A look back at the partition

[svinayak]

Here, another article, a response to the "The Problem of India" article I posted earlier (Acharya, did you get pdf of that, as you requested. I posted link on an earlier page).

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 946797D6CF

Thanks, I got it

[samuel]

From: Jiye Sindh

When, therefore, Partition came, the Sindhi Muslims were not sure it was the right thing. Mohammed Ibrahim Joyo was sure it was the wrong thing. He wrote the book Save Sind --- from Pakistan. But it was too late. And when refugees from Bihar poured in, and the Sindhi Hindus began to leave, they were sure it was the wrong thing- The atmosphere in Sindh turned funereal. It was as though the rakshasa (demon) was on the prowl and he might devour anybody and anything any time. People spoke very little and in hushed tones. The Muslims were heard saying that Qiamat (end of the world) seemed to be fast approaching.


Within days Jinnah's portrait was off the Sindhi walls. When refugee Muslims wanted to kill Hindus, Sindhi Muslims refused to cooperate. Premier Khuhro himself went out, revolver in hand, to quell the riots. Indeed, the first dispute between the Sindh Government and the Pakistan Government arose when, after the sack of Karachi on 6 January, 1948, the former arrested refugee rioters and recovered looted property from them, and the Centre sided with the rioters. The refugees were heard saying: ``The Sindhi Muslims seem to be born from the urine of the Hindus.''


In January, 1948, Government of India appointed Malkani as Additional Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan to organise the migration of Hindus from Sindh. But Khuhro, the Premier of Sindh, refused to let him tour the province; for, he said, he did not want the Hindus to leave. And he meant it. He was so keen an the Hindus staying on that he saw to it that even the ``normal'' run of dacoities did not take place. This was more than the refugee Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, could stand. Soon after, Khuhro was dismissed.


Such is the genesis of the ``Jiye Sindh'' (``Long Live Sindh'') movement, which caused the MRD (Movement for Restoration of Democracy) to assume the form of a mass struggle in August-September 1983, when five hundred persons were killed and railway property alone worth about 150 crores of rupees destroyed. A complete rationale of this movement is to be found in G .M. Syed's books The Past, Present and Future of Sindh, Sindhu Desh --- What and Why, and Consciousness of Sindh, all in Sindhi. These books make revealing reading. Syed, born in 1904 and still happily with us, says that Pakistan is a folly and a crime, that refugees have ruined the country, that West Punjab has reduced Sindh to a colony and that Pakistan must die so that Sindh can live and breathe freely again. He elaborates as follows:


First the so-called Islamic State of Pakistan''. It is altogether un-Islamic. There has never been an Islamic State --- and there never can be one. It is ridiculous to say that the Koran is the last word in wisdom or knowledge. And in any case there is nothing in the Koran on which you can base a modern polity --- or build a modern economy.


Muslims have been divided into various schools from the first day. There are 350 different sects of Islam. There is no provision for a Khalifa in the Koran; but a Khalifa was fabricated nevertheless --- on the model of the Pope. Religion and politics were also mixed up in Islam --- again on the model of the mediaeval Church. Christians, however, had the good sense to separate the Church from the State centuries ago. Muslims continue to mix up the two --- and muddy both.


Islamic principles are fine; but ``Arab Chhaap Islam'' (``Made in Arabia Islam'') has always been intolerant, aggressive and imperialist. The Arabs invaded Sindh in the name of Islam, sacked it in the name of Islam, sold 20,000 Sindhi men, women and children in slavery, again in the name of Islam. We have no use for that kind of Islam. Even tyrannical rulers such as Timur and Aurangzeb had been hailed as ``great Islamic leaders''.


Also much of what passes for Islam is pre-Mohammedan Arab tribal customs. Qaaba, says Syed, is believed to be an old Shiva linga. Hajis still throw stones to kill old Arab goddesses Manaat and Laat. They run between two hills, Marru and Safaa, because that is what Ibrahim's slave-girl Hajran did in search of water when she was about to deliver a baby. These are primitive Arab customs which have nothing to do with Islam. The water of the Indus is not less holy than that of the Arab well of Zam Zam.


The people here want to be buried in Arabia for a favourable position before Allah on the Day of judgement. They do not know that some time after burial, the Arabs take out their bodies and throw them into a cave. What kind of schools and colleges can be established by people who have been burning libraries? Can the people, who have been warring on music and dancing, ever do justice to radio and television?


Pakistan is a denial of Indian geography and history. It goes against the grain of Ashoka and Akbar. In any case, if the Arabs who speak the same language and swear by the same Allah can have separate states, why cannot the Sindhis, the Punjabis, the Baluchis and the Pakhtoons have separate, sovereign states of their own? To keep them together against their wishes is to give them a common funeral.


Pakistan is a sinful state, founded on the ashes of all sound principles. It is a thieves' kitchen. It is led by kafan-chors (people who would steal even coffins). Even as a ``bhangi'' (scavenger) does not become ``great'' by being called mahtar, this randi-khana [house of (political) prostitution] does not become ``holy'' by just being named ``Pakistan''. The Sindhis do not want to have anything to do with such a state.


Next the ``refugees''. They have come to Pakistan not because they could not live in India. Crores of Muslims are living in India in peace and with honour. In UP, the Muslims were 13 per cent of the population but they had 45 per cent of the jobs. And yet they have come away in large numbers. They are adventurers, who want even more here than they had in lndia. The Hindus left vast properties in Sindh; all these have gone to the refugees. Even the Hindu properties sold to Sindhi Muslims were declared ``evacuee property'' and handed over to refugees. Many of these refugees had filed false claims; but all these were certified by their fellow-refugees manning the evacuee property and rehabilitation departments.


It was these refugees who had murdered and looted the Hyderabad Hindus on 26 December, 1947 and the Karachi Hindus on 6 January, 1948. When Premier Khuhro proceeded against the rioters, the refugee supremo, Liaqat Ali Khan, turned against him.


The Sindhi leaders in their goodness had invited Jinnah to set up the capital of Pakistan in Karachi. But Liaqat Ali detached Karachi from Sindh and asked the Government of Sindh itself to shift to Hyderabad. When the Sindhis asked for at least compensation for the loss of Karachi, they were told that it was a ``conquered territory'', for which there could be no compensation. When Khuhro protested, they just dismissed him. In his place they brought in a spineless man, Pir Illahi Bux. This puppet promptly made Urdu compulsory in Sindh.


When Syed Ali Akbar Shah, Sindh Muslim League President, led a Sindhi deputation to Liaqat Ali to urge protection for Sindhi culture, the latter remarked: ``What is Sindhi culture, except driving donkeys and camels?'' This same Liaqat Ali invited all the Indian Muslims to Pakistan when he said it was good enough for all the ten crore Muslims.


India drafted its constitution in three years; Pakistan under Liaqat did not do so even in six years. In view of his pro- refugee and anti-local policies, some Punjabi politicians and officials united to bump him off. Soon after partition, the Punjab, NWFP, and Baluchistan banned further entry of refugees. But refugees have been allowed to flood into Sindh all through. This is an intolerable situation.


Even in the British days an officer posted in Sindh had to learn Sindhi within six months. But now this rule has been waived. The Governor, the Chief Secretary, the lnspector-General of Police and most other senior officers in Sindh are non-Sindhis, who refuse to learn Sindhi. If the refugees settled in Sindh persist in refusing to learn Sindhi, they will deserve to be disfranchised.


In pre-partition Sindh, Hindus had come to acquire 30 lakh acres of land over a period of 100 years, and the Muslims resented that; but the refugees have grabbed 60 lakh acres in a fraction of that time.


Hundreds of crores of rupees have been gifted away or loaned to the refugees to set up industry, carry on trade, build houses. None of this is available to the Sindhis. The Sindhis have less than 3 per cent jobs in the government of Pakistan. (The joke in Pakistan is that it was established by the Sunnis, so that the Shias --- of UP etc. may rule it, for the benefit of the Ahmediyas of Qadian, who have since been proclaimed as non- Muslims.)


The refugee leaders have been obliterating old Sindhi names and substituting new ones for them. (In Karachi, the ancient Ram Bagh has been renamed Aram Bagh --- and Achal Singh Park, as Iqbal Park.) On the other hand, foreign names have not been replaced in Sindh. For example, we still have Jacobabad, named after Gen. Jacob who had conquered Sindh with Napier. However, in the Punjab, Montgomery has been named Sahiwal, and Lyallpur, Faisalabad to restore the Punjabis' self-respect.


This is an impossible state of affairs. The refugees must rediscover their roots in Krishna and Kabir, and behave themselves --- if they want to live in Sindh.


