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The Shadow of the Great
Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition
The simple point made is that the British had an overarching interest in the oil fields of West Asia. India was important to provide secure access to these fields and guard them from Russia. The Great Game that the imperial English had been playing with Russia for the past 200 years had just taken a new shape. However, no one seemed to want the British in India any more. Not the Americans, not the Congress, not even Nehru. The antipathy between the British and Indians went beyond mere political differences. Sarila says that during World War II, some of the officers of British units were actually killed by their Indian subordinates and not enemy fire. When Indian soldiers got a chance to defect from the British and regroup to fight the British, they did and became a part of the INA. The naval mutiny further emphasised the point that the nationalist bug bit Indian military personnel. Under the circumstances, the British understood that independence was a foregone conclusion and that given the animosities of the recent past, there was little chance of persuading the Indians to continue to serve as the handmaiden of the British after independence. Jinnah had been nagging for Pakistan for a long time. The British decided to use him. To be sure, says Sarila, Jinnah did not want a separate state in the beginning. Even later, he did not want a state for Muslims alone. This was evident from his efforts to convince a number of Indian princes like Bhopal, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur, Jaipur and Indore to join hands with Pakistan. However, the British were quite clear that Pakistan had to be a state based on religion. It also had to be completely separate from India. It did not bother them that not all Indian Muslims would ever go to Pakistan or that there would be a substantial non-Muslim population in Pakistan. All that they wanted was a separate, religion-based state that was dependent on them. To turn matters in their favour, the British ignored the rising tide of communalism in British provinces throughout 1944-45. Perhaps, wonders Sarila, the British even encouraged the Muslim League to foment communal disturbances. The Muslim leaders of Punjab and East Bengal had hitherto kept the Muslim League and its communal politics at an arm’s length. However, the growing incidence of communal violence made it out as if it was impossible for Hindus and Muslims to live together in a single state. They too began to support the demand for a separate state of Pakistan. Gandhi, too, was similarly forced to concede to the idea of having a partition. V P Menon, says Sarila, mooted the formal idea of a partition in May 1947, and made it seem that this was the only way to prevent the Balkanisation of India and ensure strong governments in both India and Pakistan. Nehru was game to such an idea. The idea suited the British fully. This way they could have a puppet state in Pakistan with which to counter the Russian threat to the oil fields further west. At the advice of Menon, the exact division of land was delayed until after the Pakistani and Indian flags were hoisted on August 14 and 15, respectively. Until then Radcliffe’s recommendations had to hide in Mountbatten’s safe. When made public, they inevitably caused much grief to many who had hoped their land would remain with India. Sarila was Mountbatten’s ADC and well placed to narrate this story through first-hand knowledge. We, he pontificates, need to be as single-minded in pursuing our own national interests as the British had been with theirs. For, much underhand action goes on while taking momentous decisions and only taking care of the long-term self-interest of the nation is important. This is quite an old-fashioned advice but, still, correct. |
THIS well-written book
fills up many blanks in the story of India’s Partition. It also raises
some intriguing matters, which historians of India would have to tackle
with greater energy. Essentially the book holds the oil wells of West
Asia as an important reason for the Partition.