[nukkad] The Muslim League, the Congress and the Partition

[rnmenon@papl.com]

Hi folks,
	I found this interesting article on the net the other day. This is from 
the History Today Magazines' web page.
We Indians tend to place all the blame for partition on one man- Mr. Jinnah.
According to this article, all the three players (Muslim League, Congress and 
the
British) are to blame for the events leading up to partition.


The URL is : http://www.historytoday.com/today/0997/feature/muslim.stm
The following is just an excerpt. Please read the complete article. It is quite 
informative. It also talks about the Brit's policy of Divide and Rule from a 
British perspective.

All said and done, the Brits certainly had the last laugh. Fifty years after 
independence, we are still paying the price of partition.

Ravi.

[Start]
..........
There are some significant ironies in the making of partition. A common view 
would be that the Congress bitterly opposed the mutilation of Mother India. 
However, Congress did have a hand in the process itself. In the complete 
edition of his autobiography, India Wins Freedom, the Muslim member of the 
Congress high command, Abul Kalam Azad, makes it clear that of its other three 
members, Vallabhbhai Patel was positively in favour of partition before 
Mountbatten arrived, Nehru was quite quickly persuaded, and Gandhi accepted the 
inevitable. Patel and Nehru were keen to take over a strong central government 
and relatively weak provinces. Patel wanted strong central government to hold 
the new state together; Nehru was keen to put Soviet style five-year plans into 
effect. The Cabinet Mission plan patently did not supply strong central 
government.

	A common view of Jinnah, on the other hand, sees him trying to resolve 
India’s Muslim problem within the framework of a united India up to the late 
1930s and then, from the Lahore resolution of March 1940, working for a 
separate state of Pakistan and fighting his way to triumph at partition. But 
the more recent interpretation of Ayesha Jalal, which is based on much fresh 
evidence, sees no change in Jinnah’s long-term objective in 1940 and only a 
shift in strategy. The Lahore resolution was a bargaining card to gain 
recognition of Indian Muslim nationhood and the right to equal treatment at 
India’s political centre; it was also a stick to bludgeon the Muslims of the 
majority provinces into supporting the League. When the Cabinet delegation made 
known its May proposals Jinnah’s plans were realised; strong Muslim provinces 
need not feel concerned about a weak Indian centre.

When the Congress in effect rejected the proposals, Jinnah’s plans were in
tatters. In the remaining thirteen months leading up to independence, he
worked to minimise the consequences of his defeat. Partition happened
because, in the circumstances, the Congress leaders wanted it, not because
Jinnah desired it.
.....
[End]


[The Cabinet Mission Plan was:]
.... In 1946 a delegation of Cabinet Ministers
to India proposed an ingenious solution to the Pakistan problem. There
were to be three tiers of government at independence, the first to be formed
out of the existing provinces, the second to be formed out of separate Hindu
and Muslim federations of provinces (a Hindustan and Pakistan), and in the
third, the central government, representatives of these federations would
come together on an equal basis to deal with defence, foreign affairs and
communications. On June 6th, the League accepted the plan. On June 22nd,
so did the Congress but at the same time it refused to support the interim
government which was to put the plan into effect

[In effect, the plan provided for strong state govts and a weak central govt.
which was what Jinnah wanted. But as pointed out earlier, the Congress did not 
want to
head a weak govt.]