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Re-examining Partition
India Divided 1947: Who did it? Why? How? And what now? Rammanohar Lohia
points out the fundamental differences between the Hindus and the
Muslims. Their unity was at best a simulation based on false conceptions
wherein slavery, treachery and subordination passed for brotherhood,
statesmanship and accommodation. These conditions had prevailed for the
last 800 years and certainly were not the creation of the British. B.R.
Ambedkar also supports this view. The Hindus and the Muslims were
essentially two different nations tragically pursuing the parallel
roads. That is why the customary Hindu explanation failed to account for
the ideological transformation of Jinnah. Ambedkar thinks that the
Muslims sensed a new destiny, and its enigma just sucked in even the
likes of Jinnah. However, according to the revisionist historic view,
as examined by Asim Roy, the change took place only in Jinnah’s
political strategies and tactics and not in his political goals. Jinnah
played a long and slow game. Roy opines that while Jinnah
"undoubtedly needed the Islamic fervour to rally the Muslim masses
to achieve his political aims, he could scarcely afford to push it too
far as to jeopardise his constant and vital objective of securing the
interests of all Indian Muslims which could only have been possible
within a framework of Indian unity." Interestingly, the role of
the Congress was opposite. It "continued to present the facade of
the ideal of unity, while it steadily and deliberately worked itself up
to a position where Jinnah was forced to take his Pakistan and leave the
scene for good."From the traditionalist’s point of view Iqbal and
Jinnah had a parallel ideological evolution. Iqbal was quite clear about
his notions and these were not narrow: "Yet I love the communal
group which is the source of my life and behaviour; and which has formed
me what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its
culture, and thereby recreating its whole past, as a living operative
factor, in my present consciousness." For Iqbal, such a faith in
culture was vital for the creation of a harmonious nation. B. Shiva Rao
suggests that the Partition could have been averted had the advice of
Sri Aurobindo to accept the Cripps Proposals been heeded. The
geographically disjointed parts of the proposed Pakistan, the resistance
of Pakhtoons, and the reluctance of Bengali Muslims (Shila Sen’s
essay) who were already enjoying power were some of the factors inimical
to the Partition. But such was the powerful current of ideas of
separation that the Partition became inevitable. The British also
perceived, according to R. Palme Dutt, that their offer of the Partition
would be a good bargaining ground. It would not only protect the
interest of the dominant upper-class leadership of the national
movement, landlords, and big capitalists in India, but also the interest
of British imperialism. The subtitle of the book poses many difficult
questions. Since the entire text is not one integrated narrative, we do
not have clear-cut answers to all of them, albeit K.C. Yadav’s essay
is a fair attempt in that direction. This book does suggest different
possibilities and provokes us to study further the literature on the
Partition. There are some missing pages in the book that this reviewer
got and the numbering on the content pages is rather baffling.
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There
are two parts in the book. The first part has nine essays by the authors
Rammanohar Lohia, B.R. Ambedkar, B. Shiva Rao, R. Palme Dutt, Asim Roy,
V.N. Datta, Margaret Bourke-White, Shila Sen and K.C. Yadav. The second,
besides containing documents exemplifying the voices of disunity (Lala
Hardyal, V.D. Savarkar, Annie Besant, L. Lajpat Rai, Sir Mohammad Iqbal
and Mohammad Ali Jinnah) and Muslim voices of unity (Jamiat-ul-Ulema,
Majlis-i-Ahrar and Khudai Khidmatgar), carries some other well known
documents like the Cripps Proposals and the Cabinet Mission Plan. These
essays and documents help us in analysing the causes, process, and
effects of the Partition from different perspectives.