Anil Nauriya - Sectarian Politics and the Partition of India: The Targeting of Nehru and the Congress
The rise of
Hindutva-related organisations in India, especially since the late 1980s, has
witnessed frequent attacks by them on the pre-freedom Congress in relation to
the partition of India in 1947. These attacks increased since 2013 in the
run-up to the General Elections of 2014. Some Hindutva organisations have
become less covert than before in their glorification of the assassins of
Mahatma Gandhi. Simultaneously, other sections of Hindutva forces have sought
to disclaim responsibility for Gandhi’s assassination and to shift the focus of
their attack on Jawaharlal Nehru.
In this essay, (Download PDF [364 KB]) Supreme Court advocate and writer Anil Nauriya, explores some
aspects of these phenomena. He underlines also a connection between these
tendencies and a development on another plane. This is that certain somewhat
dubious and one-sided critiques of the pre-freedom Congress in relation to
partition fostered by late 20th century colonialist historiography have been
feeding into the Hindutva narrative.
Decades after the
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu Mahasabha workers have in recent
years become emboldened publicly to glorify his assassins. On January 30, 2016,
precisely 68 years after the assassination, some of them reportedly distributed
sweets to mark the killing as they continue to hold Gandhi responsible for the
Partition of India in 1947. On the same day an
intellectual associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sought, on
the electronic media, nominally to dissociate the RSS from the prime assassin.
However, the RSS and its various offshoots, including the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), have seldom dissociated themselves from holding the Indian
National Congress (Congress) responsible for Partition. On the contrary, this
has been a major plank in its propaganda offensive against the Congress. Many
BJP leaders have resorted to such rhetoric, especially at election time.
For instance, these
attacks became especially marked since the latter months of 2013 in the run-up
to the General Elections of 2014 1 . Some of the Hindutva organizations
have also become less covert than before in their glorification of the
assassins of Mahatma Gandhi. Simultaneously, other sections of Hindutva forces
have sought to disclaim responsibility for Gandhi’s assassination and to shift
the focus of their attack on Jawaharlal Nehru 2 .
There have also been
some gradual changes in the rhetoric of the BJP compared, on the one hand, with
that of the Jan Sangh, its pre-1977 predecessor, and on the other, with that of
its natural allies such as the Hindu Mahasabha, the Shiv Sena and similar
parties. The Hindu law reform conducted in the 1950s during Jawaharlal Nehru’s
tenure as Prime Minister had not gone down well with the sections of society
prone to support the Jan Sangh, and the momentous churning of a near-stagnant
social milieu provided a further point for conservative Hindu bitterness
towards the country’s first Premier. It was some two decades later, with the
Jan Sangh’s involvement in the political movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan
(JP) in the mid-1970s, that the Sangh found itself having to engage Gandhians,
Sarvodaya workers, socialists and others.
The targeting of
Nehru: Thus, when the Jan
Sangh re-emerged in 1980 as the BJP, its traditional doctrinal positions gave
way to some modified formulations; alongside it became necessary to reshuffle
the punching bags that the new party would target in its political practice. It
is in this phase that its fire came to focus more exclusively on Nehru and his
family. This did not mean that the BJP quite discarded its previous antagonism
toward Gandhi. By the 1990s, the BJP
under Lal Krishna Advani had internalised Hindutva, the ideological position of
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha leader. In 2003 the BJP-led
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government even installed, in the Central
Hall of Parliament, a portrait of Savarkar who had directly inspired Gandhi’s
assassin. JP was long dead and, in any case, for the BJP, he had served his
purpose. The BJP (and the Shiv Sena) felt enabled to disclose some more
affinities with the Hindu Mahasabha without directly attacking Gandhi himself.
