This is where I would like to place on record my respect for the deep understanding of the subject that has been displayed by
@M. Sarmad (first and foremost, a partner in the discussion whom we sincerely respect),
@AgNoStiC MuSliM, who has written with a firm grip on Pakistan's case, and
@ice Cold, who has clearly done his homework.
Both
@Vibrio and I have engaged with these three members - I should not speak for him, but ask him and others to bear with me - with respect; I believe that our language and our arguments reflect that respect. If at all it has fallen short of the highest standards of courtesy and civilised interaction, I would like to personally beg your pardon. If I - here I speak for myself, to absolve
@Vibrio of any complicity in my failures - have refuted or contradicted some of the arguments that have been put forward, it is emphatically not due to any impression that those are put forward due to any lack of integrity.
Having said that, I would like to venture further afield. Why is there such a difference in the perception of these issues, on the Pakistani side, consistently, and on the Indian side, consistently? Let me put my own evaluation of the meta-logic - the logic behind the choice and selection of the logical arguments used - that seems to structure the views, the evidence gathering and the choice of exploratory fields.
On the Pakistani side, there is a feeling of having been cheated, again and again, not merely during the freedom struggle, but beyond that, during our long and abrasive years of co-existence.
First, the struggle rapidly saw the falling away of the professional Muslim classes, who saw their interests as distinctly under threat from the much larger Hindu professional classes (neither the Sikhs nor the Christians, forget about the Dalit or the tribal, seems to have been seen as threats, only the Hindus were); from a very early stage, from 1905, the first partition of Bengal itself. So the remarkable unity shown by the nascent middle classes and the artisan and leading craftsman classes in Indian society during the earlier agitation led by Surendranath Bannerjee was entirely depleted by the Muslim perception that Curzon's brazen divisive action, intended specifically to divide Indian society, and to defang the utterly disliked Bengali babu, was good for the left-behind Muslim upwardly mobile aspirations. In a year, in 1906, the Muslim League was formed; where and how? In Dhaka itself, the seat of the Muslim feeling that partitioning Bengal gave Muslims their place in the Sun that was being denied. How? By gathering the delegates to the All India conference on Muslim education! Can anything make it clearer where the Muslims felt that their interests lay? To them, education and Muslim separatism resonated; the separation was necessary to speed up education among the Muslims; speeding up was necessary because precious years had been lost in mourning the loss of empire in 1857, and the distinct shift in British sympathy away from the Muslim, especially the Muslim upper classes, who, inevitably, formed the corps of the Muslim professional classes, both due to social leadership, and due to financial and family support. Nothing could be done until and unless the Muslim aspirations to partnership in governing the country were met by a role in government and in the professions, and nothing could be done to satisfy these until Muslims were educated.
Second, during the struggle that followed, that we can divide into the period before Gandhi, and the period after Gandhi (we might just as easily create sub-sections to signify Jinnah's entry, but we can do that in any case at a later stage), the Muslim professional was absent, very largely; surprisingly, the Muslim support for Congress was based on the religious conservative classes among Muslims. Deoband and the orthodox favoured Congress over the Muslim League. The Congress could point to dozens of leaders who had led, and who had been jailed, and who were known widely. Until Jinnah returned from self-imposed exile, there was no strong figure on the Muslim League side, except for some of the giants from Bengal, who were forming their reputation in those years. To some extent, the Aga Khan filled the vacuum to some extent.
So the Muslim grievance was of being left out of consideration by the British while all these stirring goings on were, as it were, going on. This was over and above the feeling of having been left behind in the race for power.
Then came the clarion call from a revived Muslim League, led by a person with genuine charisma. Just as Gandhi had mobilised the masses in general in support of the Congress, Jinnah formed a pole around which the specifically Muslim interest could crystallise. I rather like the account in this URL:
https://revisitingindia.com/2017/07/27/2-the-rise-the-fall-and-the-return-of-jinnah/
The third grievance was the whole concept and idea of partition. Ayesha Jalal has argued very persuasively that Jinnah had not entirely walked away from the Young Jinnah who had been the poster child of Hindu-Muslim unity while the leading young light of the Congress; the Jinnah who had architected the Lucknow Pact of 1916; and that his pushing for Pakistan was a stalking horse to cover his actual intention: to give Muslims an impregnable bastion of power within the new India, a bastion that could not be swamped by the Hindu ocean. But when Nehru and Patel finally signalled that they were happy to separate, rather than work with a recalcitrant and obstructive League, there was no alternative left.
I will finish this later this evening.
I am well aware of this, thank you very much for your input.
Irrelevant.
He was not alone. Read up first, please, and read the other Instruments of Accession and find out how many of the acceding states set out to form their own constitutions.
Sir, that did not mean that the administration was immediately taken over. Nor did it mean that the Patiala State forces came under Indian Army control. Please do spend a little extra time reading up on the role of the Patiala troops and the conversations between the Maharajas of Patiala and J&K.