As for the Punjabis in Pakistan, the less said the better. A popular saying in Sindh is that one Punjabi is equal to two men and two Punjabis are much too many. They treat all Pakistan as their colony. Pakistan has become Punjabistan. They control the politics and the civil and military services. They are taking over more and more land, industry and trade in Pakistan. The British seem to have partitioned India to give the Punjabi Muslims all this territory for their exploitation, in appreciation of their services in the two World Wars. To make this exploitation easier, in 1954 they forced the merger of all the four provinces into ``One Unit''. Since the premiers of these provinces would not agree, they were all dismissed.


As the hapless Sindhi officers were being transported en masse to Lahore, the scene reminded everybody of the Jews being taken in captivity to Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem.


At the time of the formation of One Unit, Sindh had a credit of 33 crore rupees --- and Punjab a debit of 100 crore rupees. All these finances were merged --- and Sindh was thus robbed of its surpluses.


More than ten years after Partition, the constitution of Pakistan was at last ready. All that remained was the Governor General's signature. But at this stage, this Punjabi gentleman, Ghulam Mohammed, dissolved the Constituent Assembly and installed a Bengali puppet, Mohammed Ali Bogra --- then doing duty as ambassador in Washington --- as Prime Minister of Pakistan.


The dissolution of the Consembly was challenged in the Sindh High Court, which pronounced it unconstitutional. But the Federal Court, controlled by the Punjabis, upheld the dissolution.


Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a Sindhi, but he was also a puppet of Punjab. He came up by flattering Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan. He organized lavish shikar parties for them on his vast estate. He compared Ayub to Lincoln and Lenin and said that if Shah Abdul Latif, the great Sindhi poet, were alive, he would have surely garlanded him. When Bhutto came to power, he became a terror. He branded some of his critics with red-hot irons. He took out others in procession, with their faces painted black. He got a district and sessions judge arrested without warrant. When the Sindh Assembly declared Sindhi as the sole official language of Sindh, Bhutto had the province declared bi-lingual, giving Urdu official status in Sindh. He played into the hands of the Punjabi civil and military officers. He did nothing to right the many wrongs perpetrated on Sindh by the Punjabis and the refugees.


Although Bhutto posed as a democrat, fighting military dictatorship after 1977, he had all along been hand in glove with the top brass. As Secretary-General of Convention League. Bhutto proposed that the Deputy Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police should be district party president and secretary, respectively. He was the right-hand man of Ayub until the Tashkent declaration between India and Pakistan, when Bhutto had decided to desert him, to escape the unpopularity that attended that declaration in Pakistan. Bhutto proposed to Air Marshal Asghar Khan that the two should rule together: ``The programme is to rule. The people are stupid and I know how to make a fool of them. I will have the danda (lathi) in my hand and no one will be able to remove me for twenty years.'' He made the same proposal to Gen. Yahya Khan: ``East Pakistan is no problem. We will have to kill some 20,000 people there and all will be well.''


In 1977, Bhutto actually made himself Chief Martial Law Administrator. Later he appointed himself Colonel-in-Chief of the Pakistan Armoured Corps. Not even his judicial murder had erased these memories from the public mind. One reason why Zia-ul-Haq was able to get away with the postponement of elections was the feeling, shared by other parties, that the unscrupulous Bhutto must not be allowed to return to power.


The principles of distribution of Indus basin river waters between Sindh and Punjab were laid down in the various statutes and agreements since 1901. It was laid down that Sindh shall have 25 per cent of the waters of the Ravi, the Sutlej, and the Beas, and 75 per cent of the waters of the Sindhu. These formulae were based on the fact that Sindh has less than 10 inches annual rainfall as against Punjab's more than 20 inches and it has less forest cover --- 2 per cent --- than even Arabia. When, however, One Unit was forged, this agreement was violated. The waters of the Ravi, the Sutlej, and the Beas were sold for 1,000 crore rupees from India and some other countries. And this mon- ey was not used to implement the dozen irrigation schemes earlier prepared by the Government of Sindh; it was used, instead, to dam the waters at Tarbela, Mangla, Chashma and Rawal in the Punjab, for the benefit of Punjabis.


Sui gas of Baluchistan is sold cheaper to the Punjab than to Sindh.


Punjab has an area of 55,000 square miles --- and Sindhi 54,000 square miles. In 1947, Punjab had a population density of 300 as against 80 in Sindh, 150 in NWFP, and 18 in Baluchistan. But in 1979, while the Punjab density had increased by only 33 per cent to 400, in Sindh it had more than trebled to 260 per square miles. This extraordinary increase represented the influx of the Punjabis and the refugees in Sindh.


The Sindh lands irrigated by the two post-Partition barrages at Guddu in the north and Kotri in the south --- have been allotted mostly to refugees and retired military men, most of them again Punjabis. The whole thing amounts to an internal invasion of Sindh. And when Sindh resents it all, Punjab only threatens it the more.


General Tikka Khan, as governor of East Pakistan, had said: ``Pakistan is interested only in Bangla land; as for the population, it could bring people to settle there.'' Later he told the armymen in Malir near Karachi: ``We failed in East Bengal because it was too far away; there were too many people there, and it was helped by India. If `Sindhu Desh' raises its head, we can easily crush it because it is near at hand, not very populous, and not likely to be helped by any foreign power. We will then offer the Sindhi Pirs and Zamindars, who are fattening now, as a sacrifice (qurbani) in celebration of our victory, Jashne-e-fateh.''


The Punjabis have become very aggressive. Their Iqbal only further pumped their ego when he wrote:


Khudi ko kar buland itna

ki har taqdir se pahle

Khuda banday se poochhe,

Batn teri raza kya hai


(Let your personality be so strong that before God apportions fortune, He asks you, what you would like to have.)


The Sindhi psychology is very very different. Shah Abdul Latif says:


Wag Dhani je vas,

Aun ka paana vahini?


(My string is in the hands of my Lord, I am not here on my own steam.)


Punjabi and Sindhi Khudas are as different as Punjabis and Sindhis themselves. ``If the Punjabis end up in Heaven, we Sindhis would like to stay in Hell.''


It was not always like this. Punjab and Sindh never invaded each other in history. This was because the mind of the Punjab was then moulded by saint-poets such as Guru Nanak, Warris Shah, Bullay Shah. It has now forgotten its real culture and destiny. In the process it has suffered badly. Because of Partition, two Indo-Pak wars had been fought on the soil of Punjab, hurting the Punjabis badly. The Punjabis also feel amputated by separation from other Punjabis, now in India; hence their keen desire to woo back the Sikhs. The Punjabi Muslims will have to recover their heritage of Nanak-Warris- Bulay Shah, to be at peace with themselves and with others.


As for the state of Pakistan, Sindh rejects it wholly. Sindh has always been there, Pakistan is a passing show. Sindh is a fact, Pakistan is a fiction. Sindhis are a nation, but Muslims are not a nation. Sindhi language is 2,000 years old, Urdu is only 250 years old. Sindhi has 52 letters, Urdu has only 26. The enslavement of Sindh by the Punjab in the name of ``Pakistan'' and ``Islam'' is a fraud. It is the most serious crisis in the history of Sindh in the past 2,000 years.


The Sindhis have long been fooled in the name of Islam. Many of them tried to trace their ancestry to Persian, Turkish and Arab families. Some of them could be heard singing their desire to sweep the streets of Mecca and to die in Medina. ``Under the impact of foreign Muslim rule, even a foreign sparrow came to be regarded a nightingale in Sindh.'' N ow they realize that all this is folly. ``Only a fool dances to other people's tunes.''


They had thought that the ``Islamic state of Pakistan'' would .be good for them. But it had been a disaster. ``We are reminded of the animal which went to get some horns, and returned with its ears chopped off.''


``Sindh rejects the Arabian edition of Islam, it rejects the Punjabi version of Pakistan, and it rejects made-in-India Urdu. Iqbal and Jinnah have been worse disasters for Indian Muslims than Chenghiz and Halaku. Sindh rejects them both.'' When Pakistan celebrated Jinnah centenary, lakhs of posters appeared in Sindh denouncing the Quaid-e-Azam as Qadu Hajam (Silly Barber), Qatil-e-Azam (Great Murderer), Kafir-e-Azam (the Great Heathen), and Ghadar-i-Sindh (Traitor to Sindh).


Many Muslims look upon Iqbal as the prophet and poet of Pakistan, who enunciated the theory of partition in his presiden- tial address at the Allahabad session of the Muslim League in 1930. But Sindhi nationalists look upon him as a Punjabi chauvinist and British stooge. They point out that when the Muslims were agitated over the British attack on Turkey during World War I, Iqbal had sung: ``I offer my head in the war, please accept this humble gift from a loyal subject.'' In 1923, when others were returning their titles over the British excesses, Iqbal agreed to be knighted. The Muslim League split into two in 1928 over its attitude to the Simon Commission. The nationalist section led by Jinnah and Saifuddin Kitchlew met in Calcutta and denounced the commission; the pro-British section, led by Mohammed Shafi and Iqbal, met in Lahore and welcomed the all-white Simon Commission.


