The granting of independence to India and Pakistan by Great Britain in 1947 is the single most important defining event of twentieth-century South Asia. Although it is the crucial shaping moment, it is embedded in developments that had been under way for decades, and it has continued to affect events until today. One can look earlier or later at significant turning points, but 1947 can never be excluded as a point of reference. The event-makers in the final year(s) of British India knew how momentous their decisions would be for the longterm history of the subcontinent. These decisions would define who was an Indian and who was not; would determine whether there was to be one new nation, two nations, or more; and would bring about diverse consequences for everyone centrally and peripherally involved—for South Asians, for the imperial power withdrawing from its crown jewel, and for other empires in Africa and Asia.
In the decades after 1947 historians concentrated their energies on the high politics of negotiations between leaders, and on the chronologies of large-scale clashes of communities. Recently more attention has been paid to the personal experiences of men, women, and children caught in the maelstrom of continental upheaval and violence. In recent years Partition survivors have finally been interviewed in a way that was not done previously.
The investigation of the Partition of British India can lead one back a thousand years—or forty, or twenty, or ten, or one. Popular writers Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins chose the one-year focus for Freedom at Midnight,1 but other authors, such as Sarojini Naidu, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Muhammad Iqbal, and Begum Shaista Ikramullah, have sought the roots of South Asia’s division in the relations of the Hindu and Muslim communities in the region over a millennium, or in the communal conflicts of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.
One question above all emerges from discussions of Partition: was it inevitable, and if it was, when and how did it become so? To say that an event was inevitable from a certain point in time means that the participants at that moment had no other choices. However, many scholars have suggested that there were a variety of choices even in 1946 and 1947. Abul Kalam Azad, an important Congress leader of that period, maintained in his account, India Wins Freedom, written ten years later, that Congress could have and should have adhered to its decision to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. Had it done so, he argued, there would have been no Partition, and history would have turned out much more fruitfully for all South Asians. He believed that alternatives were still available, therefore, in the spring of 1947. But he did not, according to independent sources, fight vigorously and openly to avoid Partition in the spring of 1947.
Some other writers on the Partition have selected out events of Hindu–Muslim antagonism through the twentieth century to show that the 1947 Partition had long been inevitable. But they have neglected the many instances of Hindu–Muslim cooperation during the same period. Many protagonists of the 1940s interviewed by one of the editors of this volume (LAG) maintained that the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946 heightened tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and made it much harder for them to contemplate living together in one new nation.2
However one wishes to talk about either the “inevitability” of Partition or the potential malleability of Hindu–Muslim relations, it is also important to see that although crucial nationalist and religious choices were made in 1946 and 1947 by many protagonists—British and Indian, Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu—those choices were not always irrevocable. Some Indians chose one nationality in the immediacy of the moment, and later decided to make another choice. For example, many of those in East Bengal, such as Bengalis who had opted for Pakistan in 1947, made a different determination in 1971. The same is true in regard to religion; some people, a few by choice and some by coercion, changed their religion. In spite of the political rhetoric of the time, therefore, it is not helpful to essentialize “Hinduness” and “Muslimness.”
In a broad and simplified view, three large historical trends intersected and interacted throughout the history of twentieth-century South Asia: the slow retreat of British imperialism, the growth of Indian nationalism, and the development of Muslim separatism. Most officials who served the Raj believed it would go on indefinitely—a view that one student of imperialism called “the illusion of permanence.”3 However, some British officials, such as Macaulay in the 1830s, could already envision a time of Indian self-government.
In the course of the nineteenth century, the British laid out categories in the census within which to “capture” all Indians. A number of historians have emphasized this process of categorization as contributing to an increasing antagonism between religious communities (what is called in the Indian context “communalism”), for communities were defined and pitted against one another in imperial calculations and political policy. That is, these historians argue that through the very construction and utilization of their categories, the British had already begun dividing India against itself.4
After the Rebellion of 1857, or what Hindu nationalist V. D. Savarkar called “the first war of independence,” the British created legislative councils to keep themselves better informed. The progressive granting of wider powers to, and election of some members to, the legislative councils in 1892, 1909, and 1919 further associated Indians with the Raj. Indians differed in their opinions of these reforms—some grasping them eagerly, others ignoring them as mere tidbits offered by an all-powerful imperial government. In any case, more and more Indians were beginning to vote for officials at the local, regional, and national levels, and gaining experience of government and administration. While the Moderates acquiesced in the Raj and simply wanted a larger role, the so-called Extremists, beginning from Tilak and his supporters, wanted independence.
Educated Indians were also aware of the gradual evolution of self-government in the white settlement colonies of the empire: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (which all had nonwhite populations almost invisible to their rulers). As Indians participated in institutions of government, they felt no less able than their colleagues of European birth to run their own affairs. But the racism that became ever more powerful through the nineteenth century meant to their rulers that Indians were different and, in the view of some of these Europeans, in need of endless tutorials in handling their own affairs. It was up to Indians to dissuade them from this view. To some, inspired by Tilak and others who thought all means were permissible in liberating one’s country from oppression, violence was an acceptable path. But British India was to a large extent disarmed, and advocates of violence did not find their tools easily at hand.
With the Swadeshi movement and then the coming of Gandhi, first thousands and then millions were gradually brought into a nationalist movement that was conceived as non-violent. The Congress, which Gandhi led from the front or guided from behind the scenes from 1919 into the 1940s, claimed to speak for all Indians, and aimed at membership from all communities. Although the Congress was growing apace, built up by Gandhi and his lieutenants as a formidable organization for agitation and struggle, it lacked widespread Muslim support. Through the twisted course of twentieth-century politics, early efforts at Hindu–Muslim cooperation were vitiated over time: the Congress and the Muslim League signed a pact in 1916, and the Congress joined the Khilāfat movement of the early 1920s. But from then onward, from 1928 to 1947, endless efforts at negotiation, alliance, and understanding all somehow failed.
The Muslim League was formed in 1906. The British undoubtedly played a role in its creation, and encouraged Muslim grievances against the Congress in order to undercut support for the main nationalist organization. The Congress-League, or Lucknow, Pact of 1916 accepted separate electorates for Muslims and weightage in the provinces, but was soon denounced by some who had signed it because it gave the Muslims of the Punjab and Bengal fewer seats than their percentage of the population (see the Congress-League Scheme of 1916). Realizing the necessity of a Hindu–Muslim alliance, however, Gandhi called for Congress to support the Muslim community in its agitation for retention of the Caliphate, through the Khilāfat Movement. Throughout this period and even later, some politicians were members of several organizations simultaneously; for example, Jinnah was both a Muslim Leaguer and a Congressman until 1920. Historians and public men and women are still searching for ways to understand better how Hindu–Muslim relations evolved in the first half of the twentieth century, and even India’s best intellectuals—men like Rabindranath Tagore, Lajpat Rai, and B. R. Ambedkar, who lived during those pre-Partition years—experienced in their own lives the difficulty of navigating through these waters.
The Khilāfat agitation died ignominiously with the establishment of a secular Turkish state in 1924, and then the Congress and the League had to try to find common ground on Indian issues. C. R. Das’s effort to secure all-India support for the Bengal Pact of 1924 (which included significant concessions by the Bengal Congress in order to secure Hindu–Muslim unity) failed. The Simon Commission of 1928 was set up to review the working of the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919, but the All-Parties meetings, stimulated by the formation of this commission, failed to produce an agreed-upon solution for political advance. The British government thereafter challenged Indians to draw up their own scheme for self-government. The (Motilal) Nehru Commission was the result, but it would not accept what leading Muslim organizations and their spokesman Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted: separate electorates for Muslims and one-third of the seats in all assemblies. This impasse led eventually to the British imposition of their own solutions, embodied in the Government of India Act of 1935. The act specified that Muslims should be given separate electorates and allotted seats in the various provinces. Scheduled Castes were to be given reserved seats, but not the separate electorates that Dr. Ambedkar had wanted. The Congress was especially unhappy with how few seats were given to caste Hindus in Bengal. After the act was implemented in 1936 the Congress and League had difficulty finding common ground in any negotiations, because Jinnah and the League claimed to speak for all of India’s Muslims, while the Congress claimed to speak for all Indians, including Muslims.
Indeed, one regional population of Muslims, Pathans in the Northwest Frontier Province, led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) and his organization, the Khudai Khidmatgars (“Servants of God,” also called “Red Shirts”), supported Gandhi and the Congress. In addition to these Red Shirts, many Deoband ulema from the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind (Organization of Indian [Muslim Religious] Scholars), led by Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani (1879–1957), worked with the Congress from the 1920s to 1947, though occasionally in disagreement with it. For example, they did not accept the provision for joint electorates laid out in the Nehru Report. However, Madani said in an earlier address to a Muslim conference in 1924:
Hindu–Muslim unity is a perquisite for freedom of India. It is the religious and political duty of the Muslims that they should work for the freedom of India and continue this struggle until the Government accedes to their demand. It is their duty, which they must do with or without companions, it is the order of the Almighty. If non-Muslims extend to you the hand of friendship, you too must extend yours, for compromising for the right cause will establish you as true believers in Allah. And, if they (non-Muslims) turn their back on you and leave you alone, you should not complain about it because Allah is your biggest support.5
Madani, like Ghaffar Khan, sustained his belief in one composite nationalism for India, with the Muslims as natives of the subcontinent and equal citizens of India. He asserted of the 1940 Pakistan Resolution that it was the “death-knell for the Muslims of the areas where they were in a minority.”6 The Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind passed a resolution opposing the establishment of a separate Muslim nation in 1940 that said in part,
The Indian Muslim … is unquestionably an Indian national and in every part of the country is entitled to equal privileges with that of every Indian national in every sphere of governmental, economic and other national activities and in public services … The goal of Indian Muslims is complete independence along with protection of their religion and communal rights.7
The Deoband ulema who were led by Madani were left in India as Pakistan was formed, since Deoband was within the boundaries of the new India. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, on the other hand, was thrust into a Pakistan he did not want, and soon became a political prisoner.
The first suggestions for a separate Muslim state, or at least an autonomous Muslim part of South Asia, date from the 1930s (see the selections from Iqbal and Rahmat Ali). Historian S. R. Mehrotra pointed out years ago that if the Muslims had had a majority nowhere, then they would not have been able to argue for a separate state.8 But since they had a majority in areas of the northwest and northeast, they could and did argue that these areas—they wanted all of Bengal and all of the Punjab—should be separated off from Hindustan to form their Pakistan. All the participants knew that the British had partitioned Bengal in 1905 (but within India) and Ireland in 1921, and had put forth a plan to partition Palestine in 1938. “Divide and Quit,” as Penderel Moon later titled his excellent book on Partition, was not an unknown strategy.9
The poor showing of the Muslim League in the 1936–1937 elections emboldened the Congress to start a Muslim mobilization campaign of its own, while the Muslim League and its allies harped on Muslim grievances in provinces of India ruled by Congress ministries. Both these steps contributed to the growing alienation between the Congress and the League.
It must also be noted, as Dr. Ambedkar did indeed note (see the selections from his Pakistan), that more and more violent communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims, also occasionally involving Sikhs, occurred during the three decades prior to 1947 in Bombay, U.P. (Uttar Pradesh), Bengal, and other parts of northern India. While many historians (particularly those who want to push the “inevitability” of Partition earlier and earlier) have emphasized the significance of these clashes, others have countered that there were countervailing forces: numerous ways in which Hindus and Muslims collaborated, lived together and worked together, formed friendships with each other, and shared cultural activities. Ambedkar argued forcefully that Partition made no sense in rational terms, but should be granted because it had become an emotional issue for many Muslims, though they did not understand its consequences.
While the Raj was not directly involved in the Congress–Muslim League negotiations until World War II, its actions seemed to support the Muslim League and to continue division within India—what has been called “divide and rule.” With the coming of World War II, this bias increased, as the League backed the British war effort, while the Congress protested against the Raj’s unilateral declaration of war on behalf of India. The Cripps Mission of 1942, which offered responsible self-government after World War II, failed; although it had made no progress it seemed to give the Muslim League a veto. Gandhi is reported to have quipped, “their offer was equivalent to a post-dated cheque on a failing bank.” Launching the Quit India movement in 1942, the Congress then called for all-out non-cooperation, and its members were underground or suffering mass imprisonment during the war period.
With Congress sidelined, there were three openly functioning parties left: the Muslim League, the Communist Party of India, and the Hindu Mahasabha. Of these three, the Muslim League was most successful in building up its base, as it demonstrated in the elections of 1945–1946. The Communist Party of India also emerged out of illegality in 1941 once it declared World War II a “People’s War,” and it put forth its own position on India as a nation of many nations. Dr. G. D. Adhikari argued that India was a multinational nation and that Pakistan should be allowed self-determination. This had the effect of aligning the League and the Communists, ideologically. The Hindu Mahasabha, which of course was against division of the country and what it perceived as capitulation to League demands, gained increasing influence upon the Congress.
During the war, Subhas Chandra Bose set up the Provisional Government of Free India and the Indian National Army. This small army joined with the Japanese in their invasion of India in 1944. Bose believed that all Indian communities should work together for independence, and he tried to implement a policy of communal sharing and interaction to achieve this end during the war. After the war, the British decided to try three officers of the Indian National Army—a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Sikh—for making war against the king-emperor. All Indian communities and organizations joined in demonstrating against this trial. A heady moment of communal cooperation led to the defendants’ immediate release, even though they had been convicted. But then it was back to business as usual, and mutual opposition between the Congress and the Muslim League.
Once the League had shown its stronger backing and had swept most of the reserved Muslim seats in the 1945–1946 elections, the Raj accepted the League as an equal player in the negotiations leading to the transfer of power in 1947. The League had a virtual veto power over plans put forth for the shape of an independent South Asia. By 1940, with the passage of the Lahore Resolution at the Muslim League session of that year, the League put forth, at least on paper, the argument for at least some kind of division of South Asia. Exactly what Jinnah and the League wanted has been much argued about; Ayesha Jalal, in The Sole Spokesman, has maintained that Jinnah had not committed himself to an independent Pakistan until near the very end of these negotiations in 1947.10 The Congress, though long opposed to any division of the subcontinent on the basis of religion, offered a variety of responses to the Lahore (or Pakistan) Resolution. One of these was presented by C. Rajagopalachari, who put forth a resolution within the Congress holding that if India were ever divided, all efforts must be made to draw the boundary so that the maximum number of Indians opposed to Pakistan would be kept within the borders of India.
The argument over the Cabinet Mission and subsequent proposals focused mostly on the areas where Muslims were a majority, or at least a significant part, of the population. The Muslim League conceded all of South India—except perhaps the princely state of Hyderabad—to a future Hindustan. The disputed areas were in the northern swath of India: the Punjab, Sindh, Bengal, Assam, and later the princely state of Kashmir.
Lord Wavell, viceroy from 1943 to early 1947, released Mahatma Gandhi from prison in 1944 so that Gandhi could meet with Jinnah and move toward a League–Congress rapprochement. Little was gained in these talks, or at the Simla meetings held after the war. Gandhi called the Pakistan proposal a plan to “vivisect” India, and thought that Muslims, in the end, would oppose it. In the spring of 1946, the new Labour government of Clement Attlee, pledged to independence for India, sent the Cabinet Mission to India to try to see if it could try to find a new formulation for constitutional advance, in consultation with the major parties. The mission put forward a scheme for an independent India, including a grouping of provinces, with the proviso that groups might secede from the larger structure. This federal structure had a weak center and strong stipulations for regional powers. It seemed that the Congress and League agreed to this plan, but then Jawaharlal Nehru, apparently speaking for the Congress, said that the Congress would not necessarily be bound by the groupings specified in the plan, and that once a constituent assembly met, it could decide anything it wanted. This was completely unacceptable to the Muslim League, which then backed away from the scheme and refused to join the interim government which Lord Wavell had decided to form.
Instead, the League, for the first time in its history, called for a Direct Action Day, August 16, 1946. Disaster ensued. In the Great Calcutta Killing, thousands died, and riots followed in other areas of East Bengal and the Gangetic plain. These riots contributed mightily to the belief by many Hindus and Muslims that they would be better off in separate nations, if these could be constructed out of the British Raj.
In September 1946, after the Calcutta riots, the Muslim League decided to join the interim government, a cabinet and ministries headed by Indians under the supervision of the viceroy. To meet a stipulation by Viceroy Wavell that at least one important position in the interim cabinet go to the League, Liaquat Ali Khan was sworn in as finance minister. Every activity needed funding, and the new finance minister held up every Congress proposal for severe scrutiny or blockage. This made Interim Prime Minister Nehru and Interim Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950)11 dubious about future work with the League within one united and independent India.
With the Congress and League at loggerheads in the interim government and a deteriorating law and order situation around them, Wavell packed off the leaders of the Congress and League to London for a conference at the end of 1946. This also failed to produce the necessary signs of cooperation. Facing what looked like a dead end and committed to independence for India, British Prime Minister Attlee decided in January 1947 to strike out on new ground. Wavell was terminated as viceroy and the new and last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–1979), was chosen. Mountbatten’s charge was to transfer power no later than August 1948 to one or more new states. He arrived in March, and set about his task with his usual energy and organization. After meeting all the principals, listening to their views, and getting a sense of their personalities, Mountbatten decided that the gap between the Congress and the League was too deep to bridge. Although he maintained that he had always wanted to transfer power to one India, within a few weeks he committed himself and his government to dividing India. Mountbatten blamed Jinnah’s rigidity for the need to do so.
Not only did Mountbatten have to persuade all the parties to accept a particular plan for division, but he also had to set a calendar for the steps forward. First, he worked on Congress leaders Patel and Nehru and got them to agree to Partition, but only after specifying that independent India was the main legatee of the Raj, and Pakistan was the seceder. Then he had to try to pacify some Hindu and Muslim Bengalis who did not want Bengal divided. And he had to try to calm the Sikhs, who saw that they would have a majority nowhere and realized, correctly, that they would be devastated by the division. Mountbatten never satisfied the Bengalis, the Sikhs, or the Muslims, including Congress leader Maulana Azad and Pathan followers of Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the Northwest Frontier Province. According to Azad, Patel was the first to come around to accepting Partition, and he pressed Nehru and then Gandhi to do likewise. The latter two were more opposed than Patel to the division of India on the basis of religion, but both were pragmatic enough to see, eventually, that many were coming to accept it. It could only be opposed, Gandhi said, if public opinion was against it. As he explained to Sarat Bose, this public opposition was not there. He could do nothing. On Partition day Sarat Bose and Gandhi sat in silence.
Jinnah certainly was unhappy with the “maimed, mutilated and motheaten” Pakistan—lacking East Punjab, West Bengal, and Calcutta—that Mountbatten offered him in May 1947, and one can get a feel for how these events looked from the Muslim League perspective from the autobiography, From Purdah to Parliament, penned by Jinnah’s friend Begum Ikramullah. Mountbatten was following the logic of the Rajaji (C. Rajagopalachari) formula: you must divide India so that the maximum number of Hindus (and others) who want to remain in India are on one side, and the maximum of Muslims who want to leave are on the other. This led down the path of the division of the two large and important provinces of the Punjab and Bengal. Jinnah, very unwillingly, accepted the deal, as did the Congress.
