There was another factor that contributed to the worsening of relations between the Congress and the Muslim League. The interim government, set up on 2 September 1946, was led by leaders of both the Congress and Muslim League. Communal violence, triggered by Direction Action Day launched by the Muslim League, continued even after the formation of the interim government. Even as those challenges were handled by the new government, the strained relationship between the two parties was showing in the performance and conduct of the top ministers in the interim government.5 The home minister of the interim government, Vallabhbhai Patel, did not take kindly to fiscal proposals of the finance minister in that government, Liaquat Ali Khan, a member of the Muslim League. Deep and insidious motives were read into Liaquat Ali’s budget proposals. The fiscal levies were meant for all industries, but Patel was deeply disturbed as Gujarati businessmen were seriously affected as well. In Patel, Nehru had found a new ally in his fight against the Muslim League.6
The Nehru–Patel relationship had a different aspect. As prime minister of the interim government, Nehru was closer to Patel than to Liaquat Ali Khan, who belonged to the Muslim League.7 Thus, Patel’s reservations against Liaquat Ali struck a sympathetic chord with Nehru. But within the Congress party, it was clear to all that Patel and Nehru were competing with each other to be the most favourite candidate to lead India after freedom. Both were vying for Gandhi’s attention and sought his favour. Gandhi also made no bones about who his favourite leader was between the two. At the Bardoli meeting of the Congress to elect the party president in 1929, Gandhi chose to withdraw from the race after voting and transferred the votes cast in his favour to be counted for Nehru—an act that helped Nehru gain more votes than Patel.8 Without Gandhi’s partial act, Nehru would have been a poor second to Patel in that presidential race to lead the Congress. Patel did become the party president, but only two years later. The rivalry between Nehru and Patel within the Congress was a poorly kept secret. Yet, when Nehru saw the Muslim League spoiling the idea of India gaining freedom as a united country, he eventually played along with Patel in settling for the partition of the country, even though he was conscious of the mayhem it would cause.
In the final analysis, Nehru too was a disrupter in that he went along with the British plan for dividing India into two countries before granting it independence from its rule. He made a lot of public noise about his desire to gain freedom for a united India. But when it came to postponing the date for independence in the absence of a credible resolution of differences between the Congress and the Muslim League, he chose Partition, even though he was opposed to it at heart.9
Nehru as a disrupter was different from Jinnah as a disrupter. Nehru suffered from a lack of clarity on his approach to Partition. On the one hand, he was guided by his vision of a free united India wherein Hindus and Muslims lived in peace and harmony—a vision that he had inherited from Gandhi. But on the other hand, he was getting restless over the Congress’s failure to bring the Muslim League and Jinnah round to accepting the terms on which the new united India would be constituted. The thought was that in the chase towards realizing the vision of a free united India, the goal of securing freedom from British rule should not get postponed almost indefinitely. In this regard, Nehru and Patel were more or less in agreement with the idea that popular aspirations for a free India, even if it is achieved after Partition, cannot be ignored.
In sharp contrast, Jinnah was clear that disruption or Partition was the only route that must be adopted for freedom from British rule. Jinnah was transparent about his disruptive motives. But Nehru was not that categorical. Partition—or the disruption to be caused by it—was the second best option, but nevertheless an option if the larger goal of securing freedom from British rule was to be achieved. Jinnah’s brand of disruption was easier to gauge. The adverse consequences of Jinnah’s brand of disruption were also easy to manage for one knew what he had hoped to achieve through Partition.
The Impact
The consequences of Partition were felt in many areas, and these consequences lasted for many decades after India gained independence. With Partition, India had to let go of a little less than a fourth of its total land area. Before Partition in 1947, the total land area of India was about 4.3 million square kilometres. With what was then known as East Bengal (which became Bangladesh from 1971) and West Punjab becoming Pakistan, an independent country, the total land area that went out of undivided India was about 1 million square kilometres. In other words, India after Partition saw 24 per cent of its total land area being hived off as a new country—Pakistan. This was perhaps the first and immediate consequence of the disruption caused by Partition.
The loss of land was painful for proponents of a free undivided India. It became more painful when they realized that Partition also meant less land per person in India and more land per person in Pakistan. The population pressure on India was already substantial and clear to its citizens in 1947. It got worse after Partition. The total population in undivided India was estimated at 390 million of which about 60 million went to Pakistan. In other words, while India ceded close to a quarter of its land to Jinnah’s dream, the population pressure in divided India increased as only 15 per cent of undivided India’s population went to Pakistan. Even after taking into account the millions of refugees crossing the newly created borders—Muslims walking over to Pakistan and Hindus entering India—the population–land ratio for India did not get better. While Pakistan, too, had to face the problems of rehabilitating refugees from India, the pressure on India was more. In that sense, the Partition of India as a disruption has had one of the most widespread and long-lasting impacts on India’s politics, society and even the economy.