Iqbal was a great admirer of Amanullah, the progressive king of Afghanistan. But when the British dethroned Amanullah and enthroned puppet Nadir Khan, Iqbal was all praise for Nadir too!


The Sheriff of Mecca was a nationalist. The British replaced him by a pliable Saud as the keeper of Islam's holies. This gentleman in his Wahabi fundamentalism, demolished many ancient tombs, including those of Mohammed's family members. Muslims all over the world were shocked. But Iqbal hailed Saud as ``the best ruler in Asia''.


When Bhopal sanctioned Iqbal a monthly allowance of 500 rupees, the Nawab became ``the star of Islam''. Nehru had refused to meet Mussolini; Iqbal not only met him but announced that Islam tallied with fascism. Iqbal himself admitted that he had come out in support of Pakistan because ``Lord Lothian, Under Secretary of State for India, assured me that India would be partitioned.'' For all these reasons, the Sindhis reject Iqbal. When, therefore, Pakistan observed Iqbal Centenary, Sindh countered it by celebrating the anniversary of its poet-saint Latif in every nook and corner of the province.


The Sindhis point out that Sindh is bigger than Belgium Denmark and Switzerland, all put together.


Sindh takes pride in its heritage from mooanjo-daro to Dahir to Dodo Soomro to Allah Bux --- something tabooed by the establishment in Pakistan. Sindh wonders why it cannot glorify its pre-Islamic heritage, when Firdausi, the national poet of Iran, had glorified ancient Iranian heroes and ridiculed the Arabs as barbarians.


Pakistan celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of the pre-Islamic Cyrus of Iran for a whole week; why does it not celebrate Maharaja Dahir Sen, the pre-Islamic hero of Sindh?


Dance and music are natural to a normal man. The one and only statuette unearthed at Mooanjo-daro is that of a dancing girl. Syed thinks that even Kathakali and Manipuri dances originated in Sindh. It is stupid, he says, to reject dancing as In-Islamic.


For centuries, Muslim spiritual seekers in Sindh went with Yogis and Avadhoots on pilgrimage to Porbandar and Hinglaj. They were interested in truth and self-realization, and not in hatred and violence. It is stupid to cancel Diwali, Dussehra, Janmashtami, Nanak Jayanti and Christmas as holidays in Pakistan.


Since Pakistan will never allow Sindh --- and NWFP and Baluchistan --- to live its own life and come into its own, Pakistan has got to go. ``A Sufi Sindh and an Islamic Pakistan cannot coexist, even as you can't put two swords in one scabbard. If Pakistan continues, Sindh will die. If, therefore, Sindh is to live, Pakistan must die.''


This is not an easy task. There are many cowards and collaborators in Sindh. Some of them have married Urdu- wallas --- and they even speak Urdu at home. But all is not lost; the unconquerable will never to submit or yield, remains. The Sindhi youth are awake. They know that if they do not act now, Sindhis will be liquidated like the Red Indians in America --- or reduced to the position of Harijans in Hindu society. As the Persian adage goes, ``Tang ayad ba jang ayad'' (driven into a corner, anybody will fight back). And so will Sindh. A volcano is raging underneath the apparent quiet of Sindh.


The odds are heavy. But Sindh has survived invasions of Iranians and Greeks, Arabs and Pathans, Mughals and British. It shall overcome. It says to Pakistan:


Aado takar tar,

matan rooh ratyoon thien.


(Oh you obstructing rock, get lost, or you will be smashed to smithereens.)


It hopes to God for the fall of the establishment:


Munhiji, aasa eeha,

Kadhain keraienday Kot khay.


(I am looking forward to the collapse of that fortress.) It is sure that help will come to Sindh if it helps itself:


Panehi eendo Hote,

Aun pin agabhari thiyan.


(My Lord will come; but let me, too, go forward --- to meet Him half-way.)


And so Sindh is looking to Porbandar, the ancient spiritual beacon for Sindh --- for ``Ghaibi maddad'' (divine or mysterious help).


The appeal of love, peace, and Vedanta from the East is irresistible. Did not Shah Latif himself say:


Purab mariyas,

Kanh dar diyan danhiri.


(I have been captivated by the East. To whom shall I confide this?)


The Sindhi rejection of Pakistan, as enunciated above by G.M. Syed, is total.

[samuel]

One of the strategies that I outlined earlier as a potential direction is found interestingly earlier...and I am thrilled that this was how Bapu saw as a way out, too. Chacha and his coterie again, in action, I think...
I am a Sindhi -- Gandhi

After a few years, as Acharya of Gujerat Vidyapeeth, Kripalani went full-time into politics and became General Secretary of the Congress for more than a decade. He was of the definite opinion that there would have been no partition if we had followed Gandhiji. Gandhiji wanted to lead another struggle to wrest freedom for united India. But many leaders were too old and tired to wait that long for office. Gandhiji then ``suggested that the British Government would be more anxious to back the Congress than the Muslim League. Therefore we had better try in that direction to checkmate Jinnah.'' But here again other leaders did not agree to join hands with the British and put Jinnah in his place.


Pandit Nehru even thought that the partition process would take ``at least ten years'' --- since the separation of Burma from India had taken that much time! Kripalani's plea for a ``voluntary exchange of population'' was also brushed aside. (so what went horribly wrong, then?)


When violence erupted in the Punjab in March 1947, the Congress asked for ``administrative division'' of the province. Kripalani saw in this clear seeds of partition --- and he rang up Gandhiji in Bihar to oppose the move. But, regrets Kripalani: ``He was unfortunately surrounded by non-violent sadhus who did not understand politics at all. The phone was picked up by one such sadhu who insisted on my speaking to him only. What could I talk to that dunce?'' (such sadhus are powerful today too, sadly, IMO).


The fate of Indian unity was sealed.

[shaardula]

Is too many muslims why partition was good? What are we going to do then with all the muslims now, including Pak + BD, and you think our borders will really stop "the septic-tank from backing up into the house"

Shaardula, I understand, I think, what you re saying. We have lived with Muslims for centuries. If all that did not make partition a foregone conclusion in advance then
a) We did not understand the muslims.
b) Our leadership was incompetent and intransigent. It was also inflexible.
c) We were scared of what islamists would do to us.
d) We needed to come out of our shell and we could not have prospered with all that jihad hanging over our heads.
e) We did no work in bringing the communities together.
f) Somethings were working in communities.
g) These were our people.

Some of these points can be rebutted with facts, others are a matter of opinion. I'll start with ones I can, but we will have to rewind into history and replay the action, slowly. I'll start the clock at 1906 and we'll stop at 1947. That's 41 years and if we spend a week a year, we will be done within a year. How about we just do that and at the end of the day, the only thing I promise is I will go for the truth whatever it is.

What is not possible to do is to use the present state as both the control run and the ideal run. That makes no sense.

S

hmm.. sam...
also saying it was important to solve solvable problems first and not diffuse focus and momentum in HACKING at unsolvable problems. Also saying that it was important to pay attention to a potential solution to the unsolvable problem. IMO, what we have done since the past few decades is to go to school on this "new" skill which has a potential to solve the problem. So far we have sat through lectures and taken exams in this new skill. what i am also saying is, this time at school has bought us time to rejuvenate our own strides. what i am saying is at independence the only alternatives would have all diffused these possibilities.

[samuel]

and that is exactly what i disagree with. your fear is not the nation's fear.
Let me try to put that in perspective, as I see it.
1. Sindh did not really want to go.
2. Balochistan did not want to be a part, heck they are still struggling.
3. Kashmir wasn't an issue until later.
4. NWFP, I don't know yet, but say it went to Afghanistan.
5. That leaves punjab, punjab and punjab and bengal, bengal and bengal.

What alternatives were there. My eyes are hopefully opening even reading about what Bapuji said. We have to understand here that "freedom now" was the proxy for rush to gaddi and not on the basis of "unity now." One man had it, till the very end, Gandhi. He even said, let's delay the whole thing till we get united. He was even open to a federal structure. It may be some of these ideas would not have fleshed, but here is what is certain.
The thinking was there and we did not need as big a septic tank as some call it. We may have needed none if we hear more of what bapuji says, but I have been skeptical myself of the workability of his method against islamism, so I have much to read. But a fighter he was, and kept his eyes on the ball he did. And There were options then that seem like wisdom now, only after a certain course was followed.

And hindus were rising for a very long time before independence for it to be a singular event that caused the rise. I think that argument is not quite of merit. Look at the reform movements before independence, what do you have to say for them. Look at the statistics of riots. Are they any different?

Yes the differences, as Airavatji also explains, were irreconcilable. But Partition was the result of greed, first and foremost, but that is still a working hypothesis. And the elements that propagated it and brought it to being are still in India. They have not disappeared. Another hypothesis, I submit.
S

[RayC]

Excerpts from Who was Responsible

"We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed."

This is what Jinnah said in the course of India’s independence. And it indeed became a reality.