With the main lines of division set, riots continuing, and the loyalty of Indian police and armed forces in question, Mountbatten fixed a forced march to a British exit on August 15, 1947, a year earlier than originally planned by Attlee. Attaching his countdown calendars on the walls of relevant offices, instructing his staff and political leaders, Mountbatten pushed on for a British withdrawal from their crown jewel, just over two months after the formal agreement to the Partition plan on June 3. Everything had to be divided, and the boundary commission had to set to work. Lord Cyril Radcliffe was appointed to head this latter body, but its findings were not to be announced until after August 15. A procedure for dealing with the five-hundred-odd princely states also had to be laid out and implemented. Whether Mountbatten rushed too fast, or acted appropriately to fulfill his mission, will be debated forever.
As it gradually dawned on the populace what was taking place, many were stunned: millions of Hindus and Sikhs would end up in a Muslim nation if they did not migrate; millions of Muslims would undoubtedly end up in what the League called Hindustan even if tens of millions moved to Pakistan. Ordinary people had to figure out what to do as August 15 approached, and then after the boundary commission’s findings were published. Extraordinary things happened not only for the new nations, but for ordinary men, women, and children trapped in circumstances beyond their control. As Urvashi Butalia and other writers have shown, the consequences for women and children were more dire than for any others. Decades of silence have followed the unspeakable acts done and painful choices made in those days. Decisions were made and remade. Estimates of the dead range from 200,000 to one million; in addition, thousands of families were destroyed or reshaped. The families, polities, economies, and cultures of the new nations were shaped and reshaped by the hostilities of the pre-Partition days and the terrible killings of the months after Partition. These led to lasting antagonisms between the new nations. India and Pakistan are still figuring out how to live together, and hopeful negotiations are frequently followed by disillusionment. Ordinary people who want a satisfactory end to the tensions and wars between India and Pakistan—and now to the threat of nuclear war between nations armed with such weapons—have not yet been able to push their leaders to make a lasting peace.
The crisis of 1969 to 1971 in East Pakistan, the breaking up of East and West Pakistan, and the establishment of Bangladesh as a new nation demonstrated forcefully that choices that had been made in 1947 could be revised, and a new sense of nationality developed (see chapter 10). Within India as well, there were crises that led many of its citizens to question their choices of 1947. Communal riots between Hindus and Muslims have continued, with some of the worst following the destruction of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 and the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat in 2002. The rise to power and rule for some years by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government—with its ideology of Hindu nationalism (muted or overt)—has made some Muslims feel less than full citizens. But not only the Muslims have been made to feel unsettled: Sikhs and Christians also have had dreadful episodes of havoc wrought upon them since the 1990s.
For several years during World War I, while many Indians were professing loyalty to the Raj and many thousands of Indian troops were fighting in Europe to defend the empire, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League had been discussing an agreement about a plan of constitutional advance. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a member of both organizations, took a leading role in this rapprochement. The scheme that was agreed to in 1916 provided for separate electorates for Muslims in the elections both for the provincial legislative councils and, indirectly, for the imperial legislative council. The Muslims were also to have one-third of the seats in the imperial council. It laid out percentages of reserved seats for them in the provincial councils, giving them less than their percentage of the population in some areas, more in others. The Punjab and Bengal were most at issue, and the agreement called for 50 percent of the seats in the Punjab Council and 40 percent in Bengal. This latter provision angered Bengali Muslim leaders in subsequent years, since Muslims were about 54 percent of the population. They believed they were shortchanged.
Other provisions of the pact called for political advances for Indians in ruling their own country. These were to be achieved by a much wider franchise (details unspecified); by giving Indians a greater role in provincial councils working with the governors of the provinces and in the governor-general’s council; and by limiting the role of nominated members and the Indian Civil Service. It also called for the abolition of the advisory council to the secretary of state for India in London, which Indians believed was populated by retired and reactionary civil servants.
Although the Congress–League pact had no visible or practical effect upon the British, it marked the beginning of about a decade in which there was considerable cooperation between Hindus and Muslims in the Congress and League. There were ups and downs, until the rejection of the Nehru Report recommendations in 1928 by Jinnah. The scheme also encouraged the British to formulate and implement their own reform program, known as the Government of India Act of 1919 or the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.
I. PROVINCIAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS
1. Provincial Legislative Councils shall consist of ⅘ elected and of ⅕ nominated members.
2. Their strength shall be not less than 125 members in the major provinces, and from 50 to 75 in the minor provinces.
3. The members of Councils should be elected … on as broad a franchise as possible.
4. Adequate provision should be made for the representation of important minorities by election, and the Mahomedans should be represented through special electorates on the Provincial Legislative Councils in the following proportions:
Punjab—One-half of the elected Indian Members
United Provinces—30 p.c. " "
Bengal—40 p.c. " "
Bihar—25 p.c. " "
Central Provinces—15 p.c. " "
Bombay—One-third " "
… No Mahomedan shall participate in any of the other elections to the Imperial or Provincial Legislative Councils, save and except those by electorates representing special interests.
Provided further that no Bill, nor any clause thereof, nor a resolution introduced by a non-official member affecting one or the other community, which question is to be determined by the members of that community in the Legislative Council concerned, shall be proceeded with, if three-fourths of the members of that community in the particular Council, Imperial or provincial, oppose the Bill or any clause thereof, or the resolution. …
7. (a) Except customs, post, telegraph, mint, salt, opium, railways, army and navy, and tributes from Indian States, all other sources of revenue should be provincial.
(b) There should be no divided heads of revenue. The Government of India should be provided with fixed contributions from the Provincial Governments, such fixed contributions being liable to revision when extraordinary and unforeseen contingencies render such revision necessary.
(c) The Provincial Council should have full authority to deal with all matters affecting the internal administration of the province including the power to raise loans, to impose and alter taxation, and to vote on the Budget. …
(e) A resolution passed by the Provincial Legislative Council shall be binding on the Executive Government, unless vetoed by the Governor in Council, provided, however, that if the resolution is again passed by the Council after an interval of not less than a year, it must be given effect to.
9. A Bill, other than a Money Bill, may be introduced in Council in accordance with rules made in that behalf by the Council itself, and the consent of the Government should not be required …
II. PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS
1. The head of every Provincial Government shall be a Governor who shall not ordinarily belong to the Indian Civil Service or any of the permanent services.
2. There shall be in every province an Executive Council, which, with the Governor, shall constitute the Executive Government of the Province.
3. Members of the ICS shall not ordinarily be appointed to the Executive Councils.
4. Not less than one-half of the members of the Executive Council shall consist of Indians to be elected by the elected members of the Provincial Legislative Council. …
III. IMPERIAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
1. The strength of the Imperial Legislative Council [shall] be 150.
2. Four-fifths of the members shall be elected.
3. The franchise for the Imperial Legislative Council should be widened as far as possible on the lines of the electorates for Mahomedans for the Provincial Legislative Councils, and the elected members of the Provincial Legislative Councils should also form an electorate for the return of members to [the] Imperial Legislative Council.
4. One-third of the Indian elected members should be Mahomedans elected by separate Mahomedan electorates in the several provinces, in the proportion, as may be, in which they are represented on the Provincial Legislative Councils by separate Mahomedan electorates. …
16. The Imperial Legislative Council shall have no power to interfere with the Government of India’s direction of the military affairs and the foreign and political relations of India, including the declaration of war, the making of peace and the entering into treaties.
IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
The Governor-General of India will be the head of the Government of India … [and] will have an Executive Council, half of whom shall be Indians … elected by the elected members of the Imperial Legislative Council. …
V. THE SECRETARY OF STATE IN COUNCIL
1. The Council of the Secretary of State for India should be abolished.
2. The salary of the Secretary of State should be placed on the British Estimates.
3. The Secretary of State should, as far as possible, occupy the same position in relation to the Government of India, as the Secretary of State for the Colonies does in relation to the Governments of the self-Governing Dominions.
4. The Secretary of State for India should be assisted by two permanent Under-Secretaries, one of whom should always be an Indian.
VI. INDIA AND THE EMPIRE
In any Council or other body which may be constituted or convened for the settlement … of Imperial affairs, India shall be adequately represented in like manner with the Dominions and with equal rights. … Indians should be placed on a footing of equality in respect of status and rights of citizenship with other subjects of His Majesty the King throughout the Empire.
VII. MILITARY AND OTHER MATTERS
The military and naval services of His Majesty, both in their commissioned and non-commissioned ranks, should be thrown open to Indians, and adequate provision should be made for their selection, training and instruction in India. …
[From The Report of the 31st Indian National Congress (1916), as reproduced in C. H. Philips, ed., The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947: Select Documents (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 172–173.]
Details about the life of Naidu, including her championing of Hindu–Muslim cooperation, were given in chapter 4.
The first of the two speeches excerpted below is in support of the Congress–Muslim League Pact, or Scheme of Reforms; the second was given after a communal riot in Patna in 1917, in order to encourage amity between the communities.
With regard to communal representation … I think you will find that the majority of thinking men, Hindus and Muslims, are in agreement that the principle of communal representation is not the ideal one, but in practical politics sometimes we have to go by expediency towards the path of the ideal and that is why till we are able to establish that abiding trust in each other, love and co-operation, there should be communal representation. It is [a] temporary barrier between community and community and directly trust is established. … Nobody will want separate representation but we will establish the true democracy of Indian life by saying the best men shall represent the best interests of India. … My own feeling is this … that had you not provided generously for the separate representation, it were not possible that within 5 years Mussalman brethren would have stood shoulder to shoulder with you, for, disorganized and so much behind the Hindu community they were … they began their political education later. … It was necessary for them to consolidate themselves as a unit first before they could come in a body to work side by side with their Hindu brethren. … we must support the Congress-League scheme. … It is an imperfect scheme. … If you are united, if you forget your community and think of the nation, if you forget your city and think of the province, if you forget you are a Hindu and remember the Mussalman, if you forget you are a Brahman and remember the Panchama then and then alone will India progress.
[From Verinder Grover and Ranjana Arora, eds., Great Women of Modern India (New Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications, 1993), 3:47–50.]
Centuries ago when the first Islamic army came to India, they pitched their caravans on the banks of the sacred Ganges and tempered and cooled their swords in the sacred waters. It was the baptism of the Ganges that gave the first welcome to the Islamic invaders that became the children of India as generations went by. And today, in speaking of the Hindu–Moslem Unity, we should bear in mind that historic circumstance, that historic culture, that historic evolution for which the Gangetic valley has stood in bringing about the Hindu–Muslim relationship age after age. … I wish to invoke in your hearts … a sense of responsibility. … It is only because we are ignorant that we are divided and it is the sacred mission of enlightenment to bring not the lesson of quarrel but the lesson of peace. That is the problem with which we have to deal today. … What is the meaning, what is the significance of the Hindu–Moslem Unity? There is so much misconception abroad that if a Muslim shows sympathy towards a Hindu, he becomes a traitor and if a Hindu shows sympathy towards a Mussalman he becomes an outcast. But what is the reason of this mistrust of those who stand as links between the two races? Nothing save our misreading of the entire purpose of national history. The problem of the Hindu–Muslim Unity stands like this: There are in India two communities (I will not say two races), two communities that are separated by that they consider the difference of creeds. But when you come to analyse this difference of creed you begin to find that after all, fundamentally, the teaching that came in the wake of the Muslim conquerors was the same as the teaching that arose in the great hymns in the sacred mountain regions of the Himalayas and on the sacred Ganges five thousand years ago. It means essentially the love of truth, the love of purity, the service of humanity, the search for wisdom, the great lessons of self-sacrifice, the worship of the same Transcendent Spirit, no matter whether in language it was called Allah and in another Parmeswar (applause). After all what is this antagonism between creed and creed? Antagonism is merely the asset of the ignorant. They are not the weapons of the wise, who realise that after all it is only the misunderstanding of the essential truth where in lies the difficulty in launching across that golden bridge of sympathy that brings together the two great communities whose fundamental teaching is the love of God and the service of men. And then in this great country the Moslems came to make their home not to carry spoils and to go back to their own home but to build permanently here their home and create a new generation for the enrichment of the Motherland. How can they live separate from the people of the soil? Does history say that in the past they have so lived separate? Or rather it says that once having chosen to take up their abode in this land they became the children of the soil, the very flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. … See what were the chief characteristics of the Mughal Rule. Not that the Hindus were kept at arms length, but that the Emperor Akbar took his son to Rajputana, so that the blood of the conqueror and the blood of the conquered were mixed to create a new generation of Indians in India. … Keep your separate entities, keep your separate creed, but bring to the federated India the culture of centuries to enrich with all those contributions that each has to make for the sum total, for the healthful growth of the national progress. Who says that we want in India marriage between the Hindus and the Mussalmans so that each might lose its own special characteristics? India is so complex in the problem of her civilisation, in her races and her creeds that it is impossible, that it is even very undesirable—nay, psychologically false,—were we to say that we desire a unity that means the merging of the separate races to make one kind of common life for the common weal of the country. What we want is this: that for the evolution of national life we want the Mussalmans to bring their special characteristics and so we want the Hindus to contribute theirs and considering the chivalry of the past allow no minority to suffer. We are not limiting ourselves to the contributions of the Hindu–Muslim culture alone, but we want the special contributions which the Zoroastrians and the Christians and other races … can bring us. Gentlemen, do not for a moment entertain any idea of exclusion, harbour any thought of isolation of one group from another, of one sect from another. But let each bring its own quota of special contributions as free gifts offered lovingly and generously at the feet of the great Motherland for the swelling of the national Commonwealth. … The Hindus have to bring to modern evolution of life the principal qualities of that spiritual civilization that gave to the world not merely the tone of the Upanishads, but created for the intellectual and the illiterate alike such glorious type of virtue, courage, wisdom, truth, as Ram among men and Savitri among women, that mystic genius of the Hindus, that spiritual passion, that fervour of self-abnegation, that great first realisation that the true measure of life is not the material, not the temporal, but the spiritual—that is the special contribution that the Hindu race has to make to the future evolution of India. And what of the Mussalmans? The first of the great world religions that thirteen hundred years ago laid down the first fundamental principles of Democracy was the religion of Islam. In [the] twentieth century we hear that the ideal of the future is Democracy. … The first secret of this great world-wide Democracy was laid in the desert sands of Arabia by a dreamer of the desert and it is the peculiar privilege of his spiritual children to bring to this mystic India of spiritual value that human sense of Democracy that makes the king and the beggar equal. … It implies a certain inviolable sense of justice that gives to every man his equal chance in the evolution of national life and these we want imported into our national life, assimilated into our national life which the Hindu community cannot; with its system of exclusion that have been the misinterpreted characteristic of a system that made it merely a true division of responsibility. I say the Hindu community by itself cannot evolve it because, Hindu as I am, I stand here to confess the limitation of my community. We have not mastered that fundamental equality that is the privilege of Islam. What is mutual cooperation? … We want that from the very beginning of our childhood there should be an interchange of culture. … It is by this interchange of knowledge and culture of each community from its babyhood, that we shall be able to build up not merely that kinship that is born of political expediency. …
It becomes a very simple thing to say that all men are neighbours of one another, brothers, blood ties, because they have same tears and the same laughter … so why make difference between the tillers of the soil whether he is a Muslim or a Hindu? Does he not suffer from drought, from the failure of harvest, from pestilence, from locusts? The school master, whether he be a Hindu or a Mussalman, has he not the same responsibility of creating within his hands a bond between brother and brother whether he be a Hindu or a Mussalman? Then when floods come, and famines come, and plagues come, do not all of us suffer equally? … What has the corpse of a Hindu or a Mussalman done not to deserve the same sense of honour from each of us who are equally created by God and who have been equally subject to mortality? … This is the feeling of a generous love, of brotherly love that we want to establish as a thing flawless, and in the hearts of the Hindus towards Mussal mans … of manhood that does not consider petty differences of castes and creeds … the responsible sense of cooperation in the mutual reverence for each other’s creed, mutual love for each other’s civilisation, mutual trust in your common good intention and cooperation and equal responsibilities in the evolution of your great national life of tomorrow. That is the meaning of the Hindu–Muslim Unity.
[From Grover and Arora, eds., Great Women of Modern India, 3:106–110, 112–114.]
An introduction to Tagore appears in chapter 5.
In response to a 1922 question from Kalidas Nag, a friend, writer, and occasional traveling companion, India’s poet and leading public intellectual wrote him a letter about Hindus and Muslims, and other matters. In this unique dance around the correspondent’s question, the poet testifies to what is important to him—the Sanskrit playwright Kalidasa, Indian classical music, the monsoon—and explores these before reaching the communal question, making clear that his timescale is different, that he is not a politician.
To Kalidas Nag, Santiniketan, 7 Ashadh 1359:
… Just when I was sitting at my window, humming:
My song takes its tune from the cloud
Newly risen on yon’ horizon
My thoughts are wild and restless today
Without the faintest reason …
When from across the oceans your question came: what’s the solution to India’s Hindu–Mussalman problem? It suddenly brought me to the realization that I too had my responsibilities in human sansara [life]—it was not enough to respond to the clouds with [the musical mode] meghamallara, it is also my duty to address the questions that rumble across the human history, which realization forced me to take leave of the concert of Ambubachi.12
There are two religious nations in the world fiercely turned against each other: Islam and Christianity. These are not content with following the tenets of their own faith or tending to their own flock. They feel impelled to convert all others to their own faith. You cannot interact with them on level ground of faiths—you have to embrace their religion before you can you mingle with them. However, what is commendable about Christianity is that its followers have become vehicles of modernism. The Christian mind is not frozen in a medieval matrix. Not all of their activities have to conform to religious edicts. Therefore they do not have to keep others out of their wall of religion. “European” and “Christian” are not coterminous. There is no innate contradiction in “European Buddhist” or “European Muslim.” But when a community is identified entirely by its faith, then there is no room for other traits. You cannot have a “Muslim Buddhist” or a “Muslim Christian.” That way Hindus are the same as Mussalmans—they are as walled in by their religion as the Mussalmans—only their antagonism to other religions is not active—their relationship to others is of “non-violent non-recognition.” As Hinduism is acquired at birth, and is preserved by rituals, its walls are even harder to cross. On embracing Islam, the convert can meet a Muslim as an equal but that route [of conversion] into Hinduism is narrow to the extreme. Islam does not raise barriers around itself by dietary or social rules as Hinduism does; which is why at Khilafat Movement time, while Muslims could throw open their masjids [mosques] to Hindus, Hindus could not open up their temples. Social rules are designed to help people interact with strangers—but with Hindus these are ways of keeping people away. When I began my work as zamindar, I noticed that when a Mussalman tenant had to be given a seat at the cutchery, a corner of the mattress was folded, offering him the naked floor. There is no wall harder of crossing than when an unfamiliar custom is branded as “impure.” It is the fate of India to be the meeting place of the opposites—Hindus who are liberal about theology but unyielding on ritual, and Mussalmans, who are unyielding on doctrine, but without taboos about social practices. The door of one opens on the closed door of the other. How are they going to mix? There was a time when Greeks, Scythians, Persians and others merrily entered India and mingled with the other races. But remember that was before the “Hindu” era. The “Hindu” era is one of reaction, when a deliberate attempt was made to erect an impregnable Brahmanical citadel. An attempt was made to create a wall of custom and ritual to prevent intrusion by aliens. What was forgotten was that to encase a living being within hard and sealed walls is to kill it. Anyway, after the Buddhist era, corralling such immigrant races as the Rajputs into its fold, Hinduism created with a great perseverance a wall around itself to prevent any contamination by aliens. The very essence of Hinduism is refusal and rejection. Nowhere in the world has such a web of rejection been created to seal out any scope of inter-action. This system does not work to keep Hindus and Mussalmans apart; it raises barriers between you and me who deny these barriers. This is the problem; but what is the solution? The answer is in change of minds, change of times. Just as Europe has, by its long quest for objectivity and truth, emerged from the Middle Ages into the Modern Era, the Hindu and Mussalman too will have to break out of their confines to journey into the open modern age. To turn one’s faith into an unyielding coffin, and force an entire nation to lie inside it, frozen in the past, is no way to progress, let alone intercourse. Unless we get rid of the obstacles within our own psyche, there is no possibility of freeing ourselves externally. To achieve this freedom, we need education and sadhana [spiritual practice]. We have to understand that the wing is bigger than the cage. Only then can there be the good of well-being with us. The unity of Hindu–Mussalman needs a turn of the times. But there is no need for pessimism. Other nations have through their perseverance changed their times, have emerged from a stage of the chrysalis to that of the butterfly. We too will break out of our mental blocks—if we cannot, there will be no room for us on earth.