One of the outcomes of Partition was that Kashmir became a part of India even though it had a Muslim majority. One reason was perhaps that in spite of having a Muslim majority, Kashmir had a Hindu king, Maharaja Hari Singh. Kashmir became a bone of contention when the British left India. The newly created state of Pakistan claimed control over Kashmir on the ground that it was a Muslim-majority area, while the Congress leadership did not wish to give it up; one of the reasons it cited was of course the fact that it was ruled by a Hindu king.
Kashmir is still a contentious issue between India and Pakistan. More than seven decades after Partition, the relations between India and Pakistan are still dictated by who should rule Kashmir. That is one measure of the nature of the disruption caused by Partition.
There were about 584 princely states in British India at the time of India’s Independence, whose future dispensation was left to the rulers there.10 Historian Ramachandra Guha, however, notes that the princely states at the time of India’s Independence were fewer. He writes:
One historian puts it at 521; another at 565. They were more than 500, by any count, and they varied very widely in terms of size and status. At one end of the scale were the massive states of Kashmir and Hyderabad, each of the size of a large European country; at the other end, tiny fiefdoms or jagirs of a dozen or less villages.11
Many of these princely states were not part of the major provinces and the presidencies under British control. Thus, while the British government decided to hand over these provinces and presidencies to the people of India, the decision on these 584 princely states was left to the individual rulers. An option was given to them to join either India or Pakistan. By the time the British left India on 15 August 1947, about a dozen of the princely states decided to join Pakistan. Congress leaders worked hard to convince the remaining princely states to join India.12 That made sure that India’s territorial integrity after Partition and Independence was by and large protected. Vallabhbhai Patel, Congress leader and India’s home minister, played a crucial role in ensuring that these princely states signed on the Instrument of Accession that essentially meant that they gave up their sovereignty to be part of the Indian Union. The only thing that remained with them was their financial allowances and perquisites, known as privy purse
s. Three princely states, Travancore, Bhopal and Jodhpur, agreed to be part of India after initial resistance. Travancore and Bhopal wanted to remain independent, while Jodhpur debated if it should join Pakistan. Quick interventions by Patel and the Congress leaders helped change their minds and they joined India before 15 August 1947.
Three princely states—Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir—posed different challenges for the Congress leadership. Junagadh was a Hindu-majority area in the Gujarat region, but its Muslim leaders had decided to join Pakistan after Partition. The Congress took serious objection to this and forced a controversial referendum, whose results were used to annul Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan; it instead formalized the inclusion of the state in India. Similarly, Hyderabad ruled by the Nizam put up resistance against being part of India and decided to maintain its distinct sovereign identity. However, the Congress-led Indian government used persuasion and force to ensure the accession of Hyderabad as part of India. The Nizam was given a special status as a compromise formula. That left the issue of Kashmir.
What complicated the Kashmir issue was that although its ruler Hari Singh was Hindu, he was hesitant about joining either India or Pakistan. He was of the view that Kashmir could remain an independent state, joining neither Pakistan nor India. Significantly, Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of Kashmir’s largest political party, the National Conference, and a popular leader of the Valley, had built a close rapport with the Congress leaders and was more inclined towards India. But Pakistan was also keen on taking over Kashmir, just as India was not comfortable about letting it either remain independent or align with Pakistan. Although Hari Singh signed a Standstill Agreement with Pakistan, which meant that status quo was to be maintained, the Kashmir issue remained unresolved when Pakistan and India were celebrating their freedom from British rule on 14 and 15 August 1947, respectively. What complicated matters was an invasion of Jammu and Kashmir by Muslim tribesmen in October 1947. The invasion from Kashmir’s western side was believed to have been inspired by Pakistan, although there is as yet no corroboration of whether Pakistan was indeed involved. A panicked Singh realized that he had no forces of his own to retaliate and sought help from India. The Indian leadership saw a sliver of hope in this situation and offered Singh assistance by dispatching Indian armed forces to Srinagar. The Indian authorities shifted the king to a safer place in Jammu, but before sending Indian troops to the Valley, it made sure that Singh had signed the Instrument of Accession to India. The Indian forces took a few days to push back the Pathan tribesmen. Even though Pakistan denied its involvement, the Indian government believed that Pakistan had a hand in the invasion and indeed saw that as the first incident of hostility with its new western neighbour. Later, when the Indian Constitution was adopted, Jammu and Kashmir was accorded a special status under Article 370, which granted autonomy to the state in all matters except defence, telecommunications and external affairs.
