July 22nd, 2012
Many of the horrors and the injustices of 1947 were swept beneath the carpet, under the naive and irresponsibly jingoistic chant of ‘independence’ from foreign rule.
The Partition of India in 1947 and the advent of freedom for Pakistan and India are not simple. There is nothing romantic about ‘India wins Freedom’. It is as complex as the interests of the various parties involved.
All power (political and military) was with a foreign power – the British. Indian efforts to secure a share of power had failed. Cooperation and loyalty such as supporting the 1914-1918 War had elicited promises of future rewards from the British. These proved false and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre showed that as far as the British were concerned – and in the ultimate analysis – India would be held by sheer brute force.
The alternate route, armed rebellion offered by Subhash Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army had met with stiff opposition from Indians loyal to the British and had been snuffed out. The Indian Army until World War II (1939-1945) continued to be officered by white subalterns and a small number of recently appointed (into the King’s Commission) Indian officers from families who had repeatedly, and over the centuries, shown loyalty to the British by serving in the British Indian Army as Viceroy’s commissioned officers.
The scenario in 1947 showed a Britain so exhausted of human resources as to be unable to produce white young subalterns in sufficient numbers and no longer able to trust Indians to man armies which would govern India for the British. The August 1947 Partition of India into West Pakistan, East Pakistan and India solved the one and only problem – ‘Who, amongst the natives should be the beneficiaries of the Transfer of Power from the departing British?’ In West and East Pakistan, the answer was simple – empower those who had been loyal to the alien British (like Mir Ja’afar who betrayed the Nawab Nazim of Bengal Bihar and Orissa, Sirajuddowlah at Plassey in 1757) and their descendants (e.g. Iskander Mirza).
All those who had fought the British like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan of the Pathans and Samad Khan of the Baluch were denied even their few recently earned legal rights and had to suffer long terms of imprisonment. Khan Bahadur Allah Bukhsh Sumroo, Chief Minister of the Sindh elected legislature, was dismissed for protesting Winston Churchill’s attack on Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. They were imprisoned without trial and Allah Bukhsh protested their arraignment as they could not respond. Soon he was assassinated. The Muslim League was declared sole representative of Muslims of India.
All those who had fought the British like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan of the Pathans and Samad Khan of the Baluch were denied even their few recently earned legal rights and had to suffer long terms of imprisonment.
What both Nehru and Jinnah overlooked was the shocking evidence provided by the Partition riots. A conservative estimate of lives lost yields the figure of 2.5 lakh. Tens of thousands of women were brutalised and passed from hand to hand as trophies. As the possession of even a knife longer than six inches was a criminal offence in British India (and Pakistan), the killings required great physical effort, which had to be driven by an abiding hatred.
This scenario needs to be contrasted with 1857 when the Bengal Army rose in revolt against their white officers. The force was raised on caste conscious lines and 31% of the men were Brahmin and 34% Rajput. They killed white officers as an act that pitted them irrevocably against the British. No hostages were taken and all 1.35 lakh officers and men were slaughtered by 1859.
On 10 May 1857, the Meerut Regiments of this force marched all the way to Delhi – the seat of the Mughal Emperor of India. Their spirits were kept up by the slogan they shouted. It was ‘Deen Deen’. Deen and Dharam both meant faith. What they did next was remarkable. They stormed the residence of the 82-year-old emperor Bahadur Shah Badshah Ghazi and asked him to be their leader. He protested that he had neither treasure nor army to help. The Bengal Army of the East India Company said that all they asked for was his blessings.
In 1947, no one even remembered the design and colours of the Mughal flag under which Indians fought for their freedom and lost in 1857-9, which had been erased from the Indian memory by the victorious British. They punished all who were associated with the uprising. It is only now that a serious effort is being made to restore this lost national memory.
The estimate loss of (Indian) lives totals to 10 million. Each tree from Peshawar in the North West to Arrah in Bihar carried the corpse of a sepoy, a camp follower or a peasant sympathiser of the Uprising. These corpses had to rot and disintegrate – it was forbidden to take them down. Indians had to see and smell the rebels for weeks and the terror induced in relation to the white man remains a living legacy.
The British ploy of dividing Hindus from Muslims has worked and continues to befoul the very air of the subcontinent. Unless Indians (Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) see how this mind set is self-destructive and abandon it, there is no future in sight.