History of India 1

HISTORY

Subject : History
(For under graduate student)

Paper No. : Paper - IV

History of Modern India

Topic No. & Title : Topic - 8

Partisan Saga

Lecture No. & Title : Lecture - 1

Two Nations One Country

Script

Two Nations One Country

Introduction: The trauma of partition

Newly independent India was ushered into the world with
Jawaharlal Nehru‟s famous speech, - Tryst with Destiny,
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the
time comes when we shall redeem our pledge. At the stroke
of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake
to life and freedom.”
History of India 2

It was a moment to rejoice and also a moment of mourning

because a country was vivisected into two nations along
religious lines. It resulted in an outburst of violence that will
remain etched forever in the collective memory of the two
nations. There was cross migration of 14 million people –
the biggest migration in history till date. At least one million
were reported dead and hundreds of thousands have never
been traced. A cultural tapestry woven over millennia was
rudely torn apart. The bazaars where people sold their
goods, the playgrounds where they spent many a happy
hour, homes of their friends and relatives, suddenly
belonged to another country. Railway tracks that connected
people lay barren and unused. Roads between vibrant cities
were abruptly abandoned. The other side of the river
became forbidden territory.

The magnitude and intensity of the tragedy has been

immortalized by many a poet and artist. Here are the words
of Amrita Pritam, a poet from Punjab:
O soother of the stricken, arise and see your Punjab!
Corpses are everywhere, the blood is flowing in Chenab!
History of India 3

Someone put poison in the waters of five rivers,

The rivers in turn kept feeding the fields everywhere.
Where once they heard love songs, the flute is now mute,
The art of playing flute for Ranja's brothers is lost.
Rains of blood fell, the blood seeped from graves,
The princesses of love cried loud from graves.

Mahatma Gandhi did not celebrate independence on the

15th of August. He was quietly sitting by himself in the
Beleghata locality in Kolkata mourning the division. Was
this division inevitable? Could it not be avoided? Who was
ultimately responsible for Partition?

Historians by and large blame it on the „divide and rule‟

policy of the British, - make the Muslims fight against the
Hindus and Hindus against the Muslims. They felt that
unless they did that, they would not be successful in
maintaining this big empire. However, in the last five years
before independence, both the Hindu and the Muslim
nationalist leaders perceived partition as the only option for
pacifying the communal hatred sweeping across the
country.
History of India 4

Prof. Sugata Bose has to say, “There was only one man,
Mahatma Gandhi, who tried to the best of his ability to cling
to the principle of a united and independent India. But by
1947, Mahatma Gandhi himself was being elbowed aside by
his own erstwhile lieutenants. Only if Mahatma Gandhi had
been supported by someone like Subhash Chandra Bose at
that critical moment, could partition have been avoided. But
he had died fighting for his country‟s freedom in August
1945 and Nehru and Patel, who used to be the „yes men‟ of
Mahatma Gandhi, had by now become his „no men‟.”

Trying to understand Partition is more like a blind man

feeling an elephant. As newer facts are unearthed and
historians probe deeper, new perspectives develop. The
debate continues to rage unabated. Ripples of the
vivisection continue to be felt.

Birth of Indian National Congress

But we have to make a beginning somewhere. If one side of
the coin is the story of India‟s independence movement, the
other side of the same coin is the story of Partition. So we
begin with the founding of Indian National Congress, the
History of India 5

organization that initiated the Nationalist movement. On

December 28, 1885, the Indian National Congress was
founded at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay.
Alan Octavian Hume assumed office as the General
Secretary, Woomesh Chandra Bonnerjee was elected the
President.

