Untold Facts

The Role in Essence of Jinnah and the Muslim League in the 1947 Partition of the British India

In hospital
On the 13th December I was admitted to the BIRDEM Hospital for urgent attention to my deteriorating diabetes level. This was the fourth time of my getting admitted there and second time this year since 10th June when I had a heart attack. I am so fortunate that I get VIP attention and the best treatment available there for being even more fortunate father of an eye specialist employed there now for about 12 years.

2 Recent books
This time I had two books for my pleasure reading, one Jaswant Singh’s famous and recent book Jinnah-India-Partition-Independemce and the other one, Will Secular India Survive, a collection of 14 scholarly articles by high profile academics, edited by Professor Mushirul Hassan of the Jamia Millia Islamia, India, one time Rahimia Madrassa of Shah Waliullah established in the mid eighteenth century and now in the post 1947 Independent India secularized University, somewhat like the pre-1947 Calcutta Islamia College turned into Maolana Azad College immediately after the 1947 Great Divide.
Somehow the two books with me in the hospital cabin drew some attention of the attending physicians, one in particular, a young lady doctor in specific charge of the cabin, I understood.

Young Physician
On a brief occasion just before my discharge on the 23rd December, she asked me first about my profession. I told her about my spending the life as a teacher now nearly 52 years and fully retired from actual class room teaching in a private university three years and a half ago mainly for my failing health. Possibly, her next question was about Jinnah’s division of India and establishment of Pakistan based on religion.

Responses
I responded in my own way. India was not divided in 1947 solely for religious reason, much less by Jinnah for Islam. What Jinnah had uncompromisingly stood was for securing basic rights and dignity of all including the minority Muslims on all India basis to live as free citizens once the British would leave as foreign rulers, and the majority representing the Caste Hindu Congress would not continue to suppress, oppress and exploit the minority Muslims in perpetuity. Jinnah almost until the last critical time of 1946 tried to keep India united and have independence from the British rule as one bigger India. But the Congress leaders like Patel and Nehru, in particular, by their shear arrogance against the genuine grievances of the minorities forced upon the partition as transitory measure with hidden agenda sooner than later to foil the new State of Pakistan, and reintegrate once again into the mother India or AKHAND BHARAT (See, Nehru’s letter, for example, of 23 May 1947 addressed to Tipperah’s/ Comillah’s Congress leader Ashrafuddin Chowdhury, Jaswnt’s Jinnah…, p.508).

Propaganda
The issue of Partition based on religious divide is rather a mischievous propaganda against Jinnah as he had all along been a broad minded person and according to famous Congress leader of the early twentieth century, Gokhale, the Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity. Jinnah had no religious bigotry. What he strived on for alleviating the appalling conditions of the minority Muslims all through from his early political career in the Congress Party and did not join the Muslim League, for example, he along with the Congress leader Gokhale he piloted the Muslim Wakf Bill in the Imperial Council to pass as the Muslim Wakaf Act in 1913. On joining the Muslim League he continued the pursuance for the Muslims, being then about 33% or one third of the all Indian population, for protection and safeguard of basic citizenship rights once the British would have left. For in the foreseeable democratic set up in post British India the majority would continually trample upon the minority Muslims who had continued to suffer all the disadvantages during the British rule from 1757 to 1947 along with the lower caste Hindus and other disadvantaged native people in millions. The Congress leaders cared little for the minority Muslims in the future set up. Even in the Muslim majority provinces like Bengal, Punjab, Sind and the Frontier, the autonomy set up proposed by the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946 with right to opt out in ten years if they would so choose to do was torpedoed by the Congress, particularly by the party President Nehru through his 10th July 1946 press statement. Had he not had torpedoed the Plan in the way that even many other Congress leaders termed as shear folly, India would remain undivided one with safeguard of full autonomy as per the Cabinet Mission Plan for the Muslim majority provinces.
It was only after the torpedoing of the Cabinet Mission Plan by Nehru that the Muslims, Muslim League and Jinnah had no option but to stand more firmly solid for the division of India and for one independent Pakistan comprising the Muslim majority provinces in the western and in eastern India.

Bengal Legislators (1946)
So far as the partition of Bengal was concerned, it was not only the Muslim majority Legislators of 1946 election results but also the absolute majority (106+21=127) of both Muslim (106-35) and Hindu Legislators (58-21) of Bengal combined voted against the partition, but the Viceroy Mountbatten in queer logic forced upon the partition having had obviously the same motive as Nehru had and examples given above (M. Hassan, ed., The Partition Omnibus: ‘Divide and Quit’, p.237).

