Asim Roy, High Politics

The High Politics of India's Partition: The Revisionist Perspective
Author(s): Asim Roy

Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1990), pp. 385-408
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/312661
Accessed: 30-08-2015 21:27 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Asian Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sun, 30 Aug 2015 21:27:11 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Modern Asian Studies, 24, 2 (1990), pp. 385-415. Printed in Great Britain.
Reviews
TheHigh Politicsof India'sPartition:
TheRevisionistPerspective
A real need for revaluation of the high politics of India's partition has been
boldly underscored by some recent developments. One of these is the most
valuable revisionist contribution of Ayesha Jalal of the University of Cam-
bridge.1 Whether or not the centenary years for the Indian National Congress
[henceforth the Congress] witnessed any significant publications on the
Congress politics, two major studies in the politics of the All-India Muslim
League [henceforth the League], its 'Great Leader' (Quaid-i Azam), Muham-
mad AliJinnah, and the partition have come down to us in quick succession:
I984 saw the publication of Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan,2 and the
following year received Ayesha Jalal's, as mentioned above. The importance
of these studies does not merely consist in the wide polarity of their approaches
and views. Much greater significance is attached to the fact that their sharp
difference underlines a strong and long-felt need for questioning some of the
great old assumptions and myths enshrined in the orthodox historiography of
British India's partition, as discussed below.
February 1988 saw the beginning of a series of developments, focusing on
the politics of partition, which stemmed from the much expected disclosure of
the thirty pages of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's book3 left sealed for thirty
years, and due to be released at the time. The delayed public disclosure of the
material in early November 1988, due to some legal tangle, fuelled public
curiosity and speculations about the politics of partition.4 The contents of the
excised portion, though it appeared disappointing to some for not making
startling revelations,5 deviates vitally from the book at least in one major
respect. In this section, the release of which almost coincides with the birth
centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru, Azad points his finger in a much more
determined manner at the former's responsibility for the partition. He claims
to have initiated the move for Nehru's succession as the Congress president in
I946, and regrets his decision as a 'blunder' of 'himalayan' proportion. He
writes:
i A.
Jalal, TheSole Spokesman.Jinnah, the MuslimLeagueand theDemandforPakistan
(Cambridge, Cambridge UP [University Press], South Asian.Studies No. 3I, 1985)
[henceforthJinnah].
2 S. Wolpert, Jinnahof Pakistan(New York, Oxford UP, I984).
3
M. A. K. Azad, India WinsFreedom(Calcutta, Orient Longmans, I957).
4 TheStatesman
Weekly(Calcutta & New Delhi), 29 October 1988, pp. 3, 7.
5 Ibid., 'The Maulana's Lament', Editorials, 12 November 1988, p. 9.
oo26-749X/90/$5.oo + .oo ? 1990 Cambridge University Press

385
386 REVIEWS
I can never forgive myself when I think that if I had not committed these mistakes the
history of the last io years would have been different ... I warned Jawaharlal that
history would never forgive us if we agreed to Partition. The verdict would be that India
was not divided by the Muslim League but by the Congress.6
These are indeed strong words, and may even seem bizarre to the multitude
who have been brought up with the traditional assumptions about the
partition. This brings us to what recent historical research clearly reveals as
long-cherished myths of India's partition.
The polarity between the historical theses of Wolpert and Jalal as well as
Azad's contentions touch respectively on the twin partition myths locked in a
symbiotic relationship: 'the League for partition' and 'the Congress for unity'.
The traditional understanding of the political process leading to partition has
remained strongly rooted in these two 'unquestionable' popular assumptions,
reinforced by a long and powerful tradition of academic sanctification. It
would be most surprising not to find a great majority of people, having a basic
familiarity with the major developments preceding the Indian partition,
identifying the Lahore Resolution of the League (March 1940) with the
demand for Pakistan and partition, and regarding 14 August 1947 as its logical
culmination.7 Likewise, the Indian nationalist component of this historio-
graphical orthodoxy has been content to project partition as the tragic finale of
a heroic struggle of the Indian patriots against the sinister Machiavellian
forces out to destroy the sacred Indian unity. Like all myths one may find a
modicum of truth to defend more moderate versions of such perceptions. But,
with greater accession to our knowledge in recent times and accentuation of
clarity to our perceptions on modern politics in India, such positions have
become totally indefensible.8 The traditional perspective seems desperately
remiss in not conveying not merely the true nature of the high drama but also
6
Ibid., 5 November 1988, p. 6. For a further discussion, see below.
7
'. there is universal agreement that Mahomed Ali Jinnah was central to the
Muslim League's emergence after 1937 as the voice of a Muslim nation; to its
articulation in March I940 of the Pakistan Demand for separate statehood for the
Muslim majority provinces of north-western and eastern India; and to its achievement
in August 1947 ....' R. J. Moore, 'Jinnah and the Pakistan Demand', Modem Asian
StudiesXVII, 4 (1983), p. 529. Cf. also: 'In August 1947, the Muslim League was the
only party to achieve what it wanted.' A. I. Singh, The Originsof thePartitionof India
(Delhi, Oxford UP, 1987), p. 252. See also A. Roy, 'Review' ofJalal'sJinnah in South
Asia X, I (June I987), p. IoI.
8 The most valuable recent edition of the documentary sources on the transfer of
power in India is undoubtedly N. Mansergh [ed.-in-chief], E. W. R. Lumby and P.

Moon (eds), Constitutional
RelationsBetweenBritainandIndia: TheTransferof Power1942-
1947, [henceforth TP Documents], 12 vols (London, I970-83). In addition, the Quaid-i
Azam Papers, All-India Muslim League Papers, and the 'Partition Papers'-all
rendered accessible in the National Archives of Pakistan, Islamabad, together with a
variety of private papers and other documentary material made available in the Indian
National Archives and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, form a
substantive corpus of new material on the politics of partition.
REVIEWS 387
its nuances, subtleties and intricacies. This flat and linear perspective is
astonishingly indifferent to or ignorant of the undercurrents as much in the
League as in Congress high politics during the critical decade before partition.
As early as December I938, while mpving the tenth resolution at the twenty-
sixth League session in Patna, repudiating the federal scheme under the
Government of India Act of I935 and investing Jinnah with the supreme
authority 'to adopt such a course as may be necessary with a view to exploring
the possibility of a suitable alternative which would safeguard the interests of
the Mussalmans', Maulana Zafar Ali Khan spoke about the League's 'anta-
gonism' not 'towards the Hindus generally, but against the Congress High
Command', foreshadowed the ensuing struggle between the two parties as a
gigantic 'battle of wits', and expressed his concern to see 'who emerged
victorious from the contest'.9 The revisionist perspective offers a much clearer
and more logical and convincing interpretation of this 'battle' between Jinnah
and the Congress in which both openly stood for what they did not want, said
what they did not mean, and what they truly wanted was not stated publicly
but only betrayed in their vital and purposive political decisions and actions.
The long persistence of orthodox beliefs in these matters has clearly been in
accord with the most commonly perceived interconnections among Muslim
'nationalism', 'separatism', the Muslim League, the Lahore Resolution and
partition. But 'the conspiracy of silence' resorted to both by Jinnah and the
Congress in regard to the real motives underlying their respective political
strategies and tactics must also be seen as largely contributing to the
perpetuation of these traditional myths. The acceptance of the emerging
historical truth makes a huge demand on everyone grown up with the old
verity in as much as the new is totally opposed to what has so far been largely
given to the world, namely, that it was not the League but the Congress who
chose, at the end of the day, to run a knife across Mother India's body.
II
Jalal has initiated the much needed task of historical reconstruction by taking
upon herself the challenge of demolishing the first of the twin myths which
concerns Jinnah and the League's actual role in the making of Pakistan. It
seems a remarkable coincidence that Wolpert's precedesJalal's and provides a
perfect foil, in its orthodoxy, to set off the critical significance of Jalal's
valuable revisionist contribution which deserves a very special place in the
corpus of the modern South Asian historiography on the partition of India.
The academic popularity of this orthodox historiography is clearly attested by
the fact that Wolpert is both preceded and followed, within the short span of a
decade, by some powerful advocates of the conventional position, such as U.
Kaura (1977),'" R.J. Moore (1983)," and A. I. Singh (1987),2 leaving aside a
9 S. S. Pirzada (ed.), Foundation