Hume had embarked on an endeavour to get an

organization started by reaching out to selected alumni of
the University of Calcutta. These were young men
enlightened by western education and indoctrinated into the
political thoughts of modern Europe.
Hume addressed them:

“Every nation secures precisely as good a government as it

merits. If you, the picked men, the most highly educated of
the nation, cannot make a resolute struggle to secure
greater freedom for yourselves and your country, then at
present, at any rate, all hopes of progress are at an end
and India truly neither desires nor deserves any better
Government than she enjoys.”
History of India 6

In May 1885, Hume secured the Viceroy's approval to

create an "Indian National Union", which would be affiliated
with the government and act as a platform to voice Indian
public opinion. On 12 October 1885, Hume and a group of
educated Indians also published "An Appeal from the People
of India to the Electors of Great Britain and Ireland" to ask
British voters in the 1885 British general election, to help
support candidates sympathetic to Indian public opinion,
which included opposition to the levying of taxes on India to
finance the British-Indian campaigns in Afghanistan and
support for legislative reform in India. The appeal was a
failure, and was interpreted by many Indians as "a rude
shock, but a true realization that they had to fight their
battles alone."

72 delegates, mostly Hindus and all from elite educated

families, attended the first session of the Indian National
Congress. WC Bonerjee said in his presidential speech:
The objective of the Congress is eradication by direct,
friendly, personal intercourse, of all possible race, creed or
provincial prejudices amongst all lovers of our country.
History of India 7

Though there has been discussion over the fact that the
Congress was founded by a retired civil servant and not by
Indians, G.K.Gokhale with his characteristic modesty and
political wisdom, stated this explicitly in 1913: "No Indian
could have started the Indian National Congress...if an
Indian had come forward to start such a movement
embracing all Indians, the officials in India would not have
allowed the movement to come into existence.

If the founder of the Congress had not been an Englishman

and a distinguished ex-official, such was the distrust of
political agitation in those days that the authorities would
have at once found some way or the other to suppress the
movement”.

The early leadership of the Indian National Congress was

moderate in its methods and aims. The preferred method
was the constitutional way of prayers and petitions. The
chief political aims were expansion of the elective principle
in the legislative councils and greater Indianization of the
administration. The Indian National Congress, however, was
perceived as an elitist organization by the people at large.
History of India 8

This was the time when India had just begun to get a taste
of modernization. There was a queer coexistence of
medieval beliefs and progressive thoughts in society. Those
who went to the West to acquire higher education had to do
penance on their return for having crossed the Kala Pani or
the forbidden sea. The Indian National Congress consisted
mostly of such Indians. Its formation rang alarm bells
among the orthodox Hindus as well among the Muslims.

Muslim response to INC

Muslims in India had been slow to take to English education
and this set them apart from those who were active in the
Congress. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a prominent educationist,
who later founded the Aligarh Muslim University, said in a
speech in Meerut in March 1888-
“Three years ago they founded a very big assembly, which
holds its sittings in various places. They have given it the
name National Congress. We and our nation gave no
thought to the matter. Our Mohammedan Nation has
hitherto sat silent. It was quite indifferent as to what the
Babus of Bengal, the Hindus of these provinces and the
History of India 9

English and Eurasians might be doing. But they have now

been wrongly tampering with our nation.”

Thus was mooted the idea of two nations in one country.

However, the word „kaum‟ in Urdu has connotations quite
different from what we today understand as „nation‟.

Prof: Siddiqui says that the word „kaum‟ carries many more
connotations than just meaning „nation‟: “When we speak of
„nation‟, we don‟t have a word better that „kaum‟. But at the
same time, you will find in our literature, Kaum Kayasth,
Kaum Brahman, Even in the documents written in the court,
you will find Kaum such and such, Pesha such and such,
pesha meaning profession; like that in the old documents
you will find kaum is used and kaum has a lot of
meanings‟‟.

Muslims and Hindus had cohabited in India for more than

600 years. They have influenced each other in their
religious beliefs, in their food habits, in music, language and
literature. And there has been an intricately woven
economic dependence between the two communities. A
History of India 10

Hindu bride wears a saree that a Muslim weaver takes

months to weave. A Hindu governor served a Muslim Nawab
and belonged to his inner circle of trusted men.

In Syed Ahmed Khan‟s speech, for the first time, the

interest of Indian Muslims, as separate from those of
Hindus, was publicly voiced. But his voice was not
representative of the dominant Muslim thinking of his time.
Sadly, the status of Muslims in British India had rapidly
deteriorated.

