April 1998 Edition
by Asghar Ali Engineer
PARTITION is a highly debatable issue even 50 years after Independence. Various controversies are associated with it. Some scholars maintain that it occurred due to Muslim separatism and others go a step further and assert that separatism is an integral part of the Islamic faith. A scholar, who claimed to be a rationalist, even wrote that if one wanted to understand the roots of Muslim separatism, one should search for it in Madina, the city from where Prophet Muhammad preached Islam.
Some historians believe that Jinnah or the Muslim League alone cannot be held responsible for Partition. Others too, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel, had a part in it. Some scholars like the former Advocate-General of Maharashtra, Mr. Seervai, exonarate Jinnah and hold mainly the Indian National Congress responsible for it. There are others who hold Jinnah solely responsible for the vivisection of India. The British policy of divide and rule is also cited and Lord Mountbatten is assigned a role for hurrying up with his job at the cost of unity.
I firmly feel that Partition was far from being inevitable and politics, not religion, was responsible for it. It could have been averted if wisdom, rather than a partisan attitude, had prevailed. It is far from true that Islam is separatist by nature and that Muslims tend to create a separate nation wherever they can. The Pakistan movement was not led by religious divines.
All important Islamic theologians were on the side of Indian nationalism. Maulana Azad, a great scholar of Islam, was an inveterate opponent of Partition. Another theologian of international repute, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, was another vehement opponent of the formation of Pakistan. In fact, as soon as the Lahore resolution calling for a separate state for Muslims in the North-West and North-East was passed in 1940, the Maulana undertook a whirlwind tour from Assam to Kanyakumari, pleading with the Muslims not to be misled by Jinnah's two-nation theory. He was attacked by Muslim League supporters in a number of places. Earlier, in 1938, he had written a book Muttahida Quamiyyat aur Islam(Composite nationalism and Islam) and justified, theologically, a composite nation. He quoted profusely from the Quran to support his contention. This clearly shows that Islam is not inherently separatist. Another Alim heading an organisation called Ahrar from Punjab, Ataullah Shah Bukhari, even called the Qaid-e-Azam, Kafir-e-Azamfor his un-Islamic ways.
Jinnah found it difficult to find support among the reputed Ulemas. He tried to entice some of them but did not succeed. In the early Forties, he could get the support of only one theologian, Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani of Deoband, as he parted company with the organisation of the Deoband Ulema Jamiat-ul- Ulema-e-Hind. The Jamiat - an organisation of the Deobandi Ulema - always supported the Indian National Congress and vehemently opposed separatist tendencies.
It is no less significant to note that the separatist movement was led by a thoroughly Westernised leader like Jinnah. Thus politics, not religion, was responsible for separation. Historians would agree that the Nehru Report (a report prepared by the Motilal Nehru Committee of which besides Motilal Nehru, Sir Tej Behadur Sapru and Bhai Permanand were the members) of 1928 was a watershed development as far as the communal issue was concerned. The crucial question before the Committee was the demand by a section of Muslims that they be given one-third representation in the Central Legislature though their population was only 25 per cent. They wanted a higher representation to ensure that no measure was passed by the Legislature against the interest of Muslims. Madan Mohan Malaviya and others countered this argument saying that the Hindus should be given a higher representation in the Punjab Assembly where they were a minority. The Muslim leaders countered this saying that the Muslims were an all-India minority and that in Punjab, though they were a minority, the Hindus were the dominant minority and unlike Muslims, not the dominated one, at the all-India level. In fact, Malaviya wrote a series of articles in the Punjab Tribune, arguing that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations.
However, the Nehru Committee also rejected the demand for one- third representation. Jinnah was prepared to accept joint electorates if his demand for one-third representation was accepted. But the Congress insisted that in a democracy one could give only proportional representation and, as for as the question of Muslim interests was concerned, it tried to reassure Jinnah that no measure would be passed by the Central Legislature unless a two-thirds of the Muslim members of Parliament endorsed it. But Jinnah was not convinced and the communal question, as it was called, could not be resolved.