[From Tagore, Kalantar (Calcutta: Visvabharati, 1962), 311–314. Trans. Jyotirmoy Datta.]
The Bengal Pact was an agreement made in December 1923 by C. R. Das, Congress leader, mayor of Calcutta, and leader of opposition in the Bengal Legislative Council, with Muslim leaders in Bengal, including Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who was then a supporter of Das’s Swaraj Party. It provided for giving Muslims more than 55 percent of the positions in the Calcutta Corporation and other government offices until they had a share equal to their percentage of the population. There were several other clauses that aimed at communal equality based on population and religious toleration. Approved by the Bengal Congress but rejected by the National Congress organization, it lapsed after Das’s death in 1925. At the time he was imprisoned by the government of India, Subhas Chandra Bose was the officer of the Calcutta Corporation whose duty it was to implement the pact. The pact was a high-water mark of Hindu–Muslim cooperation in Bengal politics, and foreshadowed later joint efforts in 1941 and 1947.
The following resolutions were passed at this Swaraj Party conference:
It is resolved that in order to establish real foundation of Self-Government in this province it is necessary to bring about a pact between the Hindus and the Mahomedans of Bengal dealing with the rights of each community when the foundation of Self Government is secured.
Be it resolved that:
(a) Representation in Council
Representation in the Bengal Legislative Council be on the population basis with separate electorates subject to such adjustment as may be necessary by the All-India–Hindu–Muslim Pact and by the Khilafat and the Congress.
(b) Representation in Local Bodies
Representation to local bodies to be in the proportion of 60 to 40 in every district—60 to the community which is in the majority, and 40 to the minority. Thus in a district where the Mahomedans are in majority they will get 60 per cent. Similarly where the Hindus are in majority they are to get 60 per cent, and the Mahomedans 40 [per] cent. The question as to whether there should be separate or mixed electorates is postponed for the present to ascertain the views of both communities.
(c) Government Posts
55 per cent of the Government posts should go to the Mahomedans … in the following manner:
———Fixing of tests of different classes of appointments. The Mahomedans satisfying the least test should be preferred till the above percentage is attained; and after that according to the proportion of 55 to 45 the former to the Mahomedans and the latter to the non-Mahomedans, subject to this that for the intervening years … say 20 per cent should go to the Hindus.
(d) Religious Toleration
(1) In not allowing any resolution or enactment which affects the religion of any of the different communities without the consent of 75 per cent of the elected members of that community.
(2) In not allowing music in procession before any mosque.
(3) In not interfering with cow-killing for religious sacrifices.
(4) In providing that no legislation or enactment in respect of cow-killing for food will be taken up in the Council. Endeavour should be made by members of both the communities outside the Council to bring about an understanding between the communities.
(5) In providing that cow-killing should be carried on in such a manner as not to wound the religious feeling of the Hindus.
(6) In providing for the formation every year of representative committees in every sub-division, of which half the members should be Mahomedans and half Hindus, each committee choosing its president from among themselves with power to prevent or arbitrate upon any dispute between the Hindus and Mahomedans in accordance with provision herein before stated.
B. PROGRAMME OF THE PARTY WITHIN THE COUNCIL
(1) To insist on the release of all political prisoners.
(2) To insist on the withdrawal of all repressive laws.
(3) To recommend to the Assembly for the repeal of all repressive legislation.
(4) Formulation of national demands for the province, which should be at least of effective provincial responsible Government.
(5) Vote of no-confidence on Ministers, if necessary.
(6) Reduction or refusal of salary to Ministers, if necessary.
(7) All measures proposed by the Government to be rejected or postponed till the grant of the national demand.
(8) If the Budget comes up before such grant it should be thrown out, unless … there is a change of situation which indicates an … inclination on the part of Government to concede the demands, in which case the party will meet to reconsider the situation.
(9) The party will act as a whole and the decision of the majority will be implicitly obeyed by all the members.
(10) Every member will attend unless prevented by illness or very urgent considerations.
(11) No Swarajist should accept office until the national demand is granted.
Be it further resolved that with regard to the work within the Council the whole programme is subject to such revision or modification as the All-India Swarajya–Council may think necessary.
[From H. N. Mitra, ed., The Indian Quarterly Register 1, no. 1 (Calcutta: Annual Registry Office, Jan.–March 1924): 63–64.]
An introduction to Lajpat Rai’s life appears in chapter 5.
Coming from a province with almost equal numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims, Lajpat Rai had long been concerned with their relations. He was strongly critical of Muslims, but unhappy as well with some of his fellow-Hindus.
In a series of articles in 1924, later collected and reprinted as “The Hindu–Muslim Problem,” he presented his views on how the main communities might better relate. Though insistent that separate electorates were anti-national, he also presented a plan to divide the Punjab and Bengal that foreshadowed what was to come two decades later.
I
The Hindu–Muslim problem is the problem of India. We have heard and read much of Hindu–Muslim unity. It is always a matter of controversy between the Anglo-Indian and the Nationalist. The former asserts and the latter denies the impossibility of Hindus and Muslims uniting together to form one nation. … Yet it is a fact that from 1919 to the end of 1921 Hindus and Muslims of India were fairly united. It was during this period that for the first time in the history of India a Kafir preached from the pulpit of the biggest and historically the most important and the most magnificent mosque of Northern India. It was during the same period that the Malechhas fraternised with the Hindus on the occasion of their religious festivals. It is also a fact that the amount of unity achieved in this short period, has since then melted down and for the last three years Hindus and Mussalmans have been at daggers drawn with each other to an extent never before known under British rule. … At the moment of writing, the relations between the two communities are strained almost to the breaking point. Communal riots and scuffles are of more frequent occurrence than ever before. … Even in Congress circles, in spite of much hugging and cooing, the relations between the leaders of the two communities are not free from distrust and suspicion. Hindu–Muslim unity is always put in the forefront of the Congress programme, but so far the leaders have failed to successfully grapple with the situation and find out a suitable solution. … Either they have lost influence with the masses or they are not sincere.
II
In the discussions at the Unity Conference held at Delhi one thing struck me very forcibly. That was the fact that so many of the ablest and most patriotic Muhammadan youngmen as well as a few Hindus were obsessed with the idea of “absolute rights.” Time after time it was said that the Muhammadans had an inherent right to slaughter cows and that that right could only be curtailed by their own voluntary sacrifice. … The idea of absolute rights is a fallacious one and has really no foundation in law. …
I contend that there is no such thing as an absolute right vested in any individual or in any community forming part of a nation; that all rights are relative, that no society can remain intact even for twenty-four hours on the basis of absolute rights, that the idea of absolute rights was exploded long ago, because it was found to be not only wrong in theory but pernicious in practice. … All organic relations depend upon the mutual obligations of the members composing the organism. No part of the organism has any absolute right. Firstly, all the rights of an individual are subject to the equal rights of others, which fact creates duties and obligations on the part of the different members of a society towards each other. In a well ordered social organism no one has a right to do anything which will unreasonably clash with the legal interests of any one else. Nay, in order to secure goodwill and progress, the more advanced members of a social organism have sometimes to go further and sacrifice their interests for the commonweal, or for the benefit of the other members of the community. The protection of the poor, solicitude for providing for the necessities of those who cannot look after themselves, the widows, the orphans, the blind, the lame, the aged, the minor, etc., all fall under this category.
An individual may have an absolute right to think what he wishes, but the moment it comes to the expression of the thought in speech and action, his right is hedged round by conditions and limitations. This is the legal and the constitutional aspect of the question. … It is nobler to emphasize duties rather than rights. People who insist on rights rather than duties become selfish, proud and self-centred. Those who emphasise duties, are quite the reverse. The highest development of humanity and of the spirit of service requires greater emphasis being laid on duties than on rights. That is the teaching of almost all the great religions of the world if properly understood and rightly interpreted. That is the teaching of Buddha, Christ and Gandhi. It is also the lesson of actual day to day experience. …
I would advise my young countrymen to think over this question a little more deeply … and to free themselves from the obsession of this pernicious doctrine of rights. Unless this is done, there is no hope for unity in India. We must always remember that we are a sort of polyglot nation, much less homogeneous than any of those European or Western nations who have had to fight for their freedom. Such a country can never win its freedom, or, having won freedom, can never maintain it unless the various communities composing its people are inspired more by the ideal of duties than of rights. …
III
All those who aim at creating a United India, should remember that India is a land of many faiths and many religions; that these faiths and religions, again, are divided into sections and sub-sections; that these sections and sub-sections practise numerous religious observances[,] ceremonials and rituals and that some of these rituals and observances, conflict with one another. It is impossible for any Government to guarantee to all these religions, sections and sub-sections, full and complete freedom in the matter of the observance of all their rituals and ceremonials especially when they are in conflict with one another. Some of these ceremonials and observances, moreover, are inhuman, cruel and immoral. To insist upon … a strict and full observance of all their religious rituals and ceremonials is, therefore, a clear impossibility, besides being directly opposed to the idea of a United India. The British Government, in spite of its professions of religious neutrality have, from time to time, interfered in the matter of religious practices; for example they stopped by legislation the inhuman practices of Sati and infanticide which Hindu orthodoxy contended was a part of its religion. …
Society cannot interfere with the beliefs of any one, but no progressive society can allow such practices to be carried on with impunity even in the name of religion as are revolting to the sense of humanity and morality of the vast bulk of its members. Even allowing the largest possible liberty in the matter of religious observances, no nation can for all time tolerate such practices.
… The idea of a United India demands that emphasis should be laid more on the points on which different religions agree than on the differences that divide them. The idea of a United India necessarily demands, therefore, the rationalising of religion and religious practices to the farthest extent possible. … Insistence on the observance of conflicting ceremonials has to be actively discouraged and all such ideas based on false notions of religion as increase hatred, estrange one community from another, and create barriers between different communities. …
Unfortunately for us even religious reform movements in India have in some cases taken a wrong turn. They have brought into prominence the observance of very many rites and ceremonies which do not form an integral part of the religions concerned and have nothing to do with Dharma. Communal consciousness, again, has come to be synonymous with the observance of such petty ceremonials as perpetuate differences and form a solid wall separating one community from another. The Arya Samaj, the Muhammadan reform movement and Sikh reform movement all illustrate this tendency and it cannot be denied that Mahatma Gandhi himself and the Khilafat movement,13 of which he was the strongest pillar, have also accentuated this feeling.
VIII
I am afraid Indian Muslims are more Pan-Islamic and exclusive than the Muslims of any other country on the face of the globe, and that fact alone makes the creation of a united India more difficult than would otherwise be the case. I am inclined to think that in this respect, at least, Sir Syed’s policy was sounder than that of the Khilafatists. He did not believe in a religious Khilafat … and he was opposed to the Muslims of India devoting much attention to the affairs of Turkey or other Muslim countries.
IX
What I have said about Pan-Islamism and the excess of communalism among the Mussalmans, should not be understood to imply that Hindus on their side have been quite inactive and innocent. … In their own way, Hindu revivalists have left nothing undone to create a strictly exclusive and aggressive communal feeling. Early in the eighties of the last century some of the Hindu religious leaders came to the conclusion that Hinduism was doomed unless it adopted the aggressive features of militant Islam and militant Christianity. The Arya Samaj is a kind of militant Hinduism. But the idea was by no means confined to the Arya Samaj. Swami Vivekanand and his gifted disciple Sister Nivedita, among others, were of the same mind. The articles which she wrote on aggressive Hinduism are the clearest evidence of that mentality.
It must be remembered in this connection that Western knowledge, Western thought and Western mentality took hold of the Hindu mind at a very early period of British rule. The Brahmo Samaj was the first product of it. In the early sixties the Brahmo Samaj was a non-Hindu body, and under its influence Hindu scholars, thinkers and students were becoming cosmopolitans. Some became Christians, others took to atheism and became completely westernised … The Arya Samaj movement and aggressive Hinduism was a reaction against that un-Hinduism and indifferentism. Most of the early Hindu leaders of the Indian National Congress were in this sense non-Hindus. What did Mr. S. N. Banerjea or [Bengali Congress leaders] Lal Mohan Ghosh or Ananda Mohan Bose care for Hinduism? … G. K. Gokhale was not a Hindu at all. … Thus the political nationalist movement of India was brought into existence by highminded Englishmen, enlightened and highminded Parsees, enlightened and highminded sons of Hindus (many of whom in their own mentality were either non-Hindus or indifferent Hindus) and a few enlightened and highminded Muslims. Born under these auspices, it was bound to be a movement of pure freedom. … It was, however, more a “safety-valve” than a movement of pure freedom. It was hardly three years old when its God-father, the Marquis of Dufferin [Viceroy 1884–1888] changed his mind and decided to strangle it. The best way to strangle it, he thought, was to rob it of its national character and to raise the religious and denominational bogey. The latter proved to be a Himalayan glacier, under whose weight it was bound either to perish or to be cracked so badly as to remain mangled all its life.
That Himalayan glacier was the late Sir Syed’s opposition to the Congress on denominational grounds. I do not mean to say that Sir Syed’s fears about his community were absolutely baseless, but the cry which he raised was practically the death-knell of Indian nationalism at the time. Sir Syed’s attitude towards the Indiana National Congress was influenced by the following considerations:
(a) That in India the Hindus were in a majority, and if a form of democratic Government was accepted as the political goal of India, the Muslims were bound to be in a minority.
(b) That the Hindus were both economically and educationally more advanced than the Muslims, and would monopolise much of Government influence for a long time to come.
(c) That a Hindu Raj might possibly mean the death of Islam in India, or at least a position of subservience for it. … He, therefore, favoured the idea of perpetual British rule in this country.
The founders of the Indian National Congress, on the other hand, were absolutely honest and sincere nationalists. They did not entertain any anti-Muslim intentions, but they knew that nationalism could take no notice of denominationalism. Sir Syed’s opposition, however, forced them to take some notice of it. It was by no conspiracy against the Muslims that the Hindus of that period came to occupy a large number and proportion of higher Government offices than their Muslim fellow-countrymen, and were more prominent and influential in the public life of the country. They … refused to accept communal representation in services under the Government for each community. The struggle continued for a long time, until the Congress surrendered. …
The acceptance of the principle of communal representation was a concession to religion and is the negation of nationalism. The supremacy of religion over State has thus been enthroned. Most Muslim leaders openly say that they are Muslims first and Indians afterwards, though in 1915, Mr. Mazhar-ul-Haq said from his place as President of the Muslim League that he was Indian from first to last. No one can be a true Nationalist who is not an Indian from first to last. He may be an Indian Hindu or an Indian Mussalman, but he must be an Indian all the time. A man who says he is prepared to sacrifice the freedom of India for the freedom of “Jazirat-ul-Arab” [“the Arab peninsula”] cannot be an Indian nationalist.
Leaders on both sides are emphatic that the present tension between the two communities is political and not religious. Muslims contend that the insufficiency and the unfairness of the Lucknow Pact are responsible for it. Hindus maintain that communal representation itself is at the bottom of the present trouble. Both are right in their own way. Whether the Lucknow Pact is unjust or unfair, it is certainly responsible for the Muslim demand for its extension to local bodies, government services and the educational institutions. … Practically all social relations between Hindus and Muhammadans, and Sikhs and non-Sikhs have ceased. All three communities have their separate clubs, separate organizations and separate colleges. … I am certain that religion is being used for political purposes, but I am also certain that there is a certain amount of genuine religious element in it.
X
The aggressive Hinduism preached by the Arya Samaj was not political in its conception. That it has been strengthened by political considerations cannot, however, be denied. … The principle of Shuddhi [cleansing, reconversion] has now been accepted by the Hindu Mahasabha, and I am free to confess that the idea at the back of this decision is partly political, partly communal and partly humanitarian, the latter element being more in evidence in the Shuddhi of the untouchables. …
I will now offer a few observations on how the present situation can be improved. …
It is suggested on behalf of Muslim leaders that—
(a) Communal representation with separate electorates in all the legislatures, local bodies, Universities and other official or semi-official bodies should be provided. Mr. M. A. Jinnah is the latest recruit to this party, and I really cannot understand how he calls himself a nationalist still. The euphemism that this is only tentative and that a time will come when the Muslims will be ready to give up communal representation, should deceive no one. Once you accept communal representation with separate electorates, there is no chance of its being ever abolished, without a civil war. … Communal representation with separate electorate is the most effective reply to the demand for Swaraj, and the surest way of India never getting it. I have never been able to appreciate the mentality of those who constantly talk of turning out the British and at the same time insist on communal representation with separate electorates. I really don’t understand what they mean. The second is the surest way of the first being never realized. The experience of the last three years is the most conclusive proof of it. The Muslim demand strengthens the position of anti-Swarajists both among the Hindus and the Muslims, and supplies an effective reply to the contention that India is ripe for Swaraj. Communal representation by itself is a sufficiently bad principle, destructive of, and antagonistic to, the idea of a common nationhood, but separate electorates make this vicious principle immeasurably worse. …
(b) Representation in provincial legislatures and local bodies should be on the basis of population in provinces and places where the Mussalmans are in a majority. In other provinces and places they should have “effective” minority representation.
(c) Posts and offices under Government should also be distributed on the principle stated in (b).
(d) In the provinces where the Muslims are in a minority as well as in the All-India Departments the Muslims ought to have 25 percent. to 33 percent. of the total posts.
We will take these clauses one by one, in their serial order.
The principle of clause (a) is both theoretically and practically a negation of the united nationhood. It provides for a complete division of India, as it is, into two sections: a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India. I say deliberately non-Muslim India, because all that the Muslims are anxious for, is a guarantee of their own rights. All the other communities they lump into one as non-Muslims. Let those who demand communal representation with separate electorates in all the representative institutions of the land, honestly confess that they do not believe in nationalism or in a united India. The two things are absolutely irreconcilable.