The BJP strategy of
not directly attacking Gandhi coupled with a selective utilisation of his name
continues. Given the great respect in which Gandhi is widely held, it would
have perhaps been inexpedient for the BJP, both domestically and
internationally, to adopt a course that a party with no immediate prospect of
wielding – or continuing to wield – power might have felt free to do. For that
reason, despite the celebration and sweets-distribution organised by Hindu
Mahasabha workers on the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination in 2016, the
main focus of the Hindutva-BJP attacks in the immediate future is likely to be
not on Gandhi as such but on the Congress, in particular on Nehru and his
family.
The functioning of the
post-1969 Congress too facilitated this concentrated fire on Nehru’s family by the
BJP. As the Congress began increasingly to be identified personally with
Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, power within the party came to be centralised
in her and her younger son during the emergency (1975-77). After her return to
power in 1980, and the death later in the year of the younger son, power within
the party came to be wielded also by her elder son who would, after her
assassination in 1984, succeed her as Prime Minister and remain in office till
1989. Finally, after the death of all three, the Congress came gradually to be
identified at its apex with Sonia Gandhi and also, in due course, her children.
In this scenario, attacks on Nehru and his dynasty have received new traction.
A very substantive part of the Hindutva attack involves popularising the thesis
that the Congress in general, and Nehru in particular, were responsible for
Partition.
There have been two
tactical features of the Hindutva attack on the Congress in relation to
Partition. First, Hindutva forces consciously eschewed any reflective analysis
of the pre-independence politics of the Hindu Mahasabha and, second, with
respect to British imperial objectives, they either passed them over sub
silentio or treated them as not being of adequate importance in
determining the ultimate outcome of Partition.
The silence over
Savarkar: For example, the
consequences of V.D. Savarkar’s adoption of the two-nation theory have not been
reflected upon, let alone honestly analysed in Hindutva historiography and
propaganda. In his presidential speech at the Calcutta session of the Hindu
Mahasabha in December 1939, Savarkar declared that “We Hindus are a nation by
ourselves” 3 . In this speech he pointedly excluded
Muslims from this definition of nation. Significantly, this was a few months
before Jinnah and the Muslim League formally adopted the two-nation theory.
On August 15, 1943,
four years after the ‘Hindus are a nation’ articulation, Savarkar said:
“For the last 30 years
we have been accustomed to the ideology of Geographical Unity of India and the
Congress has been the strongest advocate of that unity but suddenly the Muslim
minority, which has been asking one concession after another, has, after the
Communal Award, come forward with the claim that it is a separate nation. I
have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah’s two nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by
ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations4."
There are three
noteworthy points about this statement. First, in spite of his earlier 1939
speech, Savarkar now affects surprise at the Muslim League demand. Second, even
he concedes that the Congress has been the strongest advocate of the unity of
India. Third, he endorses Jinnah’s two-nation theory. It is quite amazing that
even after Savarkar took the position that Hindus and Muslims were separate
nations, Hindutva-oriented circles could claim to raise the banner of Akhand
Bharat (and even murder Gandhi in its name). Indeed, the Akhand Bharat slogan
was again raised by an RSS spokesman on August 15, 2016 5 .
A leading political
figure like Savarkar would, it must be assumed, have been fully aware of the
demographic composition of the various regions of undivided India. When he
spoke of Hindus and Muslims being two separate nations, surely he must have
known, or would have been expected to know, that this could serve to legitimise
the demand for separation of the regions where there was a majority of the
people who he argued constituted a separate nation.
Obviously, Savarkar was
aware of the implications of what he was saying. He knew, as even a person of
the meanest intelligence would have been expected to know, that such a
formulation could involve geographical Partition. Even though they may raise
the slogan of Akhand Bharat, the Hindutva-oriented critics’ real grievance
against Gandhi, Nehru and the Congress, therefore, was not, and is not, that
the country was divided. Their real grievance obviously is that Gandhi, Nehru
and the Congress continued to believe in a composite culture and a concept of
nation that did not accord with theirs. That is why Gandhi lost his
life and that is why Nehru is under attack today. Such matters are not
analysed or even mentioned in writings by persons belonging to organisations
like the RSS, Jana Sangh or the Bharatiya Janata Party 6 .
