I guess, we will never conclusively know what actually panned out. The sad part is, our politics still cant accept a scholarly book without getting bitter about it. Its sad that today, children in India learn history only till 1947, that is when it ends! Did we as a nation stop making history that day? Nothing about the Indo-Pak wars, nothing about our achievements in space technology, nothing about the changes in every field that the country has undergone till now.
Sad.
We keep pondering over our Shivajis and Chandraguptas while continuing to ignore our very recent - and ten times more relevent past.
Anyway, please find the article below for convenience.
Jaswant pays price for telling the truth S A Aiyar
For decades, Congress and BJP have jointly nurtured the myth that Britain teamed up with Jinnah to impose Partition on India, to institutionalise divide-and-rule even after leaving. No, says Jaswant Singh in his new book. Partition was largely due to Nehru and Sardar Patel, who insisted on a centralised India and vetoed the loose federation favoured by Jinnah.
The BJP has expelled Jaswant, and, outrageously, banned his book in Gujarat. He wonders why the party is upset by his expose of Patel/Nehru. He should have known that his expose would damage the anti-Muslim ideology of the BJP more than that of Congress.
Historically, India was a land of a thousand warring kings, along with divisions of language, region and religion. Division was a fact of life: the British did not have to invent it. Rather, as Maulana Muhammad Ali said to the British, ‘‘We divide and you rule.’’
British rule consolidated a hitherto fragmented India. Even so, British India covered only half the area and two-thirds of the population of the sub-continent. The rest lay with 600-odd princely states. Had Britain wanted to continue divide-and-rule — and Churchill certainly did — it just had to stand by its treaties with the 600 princes, who wanted independence. But the Labour Party that came to power in 1945 was against such imperial games. Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, told the princes they must join India or Pakistan. This helped create two countries out of 600 princedoms.
Jaswant portrays Jinnah as a secularist wanting a loose federation of states, each with substantial autonomy. A loose federation was initially proposed by Mountbatten but rejected by Nehru, who said it would Balkanize India. Nehru wanted a strong federal government for unity. Jinnah said this was a cloak for Hindu hegemony.
Jaswant is perhaps too soft on Jinnah, who had a communal streak as well as a secular one. His insistence that only the Muslim League could speak for Muslims was pure communalism. At one time he favoured a loose federation, but ultimately insisted on a separate Pakistan.
The interim government of 1946-47 included Congress and the Muslim League. Jinnah quarrelled daily with Congress on issue after issue to deny it legitimacy.
Liaquat Ali of the Muslim League was finance minister in the interim government, and had the power to block any expenditure. He constantly queried and blocked spending proposals of Congress ministers. Patel said he could not even appoint a chaprasi without Liaquat’s approval, which took ages.
In February 1947, Liaquat presented a socialist ‘‘poor man’s budget’’. This imposed a 25% tax on business profits over one lakh rupees, doubled the corporate tax, imposed capital gains tax, and doubled the export duty on tea. It also proposed a commission to unearth tax-evaders.
Socialists in Congress supported these proposals. But others like Patel were outraged, claiming that Liaquat was really attacking Hindu businessmen (like G D Birla) who had long financed Congress. This was a Hindu communal interpretation of a budget that equally affected Muslim and Parsi industrialists. Hindu businessmen also feared that Liaquat would selectively target them for tax evasion via the new commission, a fear some Congressmen shared.
This reflected, in part, an unwillingness to accommodate the agenda of a prickly coalition partner. Ironically, the Congress of Sonia Gandhi would in 2004-08 swallow more humiliations from a prickly partner than it did in 1946-47. But in 1947, Congress saw itself as the natural party of rule, not a mere coalition partner.
Liaquat’s tactics were stunningly successful. They convinced Patel — and later Nehru — that working with the Muslim League was impossible. Alan Campbell-Johnson says in Mission with Mountbatten that Nehru and Patel accepted Partition because ‘‘by conceding Pakistan to Jinnah they will have no more of him and eliminate his nuisance value; or as Nehru put it privately, that by cutting the head we shall get rid of headache.’’
This supports Jaswant Singh’s claim that Congress opted for Partition rather than share power with Jinnah. Pakistani historians like Ayesha Jalal argue that Congress was unwilling to make the compromises necessary in a diverse democracy, and this led to Partition. Other historians blame Jinnah and Liaquat for sabotaging any chance of a unified India.
Either way, we need to abandon the myth that the British imposed Partition on India, though Mountbatten saw it as desirable and helped promote the Jinnah-Congress agreement on it. The clincher was Liaquat’s budget and obstructionism, which drove Congress from opposing Partition to becoming a fully consenting partner in it. Jaswant Singh could have been tougher on Jinnah, but has correctly highlighted Congress’ role in Partition
____________________________________________________________________Also it hurts that the BJP is running around like a headless chicken, not proving to be a worthy opposition to the government... Blah :x
