Bose’s army failed in military terms—the Japanese who sponsored it lost the war. But the effort succeeded in creating doubts among the British about the loyalties of their Indian troops. Seven decades have passed but there are still a few Singaporean and Malaysian Indians who were part of these events who are alive today. Isn’t it remarkable that these people, many of whom had been born outside India and had never been there, were willing to die for the idea of India?
8
We’re Munni and Modern
After so many years of foreign rule, India finally became an independent country on 15 August 1947. But with Independence came the Partition. The subcontinent was divided into Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. There was widespread violence throughout the country.
In addition, over a third of the country was ruled by local princes who did not necessarily want to hand over their kingdoms. Parts of it were still ruled by the French and Portuguese. The long border with China (which was originally a border with Tibet) was disputed. Thus, the borders of modern India were not clearly drawn in August 1947—it came to its current shape only in the mid-1970s when Sikkim was included in the Union. India still has border disputes with China and Pakistan, so even the borders we have now may change in future.
THE PARTITION
The Partition of India happened because of the differences among political leaders about what makes up nationhood. These were the same differences that Akbar and Aurangzeb had in their approach to the empire they were ruling. While one was tolerant of other people’s faiths, the other believed in the superiority of one religion over others. The sixteenth-century Islamic scholar Ahmad al-Sirhindi, from Punjab, was very critical of Akbar’s liberal attitude. This was the same kind of thinking that made Mohammad ali Jinnah and the Muslim league demand a separate country for Muslims.
It was decided that India would be divided along religious lines. The meeting that finalized the Partition was held on 2 June 1947 in Viceroy Mountbatten’s study, under a large painting of Robert Clive. The Indian National Congress was represented by Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Acharya Kripalani. The Muslim League was represented by Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Rab Nishtar. Baldev Singh represented the Sikhs. Lord Ismay and Sir eric Mieville, two of the Viceroy’s key advisers, were also present.
The decision to partition India was announced at 7 p.m. On 3 June on All India Radio. The Viceroy spoke first, followed by Nehru and then by Jinnah. Pakistan was about to be born. The date of birth, However, was not announced. But when Viceroy Mountbatten was later asked about it at a press conference, he replied that the final transfer of power to India would happen on 15 August—just seventy-two days later. It looks like Mountbatten took this decision himself—he had not asked the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League or even downing Street about it. It came as a shock to everyone.
It is unclear why Mountbatten chose August 15 as the day of Independence. Could it be that he had a sentimental attachment to it? It was the same day that the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies in the Second World War just two years earlier.
The Partition of India was a major project. It was called the ‘the most complex divorce in history’ and the time to complete this divorce was really short! Everything from the apparatus of the State, including the army, to government assets and debts had to be divided fairly between the two new countries. Even chairs, tables, petty cash, books and postage stamps had to be divided. There were many arguments over the silliest of things. Sets of Encyclopedia Britannica in government libraries were partitioned. The instruments of the police band in Lahore were also divided up—a drum for India, a trumpet for Pakistan and so on! In the end, the last trombone was left and the two sides almost came to blows over it! Manto’s short story ‘Toba Tek Singh’, which is about how the inmates of Lahore’s mental asylum had to be divided up along communal grounds, captures the madness of these times accurately.
But all these petty fights were nothing compared to the real business of partitioning the land, particularly the two large provinces of Punjab and Bengal. It was Sir Clyde Radcliffe who had to do this. He was considered to be one of the most brilliant lawyers of his time but he had had nothing to do with India. And since he knew nothing about India, it was thought that he’d be the best person for the job—he wouldn’t be partial! On 27 June, he was called to the office of the Lord Chancellor and assigned the task. Radcliffe must have been stunned when he heard this. He was being asked to decide the fate of millions of people with no previous knowledge of the Land he was expected to divide. He must have known that whatever he did, nobody was going to be happy and there would be violence. It was the worst job in the world.