As it happened, the
vigorous renewal of the Hindutva propaganda holding the Congress responsible
for Partition, began even asa similar critique of the party, albeit
from a diametrically opposite perspective, was being developed in some academic
writings, especially at Cambridge University. From the early 1980s, this would
gain appreciable circulation and also feed into the Hindutva attack. It is,
therefore, necessary to deal with this particular academic critique, as it
appears, in spite of its many errors, to be not infrequently repeated 7 .
As in the case of the
Hindutva positions, discussion here too proceeds without recognition of the
existence of any British colonial strategic objectives regarding Partition.
This is strange considering the attention given by the British to retaining
control in areas in undivided India’s north-west and the north-east 8 .
The hypothesis has
been put across from time to time that in the 1940s Nehru stood in the way of a
federal structure which Jinnah supposedly desired 9 . The notion, which has in recent years
received some traction, seems to be that Jinnah stood for a more inclusive,
broader Union which was not acceptable to the Congress leaders. Generally, the
“loose federal Union” argument is made in the context of the British Cabinet
Mission Plan of May 1946. The Cabinet Mission Plan, in paragraphs 6 and 7,
rejected the ‘larger’ and ‘smaller’ versions of Pakistan that had been placed
for consideration, and overtly envisaged an undivided India. The Plan was to be
subject to re-consideration at the instance of any province after 10 years, and
every 10 years thereafter. It envisaged three Groups A, B, and C; Group B would
consist of the Muslim-majority provinces in the north-west and Group C of the
eastern provinces of Bengal and Assam. The Groups would come together at the
Centre in respect of specified subjects.
The fallacy of a
federal Cabinet Mission Plan: The two underpinnings
of the “loose federal structure” argument are, first, that this is an adequate
description of the character of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 and, second,
that Jinnah had “accepted” this Plan. The view, first expressed by the then
Viceroy Wavell, and later popularised by Cambridge scholars as well as some
Bombay-based lawyers, was that the Cabinet Mission Plan was “accepted” by
Jinnah and the League and that this implied that the Pakistan demand had been
given up. This view has been widely circulated, sometimes with the
qualification that the demand was effectively given up 10 .
The opposite was the
case in fact. The resolution passed on June 6, 1946, by the Council of the
Muslim League, by which the Plan was supposedly “accepted”, made it clear that
Pakistan remained its “unalterable objective” 11 .
Curiously, this part of the resolution was not emphasised either by Ayesha
Jalal in her work on Jinnah published by Cambridge University Press or by H. M.
Seervai in his work on Partition 12 . Jalal
and Seervai did not deal also with the League’s Madras session (1941), where it
had been made it clear by an amendment to the League’s Constitution that its
Pakistan demand was not a ‘bargaining counter’. Both these writers were the
principal propagators, after Wavell, of the idea that the League had “accepted”
the Cabinet Mission Plan which had, prima facie, rejected the Pakistan idea.
The second and third
paragraphs of the League’s resolution of June 6, 1946, reiterated that Pakistan
remained “the unalterable objective” of the League and that the Cabinet Mission
Plan was for it only a step towards Pakistan, which it saw as “inherent in
the Mission’s Plan” 13 . It
is not as if the League had “accepted” the Cabinet Mission Plan and the
Congress and Nehru simply came and torpedoed it. The League’s options with
respect to the Cabinet Mission Plan were restricted as the Labour Government in
Britain at this stage was not willing overtly to go further by way of a direct
Pakistan commitment. The Mission’s Plan ostensibly rejected the
Pakistan concept; even so, as the League noticed, an alternative route to
Pakistan was implicit in the Plan. In the third paragraph of the League
Council’s resolution of June 6, 1946, it was observed that “it will keep in
view the opportunity and right of secession of Provinces or groups from the
Union, which have been provided in the Mission’s Plan by implication” 14 .
There was on the League’s part no intention to work the Plan except as a route
to attain Pakistan.