(b) The demand for proportionate representation in the Legislatures is perfectly reasonable provided the principle is accepted through and through. The plea for “effective” minority representation is, however, untenable. Mr. Jinnah has placed a special interpretation of his own on this term. … In Bengal and the Punjab, the Mussalmans are in a majority, and if this principle is accepted, they will rule over these Provinces. The Hindus in these Provinces according to the interpretation of Mr. Jinnah are an effective minority already; so they are not entitled to any special representation. But what about the Sikhs? Are they or are they not entitled to special representation? And from whose share are they to get it? From the share of the Hindus or that of the Muslims? Under no principle can they get it from the share of the Hindus. They must get it, if they must, from the Muslims’ share on the same principle on which the Muslims themselves claim it in the U. P., or the other Provinces where they are in a minority. This will interfere with the absolute majority which Muslims demand over the Hindus and Sikhs combined. Some Mussalmans realize this and contend that they will be content with a bare majority of one or two. But it is obvious that they cannot have every thing in their own way. … The Punjab … is the home of a community who were the rulers of the Province when the British took possession of it. … Under the circumstances I would suggest that a remedy should be sought by which the Muslims might get a decisive majority without trampling on the sensitiveness of the Hindus and the Sikhs. My suggestion is that the Punjab should be partitioned into two provinces, the Western Punjab with a large Muslim majority, to be a Muslim-governed Province; and the Eastern Punjab, with a large Hindu-Sikh majority, to be a non-Muslim governed Province. I do not discuss Bengal. To me it is unimaginable that the rich and highly progressive and alive Hindus of Bengal will ever work out the Pact agreed to by Mr. Das. I will make the same suggestion in their case, but if Bengal is prepared to accept Mr. Das’s Pact, I have nothing to say. It is its own look-out.
Maulana Hasrat Mohani14 has recently said that the Muslims will never agree to India’s having Dominion status under the British. What they aim at are separate Muslim States in India, united with Hindu States under a National Federal Government. He is also in favour of smaller States containing compact Hindu and Muslim populations. If communal representation with separate electorates is to be the rule, then Maulana Hasrat’s scheme as to smaller provinces seems to be the only workable proposition. Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province or the North-West Frontier, (2) Western Punjab, (3) Sindh, and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a Province, they should be similarly constituted. … This is not a united India. It means a … partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.
(c) From a national point of view, I strongly object to any communal distinction being adopted for Government service or in the Universities. Yet it cannot be denied that Muslim dissatisfaction at the present condition of things is well-founded and genuine. Hindus must make up their mind to concede to the Muslims their fair share of the loaves and fishes obtainable from Government. … What the Muslims of the Punjab (I say Muslims as distinguished from Muslim landlords, Muslim lawyers and Muslim graduates) stand in the greatest need of, is educational and economic openings. There are Muslim districts where illiteracy is more widespread than anywhere else in the Province. There are millions of Muslims who are exclusively at the mercy of their Muslim and Hindu landlords. What have the Muslim leaders done to improve their educational and economic position? Providing posts under the Government for a few educated Muslims is no remedy for the present condition. Safeguarding the interests of the few and neglecting the interests of the many is hardly a laudable thing, but that is exactly what Mian Fazl-i-Husain15 has achieved and at such tremendous cost! The Muslims all over the world have yet to learn that there are other ways of making money and thriving economically than through and by Muslim rule. Those who are doing nothing to place modern progressive ideals before the Muslims and simply emphasize ingenious dogmas, hair-splitting doctrines and reliance on Government, can hardly be called good friends of the Muslims. …
XII
In the last article I observed that Mian Fazl-i-Husain embodied, in his person, a real grievance. … If the Hindus occupy a larger number of posts under the Government than they would be entitled to on a purely numerical basis, they are not to be blamed for it. The Muslim community ought to recognise that the fault is principally their own. They did not take sufficient advantage of the educational facilities provided by the Government in the early days of the British rule. … The claim that the number of Government posts allotted to each community should be in proportion to its strength in the population, is equally absurd. … The whole thing is so ridiculous that one wonders how such a claim could be seriously put forward by men of intelligence and common-sense. …
I am free to confess that in the present state of communal feeling no Department should be monopolised by any one community or class. … I think the appointment of a properly representative Public Services Commission will be a sufficient guarantee that no community shall, in future, be improperly deprived of its due share of Government posts. I can think of no other solution which would meet the needs of the situation. When, however, Swarajya is attained, the solution will probably be simple. The Provincial Governments will have full powers to appoint their servants, and the Provinces having Muslim majorities will … automatically have a majority of Muslim Government servants. In the All-India Services, a Services Commission will continue to make appointments. … No community can economically prosper which relies too much on Government patronage. … The cream is, in any case, reserved for Europeans; then come Anglo-Indians; Indians come last of all.
As for Universities and other educational institutions, they are the last places where any communal distinction should be allowed. That will be poisoning the whole intellectual life of the nation. I can understand and appreciate special facilities being asked for classes considered backward. Give them special scholarships, open educational centres in areas largely occupied by such classes; even assign larger or special grants from public revenues for their benefit, without dislocating or injuring existing institutions. … The case is, however, different with the Professional Colleges. In their case the allocation of numbers to different communities regardless of merit would lower the standard of education and the subsequent efficiency of the successful units. These are, however, minor matters to which undue importance should not be attached.
Now to summarise the suggestions, I have made:
(1) Free your minds from the pernicious doctrine of absolute rights.
(2) Purge your politics of “religion” (dogmatic religion).
(3) Rationalise religion as much as possible, and lay emphasis only on essentials.
(4) Remove social barriers which separate and estrange one community from another.
(5) Love India above any other country in the world, and be Indians first and last.
(6) Concentrate all efforts on improving conditions at home. That does not debar you from sympathising with your fellow-religionists abroad and helping them occasionally provided that your duty to your own countrymen permits of it. In this respect follow Turkey and Egypt.
(7) Don’t fret at Shuddhi. It has come to stay.
(8) You can try Sanghathan and Tanzim,16 if you can purge them of anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu feelings, which, in my opinion, is very difficult.
(9) Have proportional representation in Legislature if you may, but do not insist on separate electorates.
(10) Divide the Punjab into two Provinces to make majority rule effective.
(11) Don’t insist on population being the rule of representation in local bodies. But if you must, you may. But there, again, do not insist on separate electorates.
(12) Have Public Service Commissions to regulate the filling of Government posts on certain general broad principles.
(13) No communal representation in Universities and educational institutions. But special facilities for backward classes may be provided with special grants from public revenues. …
[From Lala Lajpat Rai, Writings and Speeches, vol. 2: 1920–1928, ed. Vijaya Chandra Joshi (Delhi: University Publishers, 1966), 170–171, 175–179, 203–208, 210–218.]
The tradition of Hindu nationalism begun by Tilak, Aurobindo, and Lajpat Rai was continued and given a more virulent, anti-Muslim form by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966). Born a Chitpavan Brahman like Ranade, Gokhale, and Tilak, Savarkar was the son of a landowner known for both his Sanskrit scholarship and his Western-style education. Two incidents from his youth presaged his lifelong antipathy to those he considered Hinduism’s foes. At the age of ten, hearing of bloody Hindu–Muslim riots in the United Provinces, he led a gang of his schoolmates in a stone-throwing attack on the village mosque. At sixteen, his anger at the hanging of two Maharashtrian terrorists made him vow to devote his life to driving the British out of India.
On entering Fergusson College at Poona, Savarkar quickly organized a patriotic society among his fellow students. Through poems, articles, and speeches, he reminded them of India’s glorious past and the need to regain her freedom. In 1905 he arranged for a huge bonfire of foreign cloth and persuaded Tilak to speak to the crowd gathered around it. For this he was expelled from his college. With Tilak’s help, however, he secured from an Indian patriot in London a scholarship to study there, on the understanding that he would never enter government service.
From 1906 to 1910, in the guise of a student of law, the young Savarkar bearded the British lion in its den. His “New India” group learned the art of bomb-making from a Russian revolutionary in Paris, and planned the assassination of the hated Lord Curzon. One member of the group electrified London when he shot and killed an important official of the India Office and then went proudly to the gallows. Savarkar himself was arrested a few months later, but by this time he had already published his nationalistic interpretation of the 1857–1858 rebellion, The Indian War of Independence of 1857 (1909).
When the ship carrying him back to India for trial stopped at Marseilles, Savarkar created an international incident by swimming ashore and claiming asylum on French soil. The Hague International Tribunal ultimately judged his recapture by the British authorities irregular but justifiable, but by this time he had already been twice sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1911 Savarkar was transported to the Andaman Islands (India’s “Devil’s Island” in the tropical Bay of Bengal), where he found his elder brother, a renowned terrorist, already there before him.
Agitation in India secured his release from confinement in 1924, but until 1937 his movements were restricted and he was forbidden to take part in politics. Nehru, Bose, and Roy sent him congratulatory messages on his return to the political arena, and the Hindu Mahasabha (founded in 1915, and revitalized in the early 1920s), the largest Hindu communal party, elected him as their president for seven consecutive years, until failing health forced him to resign.
Intending to unite and strengthen all Hindudom, Savarkar advocated the removal of intercaste barriers, the entry of Untouchables into orthodox temples, and the reconversion of Hindus who had become Muslims or Christians. During World War II he propagated the slogan “Hinduize all politics and militarize Hindudom,” and urged Hindus to enlist in the armed forces in order to learn the arts of war.
Savarkar and Gandhi had disagreed from the time of their discussions in London in 1909 (discussions that may have helped to provoke the latter to write his famous Hind Swaraj, a pamphlet denouncing the evils of modern civilization). Savarkar now made no bones about his conviction that Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violence was “absolutely sinful.”17 As the fateful hour of independence from British rule drew near, Savarkar and the Mahasabha opposed the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan, but maintained that Bengal and the Punjab should be divided into two provinces even if there was no partition of the whole country. Gandhi’s apparent vacillation on this issue and his post-Partition fasts for the protection of India’s Muslims and for goodwill toward Pakistan infuriated many of Savarkar’s followers. Early in 1948 one of them, to avenge what he felt was Gandhi’s betrayal of the Hindu cause, felled him with three pistol shots.
The assassin, N. V. Godse (see chapter 6), although no longer a member of the Mahasabha, was still known as a devoted lieutenant of Savarkar, who consequently had to stand trial with him. Acquitted because of lack of evidence linking him to the crime itself, but too ill to lead an active life, Savarkar returned under a cloud to his home in Bombay. In the 1950s he made speeches urging military preparedness, and until the last year of his life he issued statements and wrote books and articles.
The theory of Hindu national solidarity and political dominance evolved by Savarkar continued after independence to animate organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Their appeal to patriotic, moral, and religious sentiments has given them considerable influence on the Indian political scene.
Deprived of writing materials during his days of imprisonment, Savarkar scratched on the whitewashed walls of his cell and then committed to memory the notes for his treatise on Hindutva (“Hindu-ness”). In the final portion of this work, published in 1923, he proudly cited the geographical, racial, cultural, numerical, and religious ways in which the Hindu nation is superior to all other polities.
[I]t will not be out of place to see how far the attributes, which we found to be the essentials of Hindutva, contribute toward [the] strength, cohesion, and progress of our people. Do these essentials constitute a foundation so broad, so deep, so strong, that basing upon it the Hindu people can build a future which can face and repel the attacks of all the adverse winds that blow; or does the Hindu race stand on feet of clay? …
Have they not, these Himalayas, been standing there as one whose desires are satisfied—so they seemed to the Vedic bard—so they seem … today. You take up buckets and fill your trenches with water and call it [a] moat. Behold, Varuna himself, with his one hand pushing continents aside, fills the gap by pouring seas on seas with the other! This Indian ocean … is our moat.
These are our frontier lines bringing within our reach the advantages of an inland as well as an insular country.
She is the richly endowed daughter of God—this our Motherland. Her rivers are deep and perennial. Her land is yielding to the plow and her fields are loaded with golden harvests. Her necessaries of life are few and a genial nature yields them all almost for the asking. Rich in her fauna, rich in her flora, she knows she owes it all to the immediate source of light and heat—the sun. She covets not the icy lands; blessed be they and their frozen latitudes. If heat is at times “enervating” here, cold is at times benumbing there. If cold induces manual labor, heat removes much of its very necessity. … She loves to visit her ghats and watch her boats gliding down the Ganges, on her moonlit waters. With the plow, the peacocks, the lotus, the elephant, and the Gītā, she is willing to forego, if that must be, whatever advantage the colder latitudes enjoy. She knows she cannot have all her own way. Her gardens are green and shady, her granaries well stocked, her waters crystal, her flowers scented, her fruits juicy, and her herbs healing. Her brush is dipped in the colors of dawn and her flute resonant with the music of [Krishna’s playground] Gokul. Verily Hind is the richly endowed daughter of God. …
With the exception of [the] Chinese and perhaps the Americans, no people are gifted with a land that can equal in natural strength and richness the land of Sindhustān. A country, a common home, is the first important essential of stable strong nationality; and as of all countries in the world our country can hardly be surpassed by any in its capacity to afford a soil so specially fitted for the growth of a great nation; we Hindus, whose very first article of faith is the love we bear to the common Fatherland, have in that love the strongest talismanic tie that can bind close and keep a nation firm and enthuse and enable it to accomplish things greater than ever.
The second essential of Hindutva puts the estimate of our latent powers of national cohesion and greatness yet higher. No country in the world, with the exception of China again, is peopled by a race so homogeneous, yet so ancient and yet so strong both numerically and vitally. The Americans … are decidedly left behind. Mohammedans are no race nor are the Christians. They are a religious unit, yet neither a racial nor a national one. But we Hindus, if possible, are all the three put together and live under our ancient and common roof. The numerical strength of our race is an asset that cannot be too highly prized.
And culture? The English and the Americans feel they are kith and kin because they possess a Shakespeare in common. But not only a Kalidas or a Bhas [Vyasa], but Oh Hindus! ye possess a Ramayan and a Mahabharat in common—and the Vedas! … The Hindu counts his years not by centuries but by cycles—the Yug [age] and the Kalpa [eon]—and amazed asks: “O Lord of the line of Raghu [Rama], where has the kingdom of Ayodhya gone? O Lord of the line of Yadu [Krishna], where has Mathura gone!!” He does not attempt to rouse the sense of self-importance so much as the sense of proportion, which is Truth. And that has perhaps made him last longer than Ramses and Nebuchadnezzar. … A people that had produced an unending galaxy of heroes and heroworshipers and who are conscious of having fought with and vanquished the forces whose might struck Greece and Rome, the Pharaohs and the Incas, dead, have in their history a guarantee of their future greatness more assuring than any other people on earth yet possess.
But besides culture the tie of common holyland has at times proved stronger than the chains of a Motherland. Look at the Mohamedans. Mecca to them is a sterner reality than Delhi or Agra. Some of them do not make any secret of being bound to sacrifice all India if that be to the glory of Islam or [if it] could save the city of their prophet. Look at the Jews. Neither centuries of prosperity nor sense of gratitude for the shelter they found can make them more attached or even equally attached to the several countries they inhabit. Their love is, and must necessarily be, divided between the land of their birth and the land of their prophets. If the Zionists’ dreams are ever realized—if Palestine becomes a Jewish state … it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends—they, like the Mohamedans, would naturally set the interests of their holyland above those of their Motherlands in America and Europe. … The Crusades again, attest to the wonderful influence that a common holyland exercises over peoples widely separated in race, nationality, and language, to bind and hold them together. The ideal conditions, therefore, under which a nation can attain perfect solidarity and cohesion would, other things being equal, be found in the case of those people who inhabit the land they adore, the land of whose forefathers is also the land of their Gods and Angels, of Seers and Prophets; the scenes of whose history are also the scenes of their mythology.
The Hindus are about the only people who are blessed with these ideal conditions that are at the same time incentive to national solidarity, cohesion, and greatness. … Only Arabia and Palestine—if ever the Jews can succeed in founding their state there—can be said to possess this unique advantage. But Arabia is incomparably poorer in the natural, cultural, historical, and numerical essentials of a great people; and even if the dreams of the Zionists are ever realized into a Palestine state still they too must be equally lacking in these.
England, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey proper, Persia, Japan, Afghanistan, [the] Egypt of today (for the old descendants of “Punto” and their Egypt is dead long since)—and other African states, Mexico, Peru, Chilly [Chile] (not to mention states and nations lesser than all these)—though racially more or less homogeneous, are yet less advantageously situated than we are in geographical, cultural, historical, and numerical essentials, besides lacking the unique gift of a sanctified Motherland. Of the remaining nations Russia in Europe, and the United States in America, though geographically equally well-gifted with us, are yet poorer, in almost every other requisite of nationality. China alone of the present comity of nations is almost as richly gifted with the geographical, racial, cultural … essentials as the Hindus are. Only in the possession of a common, a sacred, and a perfect language, the Sanskrit, and a sanctified Motherland, we are so far [as] the essentials that contribute to national solidarity … more fortunate.
Thus the actual essentials of Hindutva are, as this running sketch reveals, also the ideal essentials of nationality. If we would we can build on this foundation of Hindutva, a future greater than what any other people on earth can dream of—greater even than our own past; provided we are able to utilize our opportunities! For let our people remember that great combinations are the order of the day. The leagues of nations, the alliances of powers, Pan-Islamism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Ethiopism—all little beings are seeking to get themselves incorporated into greater wholes, so as to be better fitted for the struggle for existence and power. … Woe to those who have them already as their birthright and know them not; or worse, despise them! The nations of the world are desperately trying to find a place in this or that combination for aggression:—can any one of you, Oh Hindus! whether Jain or Samāji18 or Sanātani19 or Sīkh or any other subsection, afford to cut yourselves off or fall out and destroy the ancient, the natural, and the organic combination that already exists?—a combination that is bound not by any scraps of paper nor by the ties of exigencies alone, but by the ties of blood and birth and culture? Strengthen them if you can; pull down the barriers that have survived their utility, of castes and customs, of sects and sections. What of interdining? But [let] intermarriages between provinces and provinces, castes and castes, be encouraged where they do not exist. But where they already exist as between the Sīkhs and Sanātanies, Jains and Vaishnavas, Lingayats and Non-Lingayats—suicidal be the hand that tries to cut the nuptial tie. Let the minorities remember they would be cutting the very branch on which they stand. Strengthen every tie that binds you to the main organism, whether of blood or language or common festivals and feasts or culture love you bear to the common Motherland. Let this ancient and noble stream of Hindu blood flow from vein to vein … till at last the Hindu people get fused and welded into an indivisible whole, till our race gets consolidated and strong and sharp as steel. …
Thirty crores of people, with India for their basis of operation, for their Fatherland and for their Holyland … bound together by ties of a common blood and common culture can dictate their terms to the whole world. …
Equally certain it is that whenever the Hindus come to hold such a position whence they could dictate terms to the whole world—those terms cannot be very different from the terms which [the] Gītā dictates or the Buddha lays down. A Hindu is most intensely so, when he ceases to be a Hindu; and with a Kabir claims the whole earth for a Benares … or with a Tukaram exclaims: “My country? Oh brothers, the limits of the Universe—there the frontiers of my country lie.”
[From V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva, 4th ed. (Poona: S. P. Gokhale, 1949), 108–116.]