The partition of India had been decided at least in 1930, when Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan’s spiritual and ideological father, zealously preached in his Presidential Address at the All India Muslim League Meet in Allahabad that ‘The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other’, and then went on two propose the Two Nation theory: ‘I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… the formation of a consolidated Northwest Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of Northwest India.’ And of course, with the Muslim League’s adoption of ‘Pakistan Resolution’ at Lahore in 1940, it had been sealed; it was only about time.

Any further attempts to keep India united by Hindus and a handful of nationalist Muslim leaders (Abul Kalam Azad and Fazlul Haq etc.) were destined to failure.

.......argument of Maulana Azad, India’s first Education Minister, who, in his book, “India Wins Freedom”, argued that the partition could have been avoided had Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel shown some flexibility over the Cabinet Mission plan.

‘Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.’

Jinnah was leading the separatist movement as early as 1937, when Iqbal wrote to him: ‘Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are.’ This, according to Iqbal, was need for saving ‘Muslims from the domination of Non-Muslims’.

Just before his death in 1938, Iqbal urged that ‘Muslims should strengthen Jinnah’s hands’ for achieving Pakistan, adding: ‘People say our demands smack of communalism. This is sheer propaganda. These demands relate to the defence of our national existence.’

Efforts to keep India united, continued nonetheless. The 1946 British Cabinet Mission to India released a plan on May 16, calling for a united India, comprising considerably autonomous provinces, formed on the basis of religion. The Congress initially rejected the plan, and the British Mission to release a second plan on June 16, calling for the Partition along religious lines. Jinnah, hoping that power would go only to the party that supported the plan, gave the League’s assent to both plans. But the Congress, eventually, accepted the May 16 proposal, the other.

Jinnah was disappointed for failing to grab all the power. The British Mission, then, advised by Jinnah, proposed formation of an interim government for united India, having equal number of Hindu and Muslim representatives. Muslims, being only about 20% of the population to 75% Hindus, the Congress objected to this arrangement, but agreed to a 12-member cabinet having 6 Hindu, 5 Muslim and another representative from remaining religious groups. However undemocratic, this was a jolly-good deal of Muslims, but Jinnah, who had hoped for all power, would not accede to anything less than 50% Muslim representation, which fitted well with Muslim League’s propaganda that ‘One Muslim should get the right of five Hindus’.

As the new proposal was supported by the British as well, Jinnah condemned the British negotiators of treachery, and quickly washed his hands off further negotiations. He called a Muslim League meet in Bombay on 29 July 1946. Its resolution said, ‘It has become abundantly clear that the Muslims of India would not rest with anything less than the immediate establishment of an independent and full sovereign State of Pakistan’ and urged upon the Muslim masses to undertake ‘Direct Action to achieve Pakistan and get rid of the present slavery under the British and contemplated future caste Hindu domination.’

When Jinnah was pressed on whether the Direct Action would be violent, he ominously replied: ‘I am not going to discuss ethics. We have a pistol and are in a position to use it.’ On his violent instigation, UK’s News Chronicle wrote: ‘…there can be no excuse for the wild language and abandonment of negotiations… Mr. Jinnah is totally wedded to complete intransigence, if, as now seems the case, he is really thirsting for a holy war.’

News Chronicle was prophetic concerning Jinnha’s thirst for “holy war”. There started the Direct Action on 16 August 1946 in Calcutta, the capital of Muslim-majority Bengal (53.4% Muslim), having a Muslim League government. Direct Action was a Jihad for Jinnah and his Muslim League, in the likeness of Prophet Muhammad’s stunning victory at Badr against a much stronger Meccan force; and Jinnah chose the date for Direct Action, coinciding with the day of Badr Jihad, 18th of Ramadan. A Muslim League propaganda pamphlet, read out in mosque sermons, said:

Muslims must remember that it was in Ramzam that the Quran was revealed. It was in Ramzan that the permission for Jehad was granted. It was in Ramzam that the battle of Badr, the first open conflict between Islam and Heathenism [i.e., idolatry, which equates Hinduism] was fought and won by 313 Muslims; and again it was in Ramzan that 10,000 under the Holy Prophet conquered Mecca and established the kingdom of Heaven and the commonwealth of Islam in Arabia. Muslim League is fortunate that it is starting its action in this holy month.

By the grace of God, we are ten cores [100 millions] in India but through our bad luck we have become slaves of the Hindus and the British. We are starting a Jehad in Your Name in this very month of Ramzan. Pray make us strong in body and mind—give Your helping hand in all out actions—make us victorious over the Kafers…

And the rest is history. Excited by inflammatory speeches of Muslim League leaders, the Muslim mob, after the rally, attacked the innocent Hindus and other non-Muslims of Calcutta, unleashing horrible slaughter, rape and arson for one-and-a-half days, before the Hindus and Sikhs (two-third of the population in Calcutta) hit back in like manners. Some 5,000 were dead with ~43% Muslim victims in one count—not as pretty a success as Prophet Muhammad achieved at Badr.

Nonetheless, this set off chain-reaction of violence from East Bengal to West Punjab leading to eventual partition in August 14-15, 1947. And until July 1947, violence was committed almost exclusively by Muslims, except in Bihar (Oct. 1946), where Hindus retaliated against Muslims, reacting to local Muslim instigations, and to their attacks and massacres of Hindus in Calcutta and East Bengal.

Thereafter, the Sikhs and Hindus hit back in East Punjab, as the partition was eventually agreed upon. The rest we all know: massacre of up to two million (evenly divided between Muslims and non-Muslims), rapes of hundreds of thousands (mostly Hindu & Sikh women), forced conversion of millions of non-Muslims and displacement of some 20 million across the border.

Concerning, who was responsible for the partition, enough evidence is presented above. Sri Aurobindo said, ‘The idea of two nationalities in India is only a new-fangled notion invented by Jinnah for his purposes and contrary to the facts’. Hindu Mahasabha leader, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, told the United Provinces Hindu Conference on October 8, 1944: ‘The sooner Mr. Jinnah understands that Pakistan in any form or shape will be resisted by Hindus and many others with the last drop of blood, the better for him…’

Nehru, for himself, was staunchly opposed to the partition, and blamed in his writings, wrongly and unequivocally, the British for forcing the partition upon the harmonious brotherhood (which never existed) of Hindus and Muslims. We have seen too many evidences of Jinnah’s campaign for the partition, but not a single statement, opposing it.

As concerns Nehru's lack of flexibility in forming the Interim Cabinet, it is absurd on the part of Azad to suggest that Nehru showed no flexibility. He had flexibility way to much by allowing 5 Muslim representatives in a cabinet of 12, when they deserved only 2. What Nehru didn't do is to be ridiculously flexible.

Even if Nehru did that, it was not going to be sustainable in popular democracy that India had proudly emerged as. The result would have been a recipe probably for greater horror, at a later.

[samuel]

A little more on Sind and then focus moves to the baloch.
Thrown to the Wolves

Allah Bux (1900--43) was the finest Premier Sindh ever had. Though a zamindar and government contractor, he habitually wore Khadi. Immediately on entering office, he lifted the externment orders on Obaidullah Sindhi (1872--1944), a Sialkot Sikh who had become a Muslim, a leading revolutionary who had been vegetating in West Asia. (The Muslim League gave a reception in honour of Obaidullah. But when they started to chant: ``Muslim ho, to Muslim League mein aao'' --- If you are a Muslim, then join the Muslim League --- he walked out in protest; he was thinking in terms of a''Sindhu Narbada Party''.) He withdrew the magisterial powers from the Waderas. He followed the Congress line and fixed 500 rupees as minister's salary. Nominations to local bodies were ended. The unassuming Allah Bux sat by the side of the driver, never used the official flag on the car bonnet, never accepted any receptions or parties. In the train he would use the upper berth -and let others use the more convenient lower berth. On one occasion when flood-waters threatened Shikarpur, he breached the canal to flood his own lands --- and saved the city. But above all he was non-communal and nationalist.


That was reason enough for the communal Muslims to try to topple him. A huge League conference was held in Karachi in October 1938. Here the League stalwarts roared against the Hindus, the Congress, and Allah Bux. The conference set-up was comic-opera, complete with Arab sands, date trees and horsemen in the Arab head-dress, Iqaal. They even adopted a resolution which talked of self-determination for the ``two nations'' of Hindus and Muslims. Pir Ali Mohammed Rashdi felt that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was indifferent to this resolution. ``He just allowed us to use it as a hint, a threat, a political stunt.'' The real object was to topple Allah Bux somehow, anyhow. They got 29 Muslim MLAs to join the League. With the help of 3 European MLAs, they could have formed a government of their own. When, however, a no-confidence motion was moved, only 7 of them voted for it. And the League leader Hidayatullah himself quit the party and joined the Allah Bux ministry.


