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It has often been asked why no one seems to have foreseen the hell that Partition was about to unleash. The Calcutta killings of 1946 and those elsewhere in Bengal and Bihar gave ample warning, as did the atrocities perpetrated in western Punjab in early 1947. A few officials, both Indian and British, did anticipate trouble and called for reinforcements. But in Delhi the excitement over independence claimed the moment to the exclusion of all else. Victory in the freedom struggle was not to be gainsaid. It was assumed that the entire nation shared in the rejoicings and that, in the prevailing spirit of goodwill, Partition could be effected without bloodshed. The haste with which it had been adopted might actually help. Instead of laborious consultations and the tensions that must result from them, most of the people affected were to be presented with a fait accompli. Territory would be allocated to India or Pakistan on the basis of the majority community; minorities, Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, were to be reassured with soothing words and the glorious prospect of freedom.
Aside from an arrogance born of bureaucratic habit and indifference to the plight of the lower castes, this attitude overlooked the considerable novelty of communities being equated with territories and nations with sovereign states. It also ignored the fact that a British India riddled with princely states had never been the uniform entity that partitioning implied. And it took no account of South Asia’s prior acquaintance with political division and the concept of sovereignty as something layered rather than absolute. Nehru insisted that a sense of all-Indian nationhood could be traced back into the mists of antiquity; but for most of its interminable past the Indian subcontinent had not been governed as one. Fragmentation was in fact the norm, and a strong, centralised polity as championed by Congress very much the exception. Despite claims to the contrary, history was on the side of Partition.
In yet another paradox, it has been argued that it was not Jinnah but Nehru himself who was ultimately responsible for Partition and so, indirectly, for the imminent holocaust. The demand for Pakistan, say the protagonists of this view, need not have meant separation.1 Jinnah wanted guarantees for his ‘Muslim nation’ in the form of a ‘Pakistan’ composed of all the existing Muslim-majority provinces of British India – so including the whole of Bengal (with Calcutta) and the whole of the Punjab (possibly with Delhi). The result in terms of population would have been something much nearer parity between this so-called ‘Greater Pakistan’ and a rump India composed solely of the non-Muslim-majority provinces. Such an arrangement should have sufficed to preclude mass migration and the killings that would accompany it, because Muslim opinion within the unpartitioned subcontinent would be well represented in the Constituent Assembly and could be decisive in the formation of a central government. Nothing if not consistent, in 1946 Jinnah had demanded a similar parity in respect of the interim government; indeed the Cabinet Mission’s ‘grouping’ of provinces could be read as foreshadowing this ‘Greater Pakistan’.
Jinnah’s somewhat excessive demands were informed by past experience. In the 1930s, Congress ministries in provinces with a vociferous Muslim minority, notably UP, had been accused of ignoring the sensibilities of Muslim constituents and shunning the claims to office of the Muslim League. Arguably, this could now be prevented; the League had emerged from recent elections much stronger, and the possibility of its retaliating in its own Muslim-majority provinces could be expected to act as a deterrent to Congress exclusivity.
Moreover, a Pakistan within India might be more manageable than one outside it. The anomalies and inconveniences of Pakistan’s two halves being themselves partitioned by a thousand kilometres of potentially hostile territory would be largely negated; a Pakistan within India might be less vulnerable to internal ethnic and linguistic contradictions than if left to its own devices; and the League would be well-placed to forge alliances with other non-Congress parties, like those representing the lower-caste and no-caste communities or lesser minorities like the mixed-race Anglo-Indians. Such an alliance might even contest power with Congress in the central government. Thus Jinnah, provided his ‘Greater Pakistan’ was forthcoming, had much to gain by not insisting on Partition. Some loose form of federation, or just a treaty that preserved a façade of unity, might suffice. It would be a small price to pay in terms of diminished sovereignty, and the arrangement was anyway to be subject to revision after ten years.
But if this was indeed what Jinnah wanted, he never actually said so. Adamant about what he would reject, he could be remarkably reticent about what he would accept. Nor was it what he was offered. For to Nehru, an India hobbled by a subordinate Pakistan had begun to look a worse option than an India relieved of a sovereign Pakistan. Only a strong central government could tackle India’s massive social problems, oversee the incorporation of the princely states, root out feudal and colonial attitudes, plan the framework of a modern economy, and set the world a proud example. A weak federal centre as posited by Jinnah would paralyse the state-building process and play into the hands of other possible separatists, for instance in the north-east and the south of the country. New Delhi would therefore be better writing off Pakistan completely and bidding good riddance to the unbending adversary who claimed to be its ‘sole spokesman’.
This did not, though, mean giving Jinnah the Greater Pakistan he wanted. The quid pro quo of conceding sovereignty was that the new Pakistan must be pared down to its Islamic heartland. With non-Muslims (Sikhs and Hindus) outnumbering Muslims in both the eastern half of the Punjab and the western half of Bengal, there was some logic to these two great provinces being themselves partitioned. In effect, instead of a Greater Pakistan albeit within India, Jinnah must be obliged to settle for a lesser Pakistan albeit outside India. ‘Maimed, mutilated and moth-eaten’ was his own description of the new construct; he would never accept it, he had declared. But in 1947, with his supposed bluff over separation called, that was precisely what he did have to accept. And hence, as the countdown to Independence proceeded, it was Nehru who readily endorsed Mountbatten’s Partition plan and Jinnah who, when asked to do so, merely hung his head. The gesture seemed to signify despair as much as assent.
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August, though mid-monsoon, is not an unpleasant month in Delhi. Cloudbursts douse the heat and clearing skies excite the vegetation. Trees erupt into flower, puddles shrink into sward. Were the subcontinent’s New Year timed for the growth cycle instead of the daylight cycle, it would surely fall in August. In 1947, as mid-month approached, there was much optimism and some understandable self-congratulation. Mountbatten had chosen the date for the handover of power: 15 August. He thought it propitious as being the second anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, an event in which his own part as commander of Allied forces in South-East Asia would of course be noted. India’s astrologers also deemed it propitious, and Pakistan’s leadership contented itself with insisting on just a twenty-four-hour precedence. By opting for 14 August, Pakistan would be winning independence ahead of India, and so from the hands of the British government in London rather than from the Congress government in Delhi.
Incredibly, as it now seemed, both nations had wrested their freedom through largely non-violent pressure; and although the final round of negotiations had been conducted at breakneck speed, relations with London had never been better. In fact, the restraint shown by both sides had set a valuable precedent for future decolonisations elsewhere. The majority of erstwhile India remained intact. And even Pakistan, the two-part exception, looked to have secured the resources – military, diplomatic and economic – to defy the odds stacked against it. Bisection, though regrettable, had to be better than dissection; and if that was the price of liberation, then so be it. The delights of Independence would quickly allay the pangs of Partition.
Yet when addressing New Delhi’s Constituent Assembly on the eve of Independence, Nehru invited the people to reflect as much as to celebrate. The tone of his famous oration was more messianic than triumphant, its twin themes of redemption and destiny sounding positively Churchillian.