Radcliffe began work in the terrible July heat based in a lonely bungalow in the Viceregal estate in Delhi. There was barely any time for the big day, so he could not visit the lands that he had to divide. Instead, he had to trace out a boundary line on a Royal Engineers map with just population statistics and maps for company. This was really difficult. The Hindu and Muslim areas were mixed up randomly. The city of Lahore, for example, was split exactly between the Muslim and Hindu-Sikh populations—6,00,000 each. Amritsar was a holy city for the Sikhs but it was surrounded by Muslim-majority areas. In Bengal, Calcutta was the main industrial centre and had a Hindu majority. But the raw jute for its jute mills came from the Muslim-majority east! In Punjab, partition would mean that irrigation systems had to be broken up. How was he to manage these difficulties?
Even as Radcliffe was drawing his line, communal violence was escalating across the country. People had already started to move from one region to another even before the border had been drawn. Radcliffe’s maps were sent to the Viceroy on 13 August, but they were not made public for seventy-two hours. So when India become independent on 15 August, many Indians along the borderlands did not know which country was now their home. The maps were made public a day later. And the bloodbath began.
People were on the move—on trains, on bullock carts and on foot—holding on to whatever they could save. About seven million Muslims moved from India to Pakistan and a similar Hindu-Sikh population moved from Pakistan to India. Radcliffe, who was tired and fed up of the process, returned to London. He returned the 2000 pounds that he had received for his services.
The Hindus and Sikhs who fled to West Pakistan were sent to hundreds of refugee camps. One of the largest camps was in Kurukshetra, the battlefield where the Pandavas and the Kauravas are said to have fought each other in the Mahabharata. The camp was planned for 1,00,000 but three times the number came to live in it by December 1947. Half a million refugees, mostly from West Punjab, arrived in Delhi. These desperate people squatted wherever they could, including the pavements of Connaught Circus. In time, they built homes in colonies given to them in the south and west of Lutyens’s garden city. We know them today as Lajpat Nagar, Rajendra Nagar, Punjabi Bagh and so on.
A smaller group of refugees from East Pakistan also came to Delhi and were settled in the East Pakistan displaced Persons Colony. Now named Chittaranjan Park, it still has a very Bengali identity. Within a few decades, Delhi went from being the city of Mughal memories to a grand colonial dream and then a city of refugees.
The migration happened in one big rush in Punjab but it happened over many years in Bengal. A series of anti-Hindu riots in East Pakistan in 1949–50 once again made people move from their homes. About 1.7 million came to West Bengal in 1950 alone. This migration continued for over a decade. People squatted wherever they could—in railway stations, unoccupied homes, vacant Land and even barracks. There was anger that the national government in Delhi did less to help the Bengali refugees than they did the Punjabi ones. A large population of Hindus continued to live in East Pakistan. They would face another crisis two decades later.
Despite all their troubles, the Punjabis and Bengalis at least had provinces, West Bengal and East Punjab, to call their own. But there were many others who didn’t know where they belonged. Like th
e Sindhis who now found that their entire province was under Pakistan. Many of them went to Bombay to live in refugee camps. Many Sindhis remain in Ulhasnagar, an industrial suburb of Mumbai. Over the years, they have migrated all over the world and today run a network of international businesses. Hong Kong, for example, has a number of successful Sindhi business families.
PRINCES IN DISTRESS
What about the provinces that were ruled by princes? There were over 500 of them. Some of the princes ruled kingdoms that were as big as major European countries while others ruled only a few villages. Some of these kingdoms had survived from before the time of the Mughals. It says a lot about the spirit of the times and the skills of the negotiators that despite all the grumbling and last minute bargaining, almost everyone signed over their kingdoms to the new democracy by the 15 August deadline. Some opted for Pakistan.
However, there were three important kingdoms which were not handed over—Junagarh in the west, Hyderabad in the south, and Jammu and Kashmir in the extreme north. The first two had Muslim rulers but a Hindu-majority population. Jammu and Kashmir had a Hindu ruler but a Muslim-majority population.
