I request mods to please clean up this thread from all dick measuring posts.
@
Topic:
It seems there are still some people who are picking up outdated interpretations of Indian partition. Most of the interpretations are based on theories about how Jinnah thought. Chief among them was Ayesha Jalal's theory that Jinnah was a liberal secular leader who wanted to have muslim majority provinces under one roof inside India and that all he needed was parity between Muslims and Hindus at national level. Jaswant Singh sadly backs this story. This brand of historians argue that partition was unnecessary and that we would have lived happily ever after.
There are several problems with this narrative:
1) The outstanding and simplest argument is to attack the central premise of avoiding partition. Jinnah's non-negotiable demand(under the framework of Cabinet mission plan) was to give muslims parity at the Central legislature with Hindus. The question is: Why should muslims get parity with Hindus? And why should muslims
only get parity?
I think this question alone is enough to shut the people of the above-mentioned category. But they won't because they tend to argue that the Centre would have been anyway weak according to the plan. That takes us to the next point.
2) The Centre would have retained the big 3 of the powers in any power arrangement. And in each of the powers there would have been wrangling in a united state.
http://postimg.org/image/yqne1g2xr/
a) Defence: Practically the whole of army would have been drawn from Punjab and NWFP, and both would have been more sensitive to their states' issues than others'. If there was hindu muslim tension in post-partition states, this is bad because there would have been infighting. A partition which was agreed upon on table neatly had caused so many deaths. Imagine what would have happened if there was an uncontrolled partition. We would have been fighting like Iraq. In the actual partition, Hindus knew that if they reached Amritsar, they are safe and Muslims knew they are safe if they reached either Sialkot or Delhi. Nowhere would be safe in an uncontrolled partition.
If religious tensions did not happen by some little chance(if you ask me there was no chance, the Muslim League's radicalisation program already started in the villages), the states of Punjab and NWFP would have such a huge advantage in power, that the other states would be intimidated by their own national army. See the picture of India that would have been. The muslim majority provinces would have had all the army. That is a recipe for disaster. Fights would have emerged about what would happen when the princely states merge or whether they should merge at all.
And if tensions come up, let us see what each sub-state of Pakistan(let us call the muslim majority state conglomeration that) and Hindustan would have had.
Pakistan would have whole of Punjab and Bengal(incl Assam). The access to the common capital Delhi from Hindustan would be through a narrow path through UP or through Pakistan.
Why would any self respecting politician agree to this on a personal level when they knew they would be boxed into impoverished Hindustan?
And since the Congress leadership was not even thinking on a personal level, they thought even better ahead and decided to cut their losses. They knew exactly what they were doing, asked for partition of Punjab and Bengal and rescued whoever could be. Since nobody in Muslims League had any idea to think about what Pakistan should be and since Jinnah did not think all this through(and also since he belonged neither to Punjab nor Bengal), he took his moth eaten Pakistan instead of folding when his bluff(as Ayesha Jalal and others would call it. I think it was a setback in a plan he never thought of completely because he thought it would be a path of roses, thanks to the British, like it was during the Quit India movement) was called.
And the still the single most important reason stands staring at us all this while. Why should any Indian leader agree to so much engineering to provide parity to muslims at national level(If it is at a state level or may be at local level, I would understand. But this, is outright immoral and stupid to expect such a concession at national level), only to be under threat from two sides in case hostilities arise with no army?
b) Economy: Pakistan would have all the jute production and industry. The rice bowl, sugar bowl and a hundred other bowls of India, Punjab would be in Pakistan. Except Mumbai and Madras, there would be no worthwhile cities in Hindustan. On the other side, India would have the impoverished tracts of UP, MP and the desertland of Rajasthan with some ports in Gujarat to relief and some intellectual capital from Madras state.
c) Foreign Policy: If there was parity, India would have been forced to side with muslims unreasonable even when they are at fault. It simply would not have been possible with two sides dragging in two opposite directions. And this has proved correct in practice. See the foreign relations of a country called 'Bosnia and Herzegovina'. A model for such arrangement. They can't decide what to vote in places like the UN until the last moment and sometimes they don't vote because they have no consensus.
Foreigners would have lobbied leaders appealing to religion and leaders would have appealed to people in the name of religion even more than they are now.
The worst part is that muslims would have voted only for muslims and Hindus for Hindus. This was another non-negotiable demand of Jinnah and something of a 'rather kill me now' for many leaders then(also for me and many Indians today).
Slow partition may have helped. But we should keep in mind that the violence had already started before the announcement of date.
what about Indian extremists and far right groups?
