Partition
Players’ Politics: I
By Dr. Khan Dawood
L. Khan
Chicago, IL
Partition was an anathema to
politicians in India. And, the person who wanted
to remain “plain Mr. Jinnah,” is often
labeled as the bete noire -- for creating Pakistan
in face of intense opposition from all sides,
including the British. This was a testimony to
the unflinching focus of the lawyer-tactician
in him in a complex political arena with many
players and many agendas. If the creation of Pakistan
itself wasn’t enough of a surprise (even
Jinnah had doubts about it till a year before),
it needs to be clarified that decades earlier,
partition of India was also an anathema to him,
a Congress-Party-man and an avowed nationalist
then.
Even diehard partisans would concede it takes
two to tango, and in this case, the choreographer/music
director (the British), who initially wanted to
keep India united, had also decided to join in.
There are obviously more than two sides to the
partition coin, as the history recalled in my
previous articles suggests.
Geopolitical slicing of an area, whether one agrees
with it or not, wasn’t shockingly new at
that time. Colonial powers, Britain and France
in particular, had been carving up geography and
redrawing the map, creating new countries and
alliances, however they pleased, while also trying
to hold together other regions that need to and
want to split. India’s independence, besides
being a telling blow to colonialism, was also
a forerunner of spread-democracy movement worldwide.
Independence has since been achieved not only
by the persistently-warring factions/groups within
a country but also by countries composed of different
religions, ethnic, linguistic and other groups
more interested in keeping and promoting a tolerant
and inclusive democracy. Since the end of WWII,
about 100 countries/former colonies have gained
independence, including 30 since 1990, thanks
largely to the dissolution of the Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia, and about 10 other cases.
To say that citizens of undivided India had transcended
(or seemed capable of transcending) their religious,
ethnic, regional/linguistic and other divisions
to think of India as “one nation …indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all” [from
US Pledge of Allegiance] would be just as true
as the British forgetting to apply their old motto,
‘divide-and-rule’ in a tailor-made
situation. To hope that the subcontinent countries
will have learned some thing from this experience
well enough to apply within each country is perhaps
merely another fond hope. Although it is true
that the British not only treated Hindus and Muslims
as distinct but separate groups and introduced
‘separate electorates’ for them, some
Indian nationalists still think that the Hindu-Muslim
communalism was a British creation: they forget
that the raw material was already there, in plenty,
for them.
Here’s a glimpse of the transformations
in major players, before the partition:
1. Jinnah: In 1906, Jinnah (30), a successful
lawyer in London, was Dadabhai Naoroji’s
secretary and a protégé, when he
ran for a seat in the Commons from Central Finsbury.
Jinnah’s “one ambition,” as
Stanley Wolpert reports, was “to become
the Muslim Gokhale.” Gopal Krishna Gokhale
(1866-1915), an Indian nationalist leader, was
President of the Indian National Congress, who
had also served in the Imperial Legislative Council.
On Jinnah’s efforts toward Hindu-Muslim
harmony, Gokhale himself had said: “He [Jinnah]
has true stuff in him and that freedom from all
sectarian prejudice which will make him the ambassador
of Hindu-Muslim unity.”
Two decades before Partition, pleading for a settlement
of some issues of Muslim minority, Jinnah announced
at a convention (late 1920s): “Nothing will
make me more happy than to see Hindus and Muslims
united. I believe there is no progress for India
until Muslims and Hindus are united. Let not logic,
philosophy and squabbles standing in the way of
our bringing that about,” writes Yogesh
Chadha in his book “Gandhi: A Life.”
Lawrence James, author of ‘The Raj’
and other books on the British Empire and India,
also says that in 1935, Jinnah (then president
of the Muslim League) believed that “a united
independent India was only possible if Muslim
rights were protected.”
Gandhi and Jinnah, both from Gujarat, go a long
way as friends and foes in politics. When Gandhi
returned to India in 1915, he was embraced by
the Gujarati community, and the then chairman
of the Association, who praised him for his work
in South Africa, was no other than Jinnah himself
who spoke in English, not Gujarati. Gandhi, speaking
in Gujarati, expressed thanks and made a “humble
protest against the use of English in a Gujarati
gathering.” Such ribbing seemed amusing
and harmless to “brother Jinnah.”
