Was partition of India inevitable?

[kalu_miah]

Was Partition of India Inevitable? - Mainstream Weekly

Mainstream, Vol XLVII, No 35, August 15, 2009 (Independence Day Special)

WAS PARTITION OF INDIA INEVITABLE?
Wednesday 19 August 2009, by R M Pal

This article was sent to us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier for unavoidable reasons. —Editor

On the black Saturday evening my family and I switched on the TV and heard the black and sad news of Pakistan coming under emergency rule, which meant Martial Law. We changed channels but all channels were telecasting the same news. I said, to the great annoyance of my wife, for she does not like my criticism of Gandhi, in Hindi, “Yeh sab Gandhi ki meharbani hai.” What I wanted to say is narrated below.

If Gandhi and the Congress had accepted the Cripps’ offer, the country would not have been partitioned. There are two aspects to this observation: one, that partition could have been prevented; two, whether or not unified India would have been a better place to live in. I am dealing with the first issue. One thing is clear, namely, that if there were no partition, Gandhi would not have been assassinated in 1948 and there would have been no Kashmir war. The main grievance of the few Hindu nationalist militants who had been planning to kill Gandhi was that Gandhi was pro-Pakistan and pro-Muslim. The Kashmir war that has been going on since 1947 in one form or another has cost us a lot of money, which could have been used for social development and welfare. The immediate provocation to give a fresh look at this question was provided by the black and sad news of Pakistan coming under emergency rule (Martial Law). One can be reasonably sure that if India were not partitioned, this situation, and also that Pakistan has been under more or less perpetual military rule, would not have arisen.

Instead Gandhi launched the ‘Quit India’ movement. One fails to understand why Gandhi scholars like Prof Bhikhu Parikh and Raj Mohan Gandhi do not analyse as to why Gandhi resorted to starting the ‘Quit India’ movement in spite of opposition from his colleagues like Maulana Azad. Earlier in 1924 and 1939 Gandhi was rattled in that he lost his position of supreme leadership of the Congress party. In 1924 during the Ahmedabad session of the All India Congress Committee Gandhi was rattled by the Swarajists led by Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das. Gandhi had declared that if his programme and also resolution declaring the members who did not spin for half-an-hour a day and did not observe the five-fold boycott of legislative councils, law courts, government schools, titles and mill made cloth would have to resign from the All India Congress Committee. This resolution, if carried, would have automatically excluded the Swarajists from power. Speaking for the Swarajists Pandit Motilal Nehru said: “We decline to make a fetish of the spinning wheel or to subscribe to the doctrine that only through that wheel can we obtain Swaraj. Discipline is desirable but it is not discipline for the majority to expel the minority. We are unable to forget our manhood and our self-respect and to say that we are willing to submit to Gandhi’s orders. That Congress is as much ours as our opponents and we will return with greater majority to sweep away those who stand for this resolution.” With these words Pandit Nehru and Desh-bandhu Chittaranjan Das left the hall taking with them 55 Swarajists. One hundred and ten members remained when the resolution was put to the vote and was carried against 37 with six per cent abstentions. This apparent victory of Gandhians was not a genuine win. Had the Swarajists remained in the hall, the resolution would have been defeated by about 20 votes. However, Gandhi recognised his defeat and dropped his resolution on compulsory spinning and the five-fold boycott by the workers making it only advisory in nature. And with this and other concessions the Swarajists were persuaded to rejoin the Congress. About the 1939 issue M.N. Roy wrote in an article: “The second defeat came when a much younger man than Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, defeated Gandhi’s nominee, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in the Congress Presidential election. Gandhi’s tormented soul made him acknowledge after the election ‘Pattabhi’s defeat is my defeat’. Gandhi and his disciples brought a charge of indiscipline against Subhash Bose. One would fail to understand what act of indiscipline Bose had committed except that he contested the election against Gandhi’s nominee. But for the immoral political practice adopted by Gandhi and his followers in throwing out Subhash Bose from the Congress, things might have been different in the sense that Gandhi might not have remained the absolute leader for a long time.” It would not be wrong to suggest that Gandhi expected to regain the supremacy of his position in the Congress through a movement like the ‘Quit India’ movement.

•

LET us give a quick look at what happened to the movement. One heroic figure of the Congress, Aruna Asaf Ali, wrote: “We know ours is the voice of lost souls that championed a lost cause.” Another heroic figure of the Socialist Party, Achyut Patwardhan, told the veteran journalist, Kuldeep Nayar, that it was not necessary to have the ‘Quit India’ movement to attain India’s independence. Patwardhan repeated this in a speech at Gowalia Tank in Mumbai on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the ‘Quit India’ movement. The residents of the nearby residential complex, ‘Nirmal Niwas’, heard his speech in Marathi. Gowalia Tank is the venue from where the ‘Quit India’ movement had started. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad writes in his book India Wins Freedom that from many serious considerations he had tried to dissuade Gandhi from launching the ‘Quit India’ movement. But Gandhi then wrote to him to resign from the Presidentship of the Congress and also withdraw from its Working Committee. It was, however, Patel, having no special love for Azad though, who pressurised Gandhi to withdraw the letter.

The well-known historian, R.C. Majumdar, has written in his book The History of Freedom Movement in India: “That the Movement was crushed within two to three months and that it failed to achieve any tangible result not to speak of the end for which it was launched, admits no doubt.”