Prof. Siddiqui laments that the British first did remove all
the Muslims from the army and from the judiciary. Usually,
because of the studies of Arabic and Persian, the judges
used to be Muslims – the khwajas used to be Muslims and
they were removed from judicial services. They were
removed from administrative services. They lost state
patronage. Then permanent settlement, almost exclusively
hit the Muslim community. Ninety percent of the zamindars
were non-Muslims. And they were given extraordinary
powers over the destiny of the subjects. They could
increase the rent at will. They were money lenders at the
History of India 11

same time. So in times of need they used to advance

money to the subjects and it was a horrible time for the
peasantry, who happened to be the Muslims. The Industrial
Revolution, which happened to synchronize with that
period, snatched away the vocation of the craftsmen, who
were mainly Muslims.

It was not surprising that some enlightened Muslims feared

their subjugation by the Hindus. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
continued in his speech:
“Now suppose that the English were to leave India, then
who would be the rulers of India? Is it possible that under
these circumstances two nations – the Mohammedans and
the Hindus could sit on the same throne and remain equal
in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of
them should conquer the other and thrust it down. Until one
nation had conquered the other and made it obedient,
peace cannot reign in the land.”

Prof: Siddiqui reminds us that even during the Sepoy

Mutiny of 1857, which is also called the first war of India‟s
independence, the Hindus and Muslims had fought shoulder
History of India 12

to shoulder against the British. He speaks of one Munshi

Zakiruddin Ahmed, who, at the time of the Mutiny, had
crossed the age of sixty. He collected an army of 1400
young people. Some were Muslims, but the majority was
Hindus. And he thought of reclaiming certain quarters from
the British, although he did not succeed. Following is an
intensely patriotic poem composed by Munshi Zakiruddin
Ahmed and circulated among his comrades as a pamphlet:
For the fighters of freedom there is undying glory
I am thrilled with pride on their role of glory
My heart longs for nothing
But the advent of the new spring
Patriot’s life is pale without the -----
Victory or defeat is not their concern

This pamphlet is perhaps just a small proof that the

Muslims felt equally strongly for their motherland or „kaum‟
and were ready to die for it. The Sepoy Mutiny had indeed,
united the Hindus and Muslims against a common enemy –
the British.
History of India 13

Forging a national identity

Resistance against British rule was rapidly gaining ground.
The nationalist leaders realized that a new national identity
had to be given to the people whose identities, for years,
had been circumscribed by their religion, profession, caste
and language. Different communities contributed to the
construction of the new national identity. But it got a
distinctive Hindu colour through a number of social and
cultural developments.

In 1875 Dayanand Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj – a

way of living imbibing the fundamental principles of
Hinduism and rejecting cobwebs of superstitions and dead
rituals. Raja Ram Mohan Roy‟s Brahmo Samaj was also
founded along the same philosophical thought. Bankim
Chandra Chattopadhyay‟s Ananda Math was published in
1883. In this book, the character Bhavani Pathak utters
“Bande Mataram” – the magic words that roused the Indian
youth against the British.

In 1893, Vivekananda mesmerized his audience at the

Parliament of Religions in Chicago:
History of India 14

“Sisters and brothers of America …. I am proud to belong to

a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and
universal acceptance. I am proud to belong to a nation
which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all
religions and all nations of the earth.”

In 1894 Bal Gangadhar Tilak initiated public celebration of

the Ganapati festival in Maharashtra. In 1904 Shri
Aurobindo celebrated Kali Puja. The nation was imagined as
a mother – Bharat Mata. The cry Bande Mataram was used
as the main nationalist slogan. As Aurobindo Ghosh argued
in 1907, it was only when „the mother had revealed herself‟
that the patriotism that worked miracles and saved a
doomed nation was born.‟ He credited Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay with having caught the first modern glimpse
of this grand spectacle: „It was 32 years ago that Bankim
wrote this great song and few listened. But in a sudden
moment of awakening from long delusions, the people of
Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment
somebody sang Bande Mataram. The mantra had been
given.‟
History of India 15

