By Aparna Pande
This article appeared in Indolink on August 22, 2007
“..In seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided, A continent for better or worse divided..” From ‘Partition’ by WH Auden
A recent book on the Partition (“The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan” by Yasmin Khan) has once again brought into focus a part of South Asian history which is fraught with sadness and controversy.
According to Yasmin Khan, a young British historian, “Pakistan had a legitimate right to come into existence but the manner of its creation was disastrous.” The ‘legitimacy’, for Ms. Khan, lay in the genuine fears that Muslims had of living in a Hindu-majority India. However, the ‘mess’ was created because of the desire of the British to leave India in a hurry and of the Indian rulers-to-be to assume power.
In 2005 a book by the former aide of Viceroy Mountbatten, Narindra Sarila (Untold Story of India’s Partition: The Shadow of the Great Game) took the view that the British ‘supported’ the Muslim League and the demand for Pakistan as they “viewed Pakistan as a sort of pro-West ‘forward defensive glacis’ against the USSR and a potentially pro-Communist Congress dominated India.”
The last few decades of British rule in India saw a scramble for power among both the Hindus and the Muslims. The two major national level political parties in the 1930s-40s were the Indian National Congress (which claimed to speak for all Indians) and the Muslim League (which claimed to be the sole spokesman for the Muslims).
The continued conflict and sparring between these two parties and the failure of repeated attempts at compromise resulted in the worsening of relations between not just the two parties but also the two communities.
The initial Muslim demand for separate electorates over the course of the years changed into a demand for an independent Muslim state of Pakistan and the continued intransigence of the Congress Hindu leadership prevented any compromise on the issue. Thus, in 1947, the British Raj was partitioned into the two independent states of India and Pakistan.
Independence, however, came with Partition of the British Raj. As opined by the last Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, “There can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority to live against their will under a government in which another community has a majority. And the only alternative to coercion is partition.” (June 3, 1947).
Partition of the country, especially the states of Punjab and Bengal, led to millions of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs finding themselves on the wrong side of the newly drawn India-Pakistan border. With no clear guidelines from local leaders and with increasing tensions and rising communal clashes, mass migration was spurred by panic.
Though exact estimates are not available, historians believe that almost half a million people were killed, thousands of women were raped or abducted and over 10 million people became refugees during the Partition.
August 14-15, 1947 exemplify both the jubilation of gaining independence after a long national struggle and the pain and horror of the loss of lives resulting from the Partition of the British Raj. Birth is always characterized by a duality – pain of childbirth and joy of the new life.
One remembers one’s birth with fondness and joy at being alive in this world; there are very few who look at it only as the day marking the pain of childbirth. The two countries of India and Pakistan also need to do that. They need to look beyond the pain to the gain they have achieved in the last 60 years and to what they can accomplish in the future.
Though the founding fathers of both countries tried to put forth a positive view at the time of independence, there were also dissenting voices.
While leaving Delhi for Karachi on August 7, 1947, Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the “Quaid-e-Azam or Great leader) wished India prosperity and peace and appealed, “Let us start afresh as two independent sovereign states of India and Pakistan.” Mahatma Gandhi announced his intention of going on a ‘padyatra’ ( ) in Pakistan and spending the rest of his life there.
The wording of the resolution passed by the Indian National Congress committee on the eve of Partition, however, said that “The picture of India we have learnt to cherish will remain in our minds and hearts.
The All India Congress Committee earnestly trusts that when present passions have subsided, India’s problems will be viewed in their proper perspective and the false doctrine of two nations will be discredited and discarded by all.”
This led to the view of India as wanting to ‘undo’ Partition, which coupled with the notion of an existential threat from India has influenced Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policies for six decades. The influx of refugees, the struggle for a fair share of the assets of undivided India and the war of 1947-48 over Kashmir marked a bloody start to the relationship between the previously conjoined siblings, now separated.
A prominent Pakistani journalist opined in the 1960s: “…Let us clearly understand that the Indian threat will never be averted. It is not Kashmir alone; Kashmir merely symbolizes the Indian mind. The danger is more basic. It arises from the physical situation of the two countries….So long as Pakistan stays within the Subcontinental gravitation, its position will be precarious. No settlement can overcome this geopolitical hazard.” This has been the dominant worldview among Pakistanis and has led to the unwillingness on the part of Pakistani leaders to seek cordiality with India.
Over the decades the economies of both countries have grown substantially but this economic growth has not sufficiently benefited their people. South Asia’s people would have gained more if India and Pakistan had acted in concert and not in mutual opposition.
On the 60th anniversary of Partition, the two countries need to start viewing each other not solely from the prism of Partition but rather with an eye to their futures.