Partition of India Paradigm of Hasty Decision

Naeem Baig

All Rights Reserved 2014 Naeem Baig Indo-Pak History & Research @ skanz.ex@gmail.com

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.

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