Partition remembered

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Some reflections on the 1947 partition
By Izzud-Din Pal
MY personal perspective on the migration which accompanied the partition of British India is quite modest compared to the millions of people who went through sufferings unparalleled in modern history. I left Amritsar along with some members of my family by train on August 10, 1947 for Lahore, a mere 33 miles away, and it turned out to be the last train which did not carry dead bodies among its passengers. (I had already lived in Lahore for two years as a student until June 1947.)We all left thinking at that time that it was a temporary escape from the atmosphere of bloodshed which had engulfed the city. I left with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. Others made an attempt to carry whatever they could with them. The family gradually realised that there was no turning back.From the end of July, the breakdown of law and order had engulfed the entire region from Amritsar to Paniput affecting the Muslims in the eastern part of the province, and targeting the Hindus and Sikhs from Lahore to Peshawar in the west.In Amritsar, the normal pattern of life in the city of the Golden Temple represented a working coexistence among Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. I cannot generalise for other cities, but in Amritsar the Sikh-Muslim relations were not hostile. Of course, the Muslim neighbourhoods were separated from the areas of Hindus and Sikhs. On individual level, however, many friendships had in fact evolved in social and political aspects of life. From July, we started to see everything in terms of the community to which somebody belonged. Very few of us could avoid that.Now it was the militant Sikhs with kirpans and guns, conveying a clear message to Muslims that they should ‘go to Pakistan’ or face death. The Radcliffe Award defining the new border had not yet been delivered, but the Sikh community had no doubts about the place of Amritsar in the new India.In Muslim areas of the city, a self-appointed Muslim group vigilante had emerged to fill the vacuum left by the police and the army. They claimed to be ‘ready’ to protect Muslim households in exchange for a hefty fee (with no choice), and those who started to flee from the bloody chaos were subjected to another sizable extortion, and in many cases their homes were ransacked and burnt by members of the same group.The ring leaders of the group moved to Lahore after August 14, and established themselves in McLeod/Nicholson Roads area to focus their attention on Hindu-Sikh population, ultimately taking active part in the allotment of evacuee property on a large scale, which had already developed into a lucrative occupation.It was in this atmosphere that Pakistan was inaugurated on August 14. Lord Mountbatten had played a cruel joke with Muslims during the month of Ramazan. About 12 million people were affected by Partition. How and why all this came to pass?Yasmin Khan, a British historian and a descendant of Punjabi Muslims who were forced to flee the slaughter of 1947, has published an insightful book on the subject (The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, 2007), in which she has drawn on a decade of research to reach some conclusions about this episode. “There was nothing inevitable or pre-planned about the way partition unfolded”, she adds. And further, “There were so many things that could have happened, so many ways it could have gone… What they ended up with was a stripping down, a reduction of everything to labels of religion. That was no at all a certain outcome.”She does not dwell on what was taking place in the Viceroy’s palace, with Lord Mountbatten chairing the political wrangling which was going on among leaders. The main importance of her work is that she focuses on a broad canvas and leads the reader through the confusion, the fear and the horror faced by people uprooted from their homes. Nevertheless, it is in those fateful months, with Lord Mountbatten as the new Viceroy, that the seeds were sown for a terrible calamity to unfold.Ayesha Jalal, in her pioneering study titled The Sole Spokesman, published in 1985, has summarised the developments which took place between March and June 1947, with Mountbatten who came with plenipotentiary powers to settle the issue of Indian independence. The House of Commons had made a decision on June 3, 1947 announcing that India was to be partitioned and that independence would follow not less than a year later. By August 15, the British were gone. Mountbatten had claimed credit for having accomplished “the greatest administrative operation in history in less than two and a half months.”During his negotiations, he felt that Nehru was easy to deal with, but Jinnah was a difficult man to handle. The Indian National Congress had become inclined to offer Jinnah a “moth-eaten” Pakistan, playing upon the criterion of the principle of Muslim majority areas. Mountbatten devised a “Plan Balkan” in line with this criterion. He had been warned about the carnage that would follow if his plan was implemented, which he ignored. He wanted to reduce Jinnah to his size, as he boasted. Ayesha Jalal describes succinctly how blatantly partisan Mountbatten had become in his role as the architect of the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan.The Plan Balkan turned out to be not just Cyril Radcliffe’s “cartographic” demarcation, but a much “refined” line drawn by the political advisors of Lord Mountbatten, according to reliable reports, and was announced on August 18, 1947.Jinnah was consistent in his view that the All India Muslim League represented the interests of all Muslims in the country. With Lord Wavell, he took this position for the formation of the interim cabinet. He held to this position with Mountbatten, hoping that the new Dominion of Pakistan would be able to maintain its relations with the larger entity. The new India was not inclined because this would result in a weaker centre, and according to Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian leaders, their country would need a strong centre to consolidate its new identity. Jinnah, however, kept advocating his view to the end. For various reasons, he thought that keeping such affiliation would be in the interests of Muslims as a whole.Ayesha Jalal examines what happened in the intervening years between 1940 and 1947, and investigates how Jinnah proposed to resolve the contradiction between a demand for a separate Muslim state and the need to safeguard the interests of all Muslims. It is important to note that the Muslim League had come a long way under his leadership when in 1940 it first voiced the demand for establishment of autonomous state or states in north-west and north-east of British India. Only ten years before, the same Muslim League could not muster enough members to fill a quorum for its meetings.Mushirul Hasan of the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, in his book India’s Partition, 2001, suggests that the roots of the rise of Muslim League, and that the Muslims were in need of a special arrangement in a future India, can be traced to the Act of 1935. This act was followed by the establishment of provincial governments, and policies of those held by the Indian National Congress, especially in provinces such as UP and Bombay which had aroused fears by Muslims.Hamza Alavi, a well-known Pakistani sociologist, was of the opinion that it was the salariat class (as he called it) in the Urdu-speaking regions which had become advocates for a separate homeland for Muslims, as they saw better opportunities for advancement in an atmosphere not dominated by Hindus.It remains a controversial issue, and Pakistani historians take a longer view and emphasise the link of the idea of Pakistan with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and later, Iqbal. It does not explain, however, the dominance of leaders from minority provinces in the rejuvenated Muslim League of the period 1937-40.On the 60th anniversary of Pakistan, it is sad to note that the country has not developed as a democratic and a progressive nation, as envisaged by Jinnah. The best tribute that can be offered to his memory is to make a resolve once again to work towards the goals which he had set so eloquently for the nation in his speech of August 11, 1947. The focus has to be turned mainly to improving the welfare of the people under the guidance of a representative and a democratic civilian leadership. In the international sphere, Pakistan has to strengthen her position as a regional power with strong economic links.How a state develops its relations with other states is a very complex issue. There are always long-term considerations which come into play and, with passage of time, the outlook of those who take up leadership position is influenced by these considerations. This is what is summarised in the aphorism according to which states have no enemies or friends, only interests. Pakistan’s interest can easily be defined, given the context of the current world order: the country should play its role in the area of economic relations in the region more productively than it has been able to do in the past.As an alumnus of the Pakistan Movement through my affiliation with the students federation during 1944-47, my memory like many, many old colleagues is still quite fresh about the “welcome” that Pakistan received from the new Dominion of India by withholding the distribution of assets, by disrupting the flow of canal irrigation water, and by self-denial about the promise for a UN-sponsored plebiscite in Kashmir.It is also difficult to ignore the evolving reality, and the need to explore zones of cooperation without conceding legitimate demands.The writer taught economics at Pakistani and Canadian universities before his retirement. izzud-din.pal@videotron.ca