70 Years of Partition: Two nations, one shared legacy of pain

As the British decided to set sail from the shores of the Indian sub-continent in 1947, their divide, destroy and rule policy gave birth to two new sovereign entitites — India and Pakistan.

What followed was the largest forced migration in human history and horrific bloodletting — just some of the ramifications of the untold miseries of partition that are being felt until this day.

Here, we recount the critical events and the role played by key personalities that led to the displacement of 24 million people - the most epochal event in modern history, since the two World Wars.

The 1857 Sepoy Uprising

Though the British doused the flames of rebellion within a year, the Sepoy Uprising of 1857 showed for the first time how religious sentiments can ignite large-scale unrest.

Dr B R Ambedkar, the chairman of independent India’s Constituent Assembly, wrote in 1941: “The curious may examine the history of the 1857 mutiny. If he does, he will find that in part, at any rate, it was actually [an uprising] proclaimed against the British ...”

In view of the fact that Muslims played an important role in the uprising against British authority in 1857, the British were anti-Muslim in the early post-uprising period.

The cartridges for the Enfield P-53 rifles were greased with animal fat – a major reason for a sizeable section of Indian soldiers, both Hindus and Muslims, to have refused to use them, thereby igniting what is known as ‘India’s First War of Independence’.

Two-nation theory

The idea that the primary identity of Muslims in undivided India was their religion and not their language or ethnicity is believed to be the basis on which the two-nation theory gained ground.

Based on this principle, it was argued by some that Hindus and Muslims in the Indian sub-continent were two distinct nations, irrespective of their social and cultural commonalities. This concept was the moot point on which the idea of partitioning of India into two separate nations was rooted. Based on this ideology, the movement of Muslim self-identity and self-awakening was started by Muslim reformer Syed Ahmad Khan in the 19th century. Later, the All-India Muslim League (AIML) felt that the Muslims of the sub-continent were distinct and separate from the Hindus.

While further elaborating upon the idea, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the AIML, said: “We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation.”

Birth of Indian National Congress

Between December 28 and 30, 1885, 72 delegates from all the presidencies and provinces of undivided India met in Bombay [Mumbai].

Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British civil servant played a crucial role in the formation of the Indian National Congress.

It was Hume who got in touch with luminaries from various walks of life in contemporary India, cutting across religion, caste and region, and paved the way for the Congress to emerge more as a platform for like-minded individuals to assemble and propagate the idea of a free India.

Hume also convened a national conference in Calcutta [Kolkata] around the same time.

While the Congress was largely successful in its inclusive socio-political outreach towards achieving the dream of an independent India, as a political entity, it failed to win the trust of a vast section of Muslims in the undivided country.  

Partition of Bengal in 1905

In July 1905, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, announced the partition of Bengal. The partition became effective on October 16, 1905.

The two entities were ‘Bengal’ (comprising West Bengal, as we know it today, Bihar and Orissa) and ‘East Bengal’ (including Assam).

The logic cited by Lord Curzon was that this would help ensure greater administrative efficiency.

This partition was by and large supported by the Muslims of East Bengal, who were feeling marginalised by the financially well-off Hindus of Bengal.

However, the Hindu community in general and the educated middle class of Bengal in particular was clearly unhappy at what they felt was an attempt by the British to impose a ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.

Following several months of protests, the British government back-tracked and Bengal was reunited on December 12, 1911.

Formation of the All-India Muslim League

On December 30, 1906, the AIML was born out of a literary movement that was started in Aligarh Muslim University by renowned academic and social reformist Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

This great Muslim reformer had realised the social, economic and educational hurdles faced by the community and sought to address them in the aftermath of the 1857 Sepoy Uprising, in which the Muslim soldiers of British-India had played a pivotal role in defying their masters.

The first session of the AIML was held in Dhaka (in present-day Bangladesh). Founded as a conservative political outfit, the AIML, in due course, demanded separate electorates and safeguards for members of the Muslim community in undivided India.

Under the leadership of Jinnah, it became the bastion of demand for an independent nation-state for Muslims. 

All India Muslim League, 26th Session at Patna, December 1938.

Lucknow Pact of 1916

On December 29 and 31, 1916, at a joint session in Lucknow, the Congress and the AIML came to an agreement on the guiding principles for the structure of a future government in India and also the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in the country.

Under the terms of the agreement, Congress agreed to separate electorates for Muslims in provincial council elections and for weightage in their favour (beyond the proportions indicated by population) in all provinces, barring Punjab and Bengal.

Apart from bringing the Congress and the AIML closer, the pact also helped ensure a truce between the hardline and moderate factions within the Congress party.

But more significant than that was the Congress’ acceptance of the AIML’s demand for separate electorates for Muslims, which was raised several notches higher later on as the AIML demanded a separate nation for Muslims.

Lahore Resolution of 1940

From March 22-24, 1940, the annual session of the AIML was held in Lahore.

At the meeting, Jinnah said in his speech that the differences between Hindus and Muslims were so distinct that to unify the two communities under one centralised administrative authority was impossible.

At the session, A K Fazl-ul-Haq, the chief minister of Bengal, declared: “The areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”

The Lahore Resolution negated the concept of United India and sought the creation of an independent state for Muslims comprising Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan in the northwest of India, and Bengal and Assam in the northeast.