Indeed the League was so rootless in Sindh that when they announced a public meeting for Jinnah in Jacobabad, nobody turned up. Rashdi had to request his local friend Hakim Kaimuddin to ask his Hindu friends to produce an audience. The Hindus, as good friends, obliged. They even pocketed their ``Gandhi caps ` to avoid embarrassment to Jinnah; but they refused to shout ``Jinnah Saheb Zindabad'' with any gusto.


However, the League persisted in its mischief. The respected Pir of Lawari, near Badin in the Hyderabad district, had organised a local Haj for those who could not afford to visit Arabia. It had gone on since 1934. The pilgrims gathered on Ziwal-Haj, read namaz while turning to the durgah, went to a local well renamed ``Zam Zam'', addressed the Pir as ``Khuda'' and greeted each other as ``Haji''. It gave these poor people great spiritual satisfaction. But the fanatics denounced it as un- Islamic, agitated violently, and forced Allah Bux to ban it in 1938.


Success here only whetted the League appetite. Meanwhile, under Hindu pressure, the government regularized a small unauthorized Hanuman temple on Artillery Maidan near the Sindh Secretariat and banned the Om Mandali which has since become the Brahma Kumaris organization. All this encouraged the Leaguers' belief that the government could be brow-beaten. They now mounted a big agitation to topple Allah Bux.


Manzilgah was a couple of dilapidated structures on the bank of the Sindhu in Sukkur near the Sadhbela Island Mandir of the Hindus. It had long been used as a government godown. The Muslims now claimed it to be a mosque. The Hindus opposed the claim as fake; they also feared that a mosque near Sadhbela would be used to provoke controversy and tension.


Allah Bux was on the horns of a dilemma. Ghulam Hussain before him had held Manzilgah to be government property and had refused to hand it over to the Muslims. Allah Bux sent Muslim officers to inspect the Manzilgah. They came back and reported that the original Persian inscriptions described it as an inn and that the ``mehrab'' was a later addition. But the Leaguers were determined to create trouble. From 3 October to 19 November, 1939, under the leadership of G.M. Syed, Khuhro and Sir Haroon, they forcibly occupied Manzilgah. On I November, 1939, Bhagat Kanwar Ram, the well-known singer-saint of Sindh, was gunned down at Ruk railway station --- and nobody was arrested. Sukkur district observed complete hartal for fifteen days. When Pamnani, MLA, said that the Pir of Bharchundi had got Kanwar Ram killed (earlier the Pir's son had been beaten for kidnapping Hindu girls) he, too, was gunned down. The Sindh Hindus were stunned.


But worse was to follow. Word went round that killing one Hindu was equal to doing seven Haj pilgrimages. Sixty-four Hindus were killed and property worth several million was looted or burnt in the Sukkur countryside. In this violent atmosphere, G.M. Syed said on the floor of the Assembly that the Hindus shall be driven out of Sindh like the Jews from Germany --- a statement he has very much regretted since. But the damage was done.


It was a tragic situation, in which the Congress should have understood Allah Bux's dilemma. Here was a man who had presided over the All-India Azad Conference in Delhi in 1940 and said: ``The Muslims as a separate nation in India on the basis of their religion, is un-Islamic.'' And the Congress should have understood why he had vacillated on the Manzilgah issue. As Gandhiji rightly pointed out in the Harijan (2 December, 1939), the basic problem was that self-administration was new to Sindh. ``Sindh is nominally autonomous and to that extent less able to protect life and property than the preceding government. For it has never had previous training in the Police or the Military arts.'' But Congress joined hands with Muslim League to topple the Allah Bux ministry! (And when Khoso, the only Congress Muslim MLA, objected, he was expelled from the Party!) It was a great gift made by the Congressmen of Sindh to the Muslim League, two days before that party met in Lahore and adopted the Partition resolution on 25 March, 1940! The Muslim leaders have since freely admitted that the Manzilgah issue was a bogus (``hathradoo'') agitation, staged just to topple Allah Bux.


Responsible Hindus were shocked by the short-sightedness of Sindh Congressmen. Professor N.R. Malkani wrote to Sardar Patel to do something about it. And the Sardar wrote back: ``I have received your distressing letter of the 1st March 1940. Our friends of the Congress Assembly Party in Sindh have acted in a manner which has brought discredit to the organization and to themselves . . . The Hindu Panchayat of Sukkur has, it seems, succeeded in coercing them to a line of action which they would not have taken if they had the choice or the requisite courage to stand by the principles of the Congress . . . They talk of wider interest of the country in relation to their action, while they forget that they are not serving the local, much less the wider interest.''


The League ministry fell the following year and Al]ah Bux came back to power. But the damage had been done. The Muslim League branches in Sindh went up from 30 to 400. During this one League year the British officers covered themselves with infamy, in serving the communal cause.


Justice Weston was appointed to inquire into the Manzilgah riots. When the Muslim Anjuman blamed the Muslim League for the violence, the judge turned on them! When the parties and the judge went to examine the Manzilgah site, Rashdi, the League ``counsel'', picked up Weston's shoes and kept them in the shade. Weston was thrilled. When they came out, Rashdi again took the shoes and placed them before Weston. The judge in his excess of joy forgot even elementary discretion. He now left his car and sat in Rashdi's car, as the party drove to Rohri. Rashdi writes in his memoirs that Weston even asked him that day in the car as to when the Muslims were going to claim Sadhbela. No wonder Weston in his report blamed the Hindus for the riots. This same partisan judge was now appointed lo decide about the Manzilgah. And he decided that it was a mosque! The Manzilgah issue died down --- but not before it had delivered a body-blow to Hindu-Muslim amity in Sindh.


Allah Bux came back to power. But the British were now bent on seeing him out. When the ``Quit India'' movement started, he renounced his old title of Khan Bahadur and the new one of OBE (Order of the British Empire). He also resigned from the National Defence Council. The Governor now declared that he had no confidence in him --- the Assembly's confidence notwithstanding --- and dismissed him! A few months later he was murdered in broad daylight, while going in a tonga in his home-town of Shikarpur. The League minister Khuhro was arraigned --- but he escaped with the benefit of doubt.


Meanwhile British partiality for the League continued. The 1946 Assembly elections returned 28 Leaguers, 22 Congressmen, 7 anti-League Muslims, and 3 Europeans were nominated. The 22 Congressmen and the 7 anti-League Muslims had formed an alliance. They were one more than the League. But the Governor, Sir Francis Mudie, installed a League ministry and asked the 3 nominated Europeans to support it!


Even then, with a Leaguer elected Speaker, the League was reduced to 29 in a house of 60. But the Governor would not call the Assembly session. On top of that, when Mir Bundeh Ali Khan Talpur quit the League, the Governor sent his secretary to him, asking him to rejoin the League on promise of a ministership. When the Assembly had to be called to elect Sindh's representatives to the Constituent Assembly, the Governor adjourned the House on the very day that it was scheduled to take up the no-confidence motion. His excuse was that the Assembly, called to elect members to the Consembly, could not conduct any other business. Interestingly enough, at the same time, the British Governor of the Punjab allowed the Punjab Assembly to take up the motion of no-confidence against the non-League Khizr government, though it, too, had been called for electing representatives to the Consembly.


Later, when the Sindh Assembly session became constitutionally due, the Governor did not summon it --- because the League was by then down to 25; instead, he dissolved the Assembly, called for fresh elections and kept the Leaguers as ``care-taker government''. In the ensuing elections, massive rigging by the Muslim zamindars and officers, at the instance of the British higher-ups, gave the League 35 seats, as against only 2 to Nationalist Muslims. Before the election petitions could be taken up, the rigged Assembly had voted for Pakistan!,Governor Mudie was duly rewarded for his services by being elevated from the governorship of Sindh to that of the Punjab. Pir A.M. Rashdi has aptly described Mudie as ``Katikoo'' (master crook). The fate of Sindh was sealed by ``Quide-e-Azam Mudie'' even more than by the other Quaid, Mr. Jinnah.


The Congress could have at least partly saved Sindh, but it acted like Chamberlain who had abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 with the statement that it was ``a far-away country about which we know little.''


The Thar Parker district had a Hindu majority and the Congress should have claimed it. Indeed it had traditionally been more a part of Marwar than of Sindh. On the eve of Partition, the Sindh government promptly merged Sanghar district wit4 Thar Parker district --- to cancel out its Hindu majority. But even then the case of Thar Parker district was on par with that of Sylhet in Assam, where the Muslim League had demanded --- and got --- part of the district, through a plebiscite.


In 1928, when there was talk of separation of Sindh from Bombay, Jodhpur State had laid claim to the Amarkot (Umarkot) area of Thar Parker district. Jodhpur's case was that Amarkot had traditionally been part of its Marwar area. The Britishers had taken the area from Jodhpur temporarily for defence purposes. However, the Sindh Congress had opposed the move.


