The Standpoint

HISTORICAL REMAINS REVISITED

By

Shubham Bose

Was he? Wasn’t he? It’s a question that has led to the sacking of one of the most senior leaders of India’s second largest political party, generated heated debates on both sides of the Radcliff line, and brought to fore one of the prickliest issues that has faced the Indian subcontinent.

Historically we’ve believed partition to be an ugly, indelible blemish on the face of the much-avowed “Bharat Mata” and painted Mohammed Ali Jinnah as the villain who perpetuated it. However, recent events have forced one to seek new answers to some rather existential questions about our nationhood, which strike at the heart of our long nurtured beliefs about partition.

Was Jinnah alone responsible for the cleaving of the subcontinent? Was he a privately secular man engaged in communal politics? A power hungry man of shifting loyalties, a man of razor sharp mind and high ambitions, or simply someone who found himself at a historical juncture of history without a clear idea about what his actions could entail. Unfortunately, there are no clear answers. Jinnah’s premature death and a relatively enigmatic persona in life are partially responsible for this.

The present debate about partition centres on Nehru and Patel’s role in it. Were they opposed to partition as it is generally believed or were they ambitious individuals who would have rather divided India, than share power?

This tendency to exonerate these two leaders from any responsibility of the partition is a result of the Gandhian Belief that partition was bad for India, and that if somehow undone, it would cure us of many ills.

It is said that in hindsight we do the right thing. The fact that the partition occurred more than 60 years back provides us with the opportunity to examine things in a different light, different from the conventional thought process. Looking back, there seem to have been a sense of inevitability in the partition of India, if we look at the other alternative that is an undivided India.

Had India remained undivided, it would have retained a sizeable muslim minority, small enough to be a minority but large enough to be important in all aspects of state craft. This would have also meant that a large part of the population would have had insecurities typical to any minority populace. Every time communal tensions would have broken out in post-independent undivided India, it would have led to demands for the utopian paradise of Pakistan that Jinnah had so aggressively touted.

But most importantly an undivided India would have never given us the opportunity to examine Pakistan as a case study – a case study that validates the importance of democratic and secular policies that form the cornerstone of our nation – a case study that proves that religion cannot be the basis of nationhood. And perhaps most importantly a case study that proves the very Gandhian beliefs that had sought to undo it.

Yes, perhaps Nehru and Patel were equally responsible for the partition but not in the negative way that we would like to think. Rather, they were the two leaders who found themselves at a juncture of history where every decision that they took decisively affected millions of people. In that sense, they deftly managed their duties and probably took the right decision in agreeing to partition, while ensuring a united, secular and democratic India – something that seemed completely impossible in those turbulent times.

For now, let us say, “The answer to a book is a book” as Arun Shourie rightly puts it.