Two SOAS professors- Navtej K Purewal & Eleanor Newbigin claim to have identified 'five myths about partition'. Both are stupid and ignorant. There was only one myth about partition. It was that most Muslims in Hindu majority States would live in their own enclaves where they would be supreme.
The seed of what would become partition can be found in the works of Sir Syed Ahmed and the Aligarh university that he founded. A Quaker scholar, Theodore Beck, who became the Principal of that College, observed that "Muslims are a separate nation, rule of majority is impossible; Muslims will never agree to be ruled by the Hindu majority". In 1899, his successor, Theodore Morison proposed that the only solution to the Indian political uncertainty was to centralize the Indian Muslims in one province or tract of the country, for instance, the north of India from Peshawar to Agra.
Many Aligarh Muslims remained convinced, till the announcement of the Radcliffe award, that somehow or the other they would end up ruling their own ancestral territory. It was a shock to discover they would have to migrate hundreds of miles to live in their own 'nation'.
Why did Partition happen? The answer was that Muslims wanted a bigger share of power than their percentage of the population warranted. The Hindus decided that the Muslims were a nuisance. They must be crushed once and for all. Partition destroyed the political power of the Muslims. In independent India they have fallen behind though in recent years this trend may have reversed. Still, it is a fact that Muslim youths are now less likely to go to College than Dalits and Tribals. However, because they are hard working and enterprising, their future looks promising as India's economy continues to grow.
Myth 1: The main aim was to resolve religious differences
The Muslim League wanted partition because they had religious differences with Hindus and Sikhs. They got what they wanted because Hindus and Sikhs had equally intense religious differences with Muslims.
Popular accounts of partition reproduce the British colonial state’s simplistic view of south Asian society just in terms of religious categories – with Hindu and Muslim identities as the biggest groups.
The British had granted autonomy to the Provinces in 1935. The Muslims had previously demanded and received separate electorates. However, the Brits thought that Hindus and Muslims would continue to get along well enough. They were wrong.
Over the decades scholarship has shown that religious difference doesn’t explain partition.
Over the decades 'scholarship' has turned to shit. The plain fact is the Muslim League demanded and got Partition. Pakistan was and is a theocratic state.
Simplistic religious categories in most analyses of partition fail to sufficiently understand complex social and political issues that shape south Asian societies.
Yet, Partition was on the basis of a simple religious category- viz. Islam.
Partition pushed people to identify as a particular religion, and even to migrate, based on that identity.
More particularly if the alternative was having their throats slit.
Greater focus on oral histories and personal experiences of partition have highlighted how this action did less to provide a political solution than to impose new divides around national and religious lines.
Granny says 'Muslims/Kaffirs came and started slitting our throats. We ran away.' That's all that oral history amounts to. What happened in India was similar to what happened in Ireland though very much more bloody. There was partition on the basis of religion.
It ignores huge variation of practices and identities within and across different groups in British India by assuming there was conflict based on religion.
Where there was no 'conflict based on religion' there was no talk of partition.
Shared cultures based on common language, literature, music and regional and local traditions challenge this.
Those 'shared cultures' didn't challenge shit. Once throats began to be slit, people ran away to where their religion didn't make them a target.
The tendency to frame partition in binary Hindu vs Muslim terms
is deplorable. Did you know that Pakistan isn't an Islamic state? Its national religion is Shinto, though, by law, the head of State, the President must be a practicing Quaker.
has helped to shape the rise of religious majoritarianism in post-colonial south Asia, which is based on a constructed, even mythical idea of a majority which makes the rules for everyone,
which is the case in Pakistan. The Ahmadiyas have been declared non-Muslim.
and which can most overtly be seen in the vision of a Hindu nation being advanced by the current government in India.
Better a Hindu Rashtra than an Italian dynasty.
British officials and nationalist leaders saw the violence of this period as the response of an irrational, religious society to complex political negotiations.
No. They saw it as similar to what happened in Ireland.
But there is substantial evidence to show that the violence of partition was not spontaneous.
Just as there is substantial evidence that the continuing persecution of kaffirs in Islamic countries is not spontaneous.
The violence of 1947 was deeply shaped by earlier colonial policies emphasising separate religious communities and cultivating some groups over others.
But previous Indo-Islamic kingdoms and Empires had emphasized the separateness of religious communities with different rates of tax for kaffirs.