The real question, thus, was political and that too affecting the upper class elite. Here it is also important to assert that no community can be assumed to be homogeneous - sociologically, economically or much less politically. Indian Muslims were also sharply divided both horizontally and vertically. The Muslims of majority areas such as the Punjab, Bengal, Sindh and the North West Frontier Province had very different attitudes from those of the minority states like U.P., Bihar and Bombay. The Muslims from the South were culturally and linguistically so different that they could hardly empathise with those of the North. They were, so to say, aloof from the so-called Muslim mainstream.
Pakistan, in fact, was the creation of the Muslims of minority States like U.P., Bihar and Bombay. The Muslims of majority areas were indifferent to the Pakistani demand till the mid-Forties. Jinnah had a hard time establishing his party in these States. He resorted to various tactics to win a measure of support in the these areas. And even in the minority States like U.P. and Bihar, the Muslims were vertically divided on this question. It was only the educated Muslim middle class elite and the feudal elements who feared domination by the Hindu elite in an independent India that endorsed with a measure of enthusiasm the Jinnah theory of two- nations. It is also important to note that the U.P. Muslim elite had suffered a sharp decline in its share in government jobs from 64 per cent in the pre-British era to 34 per cent in the British period (though this was much more than the Muslim population in U.P.). They feared a further decline in their share of government jobs in an independent India.
In U.P. and Bihar, there was a vertical division among the Muslims and the low-caste Muslims were hardly enthusiastic about Pakistan as anyway it would have hardly benefited them. The Ansari Muslims (the weaving caste) who were politically organised and more conscious were opposed to the very idea of Pakistan and even held a demonstration against it in Delhi in May 1940 after the Lahore resolution was passed. Thus, even the Muslims in U.P. and Bihar were sharply divided on the question of Pakistan.
It also becomes clear that Partition was the result of interests rather than religious faith. It is the upper caste elite Muslims of the minority areas whose interests were threatened and it is they who backed the Pakistan movement. The lower caste and lower class Muslims had no right to vote those days as the franchise was qualified by property and educational criteria. Hence, they could not assert their point of view through elections. It is the upper class Muslims who voted for it.
Again, till 1937, the Muslim League had not become popular even among the propertied and educated classes, if one goes by the election results of 1937. It was routed in the Muslim majority areas and could manage to get a few seats in the minority areas. In fact, it got less than a quarter of the Muslim seats it contested (it won only 110 of the 420) and the Congress went back on its promise to take two Muslim League Ministers in the U.P. Cabinet because of this debacle. It was a tactical mistake on the part of the Congress as pointed out by Maulana Azad in his India Wins Freedom, which cost the country dearly. It hardened Jinnah's attitude towards the Congress and he began to feel that its leaders could not be relied upon.
The League had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan as late as 1946 and this shows that till then Jinnah was using Pakistan only as a bargaining counter. Again, Nehru made a statement after becoming the president of the Congress in July 1946 at a press conference in Bombay that the Cabinet Mission plan could be changed in the future. This was the proverbial last straw and Jinnah now decided to accept nothing short of Pakistan even if it be a moth eaten- one. The Maulana has called it another tactical mistake on the part of Nehru which made Pakistan a reality.
Pakistan was more of an accident of history. It was the result of a very complex set of forces operating at the historical juncture. Various factors, some conscious, some unconscious, some well-calculated and some accidental, played a part in the vivisection of the country. The blame must be properly apportioned. It is true that Jinnah spearheaded the movement and he articulated the aspirations of the Muslim elite, specially of the Muslim minority areas. Still it could have been averted, if personal ambitions and certain genuine mistakes had not been made.
For another view on partition, see this essay: The 2-Nation Theory and Partition, which offers a more detailed and historical perspective on the subject.
For other selections relating to the history of India and the sub-continent, also visit South Asian History .
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