ntolerance is thy name, O India

Jaswant Singh has paid a price for being an objective observer of the history of Indian subcontinent by writing facts in his “Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence” .The division of the country has always been a matter of serious and grave disputes, but what has been most critical as far as historical inquiry is concerned is that all facts relating to the division were never made available to public or even scholars.

What we had, instead, was one version of history written by the winners in this game played out on the country in the run up to division. In this Nehru, Patel and the entire Indian elite, upper caste Congress leadership came out in flying colours and people like Muhammed Ali Jinnah and B R Ambedkar were the demons. What Pakistani children learnt by their semi-literate teachers has also been venomous. This implies that the elite of the two countries prompted and promoted hatred staking the future of the entire people of South Asia where one-fifth of he humanity inhabit, mostly in abject poverty. Official histories held good for almost five decades in both the countries and children both in India and Pakistan learnt this jaundiced view in their schools and colleges and the first generations of the two countries after Independence also transmitted their prejudices to younger people.

But this one-sided version could not stand scrutiny of times and every next generation sought fresh answers to questions that keep up popping up. Yet ambiguity ruled most of the historic events and this state of affairs suited the ruling classes, as both the Congress and the right wing Hindutva forces shared the benefits of such a demonization project, painting the Muslims and the Muslim League as responsible and Muhammaed Ali Jinnah as the villain. The Congress and Nehru family benefited the most by decades of grip on power in India.

And when the book reached the people and guileless observation of 70-year old Jaswant Singh, twice finance minister and once foreign minister, surfaced, they took the entire Indian politics by storm leading. All the parties, including “secular” Congress and Hindtva Bhartia Janata Party, spewed their venom on the author so much as to lead to his expulsion from the BJP which he formed in 1980 in collaboration with Atal Behari Vajpayee, Lal Kishan Advani and others to strengthen the country’s right wing politics and add to the extremism, reject secular thought and prompt Hindu religious and cultural thought and hatred to Pakistan. The book praised the founder of Pakistan as an upright political leader who had not been in favour of the partition and was forced to raise Pakistan slogan because of the negativism of the Jawahar Lal Nehru-dominated Indian National Congress. The reaction to the book has been so strong and all the Indian political parties, including the ruling Congress, have condemned Jaswant Singh with one voice and the Gujrat state government, headed by chief minister Narendra Nath Modi, banned the book.

But the controversy has only lent the book to become one of the bestsellers in recent years and Singh now plans to get it translated in Urdu, Gujrati and Bengali after it met a tremendous response across the country. His assertion tends to correct the Indians perceptions about the reasons for the partition of the subcontinent and holding leaders other than Mohammad Ali Jinnah responsible for, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “vivisecting” India to create Pakistan in 1947 and then Bangladesh in 1971. Singh writes that Jinnah was a nationalist parliamentarian and was not the only statesman involved in India’s partition; Nehru and Patel were, in fact, equally responsible because they so tenaciously supported the centrality of India as to sacrifice a federated decentralized India to a partitioned centralized India. It is a matter of record and all independent historians have mentioned the Cabinet Mission Plan, its deliberations with political parties in India, drawing of a group scheme for provinces to decide their future, the establishment of an All-India Union and number of ministers major parties (Congress and League) would share in the Viceroy’s Executive Council have primarily been responsible for brewing political bitterness to an extent to an extent as to lead to the partition.

The Mission, headed by Sir Pathic Lawrence with Sir Stafford Cripps and AV Alexander as other members, arrived Delhi on March 24, 1946. After hectic discussions on the communal question with all stakeholders, including Congress and Muslim League and leaders like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Sardar Vallabbhai Patel and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the Mission announced a six-point Plan which enunciated three groups as federations — Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan in the first; Bengal and Assam in the second and all other (mainly Hindu majority) provinces in the third. Every group will be empowered to form its own federation; a central legislative assembly and an All India Union as central government administering only defence, foreign affairs and communication as subjects. The various groups will frame their constitution followed by an Indian constitution. The Muslim League accepted the Plan which said that various federation may, after a period of 10 years, decide to go for independence. The Congress dragged the question of acceptance or non-acceptance with vague demands and explanations. But what proved to the bone of contention between the League and the Congress was the number of ministers at the centre. The Mission suggested five each from the two parties to be members for the Viceroy’s Executive Council which was to also have one Sikh and another from the Parsi co9mmunity. All including Mr Gandhi and Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad agreed but Nehru put their foot down and was enthusiastically supported by Sardar Patel demanding that the Council should comprise 15 members and a low-caste Hindu be appointed in consultation with the Congress in addition to five from Muslim League. That was the one ministry that cost the Congress the partition of India, because the Direct Action Day, observed by the League in protesting the attitude of the Congress and which led to killing of about 5,000 people in Calcutta in communal violence, proved to be parting ways with the All-India Scheme and the Cabinet Mission Plan. It was at this stage that the Quaid-i-Azam raised the slogan of Pakistan for the first time. The book is bound to create huge political ripples and Indian historians will have to have their views, generally jaundiced with their own narrow vision perceptions of partition, mollified, if not corrected.

The same goes with Pakistani historians who have refused to understand the Quid-i-Azam’s political and economic rationale behind partition and tend to promote the idea as if this country was to be transformed into a theological state. But what hurts more is that the largest democracy of the world and its wildly trumpeted secularism has demonstrated no tolerance for a divergent view and all parties have joined in condemning Jaswant Singh for speaking truth. Obviously feeling extremely disappointed upon expulsion from the party he had served for about three decades he commented that he had not thought the party to be as narrow-minded as it has proved to be.
Mahmood Zaman