The poetic and philosophical Iqbal has been presented in chapter 5. Here, in this second set of readings from Iqbal, his political views are set forth. Iqbal’s interest in politics grew out of his concern for the future of his community. He was elected to the Punjab provincial legislature in 1926 and took part in its debates, but made no great mark as a legislator. Temperamentally, he was not suited to politics, and his real contributions in this field were in the realm of ideas. Although his thoughts on a separate state within India for Muslims aroused no immediate response, this was the first time they had been put forward from the platform of a political party.
Iqbal’s presidential address before the All-India Muslim League in Allahabad on December 29, 1930, is his most important political statement in relation to the later establishment of a separate state for the Muslims of India in those areas where they were in the majority. His argument is that a polity that makes religion a purely private matter, as in European states, dooms religion to irrelevance. Islam, on the other hand, is organically connected with the social order and in India needs an autonomous area for its full expression and development.
It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity—by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal—has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups and finally transform them into a well-defined people. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a specific ethical ideal. What I mean to say is that Muslim society, with its remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is under the pressure of the laws and institutions associated with the culture of Islam. The ideas set free by European thinking, however, are now rapidly changing the outlook of the present generation of Muslims both in India and outside India. …
The conclusion to which Europe is … driven is that religion is a private affair of the individual and has nothing to do with what is called man’s temporal life. Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam, God and the universe, spirit and matter, church and state, are organic to each other. Man is not the citizen of a profane world to be renounced in the interest of a world of spirit situated elsewhere. To Islam matter is spirit realising itself in space and time. … In the world of Islam we have a universal polity whose fundamentals are believed to have been revealed, but whose structure, owing to our legists’ want of contact with [the] modern world, stands today in need of renewed power by fresh adjustments. I do not know what will be the final fate of the national idea in the world of Islam. …
What, then, is the problem and its implications? Is religion a private affair? Would you like to see Islam, as a moral and political ideal, meeting the same fate in the world of Islam as Christianity has already met in Europe? Is it possible to retain Islam as an ethical ideal and to reject it as a polity in favor of national politics, in which a religious attitude is not permitted to play any part? This question becomes of special importance in India where the Muslims happen to be in a minority. The proposition that religion is a private individual experience is not surprising on the lips of a European. In Europe the conception of Christianity as a monastic order, renouncing the world of matter and fixing its gaze entirely on the world of spirit led, by a logical process of thought, to the view embodied in this proposition. The nature of the Prophet’s religious experience, as disclosed in the Qurʾān, however, is wholly different. It is not mere experience in the sense of a purely biological event, happening inside the experient and necessitating no reactions on his social environment. It is individual experience creative of a social order. Its immediate outcome is the fundamentals of a polity with implicit legal concepts whose civic significance cannot be belittled merely because their origin is revelational. The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other. Therefore the construction of a polity on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim. This is a matter which at the present moment directly concerns the Muslims of India. … The unity of an Indian nation, therefore, must be sought, not in the negation but in the mutual harmony and cooperation of the many. …
Events seem to be tending in the direction of some sort of internal harmony. And as far as I have been able to read the Muslim mind, I have no hesitation in declaring that if the principle that the Indian Muslim is entitled to full and free development on the lines of his own culture and tradition in his own Indian home-lands is recognised as the basis of a permanent communal settlement, he will be ready to stake his all for the freedom of India. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism. There are communalisms and communalisms. A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will toward other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religions, and social institutions of other communities. Nay, it is my duty according to the teaching of the Qurʾān, even to defend their places of worship, if need be. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and behavior and which has formed me [into] what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its culture and thereby recreating its whole past as a living factor in my present consciousness. …
Communalism in its higher aspect, then, is indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India. The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries. India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages and professing different religions. Their behavior is not at all determined by a common race-consciousness. Even the Hindus do not form a homogeneous group. The principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India without recognizing the fact of communal groups. The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified. The [1929] resolution of the All-Parties Muslim Conference at Delhi, is, to my mind, wholly inspired by this noble ideal of a harmonious whole which, instead of stifling the respective individualities of its component wholes, affords them chances of fully working out the possibilities that may be latent in them. … I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British empire or without the British empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. …
The idea need not alarm the Hindus or the British. India is the greatest Muslim country in the world. The life of Islam, as a cultural force, in this country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory. This centralisation of the most living portion of the Muslims of India, whose military and police service has, notwithstanding unfair treatment from the British, made the British rule possible in this country, will eventually solve the problem of India as well as of Asia. It will intensify their sense of responsibility and deepen their patriotic feeling. Thus possessing full opportunity of development within the body politic of India, the North-West India Muslims will prove the best defenders of India against a foreign invasion, be the invasion one of ideas or of bayonets. …
I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilize its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times.
Thus it is clear that in view of India’s infinite variety in climates, races, languages, creeds and social systems, the creation of autonomous States based on the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests, is the only possible way to secure a stable constitutional structure in India. …
In conclusion I cannot but impress upon you that the present crisis in the history of India demands complete organization and unity of will and purpose in the Muslim community. … Our disorganized condition has already confused political issues vital to the life of the community. … Is it possible for you to achieve the organic wholeness of a unified will? Yes, it is. Rise above sectional interests and private ambitions, and learn to determine the value of your individual and collective action, however directed on material ends, in the light of the ideal which you are supposed to represent. Pass from matter to spirit. Matter is diversity; spirit is light, life and unity. One lesson I have learnt from the history of Muslims. At critical moments in their history it is Islam that has saved Muslims and not vice versa. If today you focus your vision on Islam and see inspiration from the ever-vitalizing idea embodied in it, you will be only reassembling your scattered forces, regaining your lost integrity, and thereby saving yourself from total destruction. One of the profoundest verses in the Holy Qurʾān teaches us that the birth and rebirth of the whole of humanity is like the birth of a single individual. Why cannot you who, as a people, can well claim to be the first practical exponents of this superb conception of humanity, live and move and have your being as a single individual? … In the words of the Qurʾān: “Hold fast to yourself; no one who erreth can hurt you, provided you are well guided” [5:104].
[From Iqbal, “Presidential Address,” in Speeches and Statements, ed. Latif Ahmad Sherwani, 2nd ed. (Lahore: Al-Manar Academy, 1948), 3–6, 8–13, 15, 34–36.]
Toward the end of his life Iqbal became convinced that the Muslims in India were threatened with extermination. He called the endless succession of Hindu–Muslim riots a virtual civil war, which he foresaw would develop in magnitude as time progressed. Feeling that the Muslim community was unprepared for a final showdown, ill-organized and without a leader, he singled out Jinnah as the one person capable of uniting the Muslim community. In several letters to Jinnah in the 1937, Iqbal called upon him to bring together all Indian Muslims and look to the interests of the Muslim masses as well as to their elites. He believed that the Muslims needed a separate federation of Muslim provinces and a return to a purer Islam to ensure their survival and their betterment.
20th March, 1937
My dear Mr. Jinnah,
… I believe you are also aware that the new constitution has at least brought a unique opportunity to Indian Muslims for self-organisation in view of the future political developments both in India and Muslim Asia. While we are ready to co-operate with other progressive parties in the country, we must not ignore the fact that the whole future of Islam as a moral and political force in Asia rests very largely on a complete organisation of Indian Muslims. … You should immediately hold an All-India Muslim Convention in Delhi to which you should invite members of the new Provincial Assemblies as well as other prominent Muslim leaders. To this convention you must restate as clearly and as strongly as possible the political objective of the Indian Muslims as a distinct political unit in the country. It is absolutely necessary to tell the world both inside and outside India that the economic problem is not the only problem in the country. From the Muslim point of view the cultural problem is of much greater consequence to most Indian Muslims. At any rate it is not less important than the economic problem. If you could hold this convention, it would test the credentials of those Muslim legislators who have formed parties contrary to the aims and aspiration of Indian Muslims. It would further make it clear to the Hindus that no political device, however subtle, can make the Indian Muslim lose sight of his cultural entity.
[From G. Allanda, ed., Pakistan Movement: Historic Documents (Karachi: Paradise Subscription Agency, 1967), 140–141.]
28th May, 1937
My dear Mr. Jinnah,
Thank you so much for your letter. … The League will have to finally decide whether it will remain a body representing the upper classes of Indian Muslims or Muslim masses who have so far, with good reason, taken no interest in it. Personally I believe that a political organisation which gives no promise of improving the lot of the average Muslim cannot attract our masses.
Under the new constitution the higher posts go to the sons of upper classes; the smaller go to the friends or relatives of the ministers, in other matters too our political institutions have never thought of improving the lot of Muslims generally. The problem of bread is becoming more and more acute. The Muslim has begun to feel that he has been going down and down during the last 200 years. Ordinarily he believes that his poverty is due to Hindu money-lending or capitalism. The perception that equality [is] due to foreign rule has not yet fully come to him … The question therefore is: how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question. If the League can give no such promises I am sure the Muslim masses will remain indifferent to it as before. Happily there is a solution in the enforcement of the Law of Islam and its further development in the light of modern ideas. After a long and careful study of Islamic Law I have come to the conclusion that if this system of law is properly understood and applied, at least the right to subsistence is secured to everybody. But the enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam is impossible in this country without a free Muslim state or states. … I still believe this to be the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India. If such a thing is impossible in India the only other alternative is a civil war which as a matter of fact has been going on for some time in the shape of Hindu–Muslim riots. I fear that in certain parts of the country, e.g., N.W. India, Palestine may be repeated. … For Islam the acceptance of social democracy in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam. The modern problems therefore are far more easy to solve for the Muslims than for the Hindus. But as I have said above in order to make it possible for Muslim India to solve the problems it is necessary to redistribute the country and to provide one or more Muslim states with absolute majorities. Don’t you think that the time for such a demand has already arrived?
[From G. Allanda, ed., Pakistan Movement, 143–144.]
June 1st, 1937
My dear Mr. Jinnah,
Thank you so much for your letter … you are the only Muslim in India today to whom the community has a right to look up for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North-West India and perhaps to the whole of India. I tell you that we are actually living in a state of civil war which, but for the police and military, would become universal in no time. During the last few months there has been a series of Hindu–Muslim riots in India. In North-West India alone there have been at least three riots during the last three months and at least four cases of vilification of the Prophet by Hindus and Sikhs. In each of these four cases, the vilifier has been murdered. There have also been cases of burning of the Qurʾān in Sind. I have carefully studied the whole situation and believe that the real cause of these events is neither religious nor economic. It is purely political, i.e., the desire of the Sikhs and Hindus to intimidate Muslims even in the Muslim majority provinces. And the new constitution is such that even in the Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on non-Muslims. The result is that the Muslim Ministry can take no proper action and are even driven to do injustice to Muslims partly to please those on whom they depend, and partly to show that they are absolutely impartial. Thus it is clear that we have our specific reasons to reject this constitution. It seems to me that the new constitution is devised only to placate the Hindus. In the Hindu majority provinces, the Hindus have of course absolute majorities, and can ignore Muslims altogether. In Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on Hindus. I have no doubt in my mind that this constitution is calculated to do infinite harm to the Indian Muslims. Apart from this it is no solution of the economic problem which is so acute among Muslims.
The only thing that the communal award grants to Muslims is the recognition of their political existence in India. But such a recognition granted to a people whom this constitution does not and cannot help in solving their problem of poverty can be of no value to them. The Congress President has denied the political existence of Muslims in no unmistakable terms. The other Hindu political body, i.e., the Mahasabha, whom I regard as the real representative of the masses of the Hindus, has declared more than once that a united Hindu–Muslim nation is impossible in India. In these circumstances it is obvious that the only way to a peaceful India is a redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, religious and linguistic affinities. …
To my mind the new constitution with its idea of a single Indian federation is completely hopeless. A separate federation of Muslim provinces, reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are?
[From G. Allanda, ed., Pakistan Movement, 145–146.]
There has been considerable controversy over the origin and meaning of the word “Pakistan.” It was first widely used after the Lahore Resolution of 1940, when newspapers hostile to Jinnah began saying that he wanted to divide the country into “India” and “Pakistan.” Jinnah commented that neither he nor the Muslim League had invented the word, but that it had been foisted upon them by the Hindus and the British. He went on to say that he was grateful that they had done so, for he had wanted a word to cover what was being asked for in the Lahore Resolution. As he pointed out, “Some young fellows in London, who wanted a particular part of the northwest to be separated from the rest of India, coined a name, started the idea, and called a zone Pakistan.”20 One of the “young fellows” was Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a student at Cambridge who, with a group of friends, issued a manifesto in 1933 on behalf of the Muslim population of Punjab, the Northwest Frontier Province, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan in what they called a “grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and annihilation” by the Hindu majority.21
In an essay written some years later, Rahmat Ali tells how the name was chosen.
In my early youth three fundamental truths became clear to me about the future of our people and our lands. First, that such old names of our “Indian” homelands as the Sindh Valley, the Indus Valley, and North-Western India, were anachronistic and dangerous. They were anachronistic because they were the relics both of a mythology which we exploded in the 7th century a. d. [sic] and of a hegemony which we annihilated in the 8th; and they were dangerous because they made … our “Indian” homelands Hindoolands and our people Indian—which they had ceased to be at least twelve centuries ago. So, to my mind, these names were our worst enemies; for through them the ghosts of dead ages and of defunct hegemonies were still ruling us and ruining our nationhood in our own country.
Second, that in the modern world the recognition of our nationhood was impossible without a national name for our people and our “Indian” homelands—a name which would equally serve and suit after the reintegration of our “Indian” and “Asian” homelands[,] a reintegration which in my judgment was both vital and inevitable; that the absence of such a name, in the past, had proved harmful to our interests, but, in the future, would prove fatal to our existence. For, more than anything else, it would encourage the Caste Hindoos—and others … to suck into the orbit of Indianism not only our “Indian” homelands but also our “Asian” homelands—Iran, Afghanistan, and Tukharistan.
Third, that unless and until we all in our “Indian” and “Asian” homelands, now separated by the twists and turns of history and exploited by our enemies, reintegrate ourselves into one nation under a new fraternal name, none of us whether living in the “Indian” or in the “Asian” homelands could survive and thrive in the world.
The realization of these truths created in me a solemn, surging urge to invent such a name as would reflect the soul and spirit of us all, symbolize the history and hopes of us all, strengthen the national bonds of us all, and ensure the realization of the destiny of us all. That is, a name that would detach those of us who are living in our “Indian” homelands from Indian Nationalism and re-attach us to Islamic nationalism; that would sever our artificial, national and territorial bonds with India and cement our Islamic, national and territorial ties with Iran, Afghanistan, and Tukharistan; and that would meet the challenge of Indianism and British Imperialism both to us in our Indian homelands and to our brethren in Iran, Afghanistan and Tukharistan.
It had therefore to be a name born of all the elements of our life—spiritual and fraternal, moral and ethical, historical and geographical, supra-regional and supra-national. In other words, it had to be charged with an irresistible, eternal appeal to the heart and head of all our people, and possessed of elemental power to seize on our being and make us all go out crusading for the Millat’s [Muslim community’s] Mission. For nothing short of that could generate those mighty forces which alone could ensure the liberation of us all, the transformation of some of the most important parts of India and Asia, and the fulfilment of our Millat’s Mission in India and its Islands. …
I … prayed for Allah’s guidance. I did everything that could help the accomplishment of the task, and never lost faith in Divine guidance. I carried on till, at last, in His dispensation Allah showed me the light, and led me to the name “Pakistan” and to the Pak Plan, both of which are now animating the lives of our people.
So much for the invention of the name Pakistan. Now a word about its composition.
“Pakistan” is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands—”Indian” and “Asian.” That is, Punjab, Afghania (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Iran, Sindh (including Kachch and Kathiawar), Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan. It means the land of the Paks—the spiritually pure and clean. It symbolizes the religious beliefs and the ethnical stocks of our people; and it stands for all the territorial constituents of our original Fatherland. It has no other origin and no other meaning; and it does not admit of any other interpretation. Those writers who have tried to interpret it in more than one way have done so either through love of casuistry, or through ignorance of its inspiration, origin, and composition.
[Choudhary Rahmat Ali, Pakistan: The Fatherland of the Pak Nation (1947), quoted in Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Evolution of Pakistan (Lahore: All-Pakistan Legal Decisions, 1963), 28–32.]
The long and eventful life of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1875–1948) began and ended in the city of Karachi, in a predominantly Muslim area on the Arabian Sea.22 His parents had moved there from the Kathiawar Peninsula of Gujarat to the southeast, and so their eldest son shared with his chief political rival, M. K. Gandhi, a common heritage of ancestral life in that highly political peninsula. Jinnah’s father was a restless and ambitious man. Trade drew him to Karachi and enabled him to become one of that city’s leading businessmen. He sent his son Muhammad Ali to a Muslim-managed school with classes in English, had him married, then sent him to England for further education at the age of sixteen. Young Jinnah arrived in London to start his studies the year after Gandhi finished his own legal studies and left for home.
Jinnah’s legal studies in London developed his keen mind, and the parliamentary elections of 1892 aroused his fighting instincts. Dadabhai Naoroji, the elder statesman of the Congress, ran for Parliament that year in a workingman’s district in London on the Liberal ticket. When the Tory prime minister, Lord Salisbury, insulted him with a racial slur, Jinnah joined other Indian students in working for Naoroji’s campaign, which was victorious. Meanwhile, Jinnah’s mother and wife had died, and when he returned to Karachi in 1896 he found his father deep in business troubles. Rather than go into practice there, where his family had numerous friends, the young lawyer insisted on enrolling as a barrister at the Bombay High Court, where he could work his way up through his own resources. After three lean years, Jinnah’s abilities began to receive favorable attention from British officials: first the acting advocate-general, then the head of the judicial administration, and in 1903 the president of the Bombay municipality, who hired him as its attorney. Nattily dressed after the latest English fashion, he gradually became an independent, wealthy, and highly respected member of the Bombay bar. Jinnah’s upright character and forthright manner made a lasting impression on the legal community in that sophisticated city.23
Once established in his chosen profession, Jinnah began to take an interest in political matters. He joined the Moderate wing of the Congress, attended its annual sessions, and in 1906 acted as the personal secretary of Dadabhai Naoroji, Congress president for that year (see chapter 4). In 1909 the Bombay Presidency’s Muslim constituency elected him to the Imperial Legislative Council at Calcutta, where his ability and independence soon won him recognition. He now came into close contact with his fellow legislator from Bombay, G. K. Gokhale (see chapter 4), and a warm friendship grew up between the two men. Both were dedicated to gradually improving the lot of the Indian people through constitutional means. Each admired the other: Jinnah aspired to become “the Muslim Gokhale,” and Gokhale called Jinnah “the best ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity.”24
Jinnah did in fact serve as such an ambassador during the second decade of the twentieth century by joining the Muslim League in 1913 (at the suggestion of Mohamed Ali [see chapter 6]), and working in both Congress and League to bring the two bodies to agree in 1916 to a common national demand for India’s self-government within the British Empire. This represented a great change for the Muslim League, and to bring it about Jinnah persuaded Tilak, then president of the Congress, to accept the League’s principle that Muslims should continue to be protected from Hindu domination by the three major constitutional safeguards created in 1909 by the British Parliament. These were: separate seats in the provincial and central legislatures, reserved for Muslim legislators only; a somewhat greater proportion of seats than the percentage of Muslims in the total electorate; and the election of Muslim legislators by Muslims alone. This so-called communal electorate was subsequently attacked by Hindus who feared being underrepresented in the legislatures, and it remained a source of bitter controversy for the next thirty years. Jinnah’s argument for it resembled Lincoln’s defense of majority rule in his First Inaugural Address: for a democracy to function, there should be no permanent majority, but always the possibility that the minority could attract enough support to become a majority.