One example of this was the idea of “martial races” who were recruited for the police and army and given land allocations in return for their loyalty to the British Raj.
Pakistan kept that idea. Few Bengalis were recruited into the Army. India helped liberate Bangladesh. On the other hand, though pretending otherwise, India actually doubled recruitment from the martial races. Look at the President's bodyguard. Only Sikhs, Jats and Rajputs are allowed to serve.
The idea of the martial races was developed after the uprising of 1857 to identify certain certain communities who were considered ideal for military recruitment based on their ethnicity and hypermasculinity and, above all, loyalty to the British state.
How strange! Why did the Brits not recruit effeminate seditionists?
Sikhs, Jats, Punjabi Muslims and Gurkhas were all celebrated “martial races”.
So were Dogras, Garwahlis, Coorgis, Rajputs etc.
The violence of 1947 saw men attack one another and also women. Women of other communities were raped and killed and some men killed their own female relatives in the name of “purity” and “honour”, especially in Punjab which was home to many “martial races”. Described by scholars as “genocidal”, the violence in Punjab was shaped by similar notions of racial purity and aggressive masculinity that had underpinned imperial recruiting policies for years.
No. The violence in Punjab was shaped by religion. It wasn't the case that hypermasculine Muslims started slaughtering each other. They only killed kaffirs.
Myth 3: Partition was the outcome of long-term planning
I've never heard of this myth. Most people thought the Pakistan demand was a bargaining chip. Then the Hindus realized they would be better off getting rid of the Muslim majority areas. Let Karachi pay for the defence of the North West Frontier. East Bengal was welcome to starve.
Calls for the creation of separate states, which came to the fore in 1947, had mixed and uneven support, including within the Muslim political leadership.
The Muslim League pretty much monopolized the Muslim vote. The Hindus decided they needn't bother sharing power with the Muslims. After all, the vast majority of Hindus lived in Hindu majority areas. Those who lived in Muslim areas would be killed sooner or later. Muslims in India would be reduced to second class status. The Dalits would be lifted up over their heads.
But these ideas did not set out how, or when, such states would be created or where their borders would be drawn. Up until late 1946 the British government was very reluctant to support division of the subcontinent.
But the League had won a big mandate. The question was whether Congress would make concessions. They wouldn't. Jinnah and Liaquat could fuck off to their moth-eaten Pakistan.
The British had planned to transfer power in 1948 but in February 1947 it was announced that Louis Mountbatten would replace Lord Archibald Wavell as viceroy, the British government’s representative in India, and would transfer power by August 1947.
No. Mountbatten announced the partition in June. He made it clear that the transfer of power would happen within a few months. Few expected it to happen as quickly as it did.
On June 3 1947 Mountbatten, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru (the respective leaders of the two main pre-independence political parties, the Muslim League and Indian National Congress), announced that the subcontinent would be divided just nine weeks later.
The date was not specified.
Between June and August political leaders and their lawyers jockeyed to establish borders that ran through the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. These discussions were overseen by Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer who had never visited India. He was given only five weeks to decide the border.
By the time he announced his award, both countries were independent.
While calls for the creation of a new Muslim state had been framed around religious representation, the legal negotiations of the Boundary Commission focused heavily on securing natural resources and ensuring state security.
How strange! It should have ignored geography and economics.
The final borders of the new states of India and Pakistan were announced on August 17 1947 – two days after independence. Much of the violence is attributed to the haphazard communication of the high politics of partition to wider society, and the unnecessary speed with which the process was carried out.
All of the violence can be attributed to the fact that the politicians running the States didn't give a shit about the people who would find themselves on the wrong side of the border. Mountbatten suggested that the Mahatma had super-powers and thus could prevent violence of any type. This was hilarious.
Myth 4: All of India was under British rule
Again, I've never heard this 'myth'. On the other hand it is true that all Indians were either British subjects or British protected subjects.
One-third of India was never under formal British rule but comprised more than 550 princely states. The British government had different constitutional and diplomatic arrangements with these states, all of which required legal negotiation when the British ceded power.
Not really. The states could choose to accede to one or other Dominion. One or two thought they could go it alone but were soon disabused of any such notion.
Kashmir was one of these princely states. The maharaja, Sir Hari Singh, signed an Instrument of Accession to place the state under Indian government rule in October 1947 even though the UN Security Council called for a referendum in 1948.