Another area India could have got was the native Khairpur state. as big as any district. For years the Mir of Khairpur had been kept confined to a house in Pune. In the Nineteen Forties the Khairpur Dewan was Aijaz Ali of U.P. The Number Two man was Mangharam Wadhwani, Treasury Officer. Aijaz Ali had ousted Mangharam. When the transfer of power was approaching, Mangharam met the Mir in Pune and promised to have him restored to his throne --- on condition that he removed Aijaz Ali and acceded to India. The Mir agreed. Mangharam met Mountbatten and Sardar Patel. The Mir was duly restored to his state; Aijaz Ali was sent away. The Mir was now prepared to accede to India. But Pandit Nehru declined the offer --- even as he had returned the accession papers of the Kalat state in Baluchistan.


Had New Delhi played its cards in Khairpur and Thar Parker, the frontier of India would have touched the mighty Indus. Indeed India could have asked for a plebiscite in the whole of Sindh, for the majority of Sindhis had voted against the League in the 1946 general elections. In these elections, the Muslim League got only 46.3 per cent vote in a province with a 71 per cent Muslim population. For every four votes polled by the League, three were polled by the nationalist Muslims led by G.M. Syed and Maula Bux!


In a house of sixty, ten MLAs were returned unopposed. Only one of them was a Muslim. Had polling taken place in these ten constituencies also, the League percentage of the popular vote would have come down to less than forty!


So there was a clear anti-League majority of the popular vote in Sindh. In failing to avail of all these favourable factors, the Congress did little justice to Sindh and even less to India. The Congress threw not only NWFP to the wolves --- as complained by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan; it threw Sindh also to the wolves.

[svinayak]

So there was a clear anti-League majority of the popular vote in Sindh. In failing to avail of all these favourable factors, the Congress did little justice to Sindh and even less to India. The Congress threw not only NWFP to the wolves --- as complained by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan; it threw Sindh also to the wolves.

One of the story is that Sardar Patel was paid of by the British to lay off Sindh.
JLN was paid off to take care of Kashmir

[Yayavar]

So there was a clear anti-League majority of the popular vote in Sindh. In failing to avail of all these favourable factors, the Congress did little justice to Sindh and even less to India. The Congress threw not only NWFP to the wolves --- as complained by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan; it threw Sindh also to the wolves.

One of the story is that Sardar Patel was paid of by the British to lay off Sindh.
JLN was paid off to take care of Kashmir

Yes, though after the war the British were broke, had to be rescued (Marshall Plan) - so could not really pay enough. As a result the other 500plus independent states got integrated into the modern Bharat. Small mercies!!

[svinayak]

Yes, though after the war the British were broke, had to be rescued (Marshall Plan) - so could not really pay enough. As a result the other 500plus independent states got integrated into the modern Bharat. Small mercies!!

British could pay for small groups and individuals but could not pay the debt for the soldiers on hire $15B

[Sanku]

Ah! I knew you would fall into that too.
.

N3 do u agree that these pre 47 UP/Bihari etc Muslims supporters of Pakistani Movement cannot be considred Indian and these are the same people who created the circumstances for the death of million plus people thus guilty of genocidal charge. And Finally these very Islamist people got away unharmed while many innocents others suffered with the loss of life, liberty and property.

Things such as data do not bother people like N, he is so great that in his greatness his belief alone is sufficient reason to create new truth.

Samuel has been doing a singular service in pointing out how many Muslims in pre-partition India were as patriotic to India (then) as Muslims now. These Muslims in Sindh, Baloch etc etc. In fact even in Punjab, under the Unitarian's.

Also as you pointed out there are many Muslims left in India for 47 who were actually really behind the idea of Pakistan but could not go there.

The culprit is the idea of Pakistan/Islamis and not Muslims (the people)

To assume that an arbitrary line drawn on sand can magically change the nature of people and stratify them into good and bad is not only hubris and intellectual dishonesty of the 1st order -- it is also simply hateful and disgusting.

[arnab]

Things such as data do not bother people like N, he is so great that in his greatness his belief alone is sufficient reason to create new truth.

Samuel has been doing a singular service in pointing out how many Muslims in pre-partition India were as patriotic to India (then) as Muslims now. These Muslims in Sindh, Baloch etc etc. In fact even in Punjab, under the Unitarian's.

Also as you pointed out there are many Muslims left in India for 47 who were actually really behind the idea of Pakistan but could not go there.

The culprit is the idea of Pakistan/Islamis and not Muslims (the people)

To assume that an arbitrary line drawn on sand can magically change the nature of people and stratify them into good and bad is not only hubris and intellectual dishonesty of the 1st order -- it is also simply hateful and disgusting.

I agree with you. The problem I think that the leaders were grappling with was - what would be the consequences of insisting on a united India (Ambedkar was unequivocal when he said that he preferred the freedom of India to the unity of India). The fears were - would an average, honest, nationalitic muslim be able to stand up to the hectoring of a Mullah selling the dreams of an unrequited jannat (a.k.a Pakistan).
Even in present day India - how many liberal muslims have been able to protest against Shah Bano or Taslima Nasreen? (Jawed Naqvi is on record saying he requested Rajiv Gandhi not to give into the Mullaha's demands on shah Bano. My question - why fire gun from his shoulders hain jee? why not take the issues to the street yourself? God knows many hindus protested against Gujarat).

The critical query at the time was - what about the defence of undivided India? Would we have an 1857 redux all over the country in 1957 Akhand B? As Ambedkar put it:

One cannot ignore that what is important is not the winning of independence, but the having of the sure means of maintaining it. The ultimate guarantee of the independence of a country is a safe army—an army on which you can rely to fight for the country at all time and in any eventuality. The army in India must necessarily be a mixed army composed of Hindus and Muslims. If India is invaded by a foreign power, can the Muslims in the army be trusted to defend India? Suppose invaders are their co-religionists. Will the Muslims side with the invaders, or will they stand against them and save India? This is a very crucial question. Obviously, the answer to this question must depend upon to what extent the Muslims in the army have caught the infection of the two-nation theory, which is the foundation of Pakistan. If they are infected, then the army in India cannot be safe. Instead of being the guardian of the independence of India, it will continue to be a menace and a potential danger to its independence.

The next thing that BRA touched upon was the 'sentiment' for the creation of Pakistan.

That the Muslim case for Pakistan is founded on sentiment is far from being a matter of weakness; it is really its strong point. It does not need deep understanding of politics to know that the workability of a constitution is not a matter of theory. It is a matter of sentiment. A constitution, like clothes, must suit as well as please. If a constitution does not please, then however perfect it may be, it will not work. To have a constitution which runs counter to the strong sentiments of a determined section is to court disaster if not to invite rebellion.

And finally he articulates his greatest fear:

prefer the partitioning of India into Muslim India and non-Muslim India as the surest and safest method of providing for the defence of both. It is certainly the safer of the two alternatives. I know it will be contended that my fears [=fear] about the loyalty of the Muslims in the army to a Free and United India, arising from the infection of the two-nation theory, is only an imaginary fear. That is no doubt true. That does not militate against the soundness of the choice I have made. I may be wrong. But I certainly can say without any fear of contradiction that, to use the words of Burke, it is better to be ridiculed for too great a credulity than to be ruined by too confident a sense of security. I don't want to leave things to chance. To leave so important an issue, as the defence of India, to chance is to be guilty of the grossest crime.

[/quote]

[Sanku]

So nothing has changed Arnab, has it.

[SSridhar]

“We were tired men,” India’s first Prime Minister said in 1960, “and we
were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going
to prison again—and if we had stood out for a united India as we wished
it, prison obviously awaited us. We saw the fires burning in the Punjab
and heard of the killings. The plan of Partition offered a way out and we
took it. […] We expected that Partition would be temporary, that
Pakistan was bound to come back to us.” {15Leonard Mosley, The Last Days of the Raj (London, 1961), p. 77.}

[sanjaychoudhry]

We were tired men,” India’s first Prime Minister said in 1960, “and we
were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going
to prison again

Well if they were tired, that was their problem. These old faggots should have made way for younger hot-blooded men who were energetic and could have carried on the flag, rather than monpolising leadership positions for 40 years, not groom anyone to take over after them and then be in a hurry to sign on the dotted line because they needed rest and were old. They were sticking like leeches to their chairs and brooked no competion. Till the day Nehru died, he did not groom any successor or second-rung leadership who could take over after him. Strange that the tired old man developed the energy to rule the country for 17 more years, so much so that not even God could make him part with the PM chair after the 62 war.

[Sanku]

“We were tired men,” India’s first Prime Minister said in 1960,

I think Nehru can at best speak only for himself.

[RayC]

It may not sound PC, but notwithstanding the articles that have been written, the schism between the Hindus and Muslims were deep and on the surface, it appeared a 'regulated' calm!

If we look at those days with today’s sensibilities, one wonders if the ‘situation’ was the same as today. It has to be conceded that we have been sensitised with ‘secularism’ over the period of 60 plus years and to think of the issues beyond the prism of the concept drummed into the population, could be termed as heresy.