On another occasion when Lord Wavell became the Viceroy of India, he met Jinnah. What the British Government wanted to do in India was to install an interim government in Delhi, which would have the support of the Muslim League, that is, Jinnah and the Congress, that is, Gandhi; so that the British could transfer power to this government in Delhi after World War-II (after defeating the Axis powers). So when Lord Wavell met Jinnah, his main demand was that Muslim Ministers in the proposed government would be nominated by the Muslim League and by nobody else. Wavell then met Gandhi and asked him to show statesmanship** and accept Jinnah’s demand for the sake of peace but Gandhi would not. If Gandhi had accepted Wavell’s plea united India would not have suffered any loss except that men like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, who were the Congress’ Muslim candidates for Ministership and would in no case have been nominated for the post by the Muslim League led by Jinnah, would not have become Ministers. But in that case the partition of India would have been avoided and thousands of people would not have become victims of that tragedy. In 1939, the Congress Ministries in the provinces resigned. Instead of resigning if the Congress had invited the Muslim League to join the Congress to form coalition Ministries, the British rulers would have got a clear signal that the Muslim League and the Congress had come together. Neither Gandhi nor Jinnah made any effort in this regard. On the contrary Jinnah announced that the resignation of the Congress Ministries be celebrated as the deliverance day.

A young friend of mine, who was till recently a card-holding member of the CPI-M, one day asked me what has been Jyoti Basu’s contribution to the politics and government of Bengal that he has been the uncrowned king of West Bengal for such a long time. I said that the most important contribution made by him is that he was a party to the decision to partition Bengal. As you know all the Hindu members in the Bengal Assembly, including the Communist members, voted for the partition. The reason was that in the united Bengal a Muslim would almost always have become the Chief Minister, and the bhadralok Hindus did not want to live under a Muslim Chief Minister.

This reminds me of my very kind friend, the late Justice Dorab Patel of Pakistan, making a comment at lunch at my place in Delhi, that the whole tragedy was that we did not have any statesman in pre-partition India and that we had only clever and crafty politicians.

Jinnah did not want India to be partitioned. Let me quote M.N. Roy in this context.

Unfortunately Jinnah’s coming to the front rank of politics synchronised with desecularisation of nationalism, which doubtful development introduced communalism in politics. If distrust and hatred of the British were the hallmark of patriotism, Jinnah was always a strong patriot as any other Indian. In the General Council meeting of the League held in the Imperial Hotel of New Delhi to endorse the plan of partition, Jinnah concluded his speech by declaring, “I have won Pakistan for you. Now do what you can do with it.”

If Jinnah had known that his men would rule Pakistan through emergency and Martial Law he would have perhaps given a second thought to the idea. What I suggest in this brief article is that Partition could have been avoided and undivided India would have been a less unhappy place than what these two countries are today.

It was not Jinnah but the Hindutvavadi leader Sarvarkar who first propounded the two-nation theory. Veer Sarvarkar, while presiding over the 1937 session of the Hindu Mahasabha, said in plain and simple words, advocating the two-nation theory:

I warn the Hindus that the Mohammedans are likely to prove dangerous to our Hindu nation. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogeneous nation. On the contrary there are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims in India. (Source—Mohandas by Raj
Mohan Gandhi, p. 411)

Another important thing, which has prompted me to give a fresh look at this question, is to explore the possibility of bringing about peace between India and Pakistan. (In fact, the matter came up in a short discussion at a meeting organised by the Jamia Millia Islamia University under the aegis of the Academy of Third World Studies recently.) I don’t believe, like some Gandhian and RSS ideologues, that there can be peace between India and Pakistan only if Pakistan joins India in a confederation. What a well-known Gandhian and others like him want to say is that the partition should be undone, then only there would be peace and there is nobody to question him as to why Gandhi did not prevent partition when he was in a position to do so as I have argued in this article. Also there is nobody to question him: is India truly a federation? That Gandhian intellectual wrote an article in a national daily, wherein he pleaded for Pakistan to join India in a confederation. Subsequently, while presiding over one session of an annual conference of the Indian Radical Humanist Association he advanced the same argument. I questioned him and wanted his permission to speak on the subject. Later in the course of private discussion I asked him why was it that Gandhi did not accept Jinnah’s demand? What harm would have befallen if Jinnah’s demand had been accepted except that people like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai would have found no place in the Council of Ministers of the Government of India? This intellectual dismissed the question saying that these are all old issues mixed up with the question beginning with the two-nation theory. I, therefore, add some information which is not generally known even to the Gandhivadis.

•

IT is for intellectuals like the one I have referred to above to enlighten us on how Gandhi reacted to one ruler of a Muslim majority state signing the treaty of accession with India, and also when Jinnah wanted to go to Kashmir for a holiday, why the Maharaja said that he would not allow Jinnah to enter Kashmir. It was only after this that Pakistani leaders had a meeting and decided to send infiltrators as secret agents to Kashmir to evaluate the situation and determine the Maharaja’s real intentions.

This was one of the greatest tragedies in Indian history and I have to say with the deepest regret that a large part of the responsibility for this development rests on Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was India’s quin-tessential politician. He ran the machinery of the Congress party. I was surprised when Patel said that whether we like it or not there were two nations in India. He was now convinced that Muslims and Hindus could not be united into one nation. It was better to have one clean fight and then separate than have bickerings. It was surprising that Patel was now an even greater supporter of the two-nation theory than Jinnah. Jinnah may have raised the flag of partition but now the real flag-bearer was Patel. Jawaharlal Nehru, the firm opponent of partition, had become, if not a supporter, at least acquiescent to the idea. (Source – Crisis in the Indian Subcontinent: Can it be Undone by Lal Khan, Aakar Books, New Delhi- 91) So far as Gandhi was concerned, Mountbatten told Gandhi that the Congress was not with him, it was with Mountbatten to which Gandhi replied that the Congress might not be with him, but the country was with him.

In fact those in India who advocate directly or indirectly that the partition be undone may read this book. It is a well-researched and scholarly book. The book has relevant quotations, for example, Trotsky’s critical comments on Gandhi and relevant quotations from Abul Kalam Azad’s book India Wins Freedom. One such important quotation, which relates to Sardar Patel and his advocacy of the two-nation theory, has been referred to above.