From a strong nationalist in his early political
life to the single-minded demand for Pakistan:
such transformations don’t generally happen
overnight or without any substantive reason. The
fact that he was not even a devout, practicing
Muslim and lived most of his life in a manner
best described as “secular,” adds
another interesting personal twist to his transformation
and his devotion to those he led.
The rift between Jinnah and Gandhi became clear
in the 1920 Congress convention at Nagpur where
Gandhi’s “satyagraha” (non-cooperation/non-violent
resistance) program was widely approved, and Jinnah,
the only one opposed to it, was shouted down,
questioning even his credentials to speak for
the Muslims. The boycotts of courts and seeking
imprisonment was abhorrent to Jinnah, the lawyer
and the constitutionalist, and he didn’t
like Gandhi appealing to the students to join
the movement, leaving their studies, defying the
law, and risking arrests. After Congress took
this position, “with strong religious overtones
in defiance of the Raj law,” writes Rajmohan
Gandhi (a journalist grandson of the Mahatma),
Jinnah himself, a ‘secularist’ at
heart, “became inseparable in that final
phase [of the independence movement] from the
cry of Islam in Danger.”
In the 1937 provincial elections allowed under
the 1935 Act there was another missed opportunity
for Hindu-Muslim unity. There was some understanding
that Congress and the League might form coalition
governments in the provinces where the League
also did get some support; if mutually satisfactory,
this could have taken the goodwill, when the time
came, to the central/federal government level.
Congress got widespread electoral support in this
election, while the League had some, but limited,
victories in some provinces. The League had hoped
to be invited to join coalition governments in
the provinces but the Congress party saw no reason
then to enter into any coalitions, and set strict
conditions for any successful Leaguers before
they can even considered: the Leaguers must join
Congress and “cease to function as a separate
group.” When the Bombay Congress party was
thinking of being invited from a fairly large
group of elected Leaguers to join the coalition,
Congress High Command sternly warned against it.
When Jinnah wanted Gandhi to intervene, Gandhi
replied (22 May, 1937) that he was “utterly
helpless” and when he sought a personal
meeting, Gandhi rebuffed him: “My suggestion
… to you is that conversation should be
opened in the first instance with Maulana Azad,”
who was acting as a Gandhi’s advisor. The
provincial electoral victories led Nehru to declare
that “in India there are only two parties
– Congress and the British government…..and
the rest must line up,” thus totally ignoring
the Muslim League. Nehru also asked Congress to
start mass contact with Muslims, which Jinnah
thought was a ploy to divide Muslims and weaken
the League’s hold among its supporters.
Jinnah then changed his tactics, and rallied Muslims
under the theme of protection for the Muslim minority
within a federal Constitution because “Congress
was a Hindu organization,” now determined
to deprive the Muslims of their share in governance
of the country, and that “The Muslims can
expect neither justice nor fair play under Congress
government.” Nehru did little to defend
the Congress position or allay the Muslim fears
in any manner, which left Jinnah to drive his
point home.
“Gandhi had destroyed,” complained
Jinnah in 1937, “the very ideals with which
Congress started its career and converted it into
a communal Hindu body.” Five years later,
Jinnah repeated the same in his interview with
Louis Fischer, also a Gandhi biographer. Chadha
suggests that “Jinnah’s complaint
was not entirely baseless. Gandhi’s political
aims nevertheless were so closely bound up with
the ideas of Hindu reform that in this respect
his [Gandhi’s] message contributed toward
the blame levied against him, for ‘Hinduizing
politics’. … His basic concepts, his
moral values and ideals were unmistakably of Hindu
origin. Duty-bound only by his goodwill toward
the Muslims, he chose not to perceive the unfavorable
effects on Muslim opinion of his pronounced Hinduism.”
Jinnah was not the only one who noticed and complained
about this trend: religion to politics and political
action, and back to religion through the political
arena. This was also noted earlier. Gandhi admired
Tolstoy so much that his South African commune
was named after him (‘Tolstoy Farm’),
but Tolstoy, who had been following his work and
in correspondence with him, commented in 1910:
“His Hindu nationalism spoils everything.”
To be continued.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