In pre Partition days, the British ruled and they were not concerned. They were only concerned that there is peace between communities and they reaped the harvest! Thus. each community and religion thought of maintaining its own ‘purity’. The two communities in general would not sup together, except for the most liberal of families or those at government functions. There are tales that chicken was a taboo since it was a favourite of the Muslims. I believe that even onions and garlic was not eaten because it was a Muslim way of cooking and I heard that it was not only the high caste folks, but also followed by Hindu peasants of the lower strata of society. There are many more of these rather odd, and maybe irrational, stories that one heard of.

Girilal Jain comes to mind – Islam is not theocratic, and instead is theocentric! Centring on God and the religious dictates by the Prophet as the prime concern! Therefore, the chasm was there. Jinnah and the Muslim League did a marvellous job along with Iqbal to give it shape and concretise for the Muslim dream!

One cannot blame the Jinnah or Iqbal or even the Muslim of that time to fall hook, line and sinker. Psychology has us to believe that there is the fear of the ‘alien’ majority and whether we admit it or not, there was no close domestic social interaction between the communities.

Islam is a powerful platform and no matter what is said about the ‘ummah’, the sub culture, sub nationalism cannot be ignored, more so, when another sub nationalism tries to become the majority and rule and lay down policies. The same ‘fear’ of Jinnah and the Moslem League! The Sindhis, Pashtuns all were uncomfortable with the Punjabi (military and feudal) domination and that of the Mohajirs (being educated they cornered the bureaucracy, government jobs and commerce). I would be surprised if they were in anyway against an Islam homeland and instead were frustrated by the domination of these two communities. Even today, there is this grievance! Baluchis and others were always in the periphery and neglected!

That sub-nationalism is a powerful motivator can be seen in India as also in Pakistan. The Marathi manush and Gujarati pride are but examples of India or even Mayawati’s ‘Dalit ke beti’ and thing like that or the Dravidian support for LTTE! Nothing wrong about it! It is but natural affinity that speaks! Jinnah had a Hindu, Ismaili and Shia ancestry, yet the major sub-nationalism or sub religiosity made him a Sunni by a Karachi High Court ruling! That indicates the powerful emotional and comfort levels that the ‘identity’ crisis can throw up, then and even now!

I am sure there will be those who would still prefer that there should have been no Partition looking through the mirror of today. I will confess I am in a dilemma of choice, when we have seen communal riots throughout the span of Independent India culminating in the Gujarat riots which served no community well.

Jaswant Singh puts the issue of my dilemma very succinctly. He writes:

The cruel truth of this Partitioning of India has actually resulted in achieving the very reverse of the originally intended purpose; partition, instead of setting contention between communities has left us a legacy of enhanced Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or other such denominational identities, hence differences. Affirmative action, reservation for Muslims, other castes and communities unfortunately does not dissolve those identities; it heavily underscores them. Water their roots, perpetuating differences through the nutrients of self interest being poured constantly in their separateness. Reservation results finally in compartmentalising society, hence ultimately fragmenting national identity.

[Aditya_V]

RayC-> Onion and Garlic is not eaten my many hindus today also because per Hindu scriptures and Gurus is Tamasic food or rather food in the mode of ignorance. It to be taken only for medicinal purpose. Not because it is the muslim way of cooking or anything.

[Rahul Mehta]

One of the story is that Sardar Patel was paid of by the British to lay off Sindh. JLN was paid off to take care of Kashmir

"Paid off"? Pls elaborate.

[RamaY]

One of the story is that Sardar Patel was paid of by the British to lay off Sindh. JLN was paid off to take care of Kashmir

"Paid off"? Pls elaborate.

Do not know the facts yet. But it could be a compromize, Sindh for the support on other principalities, such as Hyderabad.

[Abhi_G]

One of the story is that Sardar Patel was paid of by the British to lay off Sindh. JLN was paid off to take care of Kashmir

Do not know the facts yet. But it could be a compromize, Sindh for the support on other principalities, such as Hyderabad.

^^^^

According to N.S. Sarila, the brits dropped their previous idea of independence of the princely states once the issue of partition was accepted by JLN and Patel. Mountbatten AND Atlee had roles in this, although during the invasion of Gilgit and northern areas (J&K) under the leadership of "british army officers" of pak army (who basically herded the afridis), his and Atlee's positions changed. They became very much against the Indian stand and played dirty games to prevent US intervention, manipulated JLN and created an environment of mistrust between US and India. The brits played their game throughout to occupy a strategic base, either in the form of a federal setup where they could have their military bases and in which provinces had the choice to secede {which was not acceptable to Patel and JLN} or in the form of a "moth eaten pak" which Jinnah had to satisfy himself with. The brits never trusted INC on which they could rely on having future military bases in India to counter Soviet expansion.

According to Sarila, NWFP under the Khan brothers were against pak, but JLN's visit to that place was marred by violent protests by ML thugs and stone throwing at his vehicle in which he was supposedly injured. INC did a bungle here. It agreed on a re-election in NWFP to judge public sentiments. This was merely within three months (IIRC) after a general election where INC and the Khan brothers had won a majority. Do not know if a backdoor black mailing was going on by the brits on JLN to agree to this. In that election, the pro-pak party won by a very very small difference (massive rigging?), which INC agreed to accept. This was a situation totally opposite to the intial INC position that since they had a majority in NWFP, that province would not go to pak, and therefore eventually the pak idea would wind up by itself without NWFP. But trickery by ML and brits closed the doors of this possibility. Actually, the brit political agents (the governor) in the NWFP were responsible for fomenting trouble and possibly rigging of the elections against the Khan brothers and acting in favour of ML. This definitely points to safeguarding of future strategic military interests against USSR in those regions by the higher level politicians in the brit establishment for whom the end objective justified the means.

Added later: The governor of NWFP was Olaf Caroe !

[samuel]

Remarkably similar story plays out in Sindh. ML loses majority, governor dissolves, installs ML as care-taker, vote for pakistan, rigged elections,..end of story.

In baloch, they want to join india, if not be independent. So they become independent. a year later, pak moves in. instrument of accession, end of story.

We need to understand the structure, composition and organization of the ML very thoroughly. IMO.

S

[Abhi_G]

So rigging of elections were happening for the first time in India supported logistically by brit political agents and performed by the jihadi cadres of muslim league. Bapu definitely had NO idea of this aspect.

Most of the msulim league leadership comprised of erstwhile nawabs and zamindars. Their extreme corruption until this day is visible in pak.

[samuel]

Yes in fact, people were trying to reach Bapu in various ways. I don't know how much he knew for a fact. But at the ground level the "sons of the soil" in almost every state that is now in pakistan were a) initially aligned with INC. b) INC won the elections often in coalitions c) Locals wanted to be part of India, d) were culturally very integrated and e) Detested the arrival of all these league members.

In contrast, the ML was "upper class;" Liaquat Ali was from Karnal and claims he is direct descendant of some sassanid King. There was Jinnah. There was Aga Khan. The nawab from Dhaka.

This ruling islamic class went low after 1857 and rose forty years later when Minto/Morley did them a favor. The rest of India I think had forgotten them. They did not come to terms with the forming India, their jagirdari and zamindari and other ruler things were going to go. They were motivated to go high or low to win the battle. This was the class of people, I will argue a minority of leadership, whose nexus with islamism must be understood because the latter was initially the tool for them to propagate and activate their power. Years later, the tables turned and they got consumed by what they started. Jinnah was already broken a little into "independence," but he was a "new convert," a front for some really old power structures that Liaquat et al. represented.

But this is not the end of the story. This is only one hand. The other hand for the clap is our own Nehru, in a remarkably similar previliged background, always in the shadows of real leadership and power, intransigent. That set these people on a collision course. WTF does this have to do with what people wanted. And a million of them died.

Partition was, when viewed from a people perspective, avoidable. Bapuji saw that, I think. That is where it was then and that state must not be confused with the exchange of power between the "mughal class" and the "islamist class" that is in power today. It was not natural, obvious, or forgone that this would happen at all then.

I will also second what RayC said, in the sense that I do not have the same sense of conviction either because I am not sure exactly what would have come about. Nobody can tell. But what I am sure is that where power reached the people, they made the right choices, in the interest of staying together, united. Partition accentuates differences and discriminates one for the other in the ostensible search for homogeneity. If that is not anathema to what India is, I don't know what is.

[ShauryaT]

Partition was, when viewed from a people perspective, avoidable. Bapuji saw that, I think.

At the heart of it, it was weakness, caused by faulty policies that prevented them from doing something about partition. Gandhiji recognized that till the British were there the communal issue would be stroked and it is this failure of the INC to stop the fuel (British imperial power) to the fire (ML) that has resulted in partition. If the INC would have been successful at tackling the British, the story would have been entirely different.