My article may be read in the context of recently published book The Great Partition: the Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmeen Khan, a book backed by massive scholarship and massive research. The main thesis of the book is that the partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political freedom and a future free of religious strife. Instead, the geographical divide brought about an even greater schism exposing huge numbers of the population to devastating consequences. Thousands of women were raped. At least one million people were killed and 10 to 15 million were forced to leave their homes, to live as refugees. It was the bloodiest event of decolo-nisation in the 20th century. My thesis is that Gandhi could have stopped this devastation.

FOOTNOTE

** I can’t define statesmanship but I would refer to two instances of great statesmanship.

1. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Churchill announced on the BBC that he would fight with Stalin in the air, on the sea and on land and destroy the common enemy of human culture, civili-sation and democracy. Some of his friends asked him how he could do so for he had been opposed to the Soviet Union and Communism all his life. Churchill replied that if Hitler attacked Hell, his friend should not be surprised if he were in alliance with the Devil to destroy the evil.

2. A few months before Abraham Lincoln was tragically assassinated in a theatre hall, some of his friends asked him about his views on the system of slavery to which his reply was that his first concern was the Union, and to keep it steady and if to that effect he was required to support slavery he would do that and if he was required to oppose it he would do that.

Editor of PUCL Bulletin, Dr R.M. Pal is a former editor of The Radical Humanist and former President of Delhi State PUCL. He has co-edited with G.S. Bhargava the volume Human Rights of Dalits, proceedings of a conference held in Chennai organised by the National Human Rights Commission in collaboration with the Dalit Liberation Trust, Chennai. The initiative for this conference was taken by Dr Pal. Dr Pal has also co-edited with Mrs. Meera Verma the volume Power to the People, the Political Thought of Gandhi, M.N. Roy and Jaiprakash Narayan, published by Gyan Books, New Delhi (in two volumes).

 

[kalu_miah]

Kashmir Truth Be Told Blog: Undoing the partition

7/16/07
Undoing the partition

I have been wondering what prevents India ,Pakistan and Bangladesh from undoing the partition. I will assume that most readers will agree with me that breaking up a country on the basis of religion is simply idiotic - for lack of a better or more politically correct word. I will also assume that most of the readers will agree that the partition was a blunder of iconic proportions. Now that we agree that a mistake was made, what's stopping people from the three countries on starting negotiations on recombining?

muslim memorandum - Upload a Document to Scribd

If some readers can help me I would appreciate inputs on the exact details of events that led to the partition. But here is what I remember from history classes from way back when.

From what I remember, one of the reasons is as follows: both Mr Jinnah, and Mr Nehru wanted to be prime minsiter of the newly Independent India, and to cater to both, the British dude incharge at the time decided to break-up the country so both could be prime minister. This explanation is over-simplistic and even 4th graders can say that it doesnt pass the common-sense test.

One another hearsay explanation involves more sinister intentions on the part of the British. According to this theory, the British were aware of the capabilities of a newly democratic united-India. They knew that united, this enity has all the resources of becoming a super power. However they did not want to shift the balance of power from the west to South Asia. I dont know whether this theory holds water, but it passes the initial smell-test. India and Pakistan have fought no less than four wars and spend an enormous fraction of their GDP in arming themselves against one another. Seems to me like a divide and conquer strategy.

Some might argue that a combined federation consisting of, hypothetically speaking; India, Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh would be a non-starter with too many differences to function as a cohesive cooperating nation. However convincing this argument might seem, a closer look at these nations at a macro scale reveals these very differences on a regional level. Consider for instance India. Each state has its own language and a distinct culture of its own. Apart from insurgency in the Assam and Uttaranchal, the Indian federation seems to have been a success story (not including Kashmir ofcourse - which I will talk about next).

Many Kashmiris will also rightly put forth the argument that the Indian forces have too much blood of innocent Kashmiris on their hands to ever trust the Indians again or be willing to cooperate with them. This sentiment is very valid and given time all wounds eventually heal and all misdeeds by the enemy forgiven. A precursor to any future settlement of the Kashmiri issue should include the maximum punishment for guilty Indian Army personnel in Kashmiri civil courts with no allowance of immunity no matter how high the ranking officer.

In my opinion, one of the core reasons for insurgencies in states like ours, Kashmir, and others like Assam and Uttaranchal is the whole sense of being under occupation by a foreign nation. This sense comes from the fact that affairs at the local level are being micro managed by officials appointed by the central government and who on most occasions are unaware of the local Kashmiri customs and cannot speak the local language and yet are expected to work efficiently with the local public. As I will argue, for a successful future federation, this micro-management has to change and each member of the new federation must have the maximum autonomy when it comes to managing their local affairs and yet they will be part of a larger federation when it comes to cooperation in things like foreign affairs, defence and currency.

Some readers might still remember the unrest in Ladakh many years ago, which resulted in the state government forming the Hill Council. A simplistic reason for that unrest was the fact that the state government was trying to manage affairs in Leh at the local municipal level with many appointees from the valley trying to tell Ladakhis what to do . This is the same scenario that I mentioned earlier, albeit on a smaller scale, regarding Indian bureaucrats telling kashmiris how to run affairs at the local level. The Ladakh issue was resolved with the forming of the Hill Council; the Kashmir problem may be resolved by granting the maximum possible autonomy, and a future federation of south-asian countries can be modeled on the success of the the Kashmir-India arrangment.

Central Government appointees:

When I mention Central government appointees, I mean the IAS and IPS officers who hold the posts of District commisioners (DC) and ADC's for management of local municipal affairs, or in policing the IGP or DGP, who manage the local police force , which in my opinion are unnecessary posts in a successful federation, and these should be replaced by KPS and KAS officers so that Kashmiris are allowed to manage and police their own affairs at local levels. This is not a new concept that I am proposing. Infact most successful federations around the world give maximum autonomy to the states or provinces that make up the federation.

