Sunday, February 14, 2010

Partition of India

Partition violence and games

The British, Jinna and the Muslim League are to blame for the partition, as it emerges from the following collection of info excerpts.

Here is a recent report of possible shady dealings between the British and Jinnah:

Thinking Aloud

Jinnah was a creation of the British
By Dr Jay Dubashi

The British started looking for a man to suit their requirements. And zeroed on Jinnah.
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Several papers about financial transaction between the British and Jinnah, which had remained sealed until 1995, were released a few years ago and are now available in British Library in London. According to Muzaffar Husein, a reputed journalist and columnist who has specialised on Pakistan and Muslim affairs in India, has now written an article in which he says, on the basis of papers in the British Library, that the British were secretly paying Jinnah Rs 30 lakh a year (or about 225,000 pounds sterling) from 1935 onwards. The British have always been in the habit of bribing Indian politicians with cash—the latést example, along with Jinnah, being comrade MN Roy, the so-called radical humanist who was paid Rs 18,000 a month during the Second World War through his trade unions.

Rs 30 lakh a year is equivalent to Rs 90 crore a year at today’s prices, and amount to Rs 1,000 crore during the twelve years between 1935 and 1947 during which the payment was made. This was the amount collected by Jinnah & Co. to work against India and to divide India to suit the purposes of the British. Mr Muzaffir Husein’s article appears in Saamana, dated September 21, 2009. Saamana is a Marathi daily published from Mumbai.
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In fact, Pakistan is not a country any more and is referred to as Af-Pak, as if it was a tank regiment, not a nation. In fact, Pakistan is not so much a country as a mess. What do you expect for a measly 30 lakh a year!


Here is a flashback Time archive report from Aug. 26, 1946 (about a year before the partition):

INDIA

Monday, Aug. 26, 1946

India suffered the biggest Moslem-Hindu riot in its history. Moslem League Boss Mohamed Ali Jinnah had picked the 18th day of Ramadan for "Direct Action Day" against Britain's plan for Indian independence (which does not satisfy the Moslems' old demand for a separate Pakistan). Though direct, the action was supposed to be peaceful. But before the disastrous day was over, blood soaked the melting asphalt of sweltering Calcutta's streets.

Rioting Moslems went after Hindus with guns, knives and clubs, looted shops, stoned newspaper offices, set fire to Calcutta's British business district. Hindus retaliated by firing Moslem mosques and miles of Moslem slums. Thousands of homeless families roamed the city in search of safety and food (most markets had been pilfered or closed). Police blotters were filled with stories of women raped, mutilated and burned alive. Indian police, backed by British Spitfire scouting planes and armored cars, battled mobs of both factions. Cried Hindu Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (who is trying to form an interim government despite the Moslems' refusal to enter it): "Either direct action knocks the Government over, or the Government knocks direct action over."

By the 21st day of Ramadan, direct action had killed some 3,000 people and wounded thousands more. Said one weary police officer: "All we can do is move the bodies to one side of the street." Vultures tore into the rapidly putrefying corpses (among them, the bodies of many women & children).

Like other Indian leaders, Jinnah denounced the "fratricidal war." But most observers wondered how Jinnah could fail to know what would happen when he called for "direct action." Shortly before the riots broke out, his own news agency (Orient Press) reported that Jinnah, anticipating violence, was sleeping on the floor these nights—to toughen up for a possible sojourn in jail.


A seemingly good description of Patel's thought process at the wiki paints a picture of what happened:

Sardar Patel

In the elections, the Congress won a large majority of the elected seats, dominating the Hindu electorate. But the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah won a large majority of Muslim electorate seats. The League had resolved in 1940 to demand Pakistan—an independent state for Muslims—and was a fierce critic of the Congress. The Congress formed governments in all provinces save Sindh, Punjab and Bengal, where it entered into coalitions with other parties.

Cabinet mission and partition
See also: Partition of India

When the British mission proposed two plans for transfer of power, there was considerable opposition within the Congress to both. The plan of 16 May 1946 proposed a loose federation with extensive provincial autonomy, and the "grouping" of provinces based on religious-majority. The plan of 16 June 1946 proposed the partition of India on religious lines, with over 600 princely states free to choose between independence or accession to either dominion. The League approved both plans, while the Congress flatly rejected the 16 June proposal. Gandhi criticised the 16 May proposal as being inherently divisive, but Patel, realizing that rejecting the proposal would mean that only the League would be invited to form a government, lobbied the Congress Working Committee hard to give its assent to the 16 May proposal. Patel engaged the British envoys Sir Stafford Cripps and Lord Pethick-Lawrence and obtained an assurance that the "grouping" clause would not be given practical force, Patel converted Nehru, Rajendra Prasad and Rajagopalachari to accept the plan. When the League retracted its approval of the 16 May plan, the viceroy Lord Wavell invited the Congress to form the government. Under Nehru, who was styled the "Vice President of the Viceroy's Executive Council," Patel took charge of the departments of home affairs and information and broadcasting. He moved into a government house on 1, Aurangzeb Road in Delhi—this would be his residence till his death in 1950.

Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the first Congress leaders to accept the partition of India as a solution to the rising Muslim separatist movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He had been outraged by Jinnah's Direct Action campaign, which had provoked communal violence across India and by the viceroy's vetoes of his home department's plans to stop the violence on the grounds of constitutionality. Patel severely criticised the viceroy's induction of League ministers into the government, and the revalidation of the grouping scheme by the British without Congress approval. Although further outraged at the League's boycott of the assembly and non-acceptance of the plan of 16 May despite entering government, he was also aware that Jinnah did enjoy popular support amongst Muslims, and that an open conflict between him and the nationalists could degenerate into a Hindu-Muslim civil war of disastrous consequences


Had the Viceroy not vetoed Patel's plan to stop the communal violence being stirred by Jinnah, the violence would have been cut short, thus taking the air out of separatist movement to break up India, most likely keeping it intact.