of Pakistan.All-IndiaMuslimLeagueDocuments:igo6-
I947, II (Karachi/Dacca, National Publishing House, 1970), p. 321.
'0 U. Kaura, Muslimsand IndianNationalism.TheEmergence
of theDemandforIndia's
Partition 1928-1940 (New Delhi, South Asia Books, 1977).
"l R.J. Moore, 'Jinnah and Pakistan', pp.
529-61.
12
A. I. Singh, Originsof thePartition.
388 REVIEWS
host of scholars supportive of this position but whose involvements with this
issue are peripheral,
Where does one draw the line between the conventional and the revisionist
positions on the issue of Pakistan and partition in relation to Jinnah and the
League? On both chronological and thematic grounds the Lahore Resolution
of 1940 clearly emerges as the divide between the two distinct interpretative
approaches. Until then no sharp differences and disagreements seem to figure
very prominently in the orthodox and revisionist analyses of Muslim politics
between the two world wars. In the orthodox view, the resolution adopted at
the Annual Session of the League at Lahore on 24 March I949 was the first
official pronouncement of the 'Pakistan' or 'partition' demand by the party.
Though the term 'Pakistan' is nowhere to be found in the resolution, it is,
nonetheless, seen to have provided for the separation of the Muslim majority
areas in the north-western and eastern zones of India as 'sovereign' and
'independent states', and thereby formed the basis of the 'Pakistan demand'.
Along with this perceived reformulation of the League's political objectives,
there is also, intrinsic to this view, an equally significant assumption of a major
turn and break in Jinnah's political development: the Islamization of the
'nationalist' and 'secular'Jinnah-'the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity'
emerging as the most potent and dynamic influence in partitioning British
India on religious ground. Both these assumptions are challenged in the
revisionist analyses: the Lahore Resolution was not meant to be the 'Pakistan
demand' but a 'tactical move' and a 'bargaining counter', and hence, it
implied no ideological or religious metamorphosis ofJinnah, no basic changes
in his political aims but a significant shift in his strategies and tactics.
In the period betweenJinnah's declining influence in the Congress that led
to his resignation from the party in 1920, with the corresponding rise of
Gandhi and his populist politics, and the adoption of the Lahore Resolution,
Jinnah and the League's political aims and objectives are commonly perceived
by both orthodox and revisionist writers as seeking to ensure a secure and
legitimate place for Muslims in the changing world of India as well as build up
the League's position and power as central to the interests of all Muslims in
India. In achieving these goals the central league leadership were internally
confronted with a serious challenge of working out a delicate balance of
interests and power with the growing authority and influence of the provincial
Muslim political bosses in the Muslim majority areas, especially Bengal and
the Punjab, reinforced by the enlarged political opportunities under the
'Montford' Reforms of I9I9. Externally, their attempts, as a 'weighted
minority' to secure a 'substantial' representation at the centre, were subjected
to the competing claims, machinations, and much greater strength of the
Indian majority represented by the Congress. Both the traditionalist and
revisionist opinions find concurrence in stressing the League and Jinnah's
political efforts throughout this period, towards a resolution of the Muslim
problem within the constitutional frameworkof a united India. The detailed
political analyses of the major developments of the period are aimed at
revealing how, as a moderate constitutionalist and nationalist, seeking
adequate safeguards for the minority interests of Indian Muslims, Jinnah's
political aims were as much frustrated as was his political position under-
REVIEWS 389
mined, in stages, during this period. The steady demise of constitutionalism
and moderatism in Indian politics since 9I 7; Jinnah's relegation from the
centre of nationalist politics consequent upon the simultaneous rise of the Pan-
Islamists and Gandhi in Indian politics since I919-20; the aggravation of
communalist tendencies in politics both by the introduction of representative
institutions under the I9I9 Reforms, and the bitterness, frustrations and
confusions resulting from the collapse of the Non-cooperation-Khilafat Move-
ment (1922) as well as the abolition of the Khilafat (I924); the steep and
significant rise in the position and influence of the provincial Muslim political
bosses in the Muslim majority areas in the northwestern and eastern regions in
the inter-wars period; the reluctance or inability of the Congress to strengthen
the hands of the 'left' faction of the League under Jinnah in the course of
negotiations among the Indian political parties in the years I926-28; the
unilateral declaration by the Congress of its political goal of total
independence (puma swaraj)-all find, in varying degrees of importance,
common historiographical recognition as indicative of the predicaments of
both League and Jinnah, forcing the latter to withdraw temporarily from
Indian politics and move to London. The growing impotence and irrelevance
of the League in the world of Muslim real-politik,via-a-visthe growing authority
of the Muslim provinces and provincial leaders, as revealed in the subsequent
developments in the Round Table Conference and the Communal Award in
the early nineteen-thirties, prepared the ground for Jinnah's return, on the
supplication of the League leaders of the Muslim minority areas, to resurrect
the central role of the organization and liberate it from the suffocating
embraces of the provincial leaders. An essential continuity in Jinnah's aims
and policies, on his return, finds general acceptance among most writers. The
continuity is to be found in the common Congress and League objectives of
promoting their respective national or central dominance at the expense of the
provincial bases of power. Likewise, the League was not uninterested in the
Congress efforts to make the British concede power at the centre which they
continued to monopolize under the provisions of the Government of India Act
of 1935, the ultimate League objective being a negotiated pattern of sharing
power with the Congress on the basis of a substantial League representation at
the centre.
The agreements between the orthodox and revisionist views are also
extended to a recognition of the supreme importance of the provincial elections
of 1937 held in eleven British provinces under the Act of 1935. It is, however, in
regard to the nature and meanings of this significance that their divergences
begin. There is no room for disputations about the crippling discomfiture of
the League candidates in the election as against the overwhelming success of
the Congress in the non-Muslim constituencies. Of the eleven provinces of
British India, the Congress emerged with a clear majority in six and as the
largest single party in three others. The revelation of the utter weakness of the
League andJinnah positively diminished their importance to the Congress, as
soon experienced by the League in the growing intransigence of the Congress
revealed in their post-election attitudes and dealings. For Jinnah, who had
striven for Muslim political unity at the national level, the political reality of
the post-1937 British India that while Hindus would dominate in all the
390 REVIEWS
Hindu majority provinces, Muslims seemed unable to dominate even the two
largest Muslim majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal, looked menac-
ing. It seemed more so in view of a clear prospect of the Congress dominance at
the centre as well, should the British ever decide to implement the federal
provisions of the I935 Act which offered Muslims not more than one-third of
the central representation. More than ever he now clearly saw the lack of any
political choice other than turning the League into the 'third' focus of power in
India and the 'sole spokesman' for Muslims. 'An honourable settlement', he
came to realize, 'can only be achieved between equals' and 'politics means
power and not relying only on cries ofjustice or fair play or goodwill'.13
The conflicting perceptions ofJinnah's realization are quite significant. The
orthodox perception is one of a complete transformation of the mores of
Jinnah's personality, ideology and policy. His old secularist idea of a Muslim
minority problem to be resolved through substantial representation at the
centre and provincial autonomy stood totally discomfited, and came, there-
fore, to be discarded in favour of the radically new demand for 'parity' at the
centre based on the recognition of the Muslim claim of being a separate
religious 'nation'-the much-publicized 'two-nation theory' ofJinnah. The
use of religious slogans and symbols proved immeasurably useful not just in
rousing sentiments against the Congress ministries in the provinces. It also
helped the League in reaching the Muslim masses over the head of the
provincial leaders. Jinnah's task was facilitated further by the political
exigencies arising from the outbreak of the second world war. The Congress
'intransigence' drew the government closer to the League and made them
realize the obvious importance of promoting Jinnah as the spokesman for
Indian Muslims. Reassured by the government suspension of efforts at
federation and armed with a practical veto upon any further constitutional
advance offered by the government,Jinnah found the British ready to concede
his demands. On 24 March I940 Jinnah told the world what he wanted. In
Jinnah's mind, so a major protagonist of the orthodox school tells us, 'partition
. . was the only long-term solution to India's foremost problem' and, having
arrived at and taken this decision, he 'lowered the final curtain on any
prospects for a single united independent India'.14 From that momentJinnah
was 'set on his seven year campaign to realize the sovereign state of
Pakistan'.51 Quaid-i Azam had indeed forged the 'League into a political
weapon powerful enough to tear the subcontinent apart."'6The academic
judgement thus lends its weight to both the popular 'hagiology' and
'demonology' of Jinnah, the former representing the teeming millions of
adoring believers whom Jinnah led to 'the promised land', while, to even
greater numbers of the latter persuasion, his memory is perpetuated as a
diabolical and sinister influence behind 'the vivisection of Mother India'.
The revisionist view, in contrast, envisages no real change in Jinnah's
': Pirzada, MuslimLeagueDocuments,II, p. 269; also J. Ahmad (ed.), Speechesand