Let us consider other successful federations such as the European Union for example, which is a federation of independent countries (an excellent model for us). However, the autonomy these countries that form the Union have in terms of taking care of their own affairs is phemomenal.

Contrast this with the colonial attitude of Indian officers stationed in Kashmir. There have been numerous cases of IAS and IPS officers abusing their authority in Kashmir. This only further alienates the local population who see this abuse as just another extension of the "illegal occupation" of Kashmir by India. If we compare the Indian system of appointing IAS and IPS officers to different states and manage local affairs there with how other other successful federations in the world , we will be able to see where the frustration of Kashmiris is coming from.

 

[Butchcassidy]

Partition was inevitable but the violence was avoidable

 

[kalu_miah]

Can Partition be Undone? – An Interview with Lal Khan – Radical Notes

Can Partition be Undone? – An Interview with Lal Khan
October 24, 2007 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment
Paramita Ghosh

Lal Khan’s Crisis in the Indian Subcontinent – Partition… Can it be undone? is provocative not only because it questions the official narrations of the modern history of the Indian subcontinent by analyzing new facts with theoretical tools embedded in Marxism, but mainly because of its activistic programmatic sharpness that backs the revolutionary transformatory politics in the region. It asserts that only a voluntary socialist federation of the subcontinental societies can guarantee peace and prosperity in the region. The following interview with Lal Khan (LK) by Paramita Ghosh (PG) brings out some of the important issues dealt in the book, along with Khan’s perspective on the political situation and transformation in the subcontinent . It was originally published in an abridged form in The Hindustan Times on October 21, 2007.

PG: You have taken on the holy cows, the big boys of the Indian subcontinent – Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Sheikh Abdullah… Who according to you, did his people most harm to the people’s movements? Which, or whose actions, most influenced the way the class picture of the subcontinent looks today?

LK: I don’t think that all these leaders can be evaluated on equal terms and their roles be subjected to same degree of critical analysis. But the role played by the political representatives of the local elite was clear enough in the freedom struggle. Even the serious mouthpieces of British Imperialism conceded the clear class divide and conflicting interests in the movement of National Liberation in India. I quote from the editorial of the London Times of January 29, 1928. It said, “There is no real connection between those two unrests, labour and congress opposition, but their very existence and co-existence, explains and fully justifies the attention, which Lord Irwin gave to labour problems”. I also want to assert that these politicians could only play this role because the leadership of the CPI in reality abdicated the struggle of independence by collaborating with the British under the instructions from Stalin’s Moscow where the bureaucracy was carrying out its foreign policy for the national interests of “Russia” rather than following the Marxist-Leninist path of proletarian internationalism.

I think all of these ‘leaders’ influenced the post-colonial politics in different ways and to different degrees. Again the reason has been the lack of a clear alternative for irreconcilable class struggle.

PG: Your attitude to Gandhi is really interesting and it of course overturns the popular perception about him. On the one hand, there is of course his formidable reputation as the saviour of minorities, as he did at Noakhali 1947. On the other hand, as your book shows, in 1922 when Hindu soldiers from the Garhwal rifles refused to fire on an anti-imperialist demo by Muslims, Gandhi opposed this act of violence. Is there a contradiction between the two?

LK: The ideological foundations of Gandhi’s policies were confined within the parameters of semi-feudal, semi-capitalist social economic relations. Hence all his political actions flowed from this thought. All the confusion and divinity aside, the reality is that India won Independence through a compromise and 2.7 million innocent souls were lost in this bloodshed. Sixty years later, India and Pakistan are the bastions of most disgusting destitution and poverty in the world.

PG: You seem to suggest that Gandhiji’s protection of Muslims was actually an extension of a kind of state support to one’s subjects.

LK: The liberation movement would not have stopped at the ‘stage’ of national liberation and could have moved on to social and economic emancipation through a socialist revolution. It was cut across by the religious frenzy to restrain it within the clutches of capitalism and the system of continual imperialist exploitation. Gandhi wanted a peaceful derailment of the class struggle, which is a utopia. He might have had an honest sentiment to protect the Muslims but once the forces of reaction and communal hatred were unleashed even Gandhi failed to restrain them.

PG: Leon Trotsky believed that the Indian bourgeois could never lead a revolutionary struggle and went on to call Gandhi an artificial leader and false prophet. Would you say the same of Jinnah? You mention an oyster dinner at the Waldorf hotel in 1933 when he laughed at the idea of Pakistan calling it impractical.

LK: All leaders were subjected to change through the dynamics of the movement and dictates of the vested interests of the class they represented. Jinnah was vulnerable to that too. This shows the evolution of Jinnah from Woldorf hotel in 1933 to Karachi assembly in 1947. There were innumerable zigzags in that journey. Although Trotsky didn’t analyze him individually but from the point of view of his theory of permanent revolution, Trotsky’s analysis of Jinnah would not have been any different from his analysis of Gandhi.

PG: Would you attribute the shaky structure of democracy in Pakistan to the class biases of its founding father?

LK: The shaky structure of democracy in Pakistan is mainly due to the belated and corrupt character of its nascent bourgeoisie. In sixty years the Pakistani ruling classes could not accomplish a single task of the democraticbourgeois revolution and cannot do that in a thousand years. Parliamentary or bourgeois democracy was one of those fundamental tasks. I may add that even the Indian ruling class has not been able to complete any of these tasks.

PG: Bhagat Singh was of course one of the most progressive and thinking radicals of the liberation movement. But what is it about him that the Left, the Right and the Centre rush to adopt him as their own?

