20090829221 | Jinnah, Author of the Partition | Column - Koenraad Elst

By Dr. Koenraad Elst, on 30-08-2009 10:00

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The Narendra Modi government's ban on Jaswant Singh's Jinnah book is one sign too many of the Hindutva predisposition to solving debates by means of muzzling. This flies in the face of the ancient Hindu tradition of open debate, and brings dishonour to the heirs of Yajnavalkya, the Buddha, Shankara and other great debaters. However, on contents, Modi was right to disapprove of the book's misrepresentation of history, and this not only regarding the role of Gujarat's hero Sardar Patel.

On one point, though, Jaswant Singh is right: Mohammed Ali Jinnah was truly a great man, -- but for the opposite reason than the one he gives. It was not for his purportedly being a "secular" guardian of Muslim interest (note the Nahruvian-secularist contradiction in terms here: a guardian of one community's interests is by definition communalist, even if he does so by peaceful and cooperative means, as Jinnah did in the 1916 Lucknow Pact), but for being a determined and highly successful Muslim communalist. After all, he achieved the territorial realization of Muslim communalism, viz. Partition. Jinnah was a man of impressive strength, for he forced a political arrangement on an unwilling majority, on his colonial overlords and even on a large part of his own community.

Contrary to what Congress secularists and Hindu nationalists including Jaswant Singh claim, the British did not engineer nor even favour partition. India's numerous white-supremacists, of both the secular and the Hindutva variety, refuse to concede agency to mere natives and insist that anything of consequence must have a white hand behind it. In this case, they have been insisting since 1947 that crafty British divide-and-rule machinations were behind the Partition, which was only superficially the handiwork of their puppet, Jinnah. But in reality, Jinnah was very much his own man, not at all a British stooge, and he pursued the non-white agenda of Islam.

Viceroys Linlithgow and Wavell told Jinnah they would never countenance the division of their neat and well-integrated empire. Their successor Mountbatten only gave in under Jinnah's forceful pressure, which made Partition seem inevitable. As an exiting power, Britain no longer felt motivated to impose its will against the formidable odds of a Muslim wave of violence far larger than the one they had to put down in Kerala during the Khilafat movement (the Moplah rebellion). Additionnally, the changing world situation after WW2 with the incipient Cold War made the British government see emerging opportunities in a partitioned India (viz. to enlist Pak in the Western alliance), so they reconciled themselves to it. But all through, the initiative for Partition was with Jinnah.

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Last update : 30-08-2009 10:46

Keywords : Jinnah, Author of the Partition, Dr. Koenraad Elst

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islamic history in India is painful

By: Arvind (Registered) on 02-09-2009 16:57

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islamic history in India is painful

By: Arvind (Registered ) on 02-09-2009 16:57

Dr. Elst’s reading of the Indian partition is both interesting and contentious. He has pointed to Muslim separatism and political Islam (what he calls Islamic politics) as the primary force responsible for the vivisection of India. More importantly, the Indian (Hindu?) habit of not learning from history, even history as recent as 1947, is deplorable.

However, I would disagree on some aspects of his argument. His attempt to minimise British agency for partition is disappointing. Linlithgow and Wavell were in fact central to some critical decisions in this period. Dr. Elst says that the emerging cold war made the British see emerging opportunities in partitioning India. As Narendra Singh Sarila[i] demonstrates, that was not an incidental realisation on the part of the British, but was actually central to their conduct. All through the Great Game, the British used the middle-east and central Asia to protect their empire in India. Toward the end they came to realise they needed to use India (or a part thereof) to protect their oil interests in the middle-east, the so called Wells of Power, from Soviet influence. Linlithgow was aware of the limits of Jinnah’s popularity, yet conferred on him near veto power. This occurred during Chamberlain’s watch and was taken to it’s acme under Churchill’s leadership. More particularly, the 8th August 1940 declaration by Linlithgow that they would not transfer power to a government “whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements (read the Muslim League) in India’s national life” had the effect of first making Jinnah the sole spokesman for the Muslims. Once this happened, partition could not really be avoided. Also noteworthy that Wavell, on 7th February 1946 presented a plan to ‘demarcate’ Muslim majority areas (in case British government is compelled to partition India)[ii]. His plan eventually was implemented exactly in 1947. Sarila demonstrates how the British were furiously working toward partition while all the time erecting smokescreens about keeping India united. One must point out that the Indian nationalists conduct during the war pushed the British to this stance. Partition may or may not have resulted from Congress’s non-accommodation of Muslim communal interest; but it certainly did result from Congress’s non-accommodation of British secular (read defence) interests.