Writingsof MrJinnah,I (Lahore, S. M. Ashraf; 7th edn, I968), p. 32.
14 Wolpert,Jinnah, p. I82.
1 F. Robinson,'Review'ofJalal'sJinnah,in Modern
AsianStudies
XX, 3 (July 986),
p. 613.
1t S. Wolpert, A New Historyof India(New York, Oxford UP, I982), p. 325.
REVIEWS 391
political goals but in his political strategies and tactics. His aims still
continued to be to secure Muslim interests 'within' and not in total separation
from India. No doubt he came to realize the grave limitations and political
danger of Muslims trying to operate on the basis of the formula of a majority-
minority differentiation. With the abandonment of the minority status was
also discarded the notion of a simple unmodified federation which, as the 1937
election at the provincial level had clearly shown, was likely only to condemn
Muslims to a virtual and perpetual dominance by the Congress. The political
answer to the problem of all Indian Muslims, scattered unevenly over the
subcontinent, could not have been in a total separation of the Muslim majority
areas. As Muslims living in areas where they formed the majority had different
needs from co-religionists in Hindu areas, Jinnah had to balance the demand
for a separate Muslim state against safeguards for Muslim minorities. Viewed
from this position, the Lahore Resolution, though couched in terms of
separation of Muslim majority areas, did not reflect Jinnah's 'real political
aims'.'7 It is simplistic, in this view, to take it as a final commitment to
partition or Pakistan, if the latter term is used in its conventional sense of
partition and not in Jinnah's special sense of being a strategically important
embodiment of the recognition of the Muslim right and claim of being a
nation-a recognition that could then be used to overcome the obvious
political disadvantages of a minority status in a federal constitution. The
thrust ofJinnah's political strategy underpinning the resolution was initially
to secure the recognition of the Indian Muslim nationhood on the basis of
acceptance of the 'Pakistan' demand by the British and Congress, and thereby
gain an equal say for Muslims in any arrangement about India's political
future at the centre. Once the principle of the Muslim right to self-determina-
tion, as embodied in the Lahore Resolution, was conceded, the resultant
Muslim state or states could either 'enter into a confederation with non-
Muslim provinces on the basis of parity at the centre' or make, as a sovereign
state, 'treaty arrangement with the rest of India about matters of common
concern'.1 The resolution, in this sense, was, therefore, nothing more than a
'tactical move' and a 'bargaining counter'.19
III
How do these two views bear comparison on logic and evidence? The
conventional view, on a close analysis, reveals serious inadequacies, and fails
to accommodate certain pieces of the jigsaw.
The Lahore Resolution has given rise to three main issues, of which we have
17Jalal,Jinnah, p. 4; Roy, 'Review' ofJalal'sJinnah.

'8 Jalal, ibid., p. 241. Jinnah's vision perhaps anticipated the contemporary
Canadian situation in relation to Quebec. French Quebec decided against separation
in i980. In accordance with the arrangements of the new Accord signed between the
Canadian Federal Government and the Provinces, Quebec's power in the Centre has
been substantially reinforcedwithout compromising its right to contract out of Federal
Programmes.
", Ibid., p. 57.
392 REVIEWS
already mentioned two: the first concerns its relation to the Pakistan demand,
and the second has reference to Jinnah's political aims and strategies in the
most critical years between the resolution and the actual partition. There is a
third question which caused some political dissent between the League and
the provincial Muslim leaders, especially of Bengal, having resurfaced much
later during the political conflict between West and East Pakistan. This relates
to the doubts concerning the federal or unitary character of the separated
Muslim majority areas as envisaged in the resolution.
Of all these three issues the last is the least ambiguous. Adopted at a time
when the League's authority over the Muslim majority provinces was far from
established, the resolution found it expedient to make unequivocal referenceto
'independent states' rather than a single state. Only in 1946, asJinnah needed
to present a collective Muslim front to the Cabinet Mission, and also as the
League and Jinnah had indeed emerged as the 'sole spokesman' for Indian
Muslims, Jinnah felt himself strong enough to change the wording of the
resolution from the plural to the singular 'state', providing a rather amusing
justification, though no Leaguer seemed to have had the courage to ask for one
at the time, that the plural was a 'misprint'. The decision was carried through
the meeting of the Muslim League Council in Delhi. The provincial Muslim
leaders, like Fazlul Huq, who tried unsuccessfully to resistJinnah's centraliz-
ing arm, subsequently felt bitter about this change. Huq, the mover of the
resolution in Lahore, later accused Jinnah of'betrayal' of its letter and spirit.
Significantly enough, the United Front, led by Huq, H. Suhrawardy and
Maulana Bhasani, which decimated the Muslim League in the general
election of I954 in East Pakistan, justified its claims for the provincial
autonomy, contained in its 'Twenty-one Demands', in terms of the Lahore
Resolution.
The traditional understanding of and explanations for the other two seminal
issues are patently uncritical and inadequate. A whole range of doubts
concerning a facile equation between the resolution and the Pakistan demand
as well asJinnah's political calculations are either ignored or glossed over.
To begin with, the very omission of the word 'Pakistan' from the so-called
Pakistan Resolution cannot but raise doubts in this context. Much greater
significance is added to such doubts when Jinnah's initial displeasure at this
equation is considered. Why did he find 'fault' with Hindus for 'foisting' and
'fathering' the word 'Pakistan' on Muslims? In his Presidential speech at the
thirteenth Delhi session of the League in April 1943 Jinnah spoke his mind
quite strongly:
I thinkyou will bearme out thatwhenwe passedthe LahoreResolution,we had not
usedtheword'Pakistan'.Whogaveus thisword?(Criesof'Hindus')Letme tellyouit
is their fault. They started damning the resolutionon the ground that it was
Pakistan.... Theyfatheredthisworduponus. Givethedoga badnameandthenhang
him.... YouknowperfectlywellthatPakistanis a wordwhichis reallyfoisteduponus
andfatheredon us by somesectionof the Hindupressand also by the Britishpress.20
Jinnah was quite right about the beginning of this identification: the adoption
20
Pirzada, Muslim League Documents, II, p. 425.
REVIEWS
393
of the resolution was widely reported in the Hindu and British press as the
acceptance of the 'Pakistan demand'.
The second major source of doubt about the logic of Jinnah demanding
partition, in I940, stems from a consideration of the obvious and callous
disregard or 'sacrifice' (qurbani)of less than two score million Muslim,
unfortunate enough to be born and/or live on the wrong side of the 'holy land'
namely, the Muslim minority areas. If anything, partition was likely to
increase their vulnerability and render their position more precarious. Much
of the rationale underlying Jinnah's long political career is inseparable from
his anxiety to ensure a secure and rightful place for all Muslims of British India
in transition. One could scarcely afford to forget that it was the Muslim
minority-area leaders who madeJinnah's return from the political wilderness
in London possible, and he would have been unlikely to turn his back on them,
that is, as long as he could help it. He was, of course, eventually unable to help
it, and the paradox of the resultant Pakistan is 'how it failed to satisfy the
interests of the very Muslims who are supposed to have demanded its
creation.'21
Thirdly, not even the interests of the Muslim majority areas were either
expected to be or actually served by the partition. There is as much sense as
pathos in AyeshaJalal's most critical and searching question about the most
publicized creation of the largest contemporaneous Muslim state in the world
(about sixty million Muslims, leaving another thirty-five million out of it in
India where it became the largest number of Muslims in a non-Muslim state):
'how did a Pakistan come about which fitted the interests of most Muslims so
poorly?'22The situational and circumstantial differences as well as the
disjunction of interests between the Muslim majority and minority areas were
significant determinants of Muslim politics. The Muslim political bosses of the
majority areas, who benefited most from the expanded political opportunities
in the inter-war period, were both dependent on and adept in intercommunal
politics increasingly dominated by Muslims. Their political future was
assured in a federal structure with provisions for strong provincial govern-
ments. The Lahore Resolution based on the principle of a separate Muslim
nationhood communalized politics and destroyed the rationale and basis of
intercommunal politics. Logically and surely, the two largest Muslim prov-
inces-Bengal and the Punjab-were later partitioned with all its economic,
political and psychological consequences. As for the Muslims of Sind, NWFP
and Baluchistan, the creation of Pakistan 'bundled them willy-nilly into a state
dominated by their more numerous co-religionists from western Punjab and
placed them under the tight central control ... [of] Pakistan', and the depth of
their fervourfor Pakistan 'can be gauged by their effortssince independence to
throw off the yoke of the Punjab.'23
Fourthly, barring some zealots of the likes of the 'Cambridge student
group', the viability of a partitioned Pakistan had been a crucial question in
the minds not only of the British and non-Muslim Indian contemporaries but
also of most thinking Muslims, including the Quaid-iAzam. Serious doubts had
been expressed from time to time on the economic and defence implications of
21 22
Jalal,Jinnah,p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. 2': Ibid.,p. 3.
394 REVIEWS
the partition, given particularly the geographic absurdity of its two major
western and eastern components being separated by nearly a thousand miles
of Hindu-dominated territory. Jinnah's desperate appeal for a small corridor
interlinking eastern and western wings of Pakistan in the final stages of the
partition-talks is a pointer to his own sharing of such doubts.
Fifthly, one of the major weaknesses of the conventional interpretation is
that it offers no convincing explanations for the strange dichotomy between
the rhetoric and reality ofJinnah's politics since the adoption of the resolution.
His responses, in particular to the Cripps Offer (I942) and the Cabinet
Mission Plan (I946), remain the weakest links in the traditional arguments.
His rejection of the former as well as the acceptance (until the Congress
attitudes and response forced its rejection) of the latter clearly run counter to
the popular view thatJinnah craved for partition. The principle of'secession'
embodied in the Cripps Offer, whereby any unwilling province could 'opt out'
of the Union, was a direct British response to the Lahore demand, providing
Jinnah and the League with the surest means of fully realizing the stated goals
of the Lahore Resolution namely, independent and sovereign Muslim 'states'.
Yet the proposals were rejected by the League, ostensibly and curiously on the
ground that 'Pakistan' was not explicitly named. Most writers remain content
with this tenuous explanation, regardless of the fact that Jinnah himself did
not care much for the magic word and deliberatey excluded it from the Lahore
Resolution, as noted above. Not totally unaware of the problem, perhaps,
some others have sought explanations elsewhere. Wolpert believes that the
'Muslim League were prepared to accept the offer, since it essentially
embodied their Pakistan demand, but the Congress rejection left them no
political option but to do likewise in order to compete most effectively for mass
support.'24 Masselos emphasizes 'the political disadvantages' of the League
'being the only open supporter of the scheme in the current climate of
opinion... .'25Attribution of such political concerns to the Muslim League, in
the period following the election of 1937, and more so, after the Lahore
Resolution, may seem more than dubious. Leaving aside the resolution itself
which was a total rejection of the Congress platform and the wishes of the large
majority of Indians, the League's political strategy, throughout this period,
was geared to the object of reinforcing its political identity and position as the
sole spokesman by exploiting every opportunity of opposing as well as
discrediting the Congress. When all is said and done, the simple fact about the
Cripps Offer remains thatJinnah and the League could, had they so desired,
take the Muslim majority provinces out of the Indian Union. The Cabinet
Mission Plan, on the other hand, categorically rejected partition-nor was
Pakistan mentioned anywhere in the document-yet on 6June 1946 the League
accepted the Mission's Plan, long before the Congress indicated its 'condi-
tional' acceptance. These two responses put together raise unqualified doubts
about Jinnah's attitudes to the partition demand, the intent of the Lahore
24
25
Wolpert, New History,p. 335.
J. Masselos, IndianNationalism:AnHistory (New Delhi, Sterling Publishers, 1985),
p. 206.
REVIEWS 395
Resolution, and also the uncritical assumptions of the orthodox
historiography.
Finally, the most serious objection to the conventional viewpoints relates to
their inability to identify the continuity inJinnah's political career, as already
mentioned. This view is both misleading and unfair to Jinnah in presenting
him as a paradox: one who had been a firm believer in Indian nationalism and
also in essentially secular political values chose, in I940, to throw away all he
had striven for at a time when partition was by no means a certainty.
Undoubtedly, Jinnah's politics since his shattering discomfiture in the I937
election entered into a new phase, but the change, properly understood, is not
so much one of political goals as one of tactics, as noted above. Additionally,
the paradoxical view ofJinnah seems to contradict Wolpert's own psycho-
analytical approach to Jinnah's politics. If Jinnah possessed those traits
underlined by Wolpert-vanity, ambition, and a 'need to play the starring
role'-he was even more likely to be seeking a dominant role in the much
larger political arena of India, comprising about four-hundred million of
which ninety-five million in the whole of India and eighty million in British
India were Muslim, than his 'moth-eaten Pakistan' with its total population of
about sixty million.
IV
Serious misgivings and inadequacies of this nature in the orthodox views