While later
withdrawing its “acceptance” of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the Muslim League had
cited, inter alia, a statement by Nehru on July 10, 1946, at a press conference
in which he had declared that the Constituent Assembly would be sovereign 15 . Yet
given the fact that the League had, just a month earlier, on June 6, 1946,
reiterated the Pakistan objective, it is hardly fair to blame Nehru’s statement
for a withdrawal of a League “acceptance” that did not really exist in the
first place.
Besides, the Congress
had already made it clear through Maulana Azad’s letter of May 20, 1946 to Lord
Pethick Lawrence, who led the Cabinet Mission, that it would look upon the
Constituent Assembly as a sovereign body for the purpose of drafting the
Constitution “unhindered by any external authority”. This letter was drafted by
Nehru. What Nehru said on 10 July 1946 was, therefore, not entirely new.
A federal structure
requires that the provinces have some control over themselves and their fate.
In their submission to the Cabinet Mission four days before the Plan was
announced, the League had somewhat brazenly referred to Assam as a “Muslim
province” 16 . The
Cabinet Mission obliged the League by placing Assam in Group C, along with
Muslim-majority Bengal. There was hardly any upholding of the federal principle
here. In placing Assam in Group C the British would have known that they were
including in the Plan a “deal-breaker”. The statement issued by the Cabinet
Mission on May 16, 1946, required under Paragraph 19 (iv) that the provincial
representatives to the Constituent Assembly would divide up into three Sections
(corresponding respectively to Groups A, B, and C). Paragraph 19 (v) of the
Statement further required that these “Sections shall proceed to settle
Provincial Constitutions for the provinces included in each Section and shall
also decide whether any Group Constitution shall be set up for those Provinces”.
Maulana Azad pointed out in the letter (drafted by Nehru) to the Cabinet
Mission on May 20, 1946, that Bengal would thus play a dominating role over
Assam as the Plan required the Provincial Constitution to be “settled” not by
the Province but by the Section, that is Constituent Assembly members belonging
to Group “C’, comprising Bengal and Assam. Rules framed by Group “C” could thus
nullify the theoretical option given to a Province to opt out of a Group at a
later stage. Azad pointed out that similarly in Group B, Punjab would dominate
over Sind and the NWFP. Incidentally, those familiar with the workings of
politics in Pakistan today would readily endorse the validity of this
apprehension. In the form in which it was presented, the Cabinet Mission Plan
cannot be treated as coterminous with or equivalent to setting up a “federal
structure”. In actual fact it had the effect of covertly throttling provincial
federalism at the Group level.
There were other
features militating against inclusiveness. Some of these were immediately
obvious. Others unfolded in the course of the Cabinet Mission’s deliberations.
Sikhs were left out on a limb in Group B. Jinnah resisted also a role for
non-League Muslims in the Executive Council envisaged under the Cabinet Mission
Plan. Thus he sought to determine not only the League’s representation on the
Council but also the composition of the Congress representation. In this
context, Zakir Husain was to Jinnah a “Quisling” 17 .
To describe such positions as federalist or inclusive in any way is hardly
tenable.
Speech-making apart,
Jinnah had difficulty not only with the federal principle but also with a
pluralist approach on Pakistan. In the course of his talks with Jinnah in 1944,
Gandhi had suggested a referendum in the Muslim-majority areas to ascertain by
adult suffrage of “all of the inhabitants of the Pakistan area” whether they
wished to be part of a separate state. The offer is recorded in Gandhi’s letter
of September 22, 1944 to Jinnah. He also suggested in the letter that a “third
party or parties” be called in “to guide or even arbitrate between us”. Jinnah
responded on September 25, 1944, by demanding that the voting in such a
referendum be confined to the Muslims in the area 18 .
Thus he was not inclined to permit the Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and others in
the so-called Pakistan area to have a say in the future of the area that was
their home. Such positions sit ill with civil libertarian claims.
Throughout the
relevant period, the British resisted suggestions for resolution of the
inter-communal question which did not involve a key role for themselves. They
saw themselves as arbiters in an inter-communal dispute. Gandhi and Maulana
Azad had called this particular bluff more than once in statements usually
neglected by historians.