Jinnah’s masterful debating powers were described by Britain’s cabinet officer, Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, after their 1917 meeting: “They were followed by Jinnah, young, perfectly mannered, impressive looking, armed to the teeth with dialectics. … I was rather tired and I funked him. Chelmsford [the Viceroy] tried to argue with him, and was tied up into knots. Jinnah is a very clever man, and it is, of course, an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own country.”25
The years after the end of World War I saw the rise of Gandhi as the leader of the national movement. Jinnah, however, had no use for the new techniques of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, nor had he much liking for the defense of the prewar status of the Ottoman caliph, which Gandhi and Mohamed Ali were making the basis for Hindu–Muslim unity. The unrealistic aims of this movement, the unqualified acceptance of Gandhi’s leadership, and the confidence that the mere withdrawal of the British would enable Hindus and Muslims to settle their differences all struck Jinnah as dangerous for the future of the country.
Gandhi’s movement for achieving brotherhood between India’s two major religious communities through popular anti-government agitation did prove unrealistic. Nevertheless it displaced Jinnah from his role as mediator between the Congress and the League. Jinnah tried again in 1927 to forge an agreement on a constitutional demand, proposing that the Muslims give up their right to a separate electorate if the Congress would grant them 33 percent of the seats in the national legislature. (At that time they formed 26 percent of the inhabitants of the British-ruled provinces.) Gandhi opposed the plan and wrote, “no special legislation without a change of heart can possibly bring about organic unity,”26 and the Muslim League split over the issue, leaving Jinnah in political limbo. To add to his troubles, his second wife, a beautiful young Parsi, died at a time when the couple had had a painful separation.
In 1931 Jinnah decided to withdraw completely from India’s problems, and settled down to a lucrative law practice in London. Two years later Liaquat Ali Khan (later Pakistan’s first prime minister; see chapter 9) urged him to return to India to lead the Muslims and the Muslim League. Jinnah waited for evidence of greater support; when it was forthcoming, he sold his house in London, and in 1935 moved back to Bombay. Parliament’s enactment of a new constitution for the governing of India in that year accelerated the tempo of political life, for it enlarged the suffrage from 4 to 10 percent and made the provinces virtually self-governing. The Muslim League fared badly in the elections, however, while the Congress, led by Nehru, captured majorities in six of British India’s eleven provinces. At this point Muhammad Iqbal, whose life was nearing its end, wrote Jinnah advising him to turn the League into a body representing the Muslim masses, and to demand the creation of “a free Muslim state or states” in order to ensure the survival and development of Islamic culture and law.
From 1936 to 1946 Jinnah worked tirelessly in province after province to recruit Muslims into the League, so that it could become what it claimed to be: their sole representative. He accused the Congress of anti-Muslim activities, and declared it was a “day of deliverance” for Muslims when the Congress provincial governments resigned in 1939 (in protest against not being consulted when the viceroy declared India at war with Germany). Not until 1940 did he embrace Iqbal’s idea of a separate Muslim polity. He then had the League adopt as its goal the establishment of “independent states” in the northwestern and eastern parts of India, where Muslims formed the majority of the population.
While the entire Congress cadre remained in jail from 1942 to 1945, Jinnah continued to build and organize the Muslim League. As a result, in the central and provincial elections of 1945–1946 it won 460 out of the 533 seats reserved for Muslims. Jinnah’s case for Pakistan was now very strong, although the British, the Congress, and some Muslim religious groups remained reluctant to grant it. He now took the momentous step in mid-August 1946 of calling for Muslims to resort to “direct action” to gain their hoped-for national homeland. “This day we bid good-bye to constitutional methods,” he declared.27 His opponents accused him of unleashing a tide of blood, as killings—of Hindus and Sikhs by Muslims, of Muslims by Hindus and Sikhs—spread across the plains of eastern, northern, and northwestern India. To stop this violence, in the following year the new viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, persuaded the Congress, League, Sikh, and princely leaders to agree that India should undergo a surgical operation—partition into Hindu- and Muslim-majority areas—as soon as possible.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah assumed power at Karachi as governor-general of Pakistan on August 14, 1947. Already ill, he wore himself out trying to meet the new nation’s most pressing problems: a shortage of administrative personnel; an influx of millions of refugees into West Pakistan; a war with India over Kashmir; hunger, disease, and poverty. Amidst all these trials, the task of framing a constitution receded into the background. Unfortunately for the land he had worked so hard to see established, and for those Muslims who had hailed him as their Quaid-e Azam (the Great Leader), he died in September 1948.
At the 1928 All Parties National Convention in Calcutta, Jinnah made a strong plea for constitutional guarantees to protect the Muslim minority. At the time he was clearly hoping for unity between Hindus and Muslims, but after all but one of the resolutions he introduced on behalf of the Muslim League were voted down by large majorities, he left the convention. As he boarded the train for Delhi, he said to a Parsi friend, “This is the parting of the ways.”28
The Report of the Committee which you appointed has already been read out and placed before you. I am exceedingly sorry that the Report of the Committee is neither helpful nor fruitful in any way whatsoever. I am sure, gentlemen, that you all realize that the present moment is very critical and vital to the interest not only of the Musalmans, but to the whole of India. I think it will be recognized that it is absolutely essential to our progress that Hindu–Muslim Settlement should be reached, and that all communities should live in a friendly and harmonious spirit in this vast country of ours. … I am sure you will … consider the present situation in which we are working and struggling for freedom and record your vote in favour of [the] modifications proposed, which, I have said before, are … reasonable and … enable us to triumph in our cause.
[From The Proceedings of the All Parties National Convention (Allahabad: RafiAhmad Kidwai, Secretary, All Parties National Convention, 1929), 78–79.]
Every country struggling for freedom and desirous of establishing a democratic system of Government has had to face the problem of minorities wherever they existed and no constitution, however idealistic it may be, and however perfect from [a] theoretical point of view it may seem will ever receive the support of the minorities unless they can feel that they, as an entity, are secured under the proposed constitution and government and whether a constitution will succeed or not must necessarily depend as a matter of acid test [on] whether the minorities are in fact secure. Otherwise no proper constitution will last but result in a revolution and a civil war. …
We are here, as I understand, for the purpose of entering into [a] solemn contract and all parties who enter into it will have to work for it and fight for it together. What we want is that Hindus and Musalmans should march together until our object is obtained. … Do you want or do you not want Muslim India to go along with you? You must remember [that] the two major communities in India—I say this without the slightest disrespect to the other communities like Sikhs, Christians, and Parsis—are the Hindus and Musalmans and naturally therefore these two communities have got to be reconciled and united and made to feel that their interests are common and they are marching together for a common goal. … I am asking for this adjustment [giving Muslims one-third of the seats in the national legislature, keeping residuary powers in the provinces rather than in the central government, along with other safeguards] because I think it is the best and fair to the Musalmans. Look at the constitutional history of Canada and Egypt. The minorities are always afraid of majorities. The majorities are apt to be tyrannical and oppressive, particularly religious majorities, and the minorities therefore have a right to be absolutely secured. Was the adjustment between French Canadians and British [Canadians] arrived at on [a] population basis or on the ground of pure equity? Was the adjustment between the Coptic Christians and Musalmans in Egypt regulated by such considerations? …
If you do not settle this question today, we shall have to settle it tomorrow, but in the meantime our national interests are bound to suffer. We are all sons of this land. We have to live together. We have to work together and whatever our differences may be let us at any rate not create more bad blood. If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ but let us part as friends. I once more repeat. Believe me there is no progress for India until the Musalmans and Hindus are united and let no logic, philosophy or squabble stand in the way of our coming to a compromise and nothing will make me more happy than to see the Hindu Muslim Union.
[From The Proceedings of the All Parties National Convention, 92–95.]
The following selection is taken from Jinnah’s most famous speech, his presidential address to the annual meeting of the Muslim League at Lahore in March 1940. It is the clearest statement of “the two-nation theory,” that is, the claim that Hindus and Muslims were more than two religions—they were two nations. At the conclusion of this speech the great gathering passed what became known as the Lahore Resolution. It stated that “no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to the Muslims” unless it was recognized that “the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority … should be grouped to constitute ‘Independent States’ in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The British government and Parliament, and more so the British nation, have been for many decades past brought up and nurtured with settled notions about India’s future, based on developments in their own country which has built up the British constitution, functioning now through the Houses of Parliament and the system of cabinet. Their concept of party government functioning on political planes has become the ideal with them as the best form of government for every country, and the one-sided and powerful propaganda, which naturally appeals to the British, has led them into a serious blunder, in producing the constitution envisaged in the Government of India Act of 1935. We find that the most leading statesmen of Great Britain, saturated with these notions, have in their pronouncements seriously asserted and expressed a hope that the passage of time will harmonize the inconsistent elements of India.
A leading journal like the London Times, commenting on the Government of India Act of 1935, wrote: “Undoubtedly the differences between the Hindus and Muslims are not of religion in the strict sense of the word but also of law and culture, that they may be said, indeed, to represent two entirely distinct and separate civilizations. However, in the course of time, the superstition will die out and India will be molded into a single nation.” So, according to the London Times, the only difficulties are superstitions. These fundamental and deep-rooted differences, spiritual, economic, cultural, social, and political, have been euphemized as mere “superstitions.” But surely it is a flagrant disregard of the past history of the subcontinent of India as well as the fundamental Islamic conception of society vis-à-vis that of Hinduism to characterize them as mere “superstitions.” Notwithstanding a thousand years of close contact, nationalities, which are as divergent today as ever, cannot at any time be expected to transform themselves into one nation merely by means of subjecting them to a democratic constitution and holding them forcibly together by unnatural and artificial methods of British parliamentary statute. What the unitary government of India for one hundred fifty years had failed to achieve cannot be realized by the imposition of a central federal government…..
The problem in India is not of an intercommunal character but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such. So long as this basic and fundamental truth is not realized, any constitution that may be built will result in disaster and will prove destructive and harmful not only to the Mussalmans but to the British and Hindus also. If the British government are really in earnest and sincere to secure [the] peace and happiness of the people of this subcontinent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into “autonomous national states.” There is no reason why these states should be antagonistic to each other. On the other hand, the rivalry and the natural desire and efforts on the part of one to dominate the social order and establish political supremacy over the other in the government of the country will disappear. It will lead more towards natural good will by international pacts between them, and they can live in complete harmony with their neighbors. This will lead further to a friendly settlement all the more easily with regard to minorities by reciprocal arrangements and adjustments between Muslim India and Hindu India, which will far more adequately and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of Muslims and various other minorities.
It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of your troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions…. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state….
History has also shown us many geographical tracts, much smaller than the subcontinent of India, which otherwise might have been called one country, but which have been divided into as many states as there are nations inhabiting them…. Whereas under the plea of the unity of India and one nation, which does not exist, it is sought to pursue here the line of one central government, we know that the history of the last twelve hundred years has failed to achieve unity and has witnessed, during the ages, India always divided into Hindu India and Muslim India. The present artificial unity of India dates back only to the British conquest and is maintained by the British bayonet, but termination of the British regime, which is implicit in the recent declaration of His Majesty’s government, will be the herald of the entire break-up with worse disaster than has ever taken place during the last one thousand years under Muslims….
Muslim India cannot accept any constitution which must necessarily result in a Hindu majority government. Hindus and Muslims brought together under a democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu raj [rule]. Democracy of the kind with which the Congress High Command is enamored would mean the complete destruction of what is most precious in Islam. We have had ample experience of the working of the provincial constitutions during the last two and a half years and any repetition of such a government must lead to civil war and raising of private armies as recommended by Mr. Gandhi to [the] Hindus of Sukkur [in Sindh] when he said that they must defend themselves violently or non-violently, blow for blow….
Mussalmans are not a minority as it is commonly known and understood. One has only got to look round. Even today, according to the British map of India, four out of eleven provinces, where the Muslims dominate more or less, are functioning notwithstanding the decision of the Hindu Congress High Command to non-cooperate and prepare for civil disobedience. Mussalmans are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state. We wish to live in peace and harmony with our neighbors as a free and independent people. We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social, and political life in a way that we think best and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people. Honesty demands and the vital interests of millions of our people impose a sacred duty upon us to find an honorable and peaceful solution, which would be just and fair to all. But at the same time we cannot be moved or diverted from our purpose and objective by threats or intimidations. We must be prepared to face all difficulties and consequences, make all the sacrifices that may be required of us to achieve the goal we have set in front of us.
[From Jinnah, Some Recent Speeches and Writings, ed. Jamīl-ud-dīn Ahmad (Lahore: M. Ashraf, 1942), 1:174–180.]
In 1943 Jinnah voiced his confidence that India’s Muslims would turn the idea of Pakistan into a reality; inspired by Islam’s ideals, they would then create their own constitutional democracy. His attack on “landlords and capitalists” won the greatest applause, perhaps because Hindus were generally wealthier than Muslims.
The progress that Mussalmans, as a nation, have made, during these three years, is a remarkable fact. Never before in the history of the world has a nation rallied around a common platform and a common ideal in such a short time as the Muslims have done in this vast subcontinent. Never before has a nation, miscalled a minority, asserted itself so quickly, and so effectively. Never before has the mental outlook of a nation been unified so suddenly. Never before has the solidarity of millions of population been established and demonstrated in so limited a time and under such peculiar circumstances as are prevalent in India. Three years ago Pakistan was a resolution. Today it is an article of faith, a matter of life and death with Muslim India….
We have created a solidarity of opinion, a union of mind and thought. Let us concentrate on the uplift of our people for their educational, political, economic, social and moral well-being. Let us cooperate with and give all help to our leaders to work for our collective good. Let us make our organization stronger and put it on a thorough[ly] efficient footing…. We, the Muslims, must rely mainly upon our own inherent qualities, our own natural potentialities, our own international solidarity and our own united will to face the future.
I particularly appeal to our intelligentsia and Muslim students to come forward and rise to the occasion. Train yourselves, equip yourselves for the task that lies before us. The final victory depends upon you and is within our grasp. You have performed wonders in the past…. You are not lacking in the great qualities and virtues in comparison with the other nations. Only you have to be fully conscious of that fact and act with courage, faith and unity….
[From Jinnah, Speeches and Writings, 1:470–471.]
I have no doubt in my mind that a large body of us visualize Pakistan as people’s government. Either you seize it by force or get it by agreement. But until you get it, whether it is from a foreign nation or whether it is our own government, the question as to the constitution and the form and system of a government does not arise…. You will elect your representatives to the constitution-making body. You may not know your power, you may not know how to use it. This would be your fault. But I am sure that democracy is in our blood. It is in our marrows. Only centuries of adverse circumstances have made the circulation of that blood cold. It has got frozen and your arteries have not been functioning. But, thank God, the blood is circulating again, thanks to the Muslim League efforts. It will be a people’s government. Here I should like to give a warning to the landlords and capitalists who have flourished at our expense by a system which is so vicious, which is so wicked and which makes them so selfish that it is difficult to reason with them [Tremendous applause.] The exploitation of the masses has gone into their blood. They have forgotten the lessons of Islam. Greed and selfishness have made these people subordinate others to their interests in order to fatten themselves. It is true we are not in power today. You go anywhere to the country-side. I have visited villages. There are millions and millions of our people who hardly get one meal a day. Is this civilization? Is this the aim of Pakistan? [Cries of no, no.] Do you visualize that millions have been exploited and cannot get one meal a day? If that is the idea of Pakistan I would not have it [Cheers.] If they are wise they will have to adjust themselves to the new modern conditions of life. If they don’t, God help them [Hear, hear, renewed cheers and applause.] Therefore let us have faith in ourselves…. The constitution of Pakistan can only be framed by the Millat [the Muslim community or nation] and the people. Prepare yourselves and see that you frame a constitution which is to your heart’s desire. There is a lot of misunderstanding. A lot of mischief is created. Is it going to be an Islamic government? Is it not begging the question? Is it not a question of passing a vote of censure on yourself? The constitution and the government will be what the people will decide. The only question is that of minorities.
The minorities are entitled to get a definite assurance and ask: “Where do we stand in the Pakistan that you visualize?” That is an issue of giving a definite and clear assurance to the minorities. We have done it. We have passed a resolution that the minorities must be protected and safeguarded to the fullest extent and as I said before any civilized government will do it and ought to do it. So far as we are concerned our own history, our Prophet, have given the clearest proof that non-Muslims have been treated not only justly and fairly but generously.
[From Jinnah, Speeches and Writings, 1:506–508.]
Because of the passage of the August 1942 Congress Resolution (the “Quit India” Resolution), most Congress leaders were imprisoned for the duration of World War II. But this did not prevent the Congress and the Muslim League from making efforts to agree on a path that would pave the way to the rapid attainment of a free India. One go-between in this process in 1944 was the Congress leader C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972; usually referred to as “Rajaji”), the former Congress chief minister of Madras, from 1937 to 1939. He had disagreed with his colleagues over the Cripps Mission, and resigned from the Congress; thus he was not imprisoned with other Congressmen in 1942. So in 1943 he devised the so-called Rajaji Formula, which he sent to Gandhi for approval. Gaining a positive response from Gandhi, Rajaji wrote to Jinnah seeking his response.
According to Rajaji’s scheme, the Congress and the Muslim League would make an agreement regarding territory and jurisdiction over it, work together for an India independent of the British, and then fully implement the terms of the agreement. It provided that areas (not provinces) with an absolute Muslim majority could opt out of a united India after independence. These Muslim-majority areas would be determined by a careful survey of Punjab, Bengal, and Assam, so that a maximum number of non-Muslims would remain within the united India, and the Muslims choosing not to join this united India would form their own nation-state. Rajaji was calling for a division of India through the partition of Bengal and the Punjab. Jinnah, backed by the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League (1940), had called for a Pakistan that would include the entire provinces of Bengal, Assam, and the Punjab. Therefore, large minorities in these provinces (Hindus in Bengal, Hindus and Sikhs in the Punjab), only slightly less than half of the population of each, would be included in the League’s new nation of Pakistan, presumably against their will. Some have argued that Rajaji, an acute lawyer like Jinnah (and Gandhi), was calling Jinnah’s bluff and showing him what a real Pakistan might consist of.
8 April 1944
Here is the basis for a settlement which I discussed with Gandhiji in March, 1943, and of which he expressed full approval. He then authorised me to signify his approval of these terms should I be able to convince you of their being just and fair to all. As the Government have refused to relax any of the restrictions imposed on him to enable him to discuss or negotiate terms of any settlement, I write this to you on his behalf and hope that this will bring about a final settlement of the most unfortunate impasse we are in. You are aware of the intensity of my desire for a settlement. I was very glad when I found it possible to obtain Gandhiji’s approval of these terms. I hope that you will bestow your fullest thought to the justice and fairness of these proposals and help to terminate a condition of affairs which is steadily causing all round deterioration….
BASIS FOR SETTLEMENT
Basis for terms of settlement between the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League to which Mahatma Gandhi and Mr. Jinnah agree and which they will endeavour respectively to get the Congress and the League to approve.