[brihaspati]

MKG had the option - he could have asked for non-cooperation with the British and the ML over Partition, over and above the heads of British+ML+"tired old men of the Congress" directly to the people. Time and again it is the "people" option which had been treated like the proverbial sharp weapon which is only used carefully against a personal opponent but is also distrusted because it could turn itself around on the owner. Is it possible that he could be suspected of having such plans when he announced his wish to travel to Pakistan - just before his assassination?

[svinayak]

Remarkably similar story plays out in Sindh. ML loses majority, governor dissolves, installs ML as care-taker, vote for pakistan, rigged elections,..end of story.

In baloch, they want to join india, if not be independent. So they become independent. a year later, pak moves in. instrument of accession, end of story.

We need to understand the structure, composition and organization of the ML very thoroughly. IMO.

S

It is a British run outfit. Now TSP being a Uncle run outfit - including foreign policy, defence policy and economy

[svinayak]

I will also second what RayC said, in the sense that I do not have the same sense of conviction either because I am not sure exactly what would have come about. Nobody can tell. But what I am sure is that where power reached the people, they made the right choices, in the interest of staying together, united. Partition accentuates differences and discriminates one for the other in the ostensible search for homogeneity. If that is not anathema to what India is, I don't know what is.

This may be true but allowing a belligerent state to take roots inside the subcontinent which started the war within the first year of its existence was unacceptable. Same with allowing Tibet to be taken over by a over sized PRC govt and state which never existed before. Future generations will ask this question

[ramana]

Guess who was advising uncle about the middle east policy etc right after WWII? Olaf Caroe. The game coninues with new players.

[surinder]

MKG, JLN & the INC could have gone to the people and appealed to their sense of very existence and asked for a Dharma Yudh to save the nation, as well as their own existence. They could have gone to the Punjab & invoked the Khalsa with a simple question: Are you going to be kicked out Nankana Sahib & Punja Sahib? Do you want the Mughal Rule all over again? They could have gone to the Army and asked the Hindus/Sikhs to now do their duty to their motherland and protect it from the scourge of partition (after having protected UK in WW 1 & 2, it was time to protect the motherland).

Sadly, the INC (and MKG & JLN) held other things higher than the mere preservance of unity. Unity was lower in their hierarchy, and that is the essence of problem. What were those other goals? And why were they higher?

[ramana]

“We were tired men,” India’s first Prime Minister said in 1960, “and we
were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going
to prison again—and if we had stood out for a united India as we wished
it, prison obviously awaited us. We saw the fires burning in the Punjab
and heard of the killings. The plan of Partition offered a way out and we
took it. […] We expected that Partition would be temporary, that
Pakistan was bound to come back to us.” {15Leonard Mosley, The Last Days of the Raj (London, 1961), p. 77.}

Do we have the full text of the book for context?

[Prem]

Surinder Sir ,
G&N got Subhash Bose banished and left Bhagat Singh to fight alone. Dharam Yudh for them was only in the book.Nehru was advising Punjabis to live under new Mughals and Gandhi was telling Bengalis to sacrifice themsleves to please subhumen of the area. No surprise , bapu ke bandars still blaberring , blundering over Bakistaniant and this legacy is the real tragedy of India.

[svinayak]

Sadly, the INC (and MKG & JLN) held other things higher than the mere preservance of unity. Unity was lower in their hierarchy, and that is the essence of problem. What were those other goals? And why were they higher?

The negotiation and agreement was more important for INC than the national interest of Bharat.
This is negotiation with the colonial power for the mutual benefit of the colonial power(Geo-strategic - North west) and for INC to take over all the Princely states (for a contiguous India- freedom). It was not for the national interest of India.

The adhoc nature of the Pakistan state shows that there was not enough support from the elite and also from world community. After the UK and US recognition the state got its support from other UN member states.

[surinder]

Prem, good point.

Acharya, excellent point. When I read the history of India's independence movement, it is characterized by two things: Long drawn out negotiations about points of governance. Secondly, by bizzarre events whose motivations are bewildering, and can only be understood by convoluted arguments. But MKG & company had undoubtedly reached an aggreement with the British in early 1900's ... maybe it was an unsaid aggreement, or maybe it was articulated. The INC was not to use violent tactics, nor to threaten the Brutish people physially, nor to make any attempt at core Brutish Rule instruments of state setup & power (Army, Police, especially). In lieu of that, the INC leaders would be treated lightly & received as leaders of India. None of the core INC leaders (MKG, JLN, Patel) was ever sent to prison terms lasting decades in dark dingy cells, no Kalapani, not beaten by police nor assasinated nor bombed. They were treated as Political prisoners who could write books in jails, rather break stones. None of the leaders emerged "broken" from jail terms. They all emerged as bigger leaders. Contrast that with the jail terms for Savarkar, Guru Ram Singh, Bhai Randhir Singh, or Lala Lajpat Rai. The Indian official history books explain that very ingeniously: MKG & JLN were so popular that the Brutish feared to punish them severly.

[surinder]

Regarding Negotiations & peace: Peaceful negotiations should be a first step, no doubt, but it cannot be the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, and the last and the only tool. Could Raam have got Sita by negotiation alone? Could Sri Krishna have gotten even 5 square feet of land by negotiations alone? One of the most basic laws of dealing with such conflicts is that if you do not have the ability to wage Yudh, all your claims and attempts at Naan-Violencse are useless & laughable. Sri Raam & Sri Krishna attempted negotiations in the interest of peace, but only after knowing fully well that if the attempt at peace fails they had the capability to wage a full-fledged waar.

[ramana]

The same pattern continues even in post Independence India. India develops or starts some weapons program or the other and invariably it is never complete. Its always half baked or half-complete. Its like there is hamartia at the core which prevents completion of any project to its final end.

BTW it applies to even other civilian technology projects too.

Take the digital library e-books project. The books are scanned in tiff format, which requires connection to the network to even read the books. For whose benefit were those scanned?

[svinayak]

Acharya, excellent point. When I read the history of India's independence movement, it is characterized by two things: Long drawn out negotiations about points of governance. Secondly, by bizzarre events whose motivations are bewildering, and can only be understood by convoluted arguments. But MKG & company had undoubtedly reached an aggreement with the British in early 1900's ...

You can see similar pattern even today. The negotiation for the nuclear deal was not for the national interest of India but for the global non proliferation movement. India's national interest has not been taken care completely.

[Prem]

. They all emerged as bigger leaders. Contrast that with the jail terms for Savarkar, Guru Ram Singh, Bhai Randhir Singh, or Lala Lajpat Rai. The Indian official history books explain that very ingeniously: MKG & JLN were so popular that the Brutish feared to punish them severly.

Sorry for lighter note , may be they left this job for indians to do it themselves. Aapne hatthi apna kaam aap hi swaraye/ If you want to accomplish the desired goal, do the work yourself by getting involved.

[surinder]

One more point I have been itching to make:

The whole decision making on Partition happened in a super-fast mode. It was also very secretive. INC was part of this speed up & part of the secretiveness. The news of the calamity awaiting the Punjabis & Bengalis was clear. But if the INC had treated those two regions as part of them, they would have rushed to warn the populations of the impending disaster. So that even if Partition was unavoidable, the human cost could have been avoided by asking the populations to take security measures and/or relocating. But to do that, even, required an honesty which INC lacked. The let the massacre happen, even knowing in advance that such was the fate that awaited those areas. They aggreed to freedom without even knowing which areas of India were India on the night of Aug 15 th. Shame.

I am not knowledgable about Bengal, but in the Punjab, Sikhs/Hindus were taken by absolute surprise when partition happened. There was disbelief. No leader had even given an hint to them. The ML was well prepared and careful preparations of the M's had taken place. Riots broke out in Rawalpindin, Lahore etc. Hindus/Sikhs were massacred. The H/S reaction came late, when they were awakened from the shock. They got as much arms as they could and retaliated as hard as they could. In the end the tide was turned and more M's were liquidated than H/S. This was not something the ML had imagined would have happen. They still harbor shock: they never expected that Indian Punjab was would be cleansed. Sikhs/Hindus had never been on the receiving end of M violence since 1760's, when the last of Mughals/Afghans were cleared off. 1947 represented a reversal of fortunes vis-a-vis M's. If the INC had gotten the H/S Punjabi leaders and apprised them of what was to come, the H/S would have prepared themselves much better & armed much earlier and could have even retained fair amount of land that went to TSP (especially Lahore). But INC secretiveness meant that many many more died an unnecessary death.

If we take an even further step and imagine 1947 INC leadership uncompromising patriots whose concern for India submerged any other concern, then perhaps the most logical thing for them to do was to go to the Punjabi Villages & collect the Sikhs & Hindus issue a general call for uprising. The Khalsa spirit could have been easily roused. The Khalsa (of course w/i "Hindu" support) could have wrecked any ML + Brutish plans in the Punjab.

[ramana]

Surinder Do you think something like this is happening withthe secrecy around S-e_S and now proposed MMS visit to USA? Is India becoming another patsy?