Prof. Siddiqui draws our notice to the fact that the ideas of
patriotism were not a new concept that took roots during
the nationalist movement. Amir Khusrau‟s literature, written
a couple of hundred years back, also reverberates with
patriotism. He says: „Amir Khusrau‟s ideas you never hear
anywhere. He was full of praise for the motherland. At that
time the British were not on the scene, but he was
glorifying the country. He was comparing our country with
Iran and Afghanistan. He wrote, „our country is greater,
bigger, our flowers are more beautiful, more fragrant,‟ –
this magnified way of telling things was no doubt
patriotism.

It is perhaps natural that the Muslims felt left out of these

developments. On the key question of relations between
overarching Indian nation on one hand and religious
communities and linguistic regions on the other hand, anti
colonial thought and politics left contradictory legacies. The
anti colonialism of both Hindus and Muslims were influenced
in this period by their religious sensibilities. But since the
colonial state‟s scheme of enumeration had transformed
one into majority and the other into the minority
History of India 16

community, it became easier for Hindu religious symbolisms

and communitarian interests to be subsumed within the
emerging discourse of the Indian nation. Even a Syed
Ahmed Khan, his loyalism notwithstanding, was more
opposed to majoritarianism of the Congress variety than
the idea of an Indian nation.

Others, more inclined to making a common cause with the

Congress, found it increasingly difficult to be accepted both
as Muslim communitarians and Indian nationalists. The
granting of „communal‟ electorates in 1909 compounded the
problem even further. As Maulana Mohammed Ali
complained to his Congress colleague in 1912, the Hindu
„communal patriot‟ had turned Hinduism into an effective
symbol of mass mobilization and Indian nationality, but
refused to give any quarter to the Muslim unless the latter
quietly shuffles off his individuality and becomes completely
Hinduized.

Ironically, all the thinkers who revived the Hindu pride,

were inclusive in their outlook.
History of India 17

At the height of the Swadeshi movement Aurobindo Ghosh

had written warmly about national ego, but also saw
nationalist India preserving itself in a kind of
cosmopolitanism, somewhat as the individual preserves
itself in the family, the family in the class, the class in the
nation, not destroying itself needlessly, but recognizing the
larger interest.

Vivekananda had concluded his Chicago speech:

“I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in
honour of this convention may be the death knell of all
fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the
pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons
wending their way to the same goal.”

Bengal divided
In 1905, Lord Curzon decided to rearrange the provincial
boundaries of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa – a territory that
comprised 189,000 miles. A new province called East
Bengal and Assam was constituted, with Dacca as its
capital. Thus Bengal was divided into predominantly Hindu
and Muslim provinces. By far, this was Lord Curzon‟s most
History of India 18

controversial decision. Although sought to be justified on

grounds of administrative efficiency, the partition was
clearly a political move. As Curzon‟s home secretary put it,
“Bengal united is a power. Bengal divided would pull in
different ways …. One of our main objects is to split up and
then weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule.” More
insidious was the attempt to pit Muslim against Hindu by
claiming that the creation of a separate Muslim majority
province in eastern Bengal, with Dhaka as its capital, would
resurrect the lost glory of the Mughal Empire.

The partition was an affront to most educated Bengali

students and professionals, both Hindu and Muslim who
were proud of their common language and culture. The
nationalist leaders opposed the move tooth and nail. It was
seen as a divide and rule policy of the wily rulers. Even the
moderate Surendranath Banerji vowed to „unsettle‟ what
Curzon claimed to be the „settled fact‟ of partition.
Rabindranath Tagore came down to the streets and
embraced the Muslims as their brothers. The nation joined
him in a chorus “Bidhir Badhan Katbe Tumi emon
shaktiman, Amader bhanga gora tomar hate emon obhiman
History of India 19

… (You will cut the bond decreed by providence? You are so

powerful, are you?)