created demands for revisionist historical research and studies in this area.
AyeshaJalal has precisely filled this disturbing historical gap, and thereby laid
South Asian historiography under an enormous debt to herself. Irrespective of
the enormous significance of her study, the question of the originality ofJalal's
thesis needs, however, to be set in clear perspective. In his otherwise excellent
review of this particular Cambridge publication in the Cambridge Journal of
ModernAsian Studies,Francis Robinson calls Jalal's 'a novel thesis'.2' No
discerning student of the history of Indian partition should find this claim
totally acceptable. Like all major works of historical revisionismJalal's edifice
is reared on an existing foundation. The centre piece both ofJinnah's political
strategy in the last crucial decade before the partition and ofJalal's thesis on
Jinnah has been, as already observed, the Lahore Resolution with its intrigu-
ingly 'vague' and 'amorphous' wordings. The mainspring of this thesis has
clearly been a marginal, unorthodox and lesser known minority view that has
long questioned the purpose of the resolution and found Jinnah's political
strategy more 'a tactical move' or 'a bargaining counter' than an outright
demand for partition or Pakistan.
The 'ambiguity' of the resolution drew contemporary attention. Dr B. R.
Ambedkar, whose thoughts on the idea of Pakistan or partition met with
Jinnah's approval, noted in 1940:
26
Robinson, 'Review' ofJalal'sJinnah, p. 617.
396 REVIEWS
... the Resolution is rather ambiguous, if not self-contradictory. It speaks of grouping

the zones into 'independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous
and sovereign.' The use of the terms 'constituent units' indicates that what is
contemplated is a Federation. If that is so, then, the use of the word 'Sovereign' as an
attribute of the units is out of place. Federation of units and sovereignty of units are
contradictions. It may be that what is contemplated is a confederation. It is, however,
not very material for the moment whether these independent states are to form into a
federationor confederation. What is important is the basic demand, namely, that these
areas are to be separated from India and formed into independent states.27
Reginald Coupland, who met Jinnah in the early nineteen-forties, expressed

similar doubts:
It was not clear exactly what this paragraph of the resolution meant. It could scarcely
mean that the constituent units of the independent States were really to be 'sovereign',
but that it did mean that the States were to be really 'independent' was shown by a
subsequent paragraph.28
The notion of some ambiguities built into the resolution was juxtaposed to a
less publicized but responsible view, both contemporaneous and later, that it
was not intended as a specific demand for partition but as a 'bargaining point'.
Penderel Moon, an observant contemporary British official, wrote later in
196I: 'Privately Jinnah told one or two people in Lahore that this Resolution
was a "tactical move"; and the fact that six years later he was ready to accept
something less than absolute partition suggests that in 1940 he was not really
irrevocably committed to it.'29 Hugh Tinker wrote, in I967, that many British
politicians and administrators considered the resolution as a 'deliberate over-
bid'.3? Jalal herself cites several important contemporary sources casting
doubts on the notion of a total separation as integral to the resolution. H. V.
Hodson, as the Reform Commissioner in 1941, reported that the Muslim
Leaguers 'interpreted Pakistan as consistent with a confederation.' Hodson
found it the least surprising, as 'Pakistan' offered nothing to Muslims in the
minority areas.31 I. I. Chundrigar, a Leaguer who later became a Prime
Minister of independent Pakistan, saw the object of the resolution as not to
create 'Ulsters', but to get 'two nations . . . welded into united India on the
basis of equality.' He believed that the resolution looked for an 'alternative to
majority rule, not seeking to destroy the unity of India.':2 Jinnah himself
blamed Hindus, in I943, as mentioned above, for having 'foisted and fathered'
the word Pakistan on the Muslim League.33
27 B. R. Ambedkar, Pakistanor the Partitionof India (Bombay, Thacker, 3rd edn,
1946), pp. 4-5.
28
R. Coupland, IndianPolitics1.96-1942. Reporton the Constitutional
Problemof India
(London, Oxford UP, 1944), p. 206.
29' P. Moon, Divide and Quit (London, Chatto & Windus, 196i), p. 2I.
30 H. with
Tinker, Experiment Freedom:IndiaandPakistan1947 (Lolndon,Oxford UP,
1967), p. 24; also P. Hardy, TheMuslimsof BritishIndia (Cambridge, Cambridge UP,
South Asian Studies No. 13, 1972), p. 232.
3' H. V. Hodson, The GreatDivide: Britain, India, Pakistan(London: Hutchinson,
I969), p. 69.
32 Quoted, Jalal,Jinnah, p. 70.
33 See above p. 392.
REVIEWS 397
All this should dispel the illusion of any claim of'novelty' at least in regard
to the core ofJalal's thesis that the resolution of I94o had been a 'bargaining
counter'. The critical importance of Jalal's work lies, therefore, not so much in
presenting the resolution as a tactical manoeuvre as in her success in elevating
this interpretation basically from the realm of doubts and speculations and
giving it an academic authenticity, coherence and credibility. Her success in
this regard is facilitated as much by her own ability as the availability of a large
corpus of new documents, as mentioned above.34 Admittedly, many of the
building blocks inJalal's edifice have been drawn from the steadily expanding
store-house of historical knowledge and interpretations derived from prior
researches and investigations. These are, for example, the dichotomy of
interests between the Muslim majority and minority areas; the vested and
entrenched position of the provincial Muslim leaders; Jinnah's aim and
strategy to acquire for the League and for himself the position and the right to
speak for all Indian Muslims; his determined and sustained efforts at securing
theoretical and/or practical recognition of that right and position by the
recalcitrant Muslim provincial bosses, the Congress and the British govern-
ment; the political expediency of the transition of the League politics conduc-
ted from the vantage point of a religious and political minority to that of a
nation; refurbishing the religious contents of the Pakistan idea to facilitate the
League's cause; Jinnah's political calculations behind the rejection of the
Cripps Offer and the eagerness to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan, and so on.
But Jalal has put them all together for us into one whole coherent piece-
authentically as well as creatively refined, modified and enlarged-a piece of
historical study that for its thoroughness and excellence is most likely to
remain for quite some time the paradigm of a revisionist thesis on Jinnah's
politics in the decade before partition.35
The revisionist critique is logical and persuasive. Its seminal contribution
consists in demystifying the politics of the League,Jinnah and Pakistan in that
critical decade, as presented in the conventional historiography which is
riddled with confusing paradoxes and inconsistencies, as discussed above. The
essential integrity and continuity in Jinnah's long political life, subject to a
significant shift in his strategy, broadly since I937, for achieving his political
aims, the overt and covert meanings of the Lahore Resolution, with the very
specific contents of 'Pakistan' in Jinnah's mind, his rejection of the Cripps
Offer and the intriguing wheelings and dealings with the British, his
determined and persistent political manoeuvres to pull all provincial Muslim
leaders into line, his eager acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan until the
Congress forced him to reject it, and his 'continuing attempts to preserve his
strategy in his many shifts and ploys' even in those closing months of the
undoing of his strategy 'down to his May I947 demand for a corridor through
Hindustan to connect the two halves of Pakistan, and his June 1947 proposal
that the constituent assemblies of the two new states should both meet in
Delhi'3"-are some of the major disconcerting puzzles in the orthodox versions
which the revisionist historical reconstructions help to resolve so convincingly.
:4 See
above,note8.
:3'
36
Roy, 'Review'of'jalal'sJinnah,
p. ioI.
Robinson,'Review'ofjalal'sJinnah,p. 617.
398 REVIEWS
Jinnah's tasks, in the revisionist perspective, emerge infinitely more com-