Jinnah is an interesting phenomenon. He actually started his political life out of the Aligarh Muslim University (the true home of Islamic, separatist politics) conceived Muslim League. In fact as late as 1927, he was trying to get the League to give up separate electorates in return for 33 per cent reservation in the central legislature. The Congress rejected this demand even though separate electorates were more divisive in their outcomes than reservation. By the logic of proportional representation, the one-third reservation may also be seen to be justified. Of course, the same Jinnah had by 1940 turned into a complete die-hard communalist, who had no problem using violence to achieve political outcomes. In this respect Jinnah was truly a Dr. Jekyll (until 1927) and Mr. Hyde (from 1940). Interestingly, Mr. Jaswant Singh draws a parallel between “Congress majoritarianism” of the nationalist movement and “BJP majoritarianism” of today [iii]. He sees them both as failing to accommodate Muslim political aspirations. This is historically wrong and politically naïve. There is a distinction between the early Jinnah and the Muslim politicians of independent India today. In his Dr. Jekyll phase, Jinnah openly played identity politics to protect Muslim secular interests. The average Indian Muslim politician today plays avowedly ‘secular’ (but actually sectarian) politics, with a view to protect communal interests (e.g. shielding themselves from a modern civil law). They are actually inheritors of Jinnah’s Mr. Hyde phase. The failure is of the Congress in both cases. Dr. Jekyll rejected by Congress and Mr. Hyde is accepted by them, while wisdom would demand it to be the other way round.

In recognising the Hindu-Muslim cleavage, distinction should be made between the forces of history and those of representative government. Many people feel that the project of forming democracy-based representative government in the context of a nation-state sharpened communal differences in India. The say - had it not been for this boon of modernity, our traditional modes of tolerance would have ensured peaceful co-existence. We would have clung on to India’s ancient, Hindu traditions of accommodating and subsuming differences. Gandhiji is most representative of this tradition, which has now been self-righteously claimed by people like Ashis Nandy[iv]. This is a rose-tinted view of the past. The cleavage between Hindus and Muslims was caused not by attempt at representative government; but more accurately by a sense of history. The very painful and often violent history of Islam in the sub-continent makes people see it as being one of two things; either a deliverance (in the convert’s view) or as a fatal calamity (in the Hindu view). This sense of history is carried by both communities in their bones. It has become something instinctive. The Congress way approaching this history as a “composite culture”, merely wishes away these differences without explaining them. We have to face up to our history and the disturbance that Islam has caused in Indian (or Hindu) society. Given Islam’s exclusivist claims, is it even possible to construct a truly secular order in India? Mr. Singh’s book does ask these questions, for which Dr. Elst does not give the author his due.

Finally – if facing up to history is essential, then the partition has been fortuitous for Hindus. Of course this excludes those Hindus that were left behind in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and everyone that suffered in the partition itself. However, the overall effect of the partition is that it has splintered the Muslims into three and strategically weakened them. India could tide over the churning of Ayodhya 1992 with a 13 per cent Muslim population, but can you imagine the Hindus dealing with the Shri Ram Mandir claim in an undivided India? The damage that petro-dollar funded ‘charitable institutions’ would have wrecked would be magnified manifold. Naipaul, quite rightly, says that an undivided India would have been a calamity, where all the energy of the state would be expended in just holding itself together. In this light, one must thank the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Patel, for their accepting partition – even though this is not the framework they used. We can put this one down to the law of unintended consequences

Coming to terms with history is essential. We should debate our history more openly and honestly – and that includes not banning inconvenient books!
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[i] Narendra Singh Sarila (The Shadow of the Great Game) (Harper Collins 2005)

[ii] Narendra Singh Sarila (The Shadow of the Great Game), page 195 (Harper Collins 2005)

[iii] http://www.outlookindia.com/ article.aspx?261553 – in the same interview Mr. Singh shows a pattern in Mr. Advani’s character where the latter repeatedly runs away from the consequences of his actions. This is consistent with what Hindu society at large feels about Mr. Advani’s use, and later abandonment, of the Shri Ram Mandir movement

[iv] http:// timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ OPINION/Edit-Page/Top-Article- Partition-And-The-Fantasy-Of- A-Masculine-State/articleshow/ 4945817.cms

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