Resistance to partition signalled the beginning of the

Swadeshi movement. Although Bengal was the main centre
for agitation, the reverberations were felt in other parts of
India. The Indian National Congress took up the cause and
moderate leaders from Bombay like Gopal Krishna Gokhale,
stated in flattery of the Bengalis, “What Bengal thinks
today, India thinks tomorrow”.

The British took advantage of the Hindu dominance of the

Swadeshi movement by giving tacit support to a group of
Muslims. Curzon received support from some Muslim
landlords, particularly Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka, on
whose estate the Muslim League was eventually born in
December 1906.

In October 1906, thirty-five Muslims had met the Lord

Curzon‟s successor, Viceroy, Lord Minto, in Simla. They
appealed to the British Government for assistance against
the „unsympathetic‟ Hindu majority. They appealed for a
History of India 20

separate electorate for Muslims and representation in

proportion to their social and political importance rather
than numbers alone. The meeting was timely because the
British were contemplating to include a certain degree of
Indian participation in governing India. So it was important
for the Muslims to organize themselves into a party.

It is recorded in Lady Minto‟s diary that this act was

jubilantly hailed by British officialdom as “nothing less than
the pulling back of 62 million people from joining the ranks
of seditious oppositions”.

The All India Muslim League was thus formed to safeguard

the interest of the Muslims of India. The first meeting of the
League was held in Shah Bag in Dacca on December 30,
1906. Fifty eight delegates from all over the country
attended the meeting. Mushtaq Hussain was elected the
first President. He said in his speech:

“We, who have not yet forgotten the tradition of our own
recent rule in India and elsewhere and are more intimately
acquainted than other communities of India with the proper
History of India 21

relations which should subsist between the Government and

its subjects, should accept it as a rule of our conduct that
the plants of the political rights of a subject race thrives
best in the soil of loyalty. . The Musalmans should prove
themselves loyal to their Government before they can ask
for recognition of any of their rights.”

This was clearly an appeal to the Muslims of India to be

loyal to the British crown. The Muslim League supported the
partition of Bengal and opposed the boycott of foreign
goods. Mushtaq Hussain continued in his inaugural speech:
“I must confess, gentlemen, that we shall not be loyal to
this Government for any unselfish reasons, but that it is
through regard for our own lives and property, our own
honour and religion, that we are impelled to be faithful to
the Government”.

Swadeshi soon proved to be an expensive indulgence for

the common Bengali peasant. There were some outbreaks
of violence in East Bengal, in which Muslim peasants
attacked Hindu landlords, moneylenders and traders. By
1908, the coercive methods of the Swadeshi agitators had
History of India 22

alienated the Muslim poor. When the masses refused to rise

in rebellion, the young Swadeshi nationalists fell back on
individual terror. A certain Ibrahim Khan, in the
Mymensingh District of East Bengal, distributed pamphlets
to dissuade the Muslims from the Swadeshi Movement and
involve them in a Swajati Movement. The pamphlet
depicted Hindus as oppressors and asked Muslims to shun
Hindus, economically, socially and politically. The operative
message was: send Hindus to hell.

Bengal was reunited six years later when George the V

ascended the British throne and came to India in 1911. By
then several terrorist factions in Bengal were active and the
milieu had become too turbulent for the British
administration. So, while reuniting Bengal, the capital of
India was shifted to Delhi. Below is the announcement by
His Imperial Majesty:

We are pleased to announce to Our People that on the

advice of our ministers, tended after consultation with Our
Governor General in Council we have decided upon transfer
of the seat of the Government of India from Calcutta to the
History of India 23

ancient capital of Delhi, and simultaneously, and as a

consequence of the transfer, the creation at as early a date
as possible of the Governorship of the Presidency of Bengal,
of a new Lieutenant Governorship in Council administering
the areas of Bihar, Chota Nagpur and Orissa…. It is our
earnest desire that these changes may conduce to the
better administration of India and the greater prosperity
and happiness of our beloved people.”

Proposal for divided Punjab

In 1920, under Gandhiji‟s inspiration, the Indian National
Congress passed the resolution of non-violent Non-
cooperation with the British Government. It received
overwhelming support from the masses. The nationalist
movement was turned into a revolutionary movement. The
Congress gained wide popular support.