On August 8, 1942, a
few hours before his arrest on the next day, Gandhi dictated a letter to a
citizen of Bombay, backing Azad’s offer to the League that if it cooperated
fully in the demand for Indian independence, the Congress would have no
objection “to the British Government transferring all the powers it today
exercises to the Muslim League on behalf of the whole of India, including the
so-called Indian India” 19 . On
May 8 1946, also Gandhi had suggested that an “impartial non-British tribunal”
go into the points of dispute 20 . But it
was difficult to get the British to agree. In fact, the provision in the
Cabinet Mission Plan regarding review after every 10 years also contained
within it the likelihood of continued British supervisory presence.
Parenthetically, we
may note that within independent Pakistan too, Jinnah was not enamoured of
federalism or its implications. Although Bengalis constituted a majority in
Pakistan after its formation, Jinnah, in a speech at Dhaka on March 21, 1948,
declared that Urdu and “no other language” would be Pakistan’s state language 21 .
It was this early disinclination to grant a due place to the Bengali language
in Pakistan that contributed to the movement for secession of its eastern wing.
The oft-heard lament
for the Cabinet Mission Plan and the attempt by diverse forces to pin its
‘failure’ upon the Congress and Nehru is especially surprising considering some
other particularly obscure features of the Plan. These features associated with
the Cabinet Mission Plan have historically not received adequate attention.
These relate to the complicated tie-up envisaged in the Plan between four
future events and processes: (i) the lengthy Constitution-making process
required under the Plan, (ii) the transfer of power and sovereignty in the form
of independence to India, (iii) the condition relating to the formulation of a
treaty between the United Kingdom and the Constituent Assembly and (iv) the
stationing of British troops in India and the terms on which these troops would
be withdrawn.
An examination of this
intricate inter-relationship, indicates that the Cabinet Mission Plan was not a
document simply offering a ‘loose federal Union’. We may, for the present,
consider these features seriatim. First, the
length of the Constitution-making process envisaged under the Plan; for it
was only after this process was complete that sovereignty was to be transferred
under the Plan. In a statement issued on the same day as the Plan was
announced, Stafford Cripps declared:
“So the three Sections
will formulate the Provincial and Group Constitutions and when that is done
they work together with the States representatives to make the Union
Constitution. This is the final phase 22".
Thus, as per the
Cabinet Mission’s Plan, work on the Union Constitution would start only after Provincial
and Group Constitutions were ready. That meant that each Group could take its
own time settling its own Constitution and the constitutions of the Provinces
comprising the Group. Then work would start on the Union Constitution in
association with the (princely) States. Paradoxically, the Cabinet Mission Plan
simultaneously declared [in Paragraph 14] that British paramountcy over the
princely States would not be transferred to the new Indian
government on attainment of Indian independence. Thus even while expressing the
hope that the princely States would co-operate, the Cabinet Mission Plan
offered the States the enticing prospect of their own independence if
they did not co-operate in the making of a Union Constitution.
Second, it is not
generally known that the matter of transfer of sovereignty was deferred under
the Cabinet Mission Plan. The Secretary of State for India, Pethick Lawrence,
as leader of the Cabinet Mission, wrote in his letter dated May 22, 1946, to
Azad that “independence cannot precede the bringing into operation of a new
Constitution” 23 .
He added: “When the Constituent
Assembly has completed its labours, His Majesty’s Government will recommend to
Parliament such action as may be necessary for the cession of sovereignty to
the Indian people…”24[emphasis
added]
Even at that stage
this transfer of sovereignty was to be subject to certain provisos. Oddly
enough, these vital issues have often escaped attention.
A third aspect
concerns the Treaty envisaged under the Plan. Paragraph 22 of the Cabinet Mission Plan made it “necessary to
negotiate a treaty between the Union Constituent Assembly and the U.K, to
provide for certain matters arising out of the transfer of power 25".
