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Who Created Pakistan?:NO SIMPLE, STRAIGHT ANSWER, by Durga Das,27 August 2009 Print E-mail

Events & Issues

New Delhi, 27 August 2009

Who Created Pakistan?

NO SIMPLE, STRAIGHT ANSWER

By Durga Das

 (Controversy rages once again over the question: “Who created Pakistan”, thanks to the sharp countrywide reaction to Jaswant Singh’s glowing tribute to Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Given below is the authoritative answer provided by the late Durga Das, founder of INFA and formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Hindustan Times, in his seminal memoirs “India from Curzon to Nehru & After.” India’s third President, Dr Zakir Husain, described these memoirs in his foreword as “Indian history seen from the inside.”)

Who conceded Pakistan? Some name one person, some the other. But, in point of fact, there is no simple, straight answer.

Both the Congress and the Raj for their own reasons were keen on maintaining a united India. But both were walking the slippery path of winning the support of the third side of India’s power triangle: Muslims. Whitehall unconsciously first planted the seed of partition by conceding separate electorate and communal representation, in Minto’s words, to the Muslim “nation.”

Following the outbreak of World War II, which caught the Congress unprepared for its political repercussions, Gandhi was the first to concede to the Muslims at the Ramgarh Congress session in 1940 the right of separation as in Hindu joint family. He suggested the setting up of a Constituent Assembly based on adult franchise and proposed that the Muslim members be allowed to decide whether they wished to live separately or as members of a joint family. Gandhi’s offer was essentially a move in the political game of outbidding and outwitting the British.

The British outbid Gandhi in August 1940 when Leopold Amery, through Viceroy Linlithgow, placed in Jinnah’s hands a veto on advance to self-government. This was done both to ride over the period of war and checkmate the Congress. But it had the effect of fixing a pointer to the road to partition.

When Japan entered the war towards the close of 1941 and its warships appeared in the Bay of Bengal, C.R. (C. Rajagopalachari) got his followers in Madras to pass a resolution formally conceding the claim for Pakistan made by the League in its Lahore resolution of March 1940. Although adopted to enable the formation of a national government to resist the Japanese, the resolution was repudiated promptly by the AICC, which reaffirmed its faith in a united India.

Nehru came next, when American pressure made Chruchill dispatch Cripps to India with a proposal that envisaged partition as a possibility and gave political content to the veto placed in Jinnah’s hand. The Congress Working Committee rejected the Cripps offer but, in a resolution drafted by Nehru, it formally conceded for the first time the principle that it did not believe in keeping within the Union any area against its expressed wish.

The drift towards partition thereafter received inadvertently a push when Bhulabhai Desai and Liaquat Ali entered into an agreement providing for equal representation to the Congress and the League in the reconstituted Cabinet. Gandhi blessed the proposal but Wavell transformed it into an equality between Muslims and caste Hindus --- as against equality between two political entities. Gandhi then disowned the pact, but the damage was done.

Rajagopalachari now intervened with Gandhi’s blessings to resolve the deadlock by offering the matter of partition to be settled by a referendum. In essence this gave concrete shape to Gandhi’s plan vaguely enunciated at the Ramgarh session as a tactical move.

Wavell almost succeeded in preserving the unity of India in co-operation with the Congress with his plan for a wartime coalition. But his effort was frustrated at the eleventh hour when Jinnah received the secret offer of “Pakistan on a platter” from his friends in Whitehall and in Delhi.

Nehru, Patel and Prasad next acknowledged and endorsed Jinnahs’ two-nation theory in March 1947, by advocating in a resolution adopted by the Congress Working Committee the division of the Punjab into Muslim-majority and Hindu-majority areas. This was done by the three without consulting Gandhi, who reacted sharply and considered this to be an hour of great humiliation.

When Mountbatten found himself running into a blind alley around May 1947, be came up with his partition plan and informally consulted Nehru, who gave his consent to it. As Mountbatten himself stated in his Nehru Memorial Lecture: “……Nehru realized that this would mean a much earlier transfer of power even though it were to two Governments and left a good chance for the essential unity of India to be maintained.”

Patel was the first to accept the partition plan at the formal conference of national leaders convened by Mountbatten on 2nd June. Indeed, he gave it his wholehearted support. As Home Minister, Patel had realized that the drift towards partition had gone beyond the point of no return and chaos could be prevented only by conceding Pakistan. If this meant a break with Bapu, he was willing to pay the price – as indicated by him to me in his candid talk.

In the final analysis, the Congress leaders and the party as a whole were too weary to carry on the struggle any further and were, in their heart of hearts, anxious to grasp power and enjoy its fruits without further delay. As Badshah Khan told me in Kabul in 1967 in so many words: “Some of my colleagues in the High Command did toy with the idea of going ahead with the fight. But the majority accepted the view that they might then miss the bus. In the next election in Britain, it was feared, the Labour might be thrown out of office and the diehard Tories voted back to power….”

Unknown, at the time, Churchill played a key role in the creation of Pakistan. Following the outbreak of the war, he realized that India could not be held indefinitely and, as revealed by King George VI in his book, His Life and Reign, decided “to give up India to the Indians after the war.” Churchill and his colleagues decided, at the same time, to save what they could out of the wreckage and it was this conviction that lay behind the offer to Jinnah of “Pakistan on a platter.” Pakistan was expected to give them a foothold in the sub-continent.

Attlee and his colleagues in the Labour Party did not agree with this policy and earnestly attempted to maintain a united India, however fragile its federal structure. But the compulsion of events went beyond the control of the main British and Congress actors in the final scene of the freedom drama. And destiny helped Jinnah. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

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