plex and daunting than what the traditionalists would have us believe. For
Jinnah, it was far easier to aim at rousing the primordial instincts of Indian
Muslims, with a view to mobilizing them to achieve a division of the land, as
we have so far been told, and as it eventually happened. This now seems a
rather simplistic as well as distorting perception of the more mature, intricate
and delicate political position ofJinnah, adept in playing a 'long, slow game'.
While he undoubtedly needed the Islamic fervour to rally the Muslim masses
to achieve his political aims, he could scarcely afford to push it too far to
jeopardize his constant and vital objective of securing the interests of all
Indian Muslims which could only have been possible within a framework of
Indian unity. This was not all. Jinnah was no less interested in a strong centre
than the Congress in the interests of securing and maintaining the dominant
national position of the League against the provincial Muslim bases of power.
But here again,Jinnah and the League, unlike the Congress, had to curb their
natural instincts for a strong centre in a federal structure which would have
provided a strong leverage for the Congress dominance. Thus, confronting
Jinnah was a political challenge that seemed almost a 'political sphinx' and
almost impossible to achieve: a Muslim nation with its 'right' to be
independent, but not actually willing to break away from India, forfeiting,
thereby, the control over thirty-five million Muslims to be left in a partitioned
India; a strong centre essential for keeping the League in a dominant position
and the Muslim provinces in line, but not without some constitutional and
structuraldevice to prevent the total Congress dominance by virtue of its brute
majority.Jinnah's ideal solution lay in two federations-one Muslim- and the
League-dominated, the other Hindu- and the Congress-dohiinated-making
it in every way possible to bring the two into a system of political unity on a
confederal basis or a similar structure based on treaty arrangements between
them.
This view goes a long way in explaining many of those perplexities
mentioned before. We understand better why the Lahore Resolution seems
rather interested in the 'right' of the Muslim majority areas to be independent,
and leaves every other vital concern shrouded in ambiguity. We can also see
why Jinnah would not originally intend or even like the use of the word
Pakistan in the resolution, though later accepted it as a 'convenient synonym'
for 'this long phrase'.37We get the feeling that the word, which gradually came
to symbolize Muslim nationhood, would recommend itself toJinnah. Again,
Jinnah's rejection of the Cripps Offer, which has been one of the weakest
points in the orthodox case, provides a strong justification for the revisionist
arguments.
Jinnah's strategy centring round the Lahore Resolution was almost
immediately welcomed by the British Government through its I940 'August
Offer'. The Cripps Offer carried it even further by conceding, through its 'opt
out' provision, the effective demands of the resolution. The League's rejection,
37 Pirzada, MuslimLeagueDocuments, II, p. 426. 'We wanted a word and it was foisted
on us, and we found it convenient to use it as a synonym ftr the Lahore Resolution.'
(Ibid.)
REVIEWS 399
though intriguing, is better explained from the revisionist position. Cripps's

proposal contained two serious problems for Jinnah. If Jinnah was rather
more interested, as noted above, in the matter of recognition of the Muslim
right for self-determination than the actual severance of the Muslim states, he
was denied explicit recognition of that right-a denial given as the official
justification for the League's rejectionof the offer. More importantly,Jinnah, in
the early nineteen-forties, unable to assert his full authority over the Muslim
majority provinces, maintained a calculated silence-quite apparent in the
Lahore Resolution-on the issue of the centre, its nature and its relationship
with the Muslim provinces. A weak centre was integral to the demand of the
Muslim provinces for provincial autonomy, while the League's entire political
strategy, as representatives of all Indian Muslims, demanded a strong centre.
.Before such time as Jinnah could indeed become the sole spokesman for all
Muslims and impose his will on the provinces he chose not to raise the
awkward question until the Cripps Offer resulted in 'flushingJinnah out into
the open and forcing him to show where he stood on the question of the centre.'
The Congress rejectionof the offermade it easier forJinnah also to reject it and
avert what seemed 'the gravest threat to his entire strategy'.38
The Cabinet Mission came to recompense Jinnah for much of what was
denied to him by Cripps. The compulsory grouping of Muslim provinces-
leaving Bengal and Assam in a separate grouping for ten years-offered him
the effective contents of the Muslim federation on a platter, and brought the
Muslim provinces under the control of the League at the centre. It denied the
principle of secession and preserved India's integrity. It stipulated for a weak
centre, thwarting the prospects for a total Congress dominance. The Mission
Plan came so close to so much ofwhatJinnah's political vision embraced. The
offer, certainly, was not his ideal: the prospects for the 'parity' he would have
wished at the centre were very doubtful coming from the Congress; the centre
itself would not have been as strong as he would have liked to ensure his
authority over the Muslim provinces. But the communal provisions held out
the promise of a powerbroking role at the centre. Quaid-iAzam had indeed
come the closest to realizing his political dream.
Jinnah could not, however, have shown total indifference to the likely
impact of the denial of a 'sovereign' Pakistan on his followers. The League
acceptance of the Plan on 6 June 1946 was justified on the ground that the
'basis of Pakistan' was 'inherent' in the plan.39He also had to give them an
undertaking that he would join no interim government without parity for the
League.40In the League's statement of acceptance there was further mention
of the League's cooperation with the constitution-making apparatus in the
'hope' that their effortswould ultimately be rewarded with the 'establishment
of a completely sovereign Pakistan.'4'This is an extraordinary response if one
adheres to the view thatJinnah really wanted a sovereign Pakistan. How could
:8 Jalal,Jinnah,p. 76,
3' Mansergh, TP Documents,
VII, Doc. No. 469, Enclosure, L/P &J/5/337: PP 418-
20, p. 837.
40 p. 202.
Jalal,.Jinnah,
41
Mansergh,TPDocuments,
VII, Doc. No. 469, Enclosure,p. 838.
4oo00 REVIEWS
this man, who as recently as 7 April had claimed: 'we cannot accept any
proposal which would be, in any way, derogatory to the full sovereignty of
Pakistan',42forsake the zeal that had consumed his career since I940 for
'hope'? Rhetoric aside, Jinnah was clearly prepared on 6 June to accept
something less than what almost every one else knew as Pakistan.
Just asJinnah thought himself on the verge of reaping the harvest of a long,
chequered and an almost stoically determined political career, a variety of
political factors and circumstances combined to snatch the cup of victory from
his lips. The Congress, apparently, began the undoing of his strategy, and the
'last thirteen months of British rule', inJalal's words, 'saw the tragic collapse
ofJinnah's strategy'.43 On 25 June I946 the Congress Working Committee
gave qualified assent to the plan; the All-India Congress Committee, under
Maulana Azad's presidency, voted its approval along the same lines, on 6July,
exactly a month later than the League's acceptance of the plan. Delighted with
the prospects for sucess, the Mission left India on 29June. Within days Nehru
took over as President and declared that the Congress was 'uncommitted' to
the plan. He cast grave doubts over the grouping procedures and stressed that
the central government would require some overall power to intervene in
grave crisis or breakdown, warning that such central power 'inevitably grows'.
He also rejected parity for the League in the Interim Executive Council. The
Congress did indeed seem to be trying to make it impossible forJinnah to use
the Cabinet Mission Plan as an answer to India's political impasse. It seemed
hell bent on scuttling the plan. But why?
The answer to this question raises the concomitant issue of the revisionist
thesis: ifJinnah and the League sought to avoid partition how did it come
about? It also brings us to the second myth of partition, based on a hoary
assumption about 'the Congress for unity', as mentioned at the outset. IfJalal
has been able to mount a successful challenge at the conventional assumptions
about Jinnah and the League's politics of partition, we already have equally
strong reasons and ample, though scattered, evidence enough to throw a
challenge at the other 'verity' of the orthodox historiography, that is, the
commitment of the Congress to Indian unity.
The Congress commitment to freedom with unity, which has been integral
to the Congress ideology and politics ever since its inception, began to lose its
fervour in the wake of the ineffectual and frustrating all-parties negotiations in
the late nineteen-twenties, culminating in the unilateral declaration by the
Congress, on 26January 1930, of its goal of'total independence' (purnasvaraj).
The Congress sublimated its frustrations and its own share of responsibilities
for the failure in resolving the Muslim Question by taking a convenient line
that freedom should precede and not follow the resolution of the communal
problem. It began to speak of this as a basically 'economic' problem which was
42 4
Pirzada, ibid., II, p. 509. :Jalal, Jinnah, p. 208.
REVIEWS 40I
incapable of being resolved in a country which was in chains. This shift of