The man who played a stellar role in managing the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India was Indian Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel. Already, he had succeeded in persuading over 500 princely states to join the Indian state after Independence. The accession of Kashmir seemed like a major victory as it appeared that the Kashmir issue was settled for good. Indeed, in the early days after the deployment of Indian troops to thwart the Muslim tribesmen and freeing Jammu, Srinagar and the Valley, it seemed that India had scored a strategic victory in securing Kashmir for itself. However, the use of Indian forces in Kashmir and the manner in which the Instrument of Accession was signed almost as a quid pro quo for the deployment of Indian troops had international ramifications. To quell an international outcry, Nehru declared a ceasefire and referred the Kashmir issue to the United Nations for its arbitration with a clear hint of a plebiscite to determine whether Kashmir belonged to India or Pakistan, or it wished to be an independent country. There were concerns over the reference of the Kashmir issue to the UN and the prospects of a plebiscite. But ending all uncertainties, Kashmir decided to adopt a constitution in 1956 that declared it to be a part of India. The north-western part of the Kashmir Valley remained under Pakistan’s control.
In the last seven decades or so, India and Pakistan have fought at least four open wars—in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999—and had many minor border skirmishes. In all these battles, the Kashmir issue always reared its ugly head. Pakistan continues to demand its suzerainty over Kashmir and India reiterates that Kashmir is its integral part. Neither Junagadh nor Hyderabad became a bone of contention with Pakistan in the wake of Partition. But Kashmir continues to defy any solution.
If India or the Congress leadership then had not insisted on Kashmir, it is possible that Kashmir would have either joined Pakistan or become an independent country. There is a strong growing opinion that believes that the problem of Kashmir that arose out of the Partition of India could have been resolved if only the Congress leadership in 1947 had acted more maturely. If Kashmir has caused so many wars between India and Pakistan, diverting away scarce resources that could have been used for development projects, was the trouble of retaining the princely state in the Himalayas worth it? India’s defence needs over the years have been largely triggered by the Kashmir problem, with perhaps the largest chunk of the defence budget going towards arming the country against any attack from Pakistan. The World Bank, quoting data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, points out that during 1960–2017, India’s annual military expenditure never went below 2 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP). It rose to as high as 4.2 per cent of GDP in 1987 and declined to 2.5 per cent in 2017. But the amount of resources allocated to meeting defence expenditure for a developing economy has remained huge.13
The Rise of Religion Politics
It is undeniable that the manner in which India obtained its freedom from British rule led to the rise of communal politics in the subcontinent. The Partition of India was driven by Jinnah’s demand for a separate nation for Muslims. Jinnah believed that in no other way could the interests of Muslims as a minority community in India be protected. Leaders of the Congress, including Gandhi and Nehru, had wanted a free India without Partition. And even after it was clear that Pakistan would be carved out of India to make way for a separate country for Muslims, the Congress leaders refused to make India a country for Hindus only. That was perhaps one reason why a large number of Muslims decided to stay back in India, in a country that respected diversity and did not differentiate in its treatment of its citizens on the basis of their caste or religion.
In his address on 3 June 1947, Nehru made it amply clear to everyone that India was open to all, irrespective of their religious beliefs and practices. He said:
The united India that we have laboured for was not one of compulsion and coercion, but a free and willing association of a free people. It may be that in this way we shall reach that united India sooner than otherwise and that she will have a stronger and more secure foundation.14
For Nehru, India was a country for Indians. Jinnah, on the other hand, was focused largely on the Muslims in the speech he delivered on the same day. ‘I cannot but express my appreciation of the sufferings and sacrifices made by all classes of the Mussalmans, and particularly the great part that the women of the Frontier played in the fight for our civil liberties,’ he said. For Jinnah, his dream of creating Pakistan was close to realization, and he was worried primarily about Muslims.
Once Pakistan was a reality, Jinnah changed his tune somewhat. The opening address he delivered to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, as its president, in Karachi in August 1947 was remarkable. On three specific occasions during his short speech, made extempore, Jinnah talked about the values of secularism that he wanted Pakistan to cherish and promote. In the early part of his speech, he said: ‘You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State.’ In the middle of his speech, leaving
nobody in doubt about what he was actually speaking about, Jinnah said:
If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.15
Finally, Jinnah made a statement that must have surprised everybody, including those in the Congress. He told the citizens of Pakistan:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state.
Such a categorical repudiation of governance or politics based on religion coming from Jinnah, the father of Pakistan created for Muslims, gave rise to hopes of a country that would become a modern state giving equal and fair treatment to people belonging to all religions.16 But soon after, Jinnah died in 1949 and leaders of the new state of Pakistan backtracked on those principles enunciated by the man who had founded the nation. Pakistan became a country for Muslims, with hardly any place for those who did not practise Islam. India, on the other hand, gave to its people a Constitution that guaranteed equality to all irrespective of their religion. Its Preamble left no one in doubt that India was a ‘sovereign, secular, democratic republic’.
The Rise of Goliath Page 4