LK: Bhagat Singh was no doubt an icon of the struggle against British imperialism. He developed his political policies and ideology when he had a chance to read works of Lenin and Marxism while in prison. He was still forging his political position when he was hanged. Hence when his position of “inqilaab’ is put, its ideological and theoretical foundations are relatively shallow and not entrenched in scientific Marxism. Hence it is easier for the left, the right and the centre to rush to adopt him as their own. Thus it is vital that unless the youth who are inspired by Bhagat Singh are developed into Marxist cadres, mere slogan mongering of ‘Revolution’ could lead them in any direction. They can even blunder into certain reactionary movements displaying a revolutionary rhetoric. It is the tragedy of cultural primitiveness that the role of the individual in political movements is exaggerated. Icons are mystified and even worshipped. This devastates the role of a collective leadership in a revolutionary struggle and undermines the importance of scientific theory and practice.

PG: Pakistan has mostly been under military rule. It has had democratically elected governments only thrice in 60 years. What is the reason that Marxism has never been an option, not even as an experiment?

LK: In 1968-69 there was a revolution in Pakistan. From Chittagong to Peshawar, there was only one slogan in the air – Revolution! Revolution! Socialist Revolution! Workers occupied factories, the peasants besieged the landed estates and the youth were on the streets, refused to pay fairs in trains and buses. The prevalent property relations were being challenged by the revolution. From November 6, 1968 to March 29, 1969 there were at least 7 occasions when the capitalist system and state could have been overthrown through a revolutionary insurrection. Unfortunately due to the lack of a Bolshevik party this historical opportunity was missed. The Pakistan Peoples Party was a product of this revolution, as its founding documents clearly stated:

“The ultimate objective of the party’s policy is the attainment of a classless society which is only possible through Socialist Revolution in our times.”

Z. A. Bhutto recognized that the character of the (1968-69) movement was socialist and not national democratic. That is why he became a legend of the masses for three generations. But he had no organised Bolshevik party or a strategy to carry this revolution through to its victorious end.

The so-called democratic regimes in Pakistan were only inducted by the ruling state either to diffuse a rising revolutionary upsurge or as a preemptive measure to deviate and confine the raging movements against military dictatorships within capitalist structures. In any case the basic fault lines in Pakistan are not between democracy and military or extremism and moderation. The fundamental contradiction is of class interests and no stability can come without the resolution of this contradiction.

PG: Please tell us about your introduction to the Left ideology. Who were your mentors, your peers? You were born ten years after Independence. In the 1970s you were a student leader resisting the despotic Zia regime. Was Marxism a natural progression of a politics of student activism?

LK: The first time I got to study Marxism was in 1976 when I was incarcerated in Multan Central Jail after a clash with Islamic fundamentalists; we were tortured by the state. In the prison library there were some works of Marx and Lenin lying in a corner. They were left there by some communist prisoners during the 1940s. After I was ordered to be shot at sight by the Zia dictatorship on June 10 1980, I had to flee to exile in Amsterdam. In Europe I had the opportunity to meet and discuss with comrade Ted Grant, who was my friend mentor and teacher. I think that after Trotsky’s assassination, Ted single-handedly held high the red flag of revolutionary Marxism. His contribution in Marxist theory is enormous. For more than sixty years he resolutely worked to deepen and enhance perspectives and strategy to lay the foundations of a new and genuine Marxist international.

PG: When did you become Lal Khan? Why did you choose this name?

LK: Lal Khan was the name of a sergeant in the British Indian army. He was my uncle and had been a prisoner of the Bolsheviks in 1919 when 21 imperialist armies attacked the nascent Soviet state. As a child I used to listen his stories of how the Bolsheviks had treated the Indian military prisoners. Sometimes in dearth of food supplies the Bolshevik captors used to remain hungry themselves but fed their Indian prisoners. I was so amused and impressed that when in 1981 I had to choose a pen name under the vicious Zia dictatorship I opted for that name. It also means Red. As I have been writing under this name for more than 26 years it would have been useless to change the name which was recognized by workers and youth and linked with an ideological tendency.

PG: Under whose regime was/is it most difficult to conduct Left politics? How irresponsive were Zulfiqar Bhutto, Zia, Sharif, Benazir to people’s movements?

LK: There is no situation in a capitalist milieu that is easy and viable to build the forces of revolutionary Marxism. Similarly there can be no objective conditions so bad in which Bolshevik party cadres can’t develop the art of expanding the organization and building the revolutionary forces.

However the wrath and indignation of the masses against the brutalities of the Zia dictatorship was helpful in gaining recruits. But when Benazir Bhutto came to power, the way she disillusioned the movement and dashed the hopes of the masses, the political apathy and a certain demoralization that had set in made our work somewhat more difficult.

PG: What will happen to Kashmir?

LK: The ruling classes of India and Pakistan have used and abused the Kashmir issue for sixty years. Now they can’t go to all-out war nor can they sustain peace. Their systems don’t allow them much room. The masses of Kashmir have been brutalised and subjected to misery by these subcontinental elites. The Americans want a continual sale of their weapons of mass destruction at the expense of the sweat, tears and blood of the subcontinental masses. Without the overthrow of these capitalist regimes, Kashmir issue cannot be solved. Unless the subcontinent gets independence from imperialist slavery, how can Kashmir gain freedom?

Nationalism and fundamentalism are on decline in Kashmir, the youth and workers are moving more on to the lines of class struggle. This has to be linked to the class movements in India and Pakistan. A voluntary socialist federation of the Indian subcontinent would be the only guarantee for a genuine freedom and emancipation of the Kashmiri oppressed.

PG: In Pakistan, on the one hand, there is the military which somehow has, in a way, been an upholder of liberal will and democratic parties like the PPP are corrupt and thoroughly discredited. On the other hand, there are the religious rightist forces. What will Pakistan choose now?

LK: The liberals and fundamentalists are both entrenched in this decaying capitalist economy. Imperialism and religious obscurantism are two sides of the same coin. As soon as a revolutionary movement of the toiling masses emerges, the so-called liberaldemocratic and religious rightist forces have always and again will join hands to crush any challenge to this exploitive system. The perspective of a mass movement is rejected by mainstream intellectuals in Pakistan. There is always a doom and gloom scenario preached by these apologists of Capital in the media. But a social revolution is the only way-out for the salvation of the people. I am convinced that working masses shall tread upon this path sooner rather than later. The events of 1968-69 are too glaring a tradition to ignore.

