of India in political processes and participation in the freedom movement. He also built a reputation for himself as one who worked hard to achieve the political union of Hindus and Muslims. Gokhale even called him ‘the best ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity’. At Jinnah’s instance, the Congress and the Muslim League began holding their annual sessions jointly. The Muslims got the promise of a significant concession from the British government in the form of a separate electorate for themselves in 1909, but the Congress always opposed this demand. Jinnah did not give up on a separate electorate for Muslims, and that remained one of his primary missions as a Muslim leader. But the holding of joint annual sessions by the Congress and the Muslim League, at least on three occasions, gave rise to a new hope of an understanding between the two parties. And indeed, a new pact was reached after the Lucknow joint session, according to which both the organizations would strive hard for constitutional reform as part of their demand for freedom.
It was some progress as far as the Hindus and Muslims coming together for a national movement was concerned. For the British, such unity was a cause for concern and a signal that if the unity got stronger, their colonial rule in India would be further weakened.
The rise of Mahatma Gandhi from 1914 onwards, particularly after the launch of the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1919, also coincided with the decline of Jinnah. Many Muslim leaders formed their own regional parties or saw reason to be part of the Congress movement. Jinnah also began to realize that his own political belief was increasingly becoming incompatible with that of the Congress leaders. He started distancing himself from the Congress and eventually left the party. During the 1920s and 1930s, Jinnah devoted himself to rebuilding the Muslim League and a more unifying cause for the Muslims to get together under the League umbrella. But those efforts did not yield much for Jinnah, who was often seen by many regional Muslim leaders as too nationalistic to protect and promote the interests of Muslims. Jinnah’s image as someone who believed in Hindu–Muslim unity became a handicap for his political career. So crestfallen and frustrated had Jinnah become that he moved to London and began pursuing legal practice there. The Congress was on the ascendant during this period and became so dominant a force in the independence movement that it became more assertive, often underestimating Jinnah and his power to mobilize Muslims.
As talks for the formation of a national government gained currency in 1935, Jinnah saw it as an opportunity to once again try and reclaim leadership of the Muslim community in India. He returned from London and resumed his activities as a key leader of the Muslim League. Ironically, once again, it was a Congress mistake—arising out of its supreme confidence from its electoral victories in the 1937 polls—because of which Jinnah managed to stage a comeback to national politics. The Congress did remarkably well in the provincial elections of 1937, but the Muslim League also did well in the seats reserved for Muslims, not losing a single seat. But even then, the Congress flatly refused to form provincial governments in coalition with the Muslim League in areas where the latter had some presence. Thus, in all the six provinces, the Congress formed governments without the League. This soured relations between the Congress and the Muslim League further and just three years later, the League adopted its famous declaration at its Lahore meeting that demanded the partition of India and creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan.
The idea of a separate country for Muslims that could be named Pakistan had been mooted some years ago by Choudhry Rahmat Ali in his pamphlet Now or Never, Are We to Live or Perish Forever?, published in 1933. Ali at that time was a law student at the University of Cambridge and he presented his proposal for creating the state of Pakistan to the British and Indian delegates at the Third Round Table Conference held in London that year. While this idea found no takers at that meeting, it was to be picked up and adopted by the Lahore conference of the Muslim League seven years later.
The irony of Ali’s initiative was that once Pakistan was born, he decided to settle down in the newly created state in 1948. But soon he had trouble with the new establishment as Pakistan Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan expelled him from the country after confiscating his belongings. Ali returned to London in October 1948 and died a lonely man in 1951.14
Even though Jinnah believed that Hindu–Muslim unity in an undivided India was possible, he realized that the structure under which this could be achieved was not acceptable to the Congress. He had always been a votary of a federation in which provincial governments enjoyed a reasonable degree of autonomy in administration and policy formulation. But he sensed that the Congress could betray the League. His feeling was confirmed by Nehru’s speech in July 1946 qualifying the Congress’s commitment to the Cabinet Mission plan for a three-tier federation for India, which would have meant that while the Centre would retain some powers, the states would have jurisdiction over many other issues, with the third tier looking after the rest. In such a system, Jinnah believed the Muslim League would have reasonable control over the administration of the second and the third tiers, taking care of the interests of the Muslims. With Nehru qualifying the Congress’s commitment to this plan, Jinnah lost no time pressing for Partition, without any ambiguity.
