20090829225 | Editorial: Ignoring Lessons from Partition | Editorial

By The Editorial Team, on 30-08-2009 10:00

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Jaswant Singh's book, "Jinnah: India - Partition, Independence" has triggered a debate that refuses to die very soon. The debate is not only about Jinnah but also about partition and its various implications for India. While the debate sometimes tends to become speculative raising many hypothetical questions, most of the analysts have so far desisted from facing the real questions. The debate in public domain so far remains engaged with trivial details ignoring the questions related to Islam which welded the Muslim community in demanding Pakistan in unison. While Jinnah led Muslim League and demanded Pakistan adopting uncompromising stances, the communal history of the demand for Pakistan cannot be ignored.

Many argue that partition was a fait accompli and ultimately proved beneficial for India. Partition would have been good for India had it not been half-baked. It was an excellent opportunity to settle all outstanding Hindu-Muslim issues, by effecting a complete transfer of Muslim population to Pakistan as suggested by Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. In that sense the partition was not good for India because all those issues still remain, as they existed in pre-partition India. With partition India lost a chunk of territory and yet was left with the same set of problems in residual India.In addition to that India faces two hostile neighbours who openly aid and abet terrorism in India. Pakistan has also waged several wars against India.To add to the woes India still refuses to learn its lessons from partition remaining deeply obsessed with ‘secularism'.

Looking beyond the partition, which India is so obsessed about at the moment (a la the expulsion of Jaswant Singh from the BJP), the Hindu-Muslim problem cannot be solved by partitioning lands and transfers of population. The problem is ‘secularism' which stops India from learning the real lessons from partition. All the understandings have to remain valid in secularist terms which delete Islam from the list of references making all the attempts to evaluate partition a lopsided one. The analysts are presenting strange findings like the one - "Gandhi wanted a Hindu majority secular India and Jinnah wanted a Muslim majority secular Pakistan". How secularism and aspirations for Hindu/Muslim majority nation were supposedly reconciled remains beyond the imagination of any sensible mind. It has become academically fashionable to keep pleading allegiance to ‘secularism' to claim legitimacy in the eyes of ‘Secular-Marxist' academia. It is due to such misplaced obsession that we keep ignoring the lessons from partition.