PG: How supportive are the Indian left of leftist struggles in its neighbourhood in Pakistan? What do you think of its position on the nuclear deal, which many feel, is just an anti-American statement?

LK: There cannot be two separate revolutions in India and Pakistan. Five thousand years of common history, culture and society is too strong to be cleavaged by this partition. However the left forces can learn from experiences of each other. Especially the ideological mistakes made have to be rectified and lessons learnt from. Obviously the opposition to the nuclear deal is positive. But from a Marxist point of view it is not the most important of issue in the present situation. The way market economy is ravaging India and throwing the vast majority of population into the abyss of misery, poverty, disease and deprivation is horrendous. I think that after sixty years of the traumatic experiences the left should at least try to understand that the basic character of the Indian revolution is not national democratic but socialist. Unless they change course the Indian proletariat will force them onto a revolutionary path. The vote of the masses to left parties in the 2004 elections was for a revolutionary change rather than to maintain the existing order. Next time they will vote with their feet. If these leaders still cling on to the redundant theory of two stages they shall perish in the rising tide of a workers upsurge. A fresh revolutionary Marxist leadership shall emerge to make socialist victory a reality in the impending class war-about to explode.

Lal Khan is a prominent Marxist activist from Pakistan. He is the editor of the Asian Marxist Review.

 

[Kompromat]

Given the Hindu hatred towards Muslims, it was bound to happen. United India couldn't have worked. We are thankful that we are not living under Hindu hegemony.

 

[Thorough Pro]

No point crying over historical realities. Move on, talk about improving future.

Was Partition of India Inevitable? - Mainstream Weekly

Mainstream, Vol XLVII, No 35, August 15, 2009 (Independence Day Special)

WAS PARTITION OF INDIA INEVITABLE?
Wednesday 19 August 2009, by R M Pal

This article was sent to us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier for unavoidable reasons. —Editor

On the black Saturday evening my family and I switched on the TV and heard the black and sad news of Pakistan coming under emergency rule, which meant Martial Law. We changed channels but all channels were telecasting the same news. I said, to the great annoyance of my wife, for she does not like my criticism of Gandhi, in Hindi, “Yeh sab Gandhi ki meharbani hai.” What I wanted to say is narrated below.

If Gandhi and the Congress had accepted the Cripps’ offer, the country would not have been partitioned. There are two aspects to this observation: one, that partition could have been prevented; two, whether or not unified India would have been a better place to live in. I am dealing with the first issue. One thing is clear, namely, that if there were no partition, Gandhi would not have been assassinated in 1948 and there would have been no Kashmir war. The main grievance of the few Hindu nationalist militants who had been planning to kill Gandhi was that Gandhi was pro-Pakistan and pro-Muslim. The Kashmir war that has been going on since 1947 in one form or another has cost us a lot of money, which could have been used for social development and welfare. The immediate provocation to give a fresh look at this question was provided by the black and sad news of Pakistan coming under emergency rule (Martial Law). One can be reasonably sure that if India were not partitioned, this situation, and also that Pakistan has been under more or less perpetual military rule, would not have arisen.

Instead Gandhi launched the ‘Quit India’ movement. One fails to understand why Gandhi scholars like Prof Bhikhu Parikh and Raj Mohan Gandhi do not analyse as to why Gandhi resorted to starting the ‘Quit India’ movement in spite of opposition from his colleagues like Maulana Azad. Earlier in 1924 and 1939 Gandhi was rattled in that he lost his position of supreme leadership of the Congress party. In 1924 during the Ahmedabad session of the All India Congress Committee Gandhi was rattled by the Swarajists led by Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das. Gandhi had declared that if his programme and also resolution declaring the members who did not spin for half-an-hour a day and did not observe the five-fold boycott of legislative councils, law courts, government schools, titles and mill made cloth would have to resign from the All India Congress Committee. This resolution, if carried, would have automatically excluded the Swarajists from power. Speaking for the Swarajists Pandit Motilal Nehru said: “We decline to make a fetish of the spinning wheel or to subscribe to the doctrine that only through that wheel can we obtain Swaraj. Discipline is desirable but it is not discipline for the majority to expel the minority. We are unable to forget our manhood and our self-respect and to say that we are willing to submit to Gandhi’s orders. That Congress is as much ours as our opponents and we will return with greater majority to sweep away those who stand for this resolution.” With these words Pandit Nehru and Desh-bandhu Chittaranjan Das left the hall taking with them 55 Swarajists. One hundred and ten members remained when the resolution was put to the vote and was carried against 37 with six per cent abstentions. This apparent victory of Gandhians was not a genuine win. Had the Swarajists remained in the hall, the resolution would have been defeated by about 20 votes. However, Gandhi recognised his defeat and dropped his resolution on compulsory spinning and the five-fold boycott by the workers making it only advisory in nature. And with this and other concessions the Swarajists were persuaded to rejoin the Congress. About the 1939 issue M.N. Roy wrote in an article: “The second defeat came when a much younger man than Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, defeated Gandhi’s nominee, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in the Congress Presidential election. Gandhi’s tormented soul made him acknowledge after the election ‘Pattabhi’s defeat is my defeat’. Gandhi and his disciples brought a charge of indiscipline against Subhash Bose. One would fail to understand what act of indiscipline Bose had committed except that he contested the election against Gandhi’s nominee. But for the immoral political practice adopted by Gandhi and his followers in throwing out Subhash Bose from the Congress, things might have been different in the sense that Gandhi might not have remained the absolute leader for a long time.” It would not be wrong to suggest that Gandhi expected to regain the supremacy of his position in the Congress through a movement like the ‘Quit India’ movement.