(1) Subject to the terms set out below as regards the constitution for Free India, the Muslim League endorses the Indian demand for independence and will cooperate with the Congress in the formation of a provisional interim Government for the transitional period.
(2) After the termination of the war, a commission shall be appointed for demarcating contiguous districts in the north-west and east of India, wherein the Muslim population is in absolute majority. In the areas thus demarcated, a plebiscite of all the inhabitants held on the basis of adult suffrage or other practicable franchise shall ultimately decide the issue of separation from Hindustan. If the majority decide in favour of forming a sovereign State separate from Hindustan, such decision shall be given effect to, without prejudice to the right of districts on the border to choose to join either State.
(3) It will be open to all parties to advocate their points of view before the plebiscite is held.
(4) In the event of separation, mutual agreements shall be entered into for safe-guarding defence, commerce and communications and for other essential purposes.
(5) Any transfer of population shall only be on an absolutely voluntary basis.
(6) These terms shall be binding only in case of transfer by Britain of full power and responsibility for the governance of India.
[Indian Annual Register (1944) 2:129–130, reprinted in C. H. Philips, ed., The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947, 355–356.]
Upon his release from prison in 1944, Gandhi took up the cudgels and wrote to Jinnah in the same terms as Rajaji, and Jinnah responded at length. There was no meeting of the minds, as these documents make clear. They later met at Jinnah’s residence, with the Rajagopalachari formula forming the basis of their talks.
(I) MAHATMA GANDHI TO M. A. JINNAH, 24 SEPTEMBER 1944
I have your two letters of 23rd September in reply to my letters of 22nd and 23rd.
With your assistance, I am exploring the possibilities of reaching an agreement so that the claim embodied in the Muslim League resolution of Lahore may be reasonably satisfied. You must therefore have no apprehensions that the August [Quit India] resolution will stand in the way of our reaching an agreement. The resolution dealt with the question of India as against Britain and it cannot stand in the way of our settlement.
I proceed on the assumption that India is not to be regarded as two or more nations but as one family consisting of many members of whom the Muslims living in the North-West zones, i.e., Baluchistan, Sindh, North West Frontier Province and that part of the Punjab where they are in absolute majority over all the other elements and in parts of Bengal and Assam where they are in absolute majority, desire to live in separation from the rest of India.
Differing from you on the general basis I can yet recommend to the Congress and the country the acceptance of the claim for separation contained in the Muslim League Resolution of Lahore of 1940 on my basis and on the following terms:—
The areas should be demarcated by a Commission approved by the Congress and the League. The wishes of the inhabitants of the areas demarcated should be ascertained through the votes of the adult population of the areas or through some equivalent method.
If the vote is in favour of separation it shall be agreed that these areas shall form a separate state as soon as possible after India is free from foreign domination and can therefore be constituted into two sovereign Independent States. There shall be a treaty of separation which should also provide for the efficient and satisfactory administration of foreign affairs, defence, internal communications, customs, commerce and the like, which must necessarily continue to be the matters of common interest between the contracting parties.
The treaty shall also contain terms for safeguarding the rights of minorities in the two states.
Immediately on the acceptance of this agreement by the Congress and the League the two shall decide upon a common course of action for the attainment of independence of India.
The League will however be free to remain out of any direct action to which the Congress may resort and in which the League may not be willing to participate.
If you do not agree to these terms could you let me know in precise terms what you would have me to accept in terms of the Lahore Resolution and bind myself to recommend to the Congress? If you could kindly do this, I shall be able to see apart from the difference in approach what definite terms I can agree to. In your letter of 23rd September you refer to “the basis and fundamental principles embodied in the Lahore Resolution” and ask me to accept them. Surely this is unnecessary when as I feel I have accepted the concrete consequence that should follow from such acceptance.
(II) M. A. JINNAH TO MAHATMA GANDHI, 25 SEPTEMBER 1944
I am in receipt of your letter of September 24th, and I thank you for it. You have already rejected the basis and fundamental principles of the Lahore Resolution.
(1) You do not accept that the Mussalmans of India are a nation.
(2) You do not accept that the Mussalmans have an inherent right of self-determination.
(3) You do not accept that they alone are entitled to exercise this right of theirs for self-determination.
(4) You do not accept that Pakistan is composed of two zones, North-West and North-East, comprising six provinces, namely Sindh, Baluchistan, North-West Frontier Province, the Punjab, Bengal and Assam, subject to territorial adjustments that may be agreed upon, as indicated in the Lahore Resolution. The matter of demarcating and defining the territories can be taken up after the fundamentals above mentioned are accepted, and for that purpose machinery may be set up by agreement.
You do not accept the provisions embodied in the Lahore Resolution for safe-guarding the minorities, and yet in your letter under reply you say: “With your assistance, I am exploring the possibilities of reaching an agreement so that the claim embodied in the Muslim League Resolution of Lahore may be reasonably satisfied,” and proceed to say “you must therefore have no apprehensions that the August Resolution will stand in the way of our reaching an agreement.”
I have already clearly explained to you that the August resolution, so long as it stands, is a bar, for it is fundamentally opposed to the Lahore Resolution. You then proceed to say “that resolution dealt with the question of India as against Britain and it cannot stand in the way of our settlement.” I am not at present concerned with Britain, but the August Resolution, as I have already stated, is against the ideals and demands of the Muslim League. Further, there is the resolution of Jagat Narayan Lal, passed by the All-India Congress Committee in May 1942 at Allahabad, which, in express terms, lays down as follows:
“The A.I.C.C. is of opinion that any proposal to disintegrate India by giving liberty to any component state or territorial unit to secede from the Indian Union or Federation will be highly detrimental to the best interests of the people of the different states and provinces and the country as a whole and the Congress, therefore, cannot agree to any such proposal.”
These two resolutions, so long as they stand, are a complete bar to any settlement on the basis of the division of India as Pakistan and Hindustan. It is open to the Congress to revise and modify them, but you are only speaking in your individual capacity, and even in that capacity you are holding fast to the August Resolution and you have given no indication of your attitude regarding Jagat Narayan Lal’s resolution. I have repeatedly made it clear after we had discussed the Gandhi–Rajaji formula, as you maintained that, to use your own language, “Rajaji not only has not put the Lahore Resolution out of shape and mutilated it but has given it substance and form,” and proceeded to say “Indeed in view of your dislike of the Rajaji formula, I have, at any rate for the moment, put it out of my mind and I am now concentrating on the Lahore Resolution in the hope of finding a ground for mutual agreement.” When I asked for further clarification which you furnished me by your letter of September 15th, you started by saying “I have shunted the Rajaji formula and with your assistance I am applying my mind very seriously to the famous Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League,” and thence forward the Gandhi–Rajaji formula was not discussed any further, and the question of your representative character and authority, which I had pointed out from the very commencement, therefore did not arise, as you had given me the task of converting you to the fundamentals of the Lahore Resolution, and ever since we discussed the Lahore Resolution only at great length and examined the pros and cons, and finally you have rejected it. As a result of our correspondence and discussions I find that the question of the division of India as Pakistan and Hindustan is only on your lips and it does not come from your heart, and suddenly at the eleventh hour you put forward a new suggestion, consisting only of two sentences by your letter of September 22nd, saying, “I have therefore suggested a way out. Let it be a partition as between two brothers if a division there must be.” I naturally asked you what this new suggestion of yours meant and wanted you to give me rough outlines of this new idea of yours as to how and when the division is to take place and in what way it is different from the division envisaged in the Lahore Resolution, and now you have been good enough to give me your amplification, in your letter of September 24th under reply, in which you say: “Differing from you on the general basis I can yet recommend to the Congress and the country the acceptance of the claim for separation contained in the Muslim League Resolution of Lahore 1940 on my basis and on the following terms.” The terms clearly indicate that your basis is in vital conflict with and is opposed to the fundamental basis and principles of the Lahore Resolution. Now let me take your main terms:—
(a) “I proceed on the assumption that India is not to be regarded as two or more nations but as one family consisting of many members of whom the Muslims living in the North-West zones i.e., Baluchistan, Sindh, North-West Frontier Province and that part of the Punjab where they are in absolute majority over all the other elements and in parts of Bengal and Assam where they are in absolute majority, desire to live in separation from the rest of India.” If this term were accepted and given effect to, the present boundaries of these provinces would be maimed and mutilated beyond redemption and leave us only with the husk, and it is opposed to the Lahore Resolution.
(b) That even in these mutilated areas so defined, the right of self-determination will not be exercised by the Muslims but by the inhabitants of these areas so demarcated. This again is opposed to the fundamentals of the Lahore Resolution.
(c) That if the vote is in favour of separation they shall be allowed to form a separate state as soon as possible after India is free from foreign dominations, whereas we propose that we should come to a complete settlement of our own immediately, and by our united front and efforts do everything in our power to secure the freedom and independence of the peoples of India on the basis of Pakistan and Hindustan.
(d) Next you say “There shall be a treaty of separation which should also provide for the efficient and satisfactory administration of foreign affairs, defence, internal communications, customs, commerce and the like which must necessarily continue to be matters of common interests between the contracting parties.” If these vital matters are to be administered by some central authority, you do not indicate what sort of authority or machinery will be set up to administer these matters and how and to whom again that authority will be responsible. According to the Lahore Resolution, as I have already explained to you, all these matters, which are the lifeblood of any state, cannot be delegated to any central authority or government. The matter of security of the two states and the natural and mutual obligations that may arise out of physical contiguity will be for the constitution-making body of Pakistan and that of Hindustan, or other party concerned, to deal with on the footing of their being two independent states. As regards the safeguarding of the rights of minorities, I have already explained that this question of safeguarding the minorities is fully stated in the Lahore Resolution.
You will therefore see that the entire basis of your new proposal is fundamentally opposed to the Lahore Resolution…. Why not then accept the fundamentals of the Lahore Resolution and proceed to settle the details?
[Sapru Committee Report, 1945, app. V, xxi–xxv, as reprinted in C. H. Philips, ed., The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947, 356–360.]
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was formed in the early 1920s, but operated mostly underground after it was banned by the government of India. When World War II began in 1939, the CPI declared it an “imperialists’ war” between dueling empires. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the CPI declared World War II a “People’s War,” and thereafter acted openly with government approval.
During the war, one of its chief ideologues, Dr. G. D. Adhikari, following Stalin’s theory on the nationalist question (it appears that Dr. Adhikari was not well informed about actual Soviet treatment of the minorities in the Soviet Union), argued that India was a multinational nation inclusive of many nations. Each of these nations was to be allowed self-determination so that, he thought, they would come to see that it was in their interest to remain parts of one larger nation. In his view, Pakistan was a nation among many in South Asia, and was thus to be allowed self-determination. He maintained that granting self-determination, up to and including the right of secession, would allow the potential Pakistanis to come back within the fold of Indian unity and gain the ends they sought. Communist backing thus was given to the movement for a Pakistan to be formed out of the Muslim community of India. This analysis gave support on the left to the fledgling Pakistan movement, which was growing during the war while Congress leaders sat in prison. In later years, some CPI leaders regretted their adherence to these views and their unqualified support for the war effort, since this alienated them from the mainstream of Indian nationalism. After the war their general secretary, P. C. Joshi, approached Gandhi and the Congress for “reinstatement,” but was brushed off.
… Without national unity, without the broad unity of the masses—both Hindu and Muslim—freedom cannot be won, that was always axiomatic in our independence movement….
How does it come about that the leadership of a national movement which has to its credit the achievement of the largest measure of unity of the Indian people during the last 20 years or so, now stands helpless before the question of Hindu–Muslim unity? How does it happen that Gandhiji says “India indivisible” is an article of faith with him and Jinnah says “Pakistan” is an article of faith with him, and there is stalemate and gaping disunity among our people? The Indian National Congress stands and has stood consistently for the complete independence of the country and for the democratic rights and liberties of the people. In the free India of Congress conception there will be religious freedom, the protection of culture for every section of the people. Why should not the Congress programme, which visualises free and democratic India, united and indivisible, attract the Muslims? Or rather, if it was adequate for so many years to unite the Hindus and Muslims in the common struggle for freedom, why does it appear to fail in recent years? In the mass nationalist upsurge which began with 1935 and continued to rise up to 1940, the Muslim masses too were drawn into the common flood. But how did it happen that the awakened Muslim masses, especially, during the period of Congress Ministries rallied to the banner of the Muslim League which now became a powerful Muslim organization? Why did the Hindu–Muslim tension begin to rise during this period? How did it happen that the breach between the Muslim masses and the national movement seemed to widen[,] reaching its climax in the Pakistan Resolution passed by the Muslim League in March 1940? Also during this period, there has been a certain growth of Hindu Sabha influence inside the Congress. Unless we understand the peculiar nature of this accentuation of the communal problem and tension during the recent five years, we will not be able to see why the national leadership has failed to solve it, and why its failure has culminated in the bankruptcy which seeks to reverse the fundamental axiom of our national movement, viz., national unity for national freedom….
Apart from a general sharpening of Hindu–Muslim relations, there has been also a cropping-up of provincial jealousies and frictions, such as the Bengal–Behar controversy, the question of a separate Andhra province and the question of “Samyukta” [united] Karnatak and so on. The explanation is given that this is due to the competition between the bourgeoisie of these various communities and provinces for jobs and power which was brought to the surface by the new constitution. This is, of course, part of the truth. The cleavage brought about between the bourgeois sections of the various communities and provinces is only one aspect of the question. It is often stated that the masses have no communalism or provincialism. This is true in so far as the interests of the toiling masses all over the world and in the country are identical. But in actual practice, as the general national anti-imperialist upsurge spreads deeper into the masses, it finds an echo in the growing up of sectional, communal, and provincial patriotism, which may not necessarily weaken or conflict with the larger national patriotism, but which is often used by the bourgeois leadership for accentuating national disunity.
The growing communal tension … as well as provincial jealousies and frictions which arose during the election period and in the period of the Congress Ministries were therefore a distorted expression of an otherwise healthy growth, viz., the masses of the individual nationalities awakening to all-India anti-imperialist national consciousness….
Firstly, in spite of imperialist hindrances, bourgeois economic (industrial) development of our country is proceeding apace horizontally if not vertically. The level of industrialisation is not rising but the same low level of industrialisation is spreading to every nook and corner of India. As a result there is a growing competition between the bourgeoisie of the different individual nationalities. The provincial autonomy under the new constitution tended to accentuate these frictions and we have in this period the Bengali–Behari, Marathi–Karnataki, Andhra–Tamilnad questions, the Hindu–Muslim question in Bengal, in the U. P. and in the Punjab, cropping up. This is one aspect of the question—the bourgeois aspect—the disruptive aspect, which imperialism and its agents use for their policy of divide and rule….
Secondly, we have the healthier aspect of the question. Side by side with the bourgeois development, the all-India national anti-imperialist movement is spreading to every nook and corner of India and bringing the peasant masses of the most backward nationalities and communities into its vortex…. Here is the progressive aspect of the accentuation of the communal and provincial jealousies, which our growing national democratic movement itself brings to the surface. Herein lies the key to the solution of the communal conflict in its new form which our national movement has to perceive….
Here it will be asked: what has the Hindu–Muslim problem to do with this cropping up of provincial jealousies on the one hand, and the awakening of individual national consciousness? The Hindu–Muslim conflict arises out of the economic and other competition between the bourgeoisie or the upper class of the two communities while the imperialists are using the same to successfully divide the masses…. During 1936–42 when there was a general anti-imperialist mass upsurge … the Muslim masses too shared in the general anti-imperialist upsurge; but this expressed itself in the bulk of the Muslim petty-bourgeois masses going under the influence of the League. There was also a rise in the Muslim followers of the Congress but not as sharp and striking as in the case of the Muslim League…. In 1938 the Muslim League accepted the complete independence of India as its goal. The Muslim League leadership can be said to have undergone a transformation during this period. It is no longer feudal-reactionary, no longer just a willing tool of imperialism. It is now an industrial bourgeois leadership, which is no more just an adjunct of imperialism but one which plays an oppositional role vis-à-vis imperialism.
In fact, the Muslim League is to the Muslim petty-bourgeois mass what the Indian National Congress is to the Indian masses in general. This became quite clear in the imperialist phase of the war. The leadership of the Congress took to passive opposition to war and demanded recognition of complete independence and such present freedom which would give the Indian people effective power in the government of the country immediately. The Muslim League leadership too adopted the attitude of passive non-co-operation with the war and demanded Pakistan, which is complete independence to such territorial units in which the Muslims predominate. Immediately, they demanded political equality with the Congress in any settlement at the Centre or effective power at the Centre for the League, in case the Congress refused to accept the settlement. To the Muslim masses, therefore, it appears that the Muslim League leadership is fighting not only for the complete independence of India from imperialist rule but also for freedom and equality to territorial units which are predominantly Muslim and for the protection of the rights of Muslim minorities in other provinces in relation to culture, education and language. Thus the rise of the Muslim League influence cannot be regarded as a reactionary phenomenon. On the other hand, it is the expression of the growing anti-imperialist upsurge among the Muslim masses, of the growth of the individual national consciousness of the Sindhis, of Punjabi Muslims … and so on within the framework of the broader all-India nationalism….
To see nothing in the problem but religious and cultural differences, to ascribe the deadlock in Congress–Muslim League relations to some irrational, obscurantist and fanatical element in the Muslims, which Mr. Jinnah is in a position to exploit for opportunist ends, because of the presence of the British Power, is not to understand the problem at all…. But as soon as we realise that the leadership of the Muslim League is bourgeois in character and is playing an oppositional role vis-à-vis imperialism in a somewhat analogous way to the leadership of the Indian National Congress itself, as soon as we see the anti-imperialist base of the rise of the Muslim League influence, as soon as we grasp that behind the demand for Pakistan is the justified desire of the people of Muslim nationalities such as Sindhis, Baluchis, Punjabis (Muslims), [and] Pathans to build their free national life within the greater unity of the all-Indian national freedom, we at once see there is a very simple solution to the communal problem in its new phase….
It is the historic task and responsibility of the Indian National Congress, which has achieved such a large measure of national unity thus far, for achieving national freedom, to take the next forward step towards unity, which the new phase of the communal problem demands, at this most critical turning point of our nation. In uniting the various sections of the people for national freedom, that freedom itself has to be defined in terms of a programme of democratic rights and liberties. The Indian National Congress has to a large extent succeeded in putting such a programme before the nation and has achieved on the basis of that programme a very large measure of national unity…. It certainly says that in a free India there will be freedom of worship for every one and that the religious and cultural rights of minorities would be guaranteed. It pledges itself to abolish all inequalities based on caste, creed and origin (such as untouchability, etc.). But these declarations, essential as they are, for securing unity, are no longer enough.