emphasis on 'freedom first' had considerable bearings on the issue of'unity', as
evident in subsequent developments where unity was sacrificed on the altar of
freedom. Further, the changed League strategy, in the post-1937 political
exigencies, sharpened the focus on what appears, in retrospect, the most vital,
critical and determining factor in the partition namely, the nature of the
central government. Provincial autonomy logically based on a weak centre
had been an unchanging component of the perception of a secure future in free
India among Muslims of all political shades, including the Congress Muslims.
The demand for a combination of a weak centre and substantial Muslim
representation therein had been a persistent item in Muslim negotiations in
the pre-1937 phase. In the subsequent phase the concept of Muslim nation-
hood and its complementary notion of parity at the centre prompted the
League to exert strong pressures on the government to revoke the federal part
of the Government of India Act, 1935, which provided for a strong centre.
Linlithgow obliged Jinnah by giving him a veto on India's political future.
Confronted with a choice between 'unity' and a 'strong centre', the
Congress had been steadily coming to realize what might very well have to
become the price for freedom namely, division. The unqualified commitment
of the Congress to a strong centre stemmed from its vision of a strong, united
and modernized India. Congressmen like Nehru, with socialist streaks in
them, found the concept of a strong centre inseparable from the need and
demand for India's economic reconstruction based on centralized planning.
The bitter communal experiences of the provincial Congress ministries after
I937 as well as that in the interim government in the nineteen-forties
reinforced the Congress reluctance to seek political accommodation with the
League. Finally, the Congress could hardly have been expected to overlook the
supreme importance of a strong centre to ensure its own dominance in India
after independence, as has been the case with what is often characterized as
India's 'one-party dominance system'.44 V. P. Menon could not have better
stated the Congress case for the strong centre. Partition, he said, would 'enable
Congress to have at one and the same time a strong central government able to
withstand the centrifugal tendencies all too apparent at the moment, and to
frame a truly democratic constitution unhampered by any communal
considerations. '4
It is difficult to trace closely the process of the major Congress leaders in not
merely coming to terms with but actually favouring the idea of partition. V. P.
Menon recalled that by May 1947 Nehru was no longer averse to a proposed
partition.46 Maulana Azad's contrasting positions, as revealed in the book and
44 S. A. Kochanek, The
CongressPartyof India. TheDynamicsof One-PartyDemocracy
(Princeton, NewJersey, Princeton UP, 1968); R. Kothari, 'The Congress "System" in
India', in Party Systemand Election Studies, Occasional Papers of the Centre for
Developing Societies, No. I (Bombay, Allied Publishers, I967), pp. I-I8; also G.
Krishna, 'One Party Dominance-Developments and Trends' in ibid., pp. 19-98.
4' V. P. Menon, TheTransferof Powerin India(Princeton, NewJersey, Princeton UP,
I957), p. 358.
4' Ibid., p. 360.
402 REVIEWS
the excised portion, have been mentioned above.47 In the book he places the
responsibility squarely on Lord Mountbatten, or rather, the Mountbattens:
Within a month of Lord Mountbatten's arrival in India,Jawaharlal, the firm opponent
of partition, had become, if not a supporter, at least acquiescent to the idea. I have often
wondered how Jawaharlal was won over by Lord Mountbatten.... Jawaharlal was
greatly impressed by Lord Mountbatten but perhaps even greater was the influence of
Lady Mountbatten....4"
Leonard Mosley held very similar views. There was, he believed, 'no doubt in
any one's mind in India that the viceroy, in persuading Nehru, had performed
the confidence trick of the century'.49
Such observations on either Nehru's or many other Congress leaders'
attitudes toward the partition alternative derive credence and sustenance from
an unquestioning faith in the Congress dedication to unity until the very last
stage. With the arrival of the Mountbattens the patriots, in this romanticized
view, seemed to gear up for the last-ditch battle, but found themselves
emasculated and disarmed by the former's vice-regal charisma and charm.
The historical truth seemed to lie elsewhere. There are strong reasons and
evidence to suggest that long before the arrival of the Mountbattens on the
scene, the upper echelon of the non-Muslim Congress leaders had been calmly
calculating the distinct and pragmatic values of the partition formula. While
making this assumption that it was Mountbatten who swung Nehru round to
partition, Azad and others obviously ignored the possibility that the reverse
might be true, and the Englishman was converted by the Indian. In a mirror-
image of the dichotomy between Jinnah's professions and intentions, the
Congress continued to present the faSade of the ideal of unity, while it steadily
and deliberately worked itself up to a position whereJinnah was forced to take
his 'Pakistan' and leave the scene for good. The Lahore Resolution opened up
the way for the Congress, groping since the Purna Swaraj Resolution of 1930 for
an answer to the Muslim Question that made no demand on its 'sacred cow',
that is, the strong centre.
Almost as early as the Lahore Resolution became public knowledge, most
senior Congress leaders, like Gandhi and Nehru, had made known their
feelings which seemed remarkably cool and pragmatic. Not many days after
the Lahore session Gandhi observed:
Unless the rest of India wishes to engage in internal fratricide, the others will have to
submit to the Muslim dictation, if the Muslims will resort to it. ... The Muslims must
have the same right of self-determination that the rest of India has. We are at present a
joint family. Any member may claim a division.5"
Further,
As a man of non-violence, I canot forcibly resist the proposed partition if the Muslims of
India really insist upon it.... it means the undoing of centuries of work done by
47 See above p. 385.