•

LET us give a quick look at what happened to the movement. One heroic figure of the Congress, Aruna Asaf Ali, wrote: “We know ours is the voice of lost souls that championed a lost cause.” Another heroic figure of the Socialist Party, Achyut Patwardhan, told the veteran journalist, Kuldeep Nayar, that it was not necessary to have the ‘Quit India’ movement to attain India’s independence. Patwardhan repeated this in a speech at Gowalia Tank in Mumbai on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the ‘Quit India’ movement. The residents of the nearby residential complex, ‘Nirmal Niwas’, heard his speech in Marathi. Gowalia Tank is the venue from where the ‘Quit India’ movement had started. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad writes in his book India Wins Freedom that from many serious considerations he had tried to dissuade Gandhi from launching the ‘Quit India’ movement. But Gandhi then wrote to him to resign from the Presidentship of the Congress and also withdraw from its Working Committee. It was, however, Patel, having no special love for Azad though, who pressurised Gandhi to withdraw the letter.

The well-known historian, R.C. Majumdar, has written in his book The History of Freedom Movement in India: “That the Movement was crushed within two to three months and that it failed to achieve any tangible result not to speak of the end for which it was launched, admits no doubt.”

On another occasion when Lord Wavell became the Viceroy of India, he met Jinnah. What the British Government wanted to do in India was to install an interim government in Delhi, which would have the support of the Muslim League, that is, Jinnah and the Congress, that is, Gandhi; so that the British could transfer power to this government in Delhi after World War-II (after defeating the Axis powers). So when Lord Wavell met Jinnah, his main demand was that Muslim Ministers in the proposed government would be nominated by the Muslim League and by nobody else. Wavell then met Gandhi and asked him to show statesmanship** and accept Jinnah’s demand for the sake of peace but Gandhi would not. If Gandhi had accepted Wavell’s plea united India would not have suffered any loss except that men like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, who were the Congress’ Muslim candidates for Ministership and would in no case have been nominated for the post by the Muslim League led by Jinnah, would not have become Ministers. But in that case the partition of India would have been avoided and thousands of people would not have become victims of that tragedy. In 1939, the Congress Ministries in the provinces resigned. Instead of resigning if the Congress had invited the Muslim League to join the Congress to form coalition Ministries, the British rulers would have got a clear signal that the Muslim League and the Congress had come together. Neither Gandhi nor Jinnah made any effort in this regard. On the contrary Jinnah announced that the resignation of the Congress Ministries be celebrated as the deliverance day.

A young friend of mine, who was till recently a card-holding member of the CPI-M, one day asked me what has been Jyoti Basu’s contribution to the politics and government of Bengal that he has been the uncrowned king of West Bengal for such a long time. I said that the most important contribution made by him is that he was a party to the decision to partition Bengal. As you know all the Hindu members in the Bengal Assembly, including the Communist members, voted for the partition. The reason was that in the united Bengal a Muslim would almost always have become the Chief Minister, and the bhadralok Hindus did not want to live under a Muslim Chief Minister.

This reminds me of my very kind friend, the late Justice Dorab Patel of Pakistan, making a comment at lunch at my place in Delhi, that the whole tragedy was that we did not have any statesman in pre-partition India and that we had only clever and crafty politicians.

Jinnah did not want India to be partitioned. Let me quote M.N. Roy in this context.

Unfortunately Jinnah’s coming to the front rank of politics synchronised with desecularisation of nationalism, which doubtful development introduced communalism in politics. If distrust and hatred of the British were the hallmark of patriotism, Jinnah was always a strong patriot as any other Indian. In the General Council meeting of the League held in the Imperial Hotel of New Delhi to endorse the plan of partition, Jinnah concluded his speech by declaring, “I have won Pakistan for you. Now do what you can do with it.”

If Jinnah had known that his men would rule Pakistan through emergency and Martial Law he would have perhaps given a second thought to the idea. What I suggest in this brief article is that Partition could have been avoided and undivided India would have been a less unhappy place than what these two countries are today.

It was not Jinnah but the Hindutvavadi leader Sarvarkar who first propounded the two-nation theory. Veer Sarvarkar, while presiding over the 1937 session of the Hindu Mahasabha, said in plain and simple words, advocating the two-nation theory:

I warn the Hindus that the Mohammedans are likely to prove dangerous to our Hindu nation. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogeneous nation. On the contrary there are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims in India. (Source—Mohandas by Raj
Mohan Gandhi, p. 411)

Another important thing, which has prompted me to give a fresh look at this question, is to explore the possibility of bringing about peace between India and Pakistan. (In fact, the matter came up in a short discussion at a meeting organised by the Jamia Millia Islamia University under the aegis of the Academy of Third World Studies recently.) I don’t believe, like some Gandhian and RSS ideologues, that there can be peace between India and Pakistan only if Pakistan joins India in a confederation. What a well-known Gandhian and others like him want to say is that the partition should be undone, then only there would be peace and there is nobody to question him as to why Gandhi did not prevent partition when he was in a position to do so as I have argued in this article. Also there is nobody to question him: is India truly a federation? That Gandhian intellectual wrote an article in a national daily, wherein he pleaded for Pakistan to join India in a confederation. Subsequently, while presiding over one session of an annual conference of the Indian Radical Humanist Association he advanced the same argument. I questioned him and wanted his permission to speak on the subject. Later in the course of private discussion I asked him why was it that Gandhi did not accept Jinnah’s demand? What harm would have befallen if Jinnah’s demand had been accepted except that people like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai would have found no place in the Council of Ministers of the Government of India? This intellectual dismissed the question saying that these are all old issues mixed up with the question beginning with the two-nation theory. I, therefore, add some information which is not generally known even to the Gandhivadis.