Junagarh was not just wedged within Indian territory, but it was also of great symbolic value. The ancient temple of Somnath and the sacred hill of Girnar with its many Hindu-Jain temples were here. At the base of the hill, and a short walk from the Junagarh fort, are the rock inscriptions of Ashoka, Rudradaman and Skandagupta that you read about earlier. It’s also the last home of the Asiatic lions left in the wild. In 1947, it was ruled by Nawab Mohabat Khan, best remembered for his love of dogs. He apparently owned 2000 pedigree dogs and when two of his favourites mated, the ‘wedding’ was celebrated as a State event!
In the summer of 1947, Mohabat Khan was on holiday in Europe but he had left his kingdom in the hands of his dewan, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a Sindhi politician and the father of future Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. When the Nawab returned, Bhutto convinced him to go with Pakistan. On 14 August 1947, just hours before the handover, Junagarh announced its decision. Pakistan accepted the decision a few weeks later.
The local population (82 per cent Hindu) as well as the Indian leaders were angry. Deputy Prime Minister Patel, a Gujarati, responded by getting two of Junagarh’s vassal states to announce that they were part of India. A small military force was sent in to support them. In the meantime, people began to agitate and protest. The Nawab panicked and fled to Karachi, taking with him a dozen of his favourite dogs! Sir Shah Nawaz, who had no options left, agreed to an election in which the people voted in favour of India.
This chaotic period in Junagarh was bad news for the lions of Gir. With the Nawab’s protection crumbling, several lions were hunted down in the later months of 1947. Some of the hunters were princes of neighbouring kingdoms who simply took advantage of the situation to add to their private collections. Thankfully, order was restored by early 1948. This was not just to conserve wildlife. The lion, as shown on the Mauryan pillar in Sarnath, was now the national emblem. There had been some who had wanted the elephant but a committee headed by future president Rajendra Prasad decided on the lion in July 1947. The same committee also decreed that the flag of the Indian National Congress would become the national flag after changing the symbol of the charkha (spinning wheel) to that of the spoked wheel from the same Mauryan column—the ancient symbol of the Chakravartin or Universal Monarch. After thousands of years, Sudasa’s dream was still alive.
Meanwhile, a fresh new problem was brewing in Hyderabad, a leftover from Aurangzeb’s invasion of southern India. It was the largest of the princely states and its ruler, Nizam Osman Ali Khan, was famous as one of the richest and most miserly men in the world. Though the state was inhabited by a Hindu majority, the police, civil service and landowning nobility were full of Muslims. It even had a large army that included armoured units as well as Arab and Afghan soldiers for hire. When it became clear that the British were leaving, the Nizam first tried to make his kingdom an independent one and then hinted that he would opt for Pakistan.
This was a strange threat to make because Hyderabad was surrounded by Indian territory. Still, the Nizam was persuaded by Kasim Razvi, an Islamic fanatic, to allow the creation of an army called the Razakdars. There were about 2,00,000 of them at its height! As the political situation became worse, the Razakdars terrorized the countryside. India responded by squeezing Hyderabad out economically. Finally, in September 1948, more than a year after Independence, Deputy Prime Minister Patel decided enough was enough.
The military action to make Hyderabad a part of India was called Operation Polo, supposedly because of the large number of polo grounds in Hyderabad!
The Indian army entered Hyderabad on 13 September. The Razakdars as well as the regular troops of the kingdom put up a fight but everyone knew how it was all going to end. By the morning of 17 September, the results were clear. The surrender was surprisingly meek. TIME magazine reported that the commander-in-chief of Hyderabad’s army, a black-moustached Arab called Major General Syed Ahmed El Erdoos, drove up in a shiny Buick to a place a few miles outside the city. He then walked up to Major General Chaudhuri, the Indian field commander. They apparently ‘shook hands, lit cigarettes and talked quietly while the spellbound villagers looked on’.