These two Professors think time moves backward. Hari Singh, in 1947, should have listened to what the UN would say in 1948. Nehru was a fool for going to the UN and demanding a referendum. He didn't get that Abdullah wasn't popular outside the Valley.
This has never been held – and Kashmir’s status and sovereignty in relation to India and Pakistan has been a source of conflict and unrest ever since.
Pakistan keeps trying to get it and gets slapped down.
The western coastal areas of Goa, Daman and Diu were under Portuguese control until 1961 and the south Indian region of Pondicherry/Puducherry was under French colonial rule until 1954.
So what? They didn't matter in the slightest.
Myth 5: Partition had purely regional repercussions
This was true enough. Much of India was wholly unaffected.
Estimates of people who migrated across the borders created in 1947 range between 10 million and 17.5 million. Many people from areas directly affected by partition violence, and the insecurities that followed from it, have also migrated beyond south Asia to other parts of the world.
South Asia is a shithole. Everybody is trying to leave.
Communities from Punjab, Sindh, Kashmir, and Sylhet form sizeable and significant communities in the UK, Canada, the US, and beyond.
So what? There are plenty of Tambrams in Silicon Valley.
This is another reminder of the ongoing repercussions and legacies of colonialism. In spite of the divisions of partition, diaspora communities can be found living alongside one another in different parts of the world.
Till they can save up enough to move to a White dominated neighbourhood so that their kids can attend good schools and go to a fancy college- like Vassar.
This is not to say that Partition could have been avoided. There could have been a re-organization of the states on religious lines (as did happen in the case of Indian Punjab) and a transfer of population supervised by the Army. The Centre could have had a technocratic element- i.e. the power of elected politicians could have been curbed by various autonomous institutions- and the States could have been encouraged to focus on economic growth. Tariq Ali's grandfather, Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan, was the Premier of Punjab which had prospered under both dyarchy and provincial autonomy. Perhaps, patrician Premiers of this type would have made a better fist of things.
Ali, writing about a painter friend of his in the LRB, says
'Sohail once asked me whether Partition could have been avoided. To which my answer remains yes. Trotsky’s view that history shares commonalities with biology, and that causality works through a ‘natural selection of accidents’, is a pretty good description of what happened in India.
No. What triumphed was the view that Muslims have a duty to leave 'dar ul harb' and migrate to a place ruled by Muslims.
The determining accident was the Second World War.
It was scarcely an accident.
Soon after September 1939, Gandhi visited the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, assuring him that he and all right-minded people supported Britain, but that there was great hostility in the Congress, which he could not ignore.
Gandhi wrote an article saying the Brits must hand over the Army to the INC before packing their bags. This was because the Muslims and the Punjabis would overrun the country because the non-violent Hindu Congresswallahs would refuse to put up a fight.
The British needed colonial cannon-fodder even more in this war than in the one before,
they didn't need Gandhians who would queue up to get bayonetted by the enemy.
and for that reason could not agree to grant India immediate independence.
Because the Indians had failed to form a Federal Government. The Brits had already given autonomy to the Provinces.
As a result, all the provincial Congress administrations submitted their resignation to the viceroy. Tame pro-British governments took their place.
To be fair, Congress administrations were pretty shitty. Had the Party not resigned it would have been wiped out in the 1946 election.
The Muslim League leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah,
whose party hadn't been able to form a Government in any Province and thus was able to win big in 1946
suited, booted and monocled, also went to call on the viceroy. His message was simple. The Muslim League, unlike the Congress scoundrels, was solidly behind the war effort. He wanted guarantees of minority rights (a strong federation with limited powers for the centre) or a separate state altogether. The advantage of the latter, he calmly explained to the viceroy, was that it would enable the British to retain a foothold in the subcontinent. Pakistan would be loyal. Churchill was delighted.
Pakistan would need help against Afghanistan- more particularly if the Soviets backed the Afghans with the intention of getting hold of Baluchistan.
What a historical turnaround this was.
Not really. Punjabi administrations had been staunch loyalists through the Twenties and Thirties. They kept demanding 'the smack of firm government' from the Governor.
The Muslims had been held responsible for the 1857 uprising since its titular leader was Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last of the Mughals, a mild-mannered man on an East India Company pension who lived in the Red Fort in old Delhi, where he spent his time writing poetry. His writ never extended beyond the Fort. The bulk of the fighting against the British in 1857 was actually carried out by Hindu and Muslim soldiers.
