Introduction
‘Sub-continent’, as someone said, cannot be
understood with the mind only. I personally agree with the notion that sub-continent as land of the
most ancient culture has its own philosophy besides rich civilization. If we
walk through the historic megalomania era of earlier India called ‘Hind’, it
had its own characteristics. The reasons and rationales that may be given to understand a concept, political or otherwise
cannot be fully comprehended unless we peep into the psyche and cultural
background of the people involved. Certain philosophies belie and negate logic
but may be understood if you have lived through that philosophy. To know the
sub-continent we need to do exactly that.
Hence
the creation of Pakistan starting from the initial years of 20th
century from beginning to end was significantly a lengthy struggle that cannot
be adequately judged through standard examination. A purely political and historical study of
such a titanic struggle cannot succeed to convey its reality on the ground;
rather we must go through the perspective issues accommodating psychological
examination as well to understand the historic events that eventually led to
the Partition of India and creation of Pakistan.
However, if we set aside the
political process envisaged for independence of India as sovereign dominion,
India National Congress and All India Muslim League’s efforts that ventured
jointly on the long way path for the united India, many questions arise about
what exactly influenced later the leaders of AIML including Jinnah to surface
as sole representative for cause of earlier separate electorate in 1906
(although not by Jinnah then) and later for the separate piece of land based on
the two nation theory, firstly echoed at Allahabad in 1930 and then reaffirmed
at Lahore through a resolution passed by AIML in 1940.
Nevertheless
the dull features of two nation’s theory appeared in the historical
presidential address of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal in Allahabad in 25th
Session of AIML in December, 1930 were not exhaustive and several Muslim leaders and scholars having insight into
the Muslim-Hindu situation proposed the separation of Muslim India, however,
Dr. Muhammad Iqbal gave the most lucid explanation of the inner feelings of
Muslim community in his presidential address. In his address, Iqbal explained
that Islam was the major formative factor in the life history of Indian
Muslims. It furnished those basic emotions and loyalties, which gradually
unified scattered individuals and groups and finally transformed them into a
well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. He defined
the Muslims of India as a nation and suggested that there could be no
possibility of peace in the country unless and until they were recognized as a
nation.
He claimed that the
only way for the Muslims and Hindus to prosper in accordance with their
respective cultural values was under a federal system where Muslim majority
units were given the same privileges that were to be given to the Hindu
majority units. As a permanent solution to the Muslim-Hindu problem, Iqbal
proposed that Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and Sindh
should be converted into one province. He declared that the northwestern part
of the country was destined to unite as a self-governed unit, within the
British Empire or without it. This, he suggested, was the only way to do away
with communal division and consequent riots and bring peace in the sub-continent.
When English rule came into complete success in the
India particularly after 1857, the Muslims generally had lost, in my opinion,
their vital strength and spirit to live in the united India. In absence of the
leadership at national level, though at small level it was available, yet it
had no national impact. The intellect and wisdom of the Muslims and to improve
the interaction with the English rulers in comparison of Hindu was disastrously
hampered, in some places even disappeared. To protect the Muslim’s interest on
the political and socio-economic at national level scenario Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
and other Muslim intellectuals embarked for a continuity of the English rule to
keep Muslim population protected from the majority of Hindu in the
sub-continent was, however, needs to examine separately.
Coming back to the fierce issues that contributed
scarcity of socio-economic and political strength of Muslims as citizens of
India, we need to answer a few questions in its true perspective. That, after
1857 following the fall of Moghals and His Majesty Government taken over
the charge of United India directly into their hand from the East India Company
through a legislation passed by HMG in August 1958 as Government of India Act
1958, became strong rulers in the area. Britain moved to create a new India
office and Prime Minister Lord Palmerton’s*
added appointment of an independent secretary in Whitehall was surely a step
ahead of significance about united India. Muslims ought to be reenergized in
the sub-continent which unfortunately in absence of Muslim leadership in United
India caused less physical more psychological suffering that is the purely
subject of this book and I would aspire to answer these questions in the
following chapters how this anguish Muslims became the activist against both
Hindus and HMG. Although it took great length of time until some extended
leadership appeared on the scene for Muslims. Yet another question which
proportionately has the greater significance and enormously effected the
Partition, about disastrous massacre of over a million people and over 15
million people’s migration or displacement across the lines of two dominions,
was delayed announcement of Radcliffe’s boundary commission award.
My interest
lies in unfolding and examining those intrigues and subtle moves that paved the
way for an earlier declaration of independent states of India and Pakistan than
the proposed date. What forces, internal and external, implicit and explicit,
open and hidden, worked as a catalytic agent to accelerate the process and
declare independence before the scheduled time. I’m more compelled to see what
were the exact circumstances and considerate reasons behind the hasty decision,
first through the removal of Lord Wavell from the viceroyalty and then Lord
Mountbatten’s appointment by HMG as incoming viceroy. Was it labour party’s or
Clement Attlee’s single handed own decision or was it an aftermath of WW II? It
would also be pertinent to question here that after resuming the office of
viceroy of India why Lord MB did everything in a hasty manner as he himself
described the essence of the solution was ‘speed’ to accomplish his
assignment.
