India Divided

Title: India Divided

Author: Rajendra Prasad

Publisher: Penguin, 2010 (First published 1946)

ISBN: 9780143414155

Pages: 566

The pace of progress of the Indian independence movement reached a feverish pitch in the 1940s. Jinnah raised the spectre of Pakistan in March 1940. This spawned a flurry of activity in making proposals and counter-proposals on the need and desirability of having two independent nations – of Muslims on the one hand and of all other communities on the other. Jinnah maintained that Muslims all over the world form one nation and that they can’t coexist with other religionists. This book examines the wide-ranging proposals that were put forward on the eve of independence. Rajendra Prasad was the first President of the Indian Republic and a Congress leader hailing from Bihar. This book brings out the deft writer, astute politician and the shrewd researcher in him. The caliber of Prasad is little known in India as the stage-managed ‘aura’ of Nehru, the first prime minister permeated politics at that time and studiously maintained by his dynasty which had ruled the country for most of the time thereafter. Nehru entertained Western ideas and thought like an Englishman while Prasad’s politics was firmly rooted on Indian soil. When we look at the intimate proximity Prasad’s thinking enjoyed with India’s psyche, we’d vainly long for a reversal of roles in which we’d like to have seen him as the prime minister in place of Nehru.

The first part of the book debunks the two-nation theory. Prasad quotes the arguments for establishing the fact that the Hindus and Muslims constituted two nations. Quotes from F K Khan Durrani’s ‘The Making of Pakistan’ is included in much detail, and it must be conceded that Durrani’s arguments are logical and convincing while the author’s assertions are forced and dressed up to sound politically correct. This is especially true when the Congress is said to have accepted that it represented the Hindu community alone after the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League. However, the fineries of the pact are not included. Both communities took equal part in the Khilafat agitation which only pampered the Muslim religious sentiment which was more worried about the fate of the Turkish sultan, who was also the caliph. Muslim leaders noted three issues which engendered their discontent in India against the British. They were 1) Italy’s invasion of Tripoli in 1911 and British government’s share in it 2) Attack on Turkey by the Balkan states in 1912 with full moral support of the British and 3) the degrading experience of the sultan of Turkey at Allies’ hands. Isn’t it strange that all these issues are not at all related to India? In 1912, Dr. M A Ansari organized and led a medical mission to Turkey. Maulana Zafar Ali, editor of the Zamindar went himself to present a purse to the vizier at Istanbul. This notion of supranational allegiance arises from the zealot’s belief that Muslims of the whole world belongs to one nation (Ummah). It is the same emotion that prompted a bunch of Egyptians to fly an aircraft into the World Trade Center to avenge the treatment meted to Palestinians in 2001. Prasad does not adduce this point, but vainly array numerous examples of Hindu officials in the employ of Muslim kings in the past as an exemplar of tolerance! Unfortunately, this proves nothing. Their fate is just one step short of the Janissaries in Ottoman Empire, who were young Christian boys -  enslaved, often castrated and converted to Islam – and who were the loyal soldiers who upheld the dignity of the Porte.

There are a few people who believe that jihadism originated in the rugged hills of Afghanistan when the Muslim fighters fought against the occupying Soviets. The US supported them at first, but as time wore on and the Russians were defeated, they turned against the Americans. This book presents a contrary view on the origin of the jihadis that is riveted on historical facts. Indian Muslims came under the influence of Wahhabism in the mid-eighteenth century. Muslim empire were crumbling everywhere before the onslaught of Europeans and the reason a few religious scholars could think of was that the defeat was caused by divine wrath on account of the deviation of the Muslims from the religiously ordained path of submission to god. They wanted to cast out all external customs and rituals accrued over the ages and to go back to the supposed purity of religion at the time of the Prophet. Syed Ahmed Barelvi organized jihad against non-believers. Quite understandably, Barelvi’s jihad was against the Sikhs whose kingdom in Punjab was then not incorporated into British India. The British encouraged, if not actually supported the effort. However, after the Sikh territories were annexed to India after the two Anglo-Sikh Wars, they had to fight the jihadis in person. In the short period from 1850 to 1863, as much as 36 distinct expeditions had to be staged against the extremists holed up at Sittana.