8 Azad, India VWinsFreedom,p. I65.
' L. Mosley, Last Days of theBritishRaj (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, I961),
P- 97-
)" D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma(Bombay,Jhaveri & Tendulkar, 1952), V, pp. 333-4.
REVIEWS 4o3
numberless Hindus and Muslims to live together as one nation.... My whole soul
rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures
and doctrines ... But that is my belief. I cannot thrust it down the throats of the
Muslims who think that they are a different nation.5'
On 15 April I940, questioned about the resolution, Nehru was reportedly
pleased, not because he liked it-on the contrary he considered it to be the most insane
suggestion-but because it very much simplified the problem. They were now able to
get rid of the demands about proportionate representation in legislatures, services,
cabinets, etc.... [He] asserted that if people wanted such things as suggested by the
Muslim League at Lahore, then one thing was clear, they and people like him could not
live together in India. He would be prepared to face all consequences of it but he would
not be prepared to live with such people.52
The very next day he rejoined:
Many knots of the Hindu-Muslim problem had been merged into one knot, which
could not be unravelled by ordinary methods, but would need an operation ... he
would say one thing very frankly that he had begun to consider them [the Muslim
Leaguers] and people like himself, as separate nations.5:
In the confines of the Ahmedabad jail, in the early nineteen-forties, he wrote:
'wrong steps have to be taken sometimes lest some worse peril befall us....
Unity is always better than disunity, but an enforced unity is a sham and a
dangerous affair, full of explosive possibilities.'54 Nehru's thoughts and
attitudes to the unity proposals, as in the Cabinet Mission Plan, were clearly
revealed several months before the occurrence of the plan. In January I946,
during his 'four-hour discussion' with Woodrow L. Wyatt, Personal Assistant
to Cripps on the Cabinet Mission, Nehru was reported to have 'conceded that
the British Government might have to declare for Pakistan ... granted
however (a) a plebiscite, and (b) territorial readjustments so that solid blocks
of Hindu territory were not included, he accepted Pakistan.'55 In a letter of the
same month to Cripps, we have even positive indications that he had already
seen through Jinnah's game: 'It seems clear that he Jinnah] is not after
Pakistan but something entirely different, or perhaps he is after nothing at all
except to stop all change and progress.'56 Realization of this nature did very
little for his respect ofJinnah. Duckworth, a British official covering Nehru's
trip to Malaya during 18-26 March 1946, reported in April I946, that Nehru
was
51 Ibid., pp. 336-7.

52
Leader, 5 April 1940, quoted S. R. Mehrotra, 'The Congress and the Partition of
India', in C. H. Philips & M. D. Wainwright (eds), ThePartitionof India. Policiesand
Perspectives1935-1947 (London, Allen & Unwin, 1970), p. 210.
53 Ibid., I6
April 1940, quoted in ibid.
54 J. Nehru, TheDiscoveryof India (Bombay, Asia
Publishing House, reprint, 1969),
p. 526.
5' Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 15 January 1946; Mansergh, TP Documents, VI,
Doc. No. 357, L/PO/Io/23, p. 796.
"6 Nehru to
Cripps, 27 January 1946; ibid., Doc. No. 384, L/P & J/I/59: ff. 42-4,
pp. 855-6.
404 REVIEWS
scornful ofJinnah and doubted very much whether he had either the intention or the
power to start a revolt in India if he did not secure Pakistan. .. 'Jinnah', he said, 'rather
reminds me of the man who was charged with the murder of his mother and father and
begged the clemency of the court on the ground that he was an orphan'. '7
Later in his life Nehru indicated how both age and patience might have had
their share in making the minds of the Congress veterans even more receptive
to the partition formula. 'The truth', Nehru told Mosley in I960, 'is that we
were tired men and we were getting on in years ... The plan for partition
offered a way out and we took it. .. .'5 There might also have been a lingering
hope in the back of their minds that they had not perhaps been committing
themselves to a final and irrevocable judgement, as Nehru also admitted to
Mosley, 'we expected that a partition would be temporary, that Pakistan was
bound to come back to us.'59 Elsewhere he remarked: 'The united India that
we have laboured for was not one of compulsion and coercion but a free and
willing association of free people. It may be that in this way we shall reach that
united India sooner than otherwise and then she will have a stronger and more
secure foundation.60
Such sentiments were also expressed by Azad: 'The division is only on the
map of the country and not in the hearts of the people, and I am sure it is going
to be a short lived partition.'61 Other front-ranking Congress leaders also are
on record to lend their support to the Pakistan demand, and some of them at an
earlier stage than later. On 23 April 1942 the Madras Legislature passed a
resolution, at the instance of C. Rajagopalachari, the Congressman with a
reputation of being politically cunning, recommending a policy based on the
acceptance of the Lahore Resolution. The resolution, though rejected by the
All India Congress Committee, drew a significant early response from the
Congress Working Committee which emphatically declared that it 'cannot
think in terms of compelling the people in any territorial unit to remain in an
Indian Union against their declared and established will.'62 In early 1946
Sardar Patel, the 'strong man' of the Congress, emphatically asserted that the
time had come to 'cut the diseased limb' and be done with the Muslim
League.63 V. P. Menon's claim that he converted Patel to the idea of Pakistan
in early I947 is, again, as in Nehru's case, misleading. The Sardar, in an
interview with the Associated Press of America on 9 May 1947, maintained:
'Congress would like to have a strong centre . . it was absolutely essential that
there should be a strong army, and for a defence a strong central govt .... if the
Muslim League insists it wants separation, the Congress will not compel them
57 Note by Duckworth, 4 April 1946; ibid., VII, Doc. No. 54, L/P &J/8/636: if. 3-6,
p. 136.
58
Mosley, BritishRaj, p. 248.
5' Ibid.
6" M. Gwyer and A. Appadorai (eds), Speeches
andDocuments
on theIndianConstitution
1921-1947(London, Oxford UP, I957), II, p. 682.
6' Leader, i6June I947, quoted Mehrotra, 'Congress and Partition', p. 220.
62
Quoted in Menon, Transferof Power,p. 132.
63
D. V. Tahmankar, Sardar Patel (London, Allen & Unwin, 1970), p. 191.
REVIEWS 405
to remain by force.'64G. D. Birla, the capitalist devotee of the Mahatma,was
also known to have favoured Partition.65
The Congress played the game in a masterly fashion. Jinnah's whole
strategy vis-a-visthe Congress was to use the 'spectre' of the Pakistan demand
which was clearly based on the assumption that the Congress would be forced,
at the end of the day, to stretch itself fully to accommodate Jinnah's 'real'
demands and prevent the calamity of Mother India's dismemberment. But, as
Jinnah's game became apparent to the Congress, the latter chose to 'cut off the
head' to get rid of the 'headache'. When all the chips were down, afterJinnah's
acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the Congress called Jinnah's bluff
and shattered his political strategy and ambition. Jinnah was caught in a bind
because he had already presented his acceptance of the Mission Plan as a great
'sacrifice' and a proof of his 'goodwill'. By accepting something less than
Pakistan, he had lost the bargaining counter which the demand for the fully
sovereign Pakistan gave him.
There were the added dimensions of subtleties and dexterities involved in
the Congress strategy in this regard. For the Congress High Command openly
to push for partition would have been politically disastrous, and would have
been viewed as an acceptance of the League's communalist view of Indian
society. There was the added implication of betraying the Congress Muslims,
especially when Azad remained the President between 1940 and July 1946.
Azad, in his book, greets the initial acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan as
'a glorious event in the history of the freedom movement in India', and
attributes its ultimate failure to the intransigence of the League. Nehru's press
statements contributing to its destruction are glossed over as 'unfortunate
events which changed the course of history.'66To Mountbatten he spoke of the
Congress's responsibility in much more positive terms. The 'blame' for the
breakdownof the Cabinet Mission Plan, he said, 'in the first place must be laid
on Congress. .'.67 And, in the excised portion of his book, the finger he points
at Nehru is unmistakable.68
Despite the Congress being 'on toJinnah's game', it is conceivable that he
could have gone on with his game for some more time at least had it not been
for the totally unforeseen, abrupt and rapid change involving the British
presence and policies in India in the aftermath of the second world war. The
British refusal to impose a settlement on India and willingness to stay on until
64 Mansergh,TPDocuments, X, Doc. No. 375, L/P &J/Io/79: f.248, p. 717.