As Stanley
Wolpert described in the introduction of his greatly written book ‘Shameful
Flight’ published in 2006 by Oxford Press;
“Those ten additional
months of post-war talks, aborted by an impatient Mountbatten, might have
helped all parties to agree that cooperation was much wiser than conflict,
dialogue more sensible than division, words easier to cope with and pay for
than perpetual warfare. When asked how he felt about his Indian Viceroyalty
eighteen years after Partition, Mountbatten himself admitted to BBC’s John
Osman, when they sat next to one another at dinner shortly after the 1965
Indo-Pakistan War, that he had “got things wrong.” Osman felt ‘sympathy’ for
the remorseful sixty-five-year-old ex-viceroy and tried to cheer him, but to no
avail. Thirty nine years after that meeting he recalled: “Mountbatten was not
to be consoled. To this day his own judgement on how he had performed in India
rings in my ears and in my memory. As one who dislikes the tasteless use in
writing of... ‘vulgar slang’...I shall permit myself an exception this time
because it is the only honest way of reporting accurately what the last viceroy
of India thought about the way he had done his job: ‘I fucked it up.’”
In the same
book Wolpert further described in its introduction as;
“Although I could not
more politely and at much greater length summarise the central thesis of my
book, and what I have now long believed to be the primary cause of the tragedy
of Partition and its aftermath of slaughter and ceaseless pain, I could not
more pithily, nor aptly, state my own views of Mountbatten work in India. If
for no other reason than to counter the many laudatory, fawning accounts of
Lord Mountbatten’s splendid,” “historically unique,” “brilliant and wonderful”
viceroyalty that have for more than half a century filled shelves of Partition
literature and Mountbatten biography, I feel justified in adding my “Shameful
Flight” to history’s list of the British Raj’s last years. World War II,
British politics, personal ambitions, and simple ignorance each added
complexity to the picture, and I shall have much to say about the roles of
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai
Patel, and Viceroys Lord Linglithgo and Lord Wavell, as well as Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
though none of them played as tragic or central a role as did Mountbatten.”
These
observations deserved to be valued in its true tangible background that led to
hasty, undeveloped and unwell-done division of united India.
Ironically, my
opinion which I would like to elaborate in the coming chapters, an impact of
World War II and that the change of the HMG in Britain after WW II might have
contributed a blow toward hasty decision for the independence for India, yet
greatly the mandate for independence granted to Lord Mountbatten anyway was
till June 1948, which Wolpert rightly observed as I quoted above, if the
‘speed’ could have not been accelerated and decisions were given ample
after-thought over the consequences of drawing a simple line between two emerging
dominions without any thoughtfulness, Britain might have avoided that
disastrous massacre and migration of poor Indians before ever reaching their
promised land as we witnessed. Was it a deliberate decision planned and
executed through the cunning skills of Lord MB? Did he act on his own or were
things done through a consensus? Was Lord Mountbatten a victim of his own whims
and fancies at the expense of millions of dead bodies thus sowing a lifelong
hatred, mistrust and scars of communal riots between the two emerging
nations?
As Richard
Hough, an official biographer of Lord Mountbatten, described in the biography
of Lord MB “Mountbatten—Hero of our time” (published in UK in the year 1981 by
Book Club Associates London) had to admit that “Wavell on his return had
reported to Attlee who after a brief conversation, in Wavell’s words ‘bowed me
out without one single word of thanks or commiseration.’ He did not rule out
partition as the final solution but he never wavered in his belief that the
transfer could be made to a united India. But there must, as he told Attlee at
this last unhappy parting in March 1947, be ‘detailed arrangements so as to
avoid confusion where we leave.’”
He further
asserted “Alas, no such detailed arrangements were ever made. There was no
time. Churchill’s prediction that ‘a fourteen-month time interval is fatal to
an orderly transference of power’ was proved tragically true. In the Delhi
files was a contingency paper written by Lieutenant General Sir Francis Tuker,
GOC Eastern Command in India in March 1946 detailing the preparations that
should be made if it should come to the division of India, and Partition was
inevitable, judged this soldier, if the negotiations for the transfer were
rushed. Mountbatten never saw it, and of course no such contingency plan was
made in the period of Mountbatten Viceroyalty. There was no time, for a
decision in favour of Partition was made within fourteen days of his arrival.”
That is the
particular point which I understand should have been enquired. Had Lord
Mountbatten seen those contingency plans in order to evaluate the mass
destruction sparked from his ‘speed’ myth, the loveliest piece of land on earth
would have been saved at least to the extent of disastrous outcome of confusion
if not for the Partition. Three-fold pressure for the division, demarcation and
securely rehabilitation of potential displaced or migrated poor masses had only
demanded a reasonable time which at least HMG has already given to Mountbatten
by the end of June, 1948. ‘The result was the worst horrors India had even
known and inter-racial outrages on a terrible scale. It led to the
disembowelling the tens of thousands of pregnant women, the cutting off of
breasts, the rape of girls---all before being bludgeoned to death or hacked to
pieces; to the indescribable tortures carried out on countless Sikhs and
Muslims and Hindus; to tens of thousands dead from exposure and starvation,’ as
Richard’s gravely expressed his grief of the occasion.
Just after few days of the celebrations of
August 1947, the horrors of Partition began to emerge. Conflict upon tangible
assets of united India and its division arose immediately. Whether the partition of united India was wise
is still under debate. Even the imposition (although delayed) of Radcliffe’s
boundary commission award has not ended conflict between Muslim and Hindus
existed prior to draw a line as its final solution. Issues regarding crown and
princely states left unresolved, even Kashmir left unresolved by the British
that caused three wars and continuing strife between India and Pakistan and
this all changed the path of history if again I would say the hasty decisions
and mysterious ‘speed’ had been avoided in last days of Partition.
*****