The Cabinet Mission
did not envisage any transfer of sovereignty in the form of independence
without the Union Constitution having been drafted and in the absence of such a
Treaty having been negotiated. The inevitably long-drawn Constitution-making
process intrinsic to the Plan also implied the possibility of continued British
supervisory presence. What shape would this take? Moreover, what was there to
prevent this supervisory presence from telescoping into the review after the 10
years envisaged in the Plan? [It may be noted parenthetically that it was only
on February 20, 1947, by when it had become fairly clear that the Cabinet
Mission Plan was not working, that the British Prime Minister announced a
“definite intention” to hand over power to Indian hands “not later than June
1948”.]
There is finally
the inter-related matter of the stationing of British troops. In the Nehru-drafted letter of May 20, 1946,
Azad had pointed out to the Cabinet Mission that its notion of British troops
remaining in India “till after the establishment of the Government in
accordance with the instrument produced by the Constituent Assembly” would be
“a negation of India’s independence” 26 .
Nehru made this point several times. For example, on August 20, 1946, he
observed:
“I am sure that when
British armed might is removed from India, it will be easier for all of us to
face the realities in India and arrive at mutually advantageous agreements 27."
The Cabinet Mission
while confirming in its statement on May 25, 1946, that there was “no intention
of retaining British troops in India against the wish of an independent India
under the new Constitution”, maintained that “during the interim period” it was
“necessary” that “British troops should remain”28. By
“interim period” was meant the entire elongated period leading up to the
framing of the Union Constitution under the Plan, which would be a sequel to
the framing of the Provincial and Group Constitutions, and finally the
formulation of a Treaty between the Constituent Assembly and the U.K.
Not surprisingly, in
his letter dated May 20, 1946, to Pethick-Lawrence, Gandhi had also observed
that with British troops in India, “independence would in fact be a farce” and
that “it can in no way be contended that in the face of the troops, there would
be natural behaviour in the Constituent Assembly 29”. Thus in the obviously
long-drawn Constitution-making process envisaged under the Plan, with no
transfer of power or sovereignty in the form of Indian independence, and with
one political party still committed to its objective of Pakistan, the continued
British presence, including the presence of British troops, had the distinct
prospect of playing off Groups, Provinces, and Princely States against one
another.
The Cabinet Mission
Plan was quite different from the current perception of it in sections of the academic
community and among sections of the intelligentsia. That this perception has
acquired an appreciable hold is, in part, to be accounted for by the resources
still available to colonialist historiography. Far from being the blueprint of
a loose federal Union, the Cabinet Mission Plan contained within it no early,
clear and definite prospect of Indian independence as such; instead it set out
a Constitutional route for dissolution, a possible prelude to a larger Pakistan
and even to the prospect, under colonial auspices and under the watch of
British troops, of the separate independence of various Princely states.
Looked at from any
angle, therefore, it appears that attempts to shift the primary responsibility
for failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan and consequently for Partition upon
Nehru individually or upon the Congress collectively, whether these attempts be
made on behalf of Hindutva or on behalf of the League or by Colonialist
historiography, are less than convincing and historically dubious. This is so
particularly because each one of the forces involved in or associated with such
targeting usually excludes its own role from the analysis. It is necessary that
this record be set straight as the sectarian accounts tend to become elements
in the contemporary political and electoral arena.
References:
1.^ See, for example, Narendra Modi’s statements reported with the dateline Kheda,
November 10, 2013. Last accessed September 6, 2016.
2.^ See, for example, the report about an article published on
October 17, 2014 by the mouthpiece of the RSS in the southern state of Kerala. Last
accessed September 6, 2016.
5.^ The Indian Express, 2016, RSS leader asks youth to make ‘Akhand Bharat’ a reality.
August 15. Last accessed September 23, 2016.
6.^ See, for example, Jaswant Singh, Jinnah:
India-Partition-Independence, Rupa and Co, New Delhi, 2009. Incidentally,
the silences on the Hindu Mahasabha, and its post-Malaviya leadership, in
Jaswant Singh’s book become more deafening as Partition approaches. The last
mention in it of the Mahasabha is with reference to the Gandhi-Jinnah talks of
1944 about which it is observed at p. 312: “The announcement of the impending
meeting also angered the members of the Hindu Mahasabha”.