In that sense, Jinnah was a disrupter. His earlier vision of promoting Hindu–Muslim unity and his belief that Muslims could live in a Hindu-majority India disappeared when it came to the crunch—the final years of the British rule when the deliberations over the modality and procedures for power transfer reached a critical stage.15 Jinnah made it abundantly clear to all that he was for Partition, come what may and whatever be the consequences for millions of Indians living across the country in terms of relocation.
CHAPTER 3
MAKING THE BEST OF AN INEVITABILITY
Nehru was a central figure in the negotiations for India’s Independence and, therefore, had a role in the final decision leading to Partition. The conventional opinion of him is of a leader who had a vision and who could look ahead of his time. However, the sequence of developments in the run-up to India’s Independence presents a slightly more nuanced image of Nehru.
When the British government decided to send Mountbatten as viceroy to succeed Lord Wavell, the plan was to grant India its much-desired freedom from foreign rule by June 1948. That timetable, however, was completely upset after Mountbatten landed in India in March 1947 and reviewed the ground situation. And he decided that the British must leave by August 1947, instead of waiting for another ten months.1 What brought about the sudden advancement of Britain’s exit from India?
In early 1946, the Cabinet Mission plan had envisaged a three-tier federation for India. The Union government in New Delhi would keep foreign affairs, communications, defence and only those financial matters necessary for meeting the financial requirements of the Union. India after freedom, according to this plan, would consist of three broad territorial groups. The first group would include Hindu-majority provinces, the second group would consist of Muslim-majority provinces and the third group would include Muslim-majority Bengal and the Hindu-majority Assam. All three group
s would operate virtually as autonomous states, but under a federation called India, with its Union government functioning from New Delhi.2
This was a plan that met with Gandhi’s desire to have a free united India. Not surprisingly, the Congress leadership accepted the idea and so did the Muslim League, giving rise to a hope that India’s freedom would not necessitate any partition. However, such hopes were dashed as the Muslim League took objection to a statement made by Nehru in July 1946. Nehru, perhaps reflecting his own concerns and those of many other senior leaders over the Cabinet Mission plan, said, according to one account, in a provocative speech that suggested that the Congress was not bound to any predetermined arrangement: ‘We are not bound by a single thing except that we have decided to go into the Constituent Assembly.’3 This infuriated Jinnah. It further fuelled his distrust of the Congress party,4 which he feared would like to impose Hindu rule on the minority Muslim community in a free India. Jinnah felt that was a discreet repudiation of the Cabinet Mission plan. He convened a quick working committee meeting of the Muslim League. The outcome was that the League decided to walk out of the Cabinet Mission plan’s three-tier federation of India after it was freed from British rule. Differences between the Congress and Muslim League got worse after Jinnah declared his resolve to observe 16 August 1946 as the Direct Action Day, which led to large-scale communal violence in different parts of the country. Jinnah’s objective behind the call to Direct Action Day was to suspend all business and put pressure on the British government to yield to the Muslim League’s demand to divide the country on the basis of religion and thereby pave the way for the birth of a Muslim-dominated Pakistan.
However, communal violence spread in the wake of the protest rallies organized by the Muslim League. Bengal witnessed the worst kind of killing and arson, with Muslims and Hindus staging pitched battles on the streets of Calcutta. Muslims became more determined in their resolve to have a separate country for themselves. Gandhi was unhappy with these developments and began his tour of the nation to douse the fires of communal unrest and restore Hindu–Muslim unity. He visited Noakhali in eastern Bengal, where Hindus had suffered hugely, and later visited Bihar, where Muslims bore the brunt of communal violence at the hands of the Hindus. At the heart of this flare-up was Nehru’s July speech that became the trigger for Jinnah to call off the League’s commitment to the Cabinet Mission plan. If the three-tier federation plan for India after freedom had gone smoothly, the disruption of Partition perhaps could have witnessed a different script.
The Rise of Goliath Page 3