The conception of India’s unity was never a static one. It is a living and growing reality which is developing within its womb a host of individual nationalities which lived together on the Indian soil through centuries, and are now waking to new consciousness. Unequal economic development leads to friction and conflicts between communities and different national units. The growing sweep of the All-India people’s movement tends to unite these communities and national units into one united national front for freedom…. The National Congress … has to recognise the just claim of the peoples of these individual nationalities to autonomous state existence within the framework of a free Indian union, and their right to secession from the union, if they so desired. The National Congress, of course, dimly sees that the free India of the future would be a family of a number of nationalities, each having a territorial unit to which it is attached by historic tradition as its homeland, each having its own language, culture, common economic life, etc. The division of Congress Provinces linguistically reflects this realisation. In the resolution of the Working Committee on the rejection of the Cripps proposals, this idea was expressed more explicitly. The Congress came very near to recognising the right of self-determination of such national territorial units. But in the Allahabad A.I.C.C. there was a relapse again…. The Congress virtually denied the right of self-determination to any nationality inasmuch as it refused to recognise the right of separation to any territorial unit…. Guaranteeing of autonomous state existence, with the right of political separation, to individual nationalities having their own territorial units to which they are bound by history, having a common language, culture, economic life and psychological make-up, can never lead to the vivisection of the motherland. On the other hand, by dispelling the distrust and suspicions which exist to-day among the people of the various nationalities, the Congress would be laying the foundation of a greater unity of action now and a greater unity of India visualised as a fraternal union of free nationalities, afterwards. Those who say recognition of the right of separation for individual nationalities would lead to the disintegration of the country, really lack faith in their own people. A clear-throated declaration of the type we have printed elsewhere, if made by the Congress will provide a real basis for Congress–League unity just because it clearly grants the rational kernel of the Pakistan demand. For according to it, nationalities such as Sindhis, Baluchis, Pathans and Punjabi Muslims will have the right to secede if they so desire. But it must be borne in mind that the recognition of the right of nationalities to separation, is the recognition of their equality and freedom from oppression in a free India. This would lay the basis not for separation but for [a] joint fight for freedom against the aggressors and for the creation of an Indian Union based on voluntary co-operation of free nationalities.
By taking such a position, the National Congress would be building unity … conceding straightaway what is just and right in the Pakistan demand. Wherever people of Muslim faith living together in a territorial unit, form a nationality in the sense defined above, they certainly have the right to autonomous state existence, just like the other nationalities in India, like the Andhras, Kannadis, Marathis, Bengalis, etc. Wherever there are interspersed Muslim minorities within other autonomous states, their rights regarding culture, education and language would be guaranteed…. If the Congress makes such a declaration, proclaims it as a part of its own programme of freedom, and calls upon the Muslim masses and the League to join with the Congress in a joint effort to win National Government, Jinnah’s last argument against unity would have been knocked out. He will have to agree to unite. What would result then would be a period of the most gigantic joint effort of the Indian people for the defence of this country and for their freedom, under the leadership of their National Government. Out of this joint effort of the united people of India, no separate Pakistan and no Hindudom can ever rise but a happy family of free and autonomous states of various nationalities united in an Indian Union….
To begin with it is quite clear that India was not a nation in the modern sense from times immemorial, from the days of Ashoka and Akbar. Nation building in India begins as in … all countries, with the advent of capitalism. This takes place in India with the British conquest….
Our nineteenth and early twentieth century liberal forefathers thought that the British conquest had laid the basis for the unification of India into a single nation and that the process had begun….
This one nation–one language idea, draped in Hindu imagery, has been carried over from the past into the consciousness of our modern nationalist movement. It persists even today at a time when the reality of our national development has become quite different; at a time when this development is taking the form more and more clearly of a multi-national pattern….
Each of these areas is now having its own Chamber of Commerce—for instance, Andhra, Karnatak, Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab, etc. What does this show? It shows that the indigenous bourgeoisie in each area is attempting to consolidate its own market in its own homeland. Besides, in each of these areas there is development of their own language, culture and literature. Not only this; in some of these areas where one nation has been cut up into different provinces, the demand for unification of the nation into a single province has been put forward as a democratic demand. As mentioned above there is the demand for Samyukta Karnatak, for separation of Andhra, for united Maharashtra. The demand for Pakistan … [in] its progressive essence, is in reality the demand for the self-determination and separation of the areas of Muslim nationalities of the Punjab, Pathans, Sind, Baluchistan and of the eastern provinces of Bengal…..
Thus the demand for self-determination of the nationalities has to be looked upon as a just demand. The essence of this demand is equality and freedom from oppression. To refuse this demand means to sanction national inequality and oppression.
To the Congress patriot … We have to put before him a picture of a multinational India in which the problem of Indian unity is solved in a higher and more lasting manner. We have to show him concretely that we Communists are not dividers, but unifiers; that our solution leads to a higher unity on a higher plane, a unity the like of which India has not seen in her history….
Our solution should neither lead to hair-splitting ethnographic discussions on the one hand, nor should it be a mere fig-leaf to trick the Muslim peoples into unity!
Take Baluchistan. The Baluchis who are Muslims, speaking the Baluchi language, form 98–99% of the population of Baluchistan and the State of Kalat. They form a distinct nationality….
In the Punjab, the Muslims of Western Punjab (beyond the River Sutlej) bear the distinct impress of a nationality with a contiguous territory, language, culture, economic life and psychological make-up. These Western districts have a Muslim population of over 60% on an average, in many cases this percentage exceeds 70 or 80. But the question is not one of religion or of numerical preponderance. The dominant impress of the particular nationality is there on the life of this whole region.
This is why we grant the right of self-determination to this Muslim nationality of Western Punjab. The Sikhs and the Hindus in the eastern districts of the Punjab can easily come to a settlement with Muslims of the western districts on the basis of self-determination and guarantee of cultural rights. They can thus form a united autonomous Punjab, with the right to secede….
Then comes the question of Bengal. Firstly, the Bengalis form a distinct nationality and so should be given the right of self-determination. There is much more in common between the Bengali Hindu and the Bengali Muslim than between the Bengali Muslim and say, the Pathan. But in this case over and above this fact, Eastern Bengal forms a special problem. Here generally speaking there is a Muslim population of more than 60%. Within the framework of a common nationality, the Muslim peasantry of Eastern Bengal has a distinct cultural complex of its own which has made its impress on Eastern Bengal as a separate entity. We have to recognise this. In the case of nationalities too, there are such things as transitional forms, and we have to recognise in Eastern Bengal precisely such a transitional stage of development…. The solution put forward in our Party resolution, on the one hand, enables the peasantry of East Bengal to share and enrich the common national heritage of Bengal; on the other hand, it enables us to unite them and to convince them that they would be better off if they remained within the Bengali State. It satisfies their urge and by this very means, paves the way for their remaining inside the Bengali state…. The Muslims in the other provinces (including Eastern Punjab) form interspersed minorities … the guarantee of cultural rights, etc., is sufficient.
[From G. D. Adhikari, Pakistan and Indian National Unity (Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1943), 1–9, 34–36, 38–39, 44–46, compiled from articles published in People’s War, Aug. 1942.]
As a congressman from a Muslim-majority province, Subhas Bose (see chapter 6 for background) was constantly reaching out to the Muslims inside and outside the Muslim League. He opposed the division of political India on the basis of religion, and he wanted congressmen to work to bring the Hindu Mahasabha as well as the Muslim League closer to Congress platforms. He and the Bengal Congress tried such measures during the late 1930s and early 1940s. From 1941 to 1945, while he was outside of India searching for military and political aid from the Axis powers to help liberate India, Subhas Bose commented on political developments within India. His views were broadcast from Europe, and later from Southeast Asia. As one fervently devoted to the unity of India, he was filled with dismay as the Rajaji formula was put forward, with Gandhi’s apparent agreement. He wanted no concessions made to the Muslim League about Pakistan.
This first selection addresses women’s role in the independence struggle, from the Rani of Jhansi in 1857 (see chapter 2) to 1943 and the formation within the Indian National Army of a women’s regiment named in her honor. It comes from a speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the training camp of volunteers for the Rani of Jhansi Regiment at Singapore on October 22, 1943.
Sisters and Brothers—The opening of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment Training Camp … is a very important landmark in the progress of our movement in East Asia…. Ours is not a merely political movement. We are … engaged in the great task of regenerating our Nation…. It is … in the fitness of things that there should be a stir of New Life among our womenfolk.
Our past has been a great and glorious one. India could not have produced a heroine like the Rani of Jhansi, if she did not have a glorious tradition…. The greatness of Indian womanhood had its roots in those early days when India had its Sanskrit culture. The same India, which produced great women in the past also produced the Rani of Jhansi at a grave hour in India’s history and today while we are facing the gravest hour in our history, I have confidence that Indian womanhood will not fail to rise to the occasion. If for the war of independence of Jhansi, India had to produce, and it did produce, a Lakshmi Bai, today for the war of independence of the whole of India to liberate 38 crores of Indians, India has to produce and shall produce thousands of Ranis of Jhansi.
In the same way as we have figures like Maitreyi in India’s ancient days, we have the inspiring examples of Ahalyabai of Maharashtra, Rani Bhawani of Bengal, Razya Begum and Noor Jehan, who were shining [female] administrators, in recent historic times prior to British rule in India. 29 I have every confidence in the fertility of the Indian soil. I am confident that India, as in the past, will also produce the best flowers of Indian womanhood.
When in 1921 a new political life started in India, thousands, nay lakhs, of our sisters also joined the movement and came forward to make sacrifices. In those days it was a great thing to go to prisons. Our Indian brothers and sisters got ready to undergo the ordeal of prison life…. Joining the Civil Disobedience Movement then meant willingness to face lathi charges and gun-fire and the Indians—not only men but also women—got ready to face lathi charges and gun-fire. I cannot forget an incident in Calcutta when we held a procession against the orders of the Government and when the police tried to break the procession by lathi charge, some of our sisters made a cordon around us (coming between us and the police) without flinching to face lathi charges. Thus, I have witnessed, while in India, how the spirit and determination of our sisters have been growing stage by stage.
Not only in the history of the Passive Resistance Movement but in the history of the Revolutionary Party also, we have the examples of our brave sisters who have played a noble part. I know of many sisters who became daring revolutionaries. If one type of courage was necessary for passive resistance, another and more active courage is necessary for revolutionary efforts, and in this too, I found that our sisters were not wanting. In 1931, an English Magistrate was shot dead by two girls; the age of one was 16, the age of the other was 17. In India, even ordinary men will shudder before Magistrates, but then two young sisters bravely went to the house of the Magistrate and fired at him….
Since 1928, I have been taking interest in women’s organizations in India and I found that, given the opportunity, our sisters could rise to any occasion. There was one Rashtra Mahila Sangh of ladies in Bengal, which did splendid work. In December 1928, a volunteer corps of 500 women was formed which was not only run on sound lines but their parades and their discipline gave us great hopes … that, given the impetus and opportunity, Indian women could perform duties entrusted to them in a befitting manner…. The way our sisters were progressing was remarkable.
And so when I began to undertake the task of guiding the Indian Independence Movement, I felt that our sisters should also be given the opportunity to serve India at this grave emergency. I consulted many, and I was told by some that though to raise a women’s regiment might be possible in India, it would be an impossible task in East Asia. What they said did not affect my conviction and my determination. And today, you have seen, before your own eyes, what our sisters have accomplished….
I may at this juncture say a few words about the Rani of Jhansi. When the Rani of Jhansi started her fight, her age was only twenty. You can easily imagine what it would have been for a girl of twenty, riding a horse, and wielding her sword in open battle. You can easily realize what courage and spirit she must have had; the English Commander who fought against her said, “She was the best and bravest of the rebels.” He made this admission because Jhansi Rani’s bravery was something which he could not hide for he himself had to fight against her. First, she fought from the Jhansi Fort, and when the Fort was besieged, she escaped with a party to Kalpi…. [When] she had to retreat from this battlefront, she made an alliance with Tantia Topi, attacked and captured Gwalior Fort[,] … continued the battle and in this … great battle, she died fighting…. She died but her spirit can never die. India can once again produce Jhansi Ranis and march on to victory.
156 of our sisters are going to start their training in the camp, which is being opened today. But I hope that their number at Syonan will reach 1000 very soon. Training Camps for women have also been started in Thailand and Burma, but at Syonan, we have the Central Camp, and I feel that in this Central Camp we should at least have one thousand potential Ranis of Jhansi.
You have just now heard the brave words of the Commandant…. She expressed their determination to work ceaselessly … to get prepared for the onward March to Delhi. I feel joyous at hearing … “On to Delhi” from our sisters as I have been hearing it from our brothers.
[From “The Rani of Jhansi Regiment,” in Suhbha Chandra Bose, Chalo Delhi: Writings and Speeches, 1943–1945, ed. Sisir K. Bose and Sugaata Bose (Calcutta: Netaji Research Bureau, 2007), 124–127.]
This comment on Gandhi’s misguided (as Bose felt) attempt to come to some accommodation with Jinnah was broadcast from somewhere in Burma on September 12, 1944. It embodies his analysis of the potential implications of the Rajaji formula, and of the result to which Gandhi’s talks with Jinnah would lead.
Friends and Countrymen,
I want to talk to you today about the Indian situation. You are all aware that Gandhiji and Mr. Jinnah are discussing the Hindu–Muslim question in Bombay and that Gandhiji is prepared to come to an agreement with the League even if it means conceding the League demand of Pakistan. I know that you are all very anxious to know what we Indians abroad think about Gandhiji’s attempt to pacify the League. It is clear that Gandhiji and other Congress leaders wish to compromise with Britain after settling with the League. We must act instantly, if we are to prevent this. We Indians in East Asia are today fighting for a free and united India. We are resolved to liberate our motherland, and we are confident that we shall ultimately succeed. However long and bitter the struggle, we are convinced that truth and justice will finally triumph, and that our struggle for India’s liberation will be successful. Therefore, we shall never be a party to any compromise with Britain. The very idea of a compromise with the British is repugnant to us; it will, we very strongly feel, mean the perpetuation of our slavery. Friends, we have resolved to create a united and free India; therefore, we shall oppose all attempts to divide her and cut her up into bits. Ireland and Palestine have taught us a lesson. We have realized that to divide a country will ruin her economically, culturally and politically…. We can easily solve the minority’s problem once we are free from foreign domination….
Personally, I have great respect for Mr. Jinnah…. But, I vehemently oppose the Pakistan scheme for the vivisection of our motherland.
During the first three years of the present war the Anglo-Americans have suffered one reverse after another. But they never thought of capitulation or surrender. They fought on with the hope that sooner or later their luck would turn, and their hope was justified. They have achieved many victories, but that will not make them slacken their war effort, nor does it mean that our allies will slacken their efforts or surrender. I suspect that there are some in India who believe that this is possible. They have been duped by the barrage of propaganda let loose on India and the world by the Anglo-Americans….
We should not compromise with the British thinking that now they are winning because then it will be impossible to liberate our motherland. The agreement between the League and the Congress will be the forerunner of a compromise with Britain. If this should happen, India will remain a slave country forever. As long as the Congress and Muslim League are separated, there will be no compromise with the British. That is why the Congressmen who want to come to a compromise with Britain have decided to swallow the bitter pill of Pakistan. I wish to remind both the Congress and Muslim League leaders that even if there is an agreement between these two parties regarding the Pakistan issue, Britain will not grant freedom to India. They have already proved this by saying that the interests of the minorities and the princes should be safeguarded. Those who believe that a compromise between the Muslim League and the Congress will persuade Britain to grant India freedom are only deceiving themselves. That being so, I fail to see the necessity for rapprochement between the League and the Congress. I am sure that even if Pakistan is conceded, it will not solve our problem. The League will never fight the British as we do. All that it wants is the division of India into Hindu and Muslim States. There will be four Muslim States, which will remain under British influence. So, instead of a single slave India, we shall have four independent slave Muslim States siding with and abetting Britain. The British will ignore the Congress–League agreement, if it is against their interest in India. They will not relinquish their hold on India. I ask the millions of Muslim young men … “Will you be a party to the vivisection of your motherland? What will your status be in a divided India?” Therefore, my friends, you must remember that if you want freedom you must fight for it…. There should be no compromise with Britain. Our divine motherland shall not be cut up.
Inquilab Zindabad [Long Live Revolution!]! Azad Hind Zindabad!
[From “On the Gandhi–Jinnah Meeting,” in Suhbha Chandra Bose, Chalo Delhi, 266–268.]
The Cabinet Mission Plan is discussed in the introduction to this chapter. Although Maulana Azad later wrote that this was the plan that should have been made to work, others, like historian S. R. Mehrotra, have argued that it was an unworkable plan, and thus—happily for India’s future, he felt—was doomed to fall apart. 30
The text of the final plan is presented here.
1. On the 15th March last, just before the despatch of the Cabinet Mission to India, Mr. Attlee, the British Prime Minister, used these words:—
“My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavours to help her to attain her freedom as speedily and fully as possible. What form of Government is to replace the present régime is for India to decide; but our desire is to help her to set up forthwith the machinery for making that decision….
“I hope that the Indian people may elect to remain within the British Commonwealth. I am certain that she will find great advantages in doing so…. If she does so elect, it must be by her own free will. The British Commonwealth and Empire is not bound together by chains of external compulsion. It is a free association of free peoples. If, on the other hand, she elects for independence, in our view she has a right to do so. It will be for us to help to make the transition as smooth and easy as possible.”
2. Charged in these historic words, we—the Cabinet Ministers and the Viceroy—have done our utmost to assist the two main political parties to reach agreement upon the fundamental issue of the unity or division of India. After prolonged discussions in New Delhi we succeeded in bringing the Congress and the Muslim League together in conference at Simla. There was a full exchange of views and both parties were prepared to make considerable concessions in order to try to reach a settlement, but it ultimately proved impossible to close the remainder of the gap between the parties and so no agreement could be concluded. Since no agreement has been reached, we feel that it is our duty to put forward what we consider are the best arrangements possible to ensure a speedy setting up of the new constitution. This statement is made with the full approval of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom.
3. We have accordingly decided that immediate arrangements should be made whereby Indians may decide the future constitution of India, and an interim Government may be set up at once to carry on the administration of British India until such time as a new constitution can be brought into being. We have endeavoured to be just to the smaller as well as to the larger sections of the people; and to recommend a solution which will lead to a practicable way of governing the India of the future, and will give a sound basis for defence and a good opportunity for progress in the social, political and economic field.
4. It is not intended in this statement to review the voluminous evidence which has been submitted to the Mission; but it is right that we should state that it has shown an almost universal desire, outside the supporters of the Muslim League, for the unity of India.
5. This consideration did not, however, deter us from examining closely and impartially the possibility of a partition of India; since we were greatly impressed by the very genuine and acute anxiety of the Muslims lest they should find themselves subjected to a perpetual Hindu-majority rule. This feeling has become so strong and widespread amongst the Muslims that it cannot be allayed by mere paper safeguards. If there is to be internal peace in India it must be secured by measures which will assure to the Muslims a control in all matters vital to their culture, religion, and economic or other interests.
6. We therefore examined in the first instance the question of a separate and fully independent sovereign state of Pakistan as claimed by the Muslim League. Such a Pakistan would comprise two areas: one in the North-West consisting of the provinces of the Punjab, Sind, North-West Frontier, and British Baluchistan; the other in the North-East consisting of the provinces of Bengal and Assam. The League were prepared to consider adjustment of boundaries at a later stage, but insisted that the principle of Pakistan should first be acknowledged. The argument for a separate state of Pakistan was based, first, upon the right of the Muslim majority to decide their method of government according to their wishes, and, secondly, upon the necessity to include substantial areas in which Muslims are in a minority, in order to make Pakistan administratively and economically workable.
The size of the non-Muslim minorities in a Pakistan comprising the whole of the six provinces enumerated above would be very considerable as the following figures show:—