65 Tahmankar, Patel, p. 272.
66 Azad,IndiaWins
Freedom,
pp. I35, 138.
67 Mansergh,TP Documents, Mountbatten Interview
Papers,Viceroy's No. 14, 27 March
I947, X, Doc. No. 27, p. 34.
68 TheStatesman Weekly,5 NovemberI988,p. 6; alsoabove,notes3-6. It wasreported
thatRabindranath Roy,who was additionalprivatesecretaryto HumayunKabir,the
co-authorof the book,andwhoalso typedout the manuscript,affirmedthatthe sealed
pagescontained'noadversecommentsonJawaharlalNehruormembersofhis family.'
This statementwas immediatelycontradictedby the publishersof the book,Orient
Longmanssaying that the excisedpages 'do makecriticalreferencesto Jawaharlal
Nehru. . .', Ibid.,29 OctoberI988, pp. 3, 7.
406 REVIEWS
the Indians reached an agreement formed a major condition for the success of
Jinnah's policy.69 The return of a Labour Government to power, with its
serious commitment to post-war reconstruction at home and demobilization
and decolonization abroad, changed the Indian political scene rather dramati-
cally. It was not merely the unilateral British decision to withdraw from India
within a short specified period that constituted the sole threat to Jinnah.
Equally importantly, or perhaps even more so, Britain appeared particularly
concerned now about leaving behind a strong and centralized government in
India capable of defending the British economic and political interests in the
regions of the Indian Ocean. The Congress seemed keen, and looked both
confident and able to take over that role. It did not take very long, in the
altered conditions of time, for the British and the Congress to discover their
common interests in an India with a strong centre, and the quickest way of
achieving the purpose was to aim at Jinnah's 'Achilles' heel'-his Pakistan
demand-to oust him by conceding his professed and not real objective.
The passion roused by the partition demand gave it a momentum too strong
for Jinnah's sophisticated politics. The Pakistan idea, however vague and
undefined, could not but touch a very tender point in the Muslim mind,
continually nourished by dreams and hopes of an Islamic State. Jinnah's
unspecified political designs, mystifying political actions, and desultory tactics
left many of his followers increasingly confused and bewildered. The growing
restiveness and discontent among them, especially after the fiasco and
bitterness of the Cabinet Mission Plan, were bound to force his hand.
Likewise, the logic and the inevitable political consequence of the Muslim
'nation' theory, with its right of self-determination, generated fear and
agitation among non-Muslim minorities in the Muslim majority areas in the
Punjab and Bengal, resulting in the partition of these two provinces and the
further shrinkage ofJinnah's 'moth-eaten' and 'truncated' Pakistan which was
destined to split even further in 1971.
VI
The revisionist perspectives on the highly complex and complicated partition

politics of the League and the Congress in the nineteen-forties diverge so
substantially and significantly from the standard orthodox positions as to raise
concern about some fundamentals of this history. There are strong grounds to
challenge a few major dominant assumptions on the politics of partition, and
to demand a reconstruction of the historical verities. Robinson expressed the
desirability and likelihood ofJalal's work becoming 'the orthodox academic
interpretation' of'the role ofJinnah in the making of Pakistan'.7" With greater
accession to historical knowledge and, more importantly, given our willing-
ness to forsake the comfort and complacency of the traditional and a blinkered
view of the history of partition, one would like to think that the revisionist
versions of both League and Congress politics of partition cannot but gain
recognition as orthodox history.
69
Jalal, Jinnah, pp. 243 if.
70
Robinson, 'Review' ofJalal's innah, p. 6I7.
REVIEWS 407
Undeniably, not all doubts can be answered at the present stage of our
knowledge, and again, not all the answers given are, in themselves, unques-
tionable. Jalal's verdict on the Lahore Resolution and Jinnah's political
astuteness, for example, seem to leave some lingering doubts. The 'vagueness'
and 'ambiguity' of the wording of the resolution have been universally
admitted. There is also a generally agreed suggestion of its being 'deliberately
vague'. Jalal moves further than this position and stresses it as Jinnah's
'strength' and political sagacity. Both the assumptions of the alleged vague-
ness and Jinnah's astuteness seem a little dubious. Perhaps the resolution did
initially appear vague, as we have discussed above. But we have also noted
that the press and public soon identified it with the Pakistan demand. Jinnah
did nothing to dispel this view so that ultimately, to all concerned-the
Congress, the British, and indeed to most League members and supporters,
except perhapsJinnah and a small coterie of his confidants-it clearly implied
a separate Muslim homeland. The words 'autonomous', 'independent' and
'sovereign' in the resolution could not have been interpreted any differently.
Without a clear acceptance of such an identification-and Jinnah himself
accepted and even welcomed this identification71-it is absurd to think that
the Congress and the British Raj could have eventually found it possible to
impose Pakistan on Jinnah and the League.
This, in its turn, casts serious doubts on the soundness and strength of
Jinnah's political strategy. Given his ultimate political goal of maximization of
Muslim interests within a framework of confederal or federal (under the
Cabinet Mission Plan he was quite prepared to accept a federal scheme, as
already noted) unity of India, comprising, ideally, a Hindu and a Muslim unit,
as opposed to the idea of total separation, one has to question the rationale of
his entire political strategy, centering round the resolution. No final judge-
ment on Jinnah's politics could be offered unless we are in a position to
determine the precise place of the partition formula among his political
options. Was he totally opposed to the notion of partition? Or did he leave this
option open, despite his preferencefor a solution short of partition?Answers to
such questions alone can provide the true measure of his failure. Granted,
however, the thrust of his policy to seek a solution other than partition, which
we indeed believe to have been the case, it seems a rather dubious and self-
defeating tactic forJinnah to continue, since the Lahore Resolution, to play the
way he did with the 'spectre' of partition. It seems very likely, as discussed
above, that the resolution sought to gain recognition of Muslim nationhood
through its demand for the right of Muslim majority areas to secede. Whatever
vagueness one may talk about, the resolution does not appear vague about the
right of Muslim majority areas to break away and form 'independent states'.
The obvious political capital to be derived from a recognition of this right
induced Jinnah not to contradict the almost universal assumption about the
League's association and commitment to Pakistan in the sense of partition.
Were partition an unwelcome prospect, these tactics risked its achievement. It
was less than political good sense and foresight not to have secured the
71 See above p. 396 also note 32.
408 REVIEWS
interests of Muslims in the minority areas precisely against the strong

possibility of the Congress seeking the easiest and hence the most tempting
answer to this highly complex problem by trying to cut the Muslim League
and Muslims out of India. The 'hostage theory' was nothing more than an
after-thought-a later rationalization calculated to offer some psychological
comfort to the minorities concerned. The Lahore Resolution could afford, so it
may seem, greater political tact, maturity and vision in attempting to
integrate, openly and clearly, the demands of Muslims of the minority areas
with those of their co-believers in the majority areas. Alongside the demand for
the right of the majority areas to secede, could the resolution not have
indicated its preference, in the interests of all Indian Muslims, for a solution
avoiding partition? There is a tacit admission of failure of this strategy as well
as an obvious touch of sadness when Jinnah expressed his regrets to Lord
Mountbatten, in April I947, for 'his inability to re-consider the Cabinet
Mission Plan', and added: '... it was clear that in no circumstances did
Congress intend to work the plan either in accordance with the spirit or the
letter.'72
One wonders about the ultimate logic of Jinnah choosing to adopt his
secretive approach-not wanting partition and yet using the partition threat
to hang, like the sword of Damocles, over the country until it was too late to be
discarded. What if he tried to confront the Congress with his 'real' demands to
secure the interests of all Muslims in India, openly rejecting the partition
option, and continue to play his usual 'long, slow game'? If partition was never
an option for the League andJinnah, would the Congress and the British, even
in the changed circumstances in the latter half of the nineteen-forties, have
found it as easy as they did to force it on eighty million Muslims of British
India? Instead of this precarious and dangerous gamble intrinsic to 'poker',
would Jinnah have done better to match the strength and skill of the Congress
in an open game of'chess'? Then, perhaps, we have hindsight on our side.
Issues of this nature will engage us in debate and discourse, as revisionist
efforts are elevated to the status of orthodoxy. Meanwhile, revisionism on
Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan questions the very legitimacy of the
state brought into existence by the Quaid-i Azam as the universally acknow-
ledged 'Father of Pakistan'.
Universityof Tasmania As I M R o Y
72
Mansergh, TP Documents,Viceroys
PersonalReportNo.3, 17 April 1947, X, Doc. No.
I65, L/PO/6/I23: if. 42-9, p. 301.

Asim Roy, High Politics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Asim Roy, High Politics

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Asim Roy, High Politics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The High Politics of India's Partition: The Revisionist Perspective

Author(s): Asim Roy

oo26-749X/90/$5.oo + .oo ? 1990 Cambridge University Press

power in India is undoubtedly N. Mansergh [ed.-in-chief], E. W. R. Lumby and P.

9 S. S. Pirzada (ed.), Foundation

': Pirzada, MuslimLeagueDocuments,II, p. 269; also J. Ahmad (ed.), Speechesand

17Jalal,Jinnah, p. 4; Roy, 'Review' ofJalal'sJinnah.

Serious misgivings and inadequacies of this nature in the orthodox views

... the Resolution is rather ambiguous, if not self-contradictory. It speaks of grouping

Reginald Coupland, who met Jinnah in the early nineteen-forties, expressed

Jinnah's tasks, in the revisionist perspective, emerge infinitely more com-

though intriguing, is better explained from the revisionist position. Cripps's

incapable of being resolved in a country which was in chains. This shift of

47 See above p. 385.

51 Ibid., pp. 336-7.

64 Mansergh,TPDocuments, X, Doc. No. 375, L/P &J/Io/79: f.248, p. 717.

The revisionist perspectives on the highly complex and complicated partition

71 See above p. 396 also note 32.

interests of Muslims in the minority areas precisely against the strong

You might also like