7.^ For an earlier critique of such perspectives, see Anil Nauriya,
‘Some Portrayals of Jinnah : A Critique’, in D.L. Sheth and Gurpreet Mahajan
(eds.), Minority Identities and the Nation-State, Oxford University
Press, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 73-112.
8.^ We may cite one of various indications of a British expectation
of a foothold in the so-called ‘Pakistan’ areas. On 25 April 1946, a few days
before the Cabinet Mission Plan was announced, one of the contingency
arrangements put forward by Sir William Croft, the Deputy Under Secretary of
State, India Office, was “that we should withdraw from Hindustan and leave it
to its own devices while staying in Pakistan by agreement which he estimated
would be forthcoming…”.(The Transfer of Power, 1942-7, HMSO, London, Vol
VII, Document 138). Upon this Viceroy Wavell said that he “had considered this
possibility in consultation with the Commander-in-Chief, and thought that we
might have to contemplate something of the sort”. …”.(The Transfer of Power,
Vol VII, Idem). At the meeting of the Cabinet Delegation with
Wavell on 31 May 1946 the Viceroy said that “he did not feel that there were
final grounds for rejecting the possibility that we might remain in
North-Eastern and North-western India for an indefinite period.” (The
Transfer of Power, Vol VII, Document 415) This line of thinking was
understandable also because, so far as British control of India was concerned,
Wavell, his administration and provincial Governors were naturally more in sync
with policies maintained by the previous British Government headed by Winston
Churchill than with the post-war Labour Government. Earlier, when on a visit to
England soon after the change in Government, Wavell had on August 31, 1945
called on Churchill, the former Prime Minister, the latter’s parting advice had
been to “ Keep a bit of India”. (Wavell, The Viceroy’s Journal,
Oxford University Press, Delhi 1973, p. 168).
9.^ In an article published on August 18, 2009, Jaswant Singh was
reported as follows: He said Jinnah envisaged that some areas of the new
country would have Muslim majority areas and some Hindu majority areas and
believed a federal system that kept the country as one was desirable. Nehru, by
contrast, demanded a system that was centralised. "Nehru believed in a
highly centralised policy. That's what he wanted India to be," Mr Singh
went on. "Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That, even Gandhi accepted.
Nehru didn't. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947
when it became a partitioned India."http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/search-for-the-real-villain-of-partition-divides-india-again-1773486.html".
Last accessed September 6, 2016.
See also: ‘Nehru was
as much to blame as Jinnah for Partition’ (January 2016). Rediff interview with
Nisid Hajari (author of Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s
Partition, Viking/Penguin, Gurgaon, 2015):. "http://m.rediff.com/news/interview/nehru-was-as-much-to-blame-as-jinnah-for-partition/20150813.htm".
Last accessed September 6, 2016. In the interview to Rediff, Hajari asserts :
“Up until the spring of 1946, a political compromise that would have preserved
a united India, was still possible. The Congress – Nehru in particular- would
have had to grant the Muslim areas that (eventually) became Pakistan more
autonomy than he was willing to grant, and have had to accept a weaker Central
government than he wanted”.
10.^ See, for example, Aijaz Ahmad, “‘Tryst with destiny’ – free but
divided”, The Hindu, Independence Day Supplement, August 15, 1997,
pp. 21-27 at pp.22-23.
11.^ For text see Maurice Gwyer and A. Appadorai, Speeches
and Documents on the Indian Constitution, 1921-47, Vol. II, Oxford University
Press, Bombay, 1957, pp. 600-602 at p.601.
12.^ Ayesha, Jalal, The Sole Spokesman : Jinnah, The Muslim
League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1985 and H M Seervai, Constitutional Law of India, Vol 1, N M
Tripathi Private Ltd., Bombay, 1991, (4th edition).