India was partitioned in 1947, but the violence that overlapped the event presents a shocking instance of most inhuman cruelty on both sides. So, is the partition something to be grieved for? Reading about the nature and direction of Indian politics in this book which covers the half century till Independence, it seems that the Partition was a good thing after all, at least for India. Before that, the politicians were always on tenterhooks; pleading, placating and appeasing the belligerent Muslim community represented by Jinnah. The Muslim presence in India was something they could not afford to be oblivious of, even for a moment. Prasad’s narrative covers a lot of ground in imploring the minorities to stay a part of the union, stressing about common attributes of the two communities in culture, habitat and customs. We’d be wary of the extent to which the political parties were willing to compromise to avoid partition. If all such concessions were accepted and had we dodged secession, the power granted to Muslims would’ve caused eternal strife in undivided India, not to say anything about the 360 million Muslims of Pakistan and Bangaldesh who would’ve been in our electoral rolls. Luckily, Jinnah spurned all such proposals. The more they yielded, the more strident his demands became. Can you now even imagine that the Muslims protested against the use of Devanagari script for writing Hindi for official purposes in the 1920s? Or that they refused to accept the Dalits as belonging to Hindu religion? Prasad presents a case of the British practicing the strategy of ‘Divide and Rule’. The principals of the Aligarh Muslim College were British and they weaned Sir Syed Ahmed Khan away from Congress and prompted him to assert Muslim identity. The Muslim League itself was formed in the aftermath of a visit of Muslim aristocrats headed by Agha Khan to the Viceroy that was arranged by the principal. Muslims found political voice since the establishment of separate electorates by the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909, which was strengthened by the Montagu-Chelmsford measures in 1919 and consolidated with the Government of India Act of 1935. League’s demand became stringent and the book introduces three distinct stages in it. In the first, it was happy with a federal structure and one-third representation in the central legislature. In the next stage, they wanted equal share as the Hindus and by 1945, the claim had escalated to equal share against all other communities combined. This was when they constituted only 27% of the population. With partition, the share of Muslims fell to 10% in India and all claims of parity were silenced.

This book covers detailed analyses of a multitude of proposals to partition the country. A few examples are so amusing as to reproduce here. Prof. Syed Zafrul Hasan and Mohammed Husain Qadri of Aligarh envisaged six sovereign Muslim states, which even included the district of Malabar in Kerala. Chaudhuri Rahmat Ali, the original proposer of Pakistan, suggested that India be divided into Pakistan, Bangistan (Bengal), Usmanistan (Hyderabad), Maplistan (Malabar), Haideristan (parts of UP), Siddiqistan, Faruqistan, Muinistan (Rajastan), Safiistan and Nasaristan. This was a plan to consolidate the regional Muslim-dominated zones while decimating other communities. A remarkable effort from the author is to study these schemes, with data on population, economics, industries and budgetary provision. This book includes 55 tables of such data which are priceless for students of history. The data is compiled so meticulously that it delves into individual districts as well. The analysis of population data of the border districts of Assam display the terrifying impact of unchecked migration from East Bengal, particularly Mymensingh district. This caused a quantum jump in the Muslim population. Prasad claims that these immigrants ran roughshod over the natives on account of their political hegemony, indulging in lawlessness and oppression such as maiming of cattle and buffaloes, riotous assaults on grazers and accompanied even by murder. As a result of this unimpeded flow of asylum-seekers, the districts of Naogaon and Sylhet of Assam became Muslim-majority districts and had to be ceded to Pakistan in 1947!

What makes Prasad stand out among leaders of those times is the admirable research he had undertaken on the income and expenditure of the new states to be formed. He argues that Pakistan can’t meet the increased defence expenditure necessary to guard its western and northwestern frontiers. Understandably but myopically, the possibility of a war erupting between the two sister states never enter the author’s mind, but that was what precisely happened a few months later. The fall of Bengal from industrial predominance to the graveyard of industry is visible in the compiled figures. The province housed only 20% of the total population of India, but contained a third of its industries then. With hindsight, it can be seen that the arguments on the financial non-viability of Pakistan turned out to be false in the end. Moreover, all proposals for the new central government envisaged it to be a weak one, controlling the portfolios of defence, foreign affairs, communication and such common concerns. Real power was supposed to rest in the provinces. But in both the countries, the central administration turned out to be the strongest.

The book includes long extracts from other books which are sometimes repetitive in nature. Author’s paraphrasing comments are difficult to make out from the detailed coverage of a rival argument. The large number of data tables, maps and graphs included in it is invaluable after all those decades that separate us from 1947. A good index is also provided in this huge book. May of the parts of this work may be more accurately called appendices. The book answers one prominent question that pops to the mind of anyone familiar with pre-partition politics – how could Jinnah and the Muslim League agree to a split which jeopardized the position and prosperity of those Muslims who had to stay behind in India? This question is answered in a remark made by F K Khan Durrani, a prominent supporter of partition. Pakistan, he says, is only a beginning and goes on to add that “our forefathers conquered India and the whole of it is therefore our heritage and it must be reconquered for Islam. Expansion in the spiritual sense is an inherent necessity of our faith. Our ultimate ideal should be the unification of India, spiritually as well as politically, under the banner of Islam; the final political salvation of India is not otherwise possible” (p.413). Remember, this is the voice of a moderate among them!

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star