The Muslims too developed strong anti-British feelings

because of Britain‟s role in the dismemberment of the
Turkish Empire. Some Muslim leaders organized a mass
movement of the Muslims, called the Khilafat movement.
Gandhiji saw this as a rare opportunity to unite Hindus and
History of India 24

Muslims. The Civil Disobedience movement thus gained

greater momentum.

Muslim leaders were not the only ones to articulate the idea
of two nations. The idea of two nations was articulated by
many leaders in different ways. Lala Lajpat Rai in 1923
moved the idea of Partition. He said, „we cannot live with
the Muslims‟. In a letter to Sarat Chandra Chatterjee he
stated

I am not afraid of seven crores of Indian Musalmaans. But

the seven crores, plus the armed hordes of Afghanistan and
Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey, will be
irresistible. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the
necessity and desirability of Hindu Muslim unity. I am also
fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about
the injunctions in the Quran and Hadis? The suggestion is
that the Punjab should be partitioned into two provinces; –
western Punjab with large Muslim majority to be Muslim
governed province and the eastern Punjab with the large
Hindu Sikh majority to be the non-Muslim governed
province.
History of India 25

What is a nation?
Mohammad Iqbal has defined a nation with a poetic touch:
“Man is enslaved neither by his race, nor by his religion, nor
by the course of rivers, nor by the direction of mountain
ranges. A great aggregation of men, sane of mind and
warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is
called a nation”.

Rabindranath Tagore envisioned a nation enriched by the

confluence of many streams of thought:
Come Ye Aryan, come non-Aryan. Come Hindu and
Musalmaan.
Welcome to the Englishman. Welcome to all Christians.
Come to our mother’s coronation.
Your presence will fill the chalice.
Your touch will enable a holy union.
All humanity will congregate by the seas of our great
nation.

So did Mohammad Iqbal. And yet he observed:

“It is however painful to observe that our attempts to
discover such a principle of internal harmony have so far
History of India 26

failed. Perhaps we are unwilling to recognize that each

group has a right to free development according to its own
cultural traditions. If the principle that the Indian Muslim is
entitled to full and free development on the lines of his own
culture and tradition in his own Indian homelands, is
recognized as the basis of a permanent communal
settlement, he will be ready to stake all his for the freedom
of India.”

Mohammad Iqbal continued in his 1930 speech:

“Without fullest cultural autonomy - and communalism in its
better aspect is culture – it will be difficult to create a
harmonious nation. Communalism, in its higher aspect, is
indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a
country like India. The Muslim demand for the creation of
Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified. I
would like to see the Punjab, North West Frontier provinces,
Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self
Government within or without the British Empire, the
formation of a North West Indian Muslim state appears to
be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North West
India.”
History of India 27

Thus the geographical contours of a Muslim state were

articulated for the first time. Mohammad Iqbal‟s idea was
taken to its logical conclusion in a pamphlet published from
Cambridge in 1932 called “Now or Never: Are we to live or
perish forever?” The author was Chaudhary Rahmat Ali, a
thirty five year old student who claimed to be the founder
of Pakistan national movement. The name Pakistan was
thus coined. But it took some more years to gain currency.

Prof. Sugata Bose is of the opinion that all of the senior

leaders of the Muslim League had dismissed it as a student
scheme that was chimerical and impractical and many of
the top leaders of the Muslim League held much the same
view even in the early 1940s. But the word Pakistan did not
get snuffed out from the collective consciousness of the
people.

Sugata Bose reminds us that there was a moment when

Jinnah himself said that the name Pakistan has been foisted
on us by the Hindu press. The idea of Pakistan drew
nourishment from the power hungry factions and struck
deeper roots with the passing years.
History of India 28

Advocates of partition say that separation can bring

irreconcilable warring parties to the negotiating table and
conflict and save lives. Giving antagonistic communities the
freedom not to live together may prevent violence.
Impartial peace brokers may offer justice to both sides. The
realities of division, however, have been very different.