13.^ Gwyer and Appadorai, Speeches and Documents on the
Indian Constitution, 1921-47, Vol. II, 1957, p. 601.
16.^ Terms of Offer made by the Muslim League as a basis of
agreement, 12 May 1946, see Gwyer and Appadorai, op. cit. p. 573. Earlier,
on February 7, 1946, Viceroy Wavell, in a cable to Pethick-Lawrence had
accepted that Assam (apart from Sylhet district) was not a province to which
there could be “a reasonable claim” on behalf of the projected Pakistan. (The
Transfer of Power, 1942-7, HMSO,London, Vol VI, Document 406). When the
Cabinet Mission Plan was yet in the making the Mission offered to Jinnah on 16
April 1946 the possibility of a Union Centre limited to essential subjects and
envisaging also “in one federation the whole of the Provinces of Sind, Baluchistan,
North-West Frontier Province, the Punjab and Bengal plus perhaps
the Sylhet district of Assam”. (The Transfer of Power, 1942-7, Vol VII,
Document 116). By the time the Cabinet Mission Plan was announced in the
following month, Assam as a whole was to be added to Group C. The Mission was
fully aware of the unfairness of this particularly when the Group was to frame
the Provincial Constitution as well. A note by W. Croft and F.F. Turnbull,
secretary to the Mission, circulated on 25 April 1946, and by these two men and
G.E.B Abell, the Private Secretary to the Viceroy, on 2 May 1946 presaged this
change in the manner the Mission would treat Assam. [The
Transfer of Power, 1942- 7, Vol VII, Documents 140 (enclosure) and 179]. While
these documents were not as such “accepted” they clearly affected the evolution
of the Cabinet Mission proposals. Besides, a further rigidity was introduced in
terms of restricting the possibility of any Province opting out of the
particular Group in which it had been placed. After initially suggesting that
“Provinces should be free to form groups…”, a formulation that still remained
in Paragraph 15 of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the same document went on to
nullify this by specifying in Paragraph 19 (viii) that “opting out” by a
province from the Group could only be after “ the new Constitutional
arrangements come into operation” and “after the first general election under
the new Constitution”. The change in Paragraph 19 occurred primarily as a
sequel to a cable on 9 May 1946 from F. Burrows, the Governor of Bengal whose
views had also been sought by Wavell. (The Transfer of Power, 1942-7,
Vol VII, Document 231). Burrows wanted also to ensure that the voting system
within the Group, for formulation of the Constitutional arrangements, be such
that decisions would be by simple majority. The inherent unjustness of this was
marked also in relation to the NWFP and similarly placed provinces. In any
explanation of partition and analysis of sectarian politics the role of
officials like Croft, Turnbull, Abell and Burrows who pointedly introduced and
encouraged sectarian demands needs close evaluation. The arrangements devised
by them appear to have been programmed to ensure the failure of the Cabinet
Mission even before publication of its Plan. How these arrangements could be
projected in scholarship and in ‘popular’ writing as loose federal
arrangements, and Nehru accused of opposing them without justification, remains
quite inexplicable.
18.^ Sharifuddin Pirzada, Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah’s
Correspondence, East and West Publishing Company, Karachi, 1977, p.124.
21.^ Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Speeches &
Statements as Governor General of Pakistan 1947-48, Ministry of
Information & Broadcasting,Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1989, p.183.
http://www.thehinducentre.com/the-arena/current-issues/article9149854.ece
See also
Irfan Habib on Gandhi's Finest Hour (video)
Modi says Congress committed 'sin' of partition // The Non-politics of the RSS
Modi says Congress committed 'sin' of partition // The Non-politics of the RSS
The Abolition of truth
Book review: In the name of the father
RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology
Book review: In the name of the father
RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology
The music of humanity
Apoorvanand: गांधीजी का आखरी महीना - Gandhiji's Last Month (Pune, October 2; 2015)
Apoorvanand: गांधीजी का आखरी महीना - Gandhiji's Last Month (Pune, October 2; 2015)