Sadly, they were a bit shit. The Sikhs weren't. They got their revenge on the Hindi speakers in 1857.
It was this tradition to which Bose had appealed when creating the INA.
Two of his most senior commanders fought on the Pakistani side in Kashmir in 1947/48.
Afterwards, many religiously unified divisions were separated to prevent a repeat performance. The Sikhs and Muslims who had remained loyal (mainly Punjabis) became the most trusted troops in imperial wars.
Indira certainly trusted her Sikh bodyguards!
The favour shown by the British to the Muslim League became even more pronounced after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942. INA units under Bose fought against the British Indian Army.
Though Bose must have known that the Japanese were much more cruel Imperialists than the Brits ever hand been.
For the first time ever, Gandhi lost his cool.
He thought the Japs would win. His idea was to let the Japanese invade in the hope they might move on somewhere else. Sadly, not even the Mahacrackpot was able to make India a present to the Japanese Emperor.
Until now he had been playing cat and mouse with the Raj,
He was pretending Hindus are non-violent mice whom the aggressive Muslim and Punjabi would rob and rape if the Brits ran away. Gandhi issued the call 'Quit India' because he thought the Japanese would replace the Brits- i.e. kill Muslims and Punjabis if they threatened the anal cherries of Ahimsa loving Hindus.
knowing that only a negotiated settlement would enable what he considered a satisfactory transition to independence.
Gandhi had attended he Second Round table conference where he demanded that the Army be handed over to the INC. At this time there was a rebellion in North Kashmir. The Maharaja asked for and got British troops to put down the rebellion. It was obvious that if the INC had the army, then it could do what it liked. That's why all the non-Congress people present voted against Gandhi.
The Japanese triumph in Singapore disoriented him. He now believed he might be forced into negotiating independence with Hideki Tojo, the Japanese prime minister, rather than Churchill and that the Japanese might install Bose as the leader of the new India.
Gandhi wasn't that much of a fool. He knew the Japanese would put in a puppet of some sort. That was their modus operandi. Still, the Japanese might be more sympathetic to the Hindus and more antagonistic to the Muslims whereas the Brits were even-handed.
In March 1942, the British war cabinet, alerted to the danger by intelligence reports, despatched the Labour cabinet minister Stafford Cripps to plead with the Congress to return to the fold and help the war effort. ‘I have been authorised to offer you a blank cheque once the war is over,’ Cripps told Gandhi.
Cripps was well regarded by the Soviets. Churchill was playing for time.
‘What is the point of a blank cheque,’ Gandhi asked, ‘from a bank that is obviously failing?’
The bigger problem was that if Congress joined the war-effort, people would soon see that it was incompetent and corrupt. Staying out of power was the way to win the next election.
A few months later, in August 1942,
which was when the tide began to turn against the Japanese in the Pacific
Congress launched the Quit India movement, demanding immediate independence. Millions took part in demonstrations: Gandhi and his colleagues had mobilised the peasantry on a scale comparable to the Chinese revolution.
There was a lot of violence in Bihar- but then when isn't there a lot violence in Bihar? Still, the Quit India agitation had little material impact on the war effort.
The British resorted to large-scale repression. There were hundreds of arrests and the independence leaders were sent back to prison. Had the Congress accepted the war cabinet’s offer, they would have been given the whole of India on a platter.
only if they joined the war effort. This was the sticking point. Congress knew that most of its leaders were shit administrators. Either they would fuck up monumentally or become a rubber stamp for the ICS officials. In both cases they would lose the 1946 election. It was better for them to stay in jail and keep their powder dry.
The Muslim League and the Communist Party of India grew rapidly under British patronage.
No. The Premiers of Punjab and Bengal backed the Pakistan demand. They were aware that the Muslim middle class- including educated women- adored Jinnah.
Pakistan was a thank you present to the Muslim League from the British, but it was handed over only after the Congress leaders had rejected all compromises.
The Muslims were demanding too much- viz. control of undivided Punjab and Bengal plus a majority at the Centre (assuming the Dalits and other non-Hindus sided with them)
Nehru’s obstinacy and arrogance trumped Gandhi’s more conciliatory posture: he had suggested a national government with Jinnah as prime minister
but, under the mission plan, the prime minister would have had no power.
only to be vetoed by Nehru and the right wing of the Congress. As late as 1946, Jinnah was prepared for compromise,
no. Calling for 'Direct Action Day'- in which about 4000 were killed in Calcutta- Jinnah said he wanted 'either a divided India or a destroyed India'.
but the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Anti-Muslim pogroms in Bihar resulted in thirty thousand deaths,
that was Jinnah's claim. 8,000 is more likely.
but Nehru and Gandhi equated the massacre with a riot in Noakhali in Bengal in which fewer than fifty Hindus were killed.