Partition Reconfirmed
The 1947 partition of Bengal was not negated but once again reconfirmed in 1971 following the victory in the war when despite enthusiasm from certain quarter like Awami League M.P. (1970) from Barisal, Chiitta Ranjan Sutar, in particular, failed to impress for further action upon the then Indian Prime Minster Indira Gandhi to integrate Bangladesh into the Indian fold that she fortunately declined to do right then saying, AVI MUMKEEN NEHI. For the time being the Indian P.M. Indira remained content with partial attainment well known in her verbatim, HAZAR SALO KA BADLA LE LIA. I did not tell the young doctor all these facts in elaboration made here as she was busy with other priorities but even so asked me few other questions.

Unity in Diversity
One such was that she wished to impress upon me that the Muslims had regional differences in many aspects of lives and so were different the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Apparently there is little to disagree about, I said. But my point to her on this issue was that in matters of spirituality based on undiluted monotheism and belief in equality of human being, Islam binds all Muslims in the same cord that is hardly comparable with any other existing formal religions. Not only this. The apparent regional and geographical differences in general override all other religious people in matters of value system developed and sustained in spiritual origin that the holy Quran upholds in all purity that no other religion can claim for certain. Thus the Muslims alone as a religious group all over the world, despite apparent differences, have still been maintaining the foundation of life system with the highest level of value aspirations in private and personal lives on which the social superstructure and all other decorations are sustained. The superficial difference manifested though appreciable, the foundational unity is unique and indivisible, unity in apparent diversity.

Facts to Ponder
I gave her some recent facts, not century old ones, as I could right then recall from memory as to how the Muslims in India after 1947 have continually been in deprivation in all matters- in jobs, employment, housing, education, landholding etc. ( See also, M Hassan, Will Secular India Survive, NSSO, 1999-2000 facts and figures quoted in pp.245-6) and even more than the scheduled castes, Dalits, Harijans, tribals etc as they have reservations in those social and economic opportunities that the Muslims do not have since after 1947. Even the reservations in public bodies that existed during the British rule since early twentieth century beginning from the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 were done away with in post 1947 independent India. How Bangladeshi Muslims would fare in social opportunities in undivided Bengal with the capital obviously in Kolkata, then in that case Dhaka remaining possibly even now, at best, a small divisional town and in one united India? Minus the Partition of 1947, how would the Bengal Muslims and many others disadvantaged people fare in the all India context and if the Muslims would have misfortune anything other than the overwhelming Muslims of the Indian held Jammu and Kashmir?

Gaps
I knew that she is a young doctor specialized in Diebetes, even junior to our third son working there, and I know that such technical specialists of the post Bangladesh generation including my sons and daughter, all technical professionals, are not only quite ignorant about the past British period pitiable history of the Muslims in India and in Bengal in comparison with the high caste elite Hindus in contrast with the position of the pre eighteenth century Muslim period rule but also had little scope to know about the clear and unbiased history of the nation. As she had time constraint, she was to give time to other patients thus stopping the debate, I asked her to read through carefully those two books I had with me, written by contemporary Indian academics for understanding Jinnah’s struggle for Pakistan in some depth and also think in depth about the two words, theocratic and theocentric, for Muslims should ideally aspire for theocentric society of individual piety and not for theocratic state so far as Muslim state foundation and superstructures are concerned in the present world context.

Jinnah and Muslim League
It is true that the platform of the Muslim League provided Jinnah with at least three achievements, according to American historian and author, Stanley Wolpert- ‘alter the course of history’, ‘modify the map of the world’, ‘creating a nation state’ from nothing or ‘scratch’. It was Jinnah’s leadership that raised the Muslim League, though established on the 30th December in 1906 in Dhaka, to heights of achievement after running through a long period of bewilderment for clear goal that in 1940s Jinnah’s leadership provided rightly in fulfilling aspirations for Pakistan for the then deprived British Indian Muslims.

Author:
Dr. M.T. Hussain
Dhaka
27 December 2009

(This is a birthday presentation to our only daughter who turns fifty today and a consultant physician herself and now a constant nurse for me since I fell ill from heart attack on the 10th June 2009 and then on bed ridden).