•

IT is for intellectuals like the one I have referred to above to enlighten us on how Gandhi reacted to one ruler of a Muslim majority state signing the treaty of accession with India, and also when Jinnah wanted to go to Kashmir for a holiday, why the Maharaja said that he would not allow Jinnah to enter Kashmir. It was only after this that Pakistani leaders had a meeting and decided to send infiltrators as secret agents to Kashmir to evaluate the situation and determine the Maharaja’s real intentions.

This was one of the greatest tragedies in Indian history and I have to say with the deepest regret that a large part of the responsibility for this development rests on Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was India’s quin-tessential politician. He ran the machinery of the Congress party. I was surprised when Patel said that whether we like it or not there were two nations in India. He was now convinced that Muslims and Hindus could not be united into one nation. It was better to have one clean fight and then separate than have bickerings. It was surprising that Patel was now an even greater supporter of the two-nation theory than Jinnah. Jinnah may have raised the flag of partition but now the real flag-bearer was Patel. Jawaharlal Nehru, the firm opponent of partition, had become, if not a supporter, at least acquiescent to the idea. (Source – Crisis in the Indian Subcontinent: Can it be Undone by Lal Khan, Aakar Books, New Delhi- 91) So far as Gandhi was concerned, Mountbatten told Gandhi that the Congress was not with him, it was with Mountbatten to which Gandhi replied that the Congress might not be with him, but the country was with him.

In fact those in India who advocate directly or indirectly that the partition be undone may read this book. It is a well-researched and scholarly book. The book has relevant quotations, for example, Trotsky’s critical comments on Gandhi and relevant quotations from Abul Kalam Azad’s book India Wins Freedom. One such important quotation, which relates to Sardar Patel and his advocacy of the two-nation theory, has been referred to above.

My article may be read in the context of recently published book The Great Partition: the Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmeen Khan, a book backed by massive scholarship and massive research. The main thesis of the book is that the partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political freedom and a future free of religious strife. Instead, the geographical divide brought about an even greater schism exposing huge numbers of the population to devastating consequences. Thousands of women were raped. At least one million people were killed and 10 to 15 million were forced to leave their homes, to live as refugees. It was the bloodiest event of decolo-nisation in the 20th century. My thesis is that Gandhi could have stopped this devastation.

FOOTNOTE

** I can’t define statesmanship but I would refer to two instances of great statesmanship.

1. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Churchill announced on the BBC that he would fight with Stalin in the air, on the sea and on land and destroy the common enemy of human culture, civili-sation and democracy. Some of his friends asked him how he could do so for he had been opposed to the Soviet Union and Communism all his life. Churchill replied that if Hitler attacked Hell, his friend should not be surprised if he were in alliance with the Devil to destroy the evil.

2. A few months before Abraham Lincoln was tragically assassinated in a theatre hall, some of his friends asked him about his views on the system of slavery to which his reply was that his first concern was the Union, and to keep it steady and if to that effect he was required to support slavery he would do that and if he was required to oppose it he would do that.

Editor of PUCL Bulletin, Dr R.M. Pal is a former editor of The Radical Humanist and former President of Delhi State PUCL. He has co-edited with G.S. Bhargava the volume Human Rights of Dalits, proceedings of a conference held in Chennai organised by the National Human Rights Commission in collaboration with the Dalit Liberation Trust, Chennai. The initiative for this conference was taken by Dr Pal. Dr Pal has also co-edited with Mrs. Meera Verma the volume Power to the People, the Political Thought of Gandhi, M.N. Roy and Jaiprakash Narayan, published by Gyan Books, New Delhi (in two volumes).

 

[kalu_miah]

No point crying over historical realities. Move on, talk about improving future.

Lal Khan actually talked about undoing partition to improve the future of South Asia.

 

[East or West India Best]

Given the Hindu hatred towards Muslims, it was bound to happen. United India couldn't have worked. We are thankful that we are not living under Hindu hegemony.

lol we aren't the ones with all our minorities going extinct. You can't even live under muslim rule so how are you going to live under hindu rule?

 

[Kompromat]

lol we aren't the ones with all our minorities going extinct. You can't even live under muslim rule so how are you going to live under hindu rule?

Then you will be a minority by 2050. Imagine an Islamic republic from the Bay of Bengal to the Caspian Sea.

 

[East or West India Best]

Then you will be a minority by 2050. Imagine an Islamic republic from the Bay of Bengal to the Caspian Sea.

Imagine if the sun was green

 

[Thorough Pro]

undo? LOL

Can Lal Khan undo his birth to make room for sane people?

Lal Khan actually talked about undoing partition to improve the future of South Asia.

 

[Kompromat]

undo? LOL

Can Lal Khan undo his birth to make room for sane people?

What do you expect from a Marxist?

 

[Dnt deliver us from evil]

People who think Partition was bad should take their opinion and shove it where sun does not shine.


Partition was a "good riddance" moment for India. Only lament that one should have is that it was not complete due to fool like Gandhi in India's rank.

 

[kalu_miah]

undo? LOL

Can Lal Khan undo his birth to make room for sane people?

It depends how you define sanity. South Asia is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped and also one of the most heavily armed part of the world.

My previous thread was locked without giving any reason. @mods, is there a rule against discussing subjects like this?

 

[Thorough Pro]

First I don't know who this Lal clown is and where he hails from, regardless there are a lot of poor people in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, I am not sure about India and Bangladesh but we don't fuse poor people together or send them back where the came from (I mean undo there births), we look forward and see what needs to be dome to improve their lives.

Anyone who talks about undoing partition is hinting at undoing Pakistan, and that motherfucker is one insane son of a bitch and all such threads are insulting to Pakistan and can not be tolerated on PDF.

Thread reported

It depends how you define sanity. South Asia is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped and also one of the most heavily armed part of the world.

My previous thread was locked without giving any reason. @mods, is there a rule against discussing subjects like this?