Second World War

At the start of the Second World War on September 3, 1939, the Governor-General of India, Lord Linlithgow, proclaimed that by virtue of being a British colony, India was automatically at war with Nazi Germany.

He made this announcement without any consultation with the Indian leaders and the Congress party. In protest, the Congress quit all its posts won in the 1937 provincial elections.

This is considered by many analysts as a tactical mistake by the party leadership as the AIML stepped in to fill in the void left by the Congress.

This also brought the AIML leadership closer to Linlithgow and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. While this changed the dynamics of the two-nation theory within undivided India, by the time the Second World War ended, the British Empire was reduced to a spent force, with Britain owing £1.25 billion (Dh5.97 billion) to India for its services during the war.

Quit India Movement of 1942

With India caught in the ravages of the Second World War and with rising unemployment, there was massive disappointment in public life in India.

Under the circumstances, the Congress leadership and Mahatma Gandhi felt the need to start a mass movement to expedite the exit of British imperialist forces from the shores of India.

But even before the movement could get off the ground, there were large-scale arrests of Congress leaders and the movement soon took a violent turn.

With the Congress party rendered rudderless, a political vacuum was created, which was filled in by the AIML. In the provincial elections of 1937, while the Congress came up with impressive results, the AIML’s performance was rather dismal.

However, with virtually the entire Congress leadership behind bars during the Quit India Movement, it allowed the AIML enough political space to consolidate its base and come up with a much improved showing in the 1946 elections.

  

Simla Conference of 1945

With the failure of the Simla Conference, all hopes of avoiding a partition of the country were reduced to ashes. As part of the conference, the viceroy of India was supposed to hold talks with major political leaders of British-ruled India. The meeting was convened to discuss the Wavell Plan for Indian self-rule. However, the talks hit the doldrums over the issue of Muslims’ representation. The AIML refused to allow the Congress party any role in appointing Muslim representatives to the Executive Council. Explaining the AIML’s stance, Jinnah said: “Acceptance of the proposals of Lord Wavell was nothing but to sign the death warrant of the Muslims. Simla Conference failed due to non-acceptance of the All-India Muslim League as the only representative political party of the Indian Muslims.”

 

Labour Party’s victory in England in 1945

This was a very significant political development – an incident that happened in far-off Europe, but the ramifications of which could be felt and seen in British-ruled India. The Labour Party’s win brought Clement Attlee to power as Britain’s new prime minister. Attlee was a firm believer in the freedom and equality of nations. It was Attlee who had appointed Lord Mountbatten as the last viceroy of India in March 1947, under whose watch India was partitioned. In fact, the entire process of India’s partition was hastened with Attlee coming to power at Westminster and Lord Mountbatten being sent to India. It was a rushed job, with British officials scribbling lines across the map of a gargantuan Indian subcontinent to bring the idea of two separate states to reality.

Calcutta killings of 1946

The riots that broke out on the streets of Calcutta [Kolkata] were truly unprecedented in pre-independence India’s history. Coming close on the heels of the AIML’s call for ‘Direct Action Day’ on August 16, the Congress held the AIML and particularly the chief minister of Bengal, Hussain Suhrawardy, responsible for the carnage. The AIML’s version of the episode squarely put the blame on the Congress and the Hindus. Until this day, there is no reliable estimate as to how many people were killed between August 16 and 19 in Calcutta, but the figure could be anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000. This one incident soured relationships between the two communities like never before and sparked further riots in Noakhali, Bihar, Punjab, North-West Frontier Province and United Provinces.

A hurried transfer of power

In just 144 days’ time, after being sworn in as the 20th and last viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten completed the partition of India. He had very clear instructions from prime minister Attlee, to complete the task in the shortest possible time – and Mountbatten had delivered. However, this was done in such a haste that the British government of the day did not have the time or inclination to even spare a thought for the gathering storm clouds of extreme communal hatred. Deteriorating economic conditions in South Asia, rising unemployment, rise of militant nationalism in India — led by the co-founder of Indian National Army, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose — were all factors that forced the British to leave in a hurry, without a well-thought-out plan for post-partition India and Pakistan.

The rise of nationalism and identity politics

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of India’s freedom struggle and the subsequent division of the country into two separate entities — India and Pakistan — is the rise of nationalism and nationalistic ideologies among the communities. Over the decades preceding independence and thereafter, the very idea of ‘India’ as a monolithic sovereign entity has undergone tectonic shifts, the most vital contribution to which has obviously come from partition and its concomitant saga of pain and nostalgia. Right from the Sepoy Uprising in 1857 to the gory trails that the birth of two nations heralded just before and after independence in 1947, identity politics and the rise of nationalism, in absolutist terms over one’s religious affiliation, has, to a large extent, been instrumental in shaping the modern-day notion of a nation-state – whether it is India or Pakistan.

Dissolution of British authority

The end of the Second World War marked a major shift in the balance of power away from Britain and towards US and Soviet Union. As the nerve-centre of world politics moved away from the United Kingdom in the most definitive terms, it saw the emergence of two new centres of power — US and Soviet Union — and the rise of a duopoly in global economic and political hegemony. Britain had suffered huge financial setbacks with the two World Wars and owed around $30 billion (Dh110.34 billion) to the US under the Lend-Lease programme. Britain’s wartime debts to India were also quite considerable at £1.25 billion. Managing a dominion of the size of India had become truly untenable for the British Empire.