But the story of Jammu and Kashmir is very different. Here, a Hindu prince ruled over a Muslim-majority kingdom. Ladakh was the north-east part of the state, a large but sparsely populated area with Buddhist majority. To the north-west were the equally sparsely populated areas of Gilgit and Baltistan. The population here was Muslim but belonged to the Shia and Ismaili sects rather than the Sunni branch. In the middle was Kashmir, including the Valley, a relatively densely populated area. It was largely made up of Sunni Muslims though it also had Sikh, Hindu and Shia minorities. Finally, to the south was Jammu, home to the Dogra Rajputs who had conquered this kingdom. The Hindu population here had increased because of the recent refugees who had come from West Punjab. Unlike Junagarh and Hyderabad, this state shared borders with both India and Pakistan. This meant that it could choose between the two. Yet, Maharaja Hari Singh dreamt of remaining independent, as some sort of Asian Switzerland. Obviously, this only made things more complicated.
And then, something unexpected happened. On 22 October 1947, thousands of armed Pakhtun tribesmen from Pakistan’s North West poured into Kashmir. Nobody knows for sure who sent them or why they came there but they did have the support of the newly formed Pakistan. They made quick progress because the remote mountain valleys were cut off from the rest of the world and even Hari Singh had no idea about what was happening. He realized the seriousness of the situation only when the tribesmen blew up the Mahura power station. The entire state went dark. The invaders were now only 75 km away from Srinagar, the capital. At this stage, they could have just driven down the short undefended and well-paved road and taken over.
But the tribesmen had other plans. They decided to loot and plunder the local population, both Hindu and Muslim. They also raped the European nuns of a Franciscan mission in Baramullah, barely 50 km from the capital. They struck terror in the region for forty-eight hours and their progress to the capital was thus delayed.
The Indian government in Delhi first heard of the invasion from a very curious source. Remember, this was just two months after Independence and the Commanders-in-Chief of both the Indian and Pakistani armies were British. The Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistani army was Major General Douglas Gracey, who received secret intelligence reports of what was going on in Kashmir. The first thing he did was to pick up his phone in Rawalpindi and call his old classmate lt General Rob Lockhart, the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army. It didn’t take long for Mountbatten and Nehru to find out what was happening.
Hari Singh panicked and signed his kingdom over to India. By the morning of 27 October, Indian troops had secured Srinagar airport and were landing men and supplies. The tribesmen had been stopped at the gates of the city. Jin
nah was furious! Bit by bit, the Indians began to push back the tribesmen despite the bitterly cold winter. One of the heroes from the Indian side was Brigadier Mohammad Usman, a Muslim officer who had decided to stay in India. He was later killed in battle in July 1948.
The first Indo-Pak war in Kashmir dragged on throughout 1948. Though Srinagar was safe, western Kashmir, Gilgit and Balistan were with Pakistan. For a while, Pakistan even took over Kargil and Dras—two towns strategically important for the military. It also almost took over Ladakh. But by November 1948, Indian troops regained the two towns and secured the supply lines to Ladakh. Half a century later, Pakistan again tried to get back these towns—in what we call the Kargil War of 1999.
Some Indian commanders wanted to push ahead but they were not given permission. The matter was referred to the United Nations and ceasefire was announced. The ceasefire line is now called the Line of Control as per the Shimla Accord of 1972.
On 26 January 1950, the country became a Republic. At that time, India’s borders had still not taken the shape they have today. The country had a population of 359 million—14.2 per cent of the world’s population. But its share of world economy was just 4.2 per cent, compared to the 16 per cent in 1820 and nowhere close to the 30–33 per cent that it had in ancient times. The United States was now the largest economy in the world with a 27 per cent share. The Chinese economy, affected by war, was just a little larger than India’s. The Chinese population was 546 million while the United States had a population of 152 million. It turned out that even dirt-poor India had a per capita income that was 40 per cent higher than that of China!
The Incredible History of India's Geography Page 19