The Muslim league said there were 500 deaths. Congress said it was 50,000. Five thousand is likely.
They refused to take Jinnah seriously, believing, wrongly, that the Muslims were tightly controlled by their religious leaders, some of the most prominent of whom were either in the Congress, like Abul Kalam Azad, or collaborated with it.
No. Jinnah had won decisively in the elections. Azad was considered loyal but useless. Anyway, Gandhi's decision to negotiate with Jinnah meant that Congress had conceded his claim to represent India's Muslims.
The Jamaat-i-Islami, led by the formidable Maulana Maududi,
he was of little account back then.
opposed the very idea of Pakistan: Islam was either universal or it was nothing.
Muslims should conquer whole world and put the infidels to the sword.
The preachers of the most important seminary of orthodox Islam in Deoband also opposed Partition. But Nehru and Gandhi should have studied a bit of Muslim history. Muslims have never been united for long.
Nor have they refrained from slitting kaffir throats for very long unless they were ruled by a smart dynasty- e.g. the Saudis.
They do not like tight control. India’s Muslims did not follow their religious leaders in late 1946 and 1947 but turned to Jinnah.
Jinnah had shown he could do 'Mass Contact' better than Nehru.
Nehru too had an outdated view of the Muslim League. Like the Congress, it had been a party of notables before being taken over in the 1930s by liberal lawyers, journalists and mostly secular Muslim intellectuals under the leadership of Jinnah, a prickly but brilliant criminal lawyer, who was a committed constitutionalist.
No. Sapru could be called a constitutionalist. Jinnah had no problem breaking the existing constitutional structure to create a country where he would get the top job.
At that time the League was still a minority force within Indian Islam. The war and British patronage helped change that, and Hindu chauvinism did the rest.
What helped Jinnah and the League was that they had not formed ministries and thus people hadn't got sick of their incompetence or corruption.
By 1946 it was too late to stop Partition,
not really. Suppose the Americans had decided to finance the Raj so there could be an orderly transition to a Federal State, then Atlee could have left Wavell to tinker with the Cabinet Mission Plan till some sort of consensus was reached. Jinnah's dying would have helped.
but the complete failure of the colonial state
there was Provincial autonomy. It was people with names like Shurawardy, not Smith, who presided over Direct Action day and other such carnage.
to safeguard human lives was a sign that it had abdicated its responsibilities.
Britain had transferred relevant authority to elected Provincial governments.
Having encouraged religious divisions within the army,
The Brits did no such thing. Why tell the Sikh that he should shoot the Muslim rather than the German or the Japanese?
the colonial authorities were worried that Hindu troops would refuse to obey orders if asked, say, to fire on Hindu crowds.
No. Elected Premiers and Home Ministers had this worry.
As a result, the army would look on while one religious group slaughtered another and the country disintegrated.
The Pakistani Army did plenty of slaughtering in what would become Bangladesh.
And so two-thirds of India’s Muslims became part of Pakistan as the Punjab and Bengal were split off, separated from each other by a thousand miles of Indian territory. But Partition solved very little and the divisions it entrenched enabled the election of a semi-fascist government in India, where it is now open season on Muslims and other minorities.
Under Nehru- who founded a Fascist dynasty- millions of Muslims were killed or chased out of Hindu majority areas. Still, it is true that Muslims are less inclined to riot in BJP ruled states. But that is a good thing. There is little point starting a fight you are bound to lose.
If Purewal & Tariq Ali (both of whom I assume to be Punjabi and therefore votaries of Punjabi logic) have decided that it is a myth that Muslims want Islamic states or, at the very least, states where non-Muslims are a cowed minority- then what other myths do they also subscribe to? One might be that South Asians decide to settle in London or other British cities because they worship camels and London is famous for its vast population of dromedaries. I suggest that Rishi Sunak arrange funding for an oral history project in which elderly people like myself are encouraged to tell anecdotes about their interactions with camels of various descriptions in Mrs. Thatcher's England.
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