After the recent skirmish with India over Kashmir, Imran Khan did the right thing by returning the Indian fighter pilot. In his recent meeting with the press, which was cited in the New York Times, he said that there was no place for armed militants in Pakistan. And then he went on to make the boldest statement of his tenure: The militants were created by the army.
Do these statements portend a long overdue change in the strategic culture of Pakistan? Is the hatchet about to be buried? It’s too soon to say. The Partition of 1947 continues to cast its shadow on the relations between the two siblings. Why is that?
The political founders of the two countries, Jinnah and Nehru, studied in England. Early in life, Jinnah was widely regarded as the “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.” Years later, he surprised everyone by calling for the establishment of a state premised entirely on the religion of its inhabitants. He willed Pakistan into existence in 1947 as a secular democracy. But in just a few years after his passing it was declared an “Islamic Republic.”
What was the rush to partition India? Did Partition yield any desirable results? How could its learned proponents, both seasoned politicians, fail to anticipate its unintended consequences?
In his book, “Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence,” Jaswant Singh tackled these questions head on. A one-time stalwart of the right-wing BJP party, Singh was at various times India’s face to the world as either its finance or external affairs minister.
In Pakistan, Singh’s book received with much acclaim. It seen as a vindication of Jinnah’s policies and a condemnation of Nehru’s. Indeed, the book was critical of Nehru in many places and faulted him for lacking realism and having no foresight, purpose or will.
What was ignored in Pakistan was that the book was equally critical of Jinnah. Singh said that Jinnah’s Two-Nation Theory was “an error of profound and telling dimensions.” He concluded, Jinnah “got the [promised] land but failed to create a state and failed decisively in creating a nation.”
In Singh’s narrative, when it became clear to Jinnah that the major political party of the time, the Indian National Congress, was not going to accommodate the Muslim viewpoint, he began arguing for separate electoral representation for the Muslims. At some point, this demand progressed into a call for a separate state.
But Singh argued that Jinnah may have propounded his theory of nationhood simply as a negotiating ploy. Until very late in the game, he may have been thinking of Pakistan in metaphorical, not literal terms.
Singh said that Jinnah could not have been oblivious to the fact that there were many states in the world which encompassed multiple nationalities. Why then did he push forward with Pakistan?
And why did he accept the “moth-eaten” state that Mountbatten handed him? Did he not know that Partition would unleash genocide, mass migration and untold suffering on millions? And how could he allow such a state to come into being without even knowing its precise boundaries? The Radcliffe Commission awards were not released until three days after Partition.
Both Jinnah and Nehru were long gone by the time ethnic divisions cut through the religious bond that had connected the two wings of Pakistan in 1971. Had they known what Partition was going to unleash, Nehru and Jinnah might have felt differently about Partition
Singh stated that one of three Muslims chose to stay in India and asked why the Quaid knowingly had sacrificed them, knowing they would be reduced to a small minority. He wondered whether the Quaid saw the inconsistency in using the Two-Nation Theory to create Pakistan and then famously putting it to bed in his 11 August 1947 speech.
Earlier, at a press meet on the 14 November 1946, Singh reminds us that Jinnah posed a question: Once Partition had separated the two warring communities, what reason would there be for the two nations to quarrel? Jinnah predicted, “The two states … will be friends and will go to each other’s rescue in case of danger and will be able to say ‘hands off’ to other nations. We shall then have a Munroe Doctrine more solid than in America … I am not fighting for Muslims, believe me, when I demand Pakistan.”
Within months of independence, the fight broke out in Kashmir. In doing its cover story on Jinnah, Life magazine found him to be a distraught man who was quick to add that the war was none of his doing. Life reported that as Pakistan struggled for survival amidst religious warfare and economic chaos, Jinnah remained in “absolute seclusion,” emerging only occasionally to denounce the Hindu.
Jinnah didn’t foresee that Partition would not end the strife between the warring communities in a united India. Partition simply poured fuel on the fire of communalism. It internationalized the conflict and decades later we are witnessing the nuclear-armed siblings living on the brink of Armageddon.
Nehru lived long enough to tell an interviewer in 1960 that he and other Congress leaders had accepted Partition because “We were tired men and we were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going to prison again.” He added, “None of us guessed how much the killings and the crisis in Kashmir would embitter relations.”
Jinnah may have come to the same realization. According to von Tunzelman, as he lay dying in 1948, he called Pakistan his biggest blunder. Given the opportunity, he said, he would “go to Delhi and tell Jawaharlal to forget about the follies of the past and become friends again.”
Both Jinnah and Nehru were long gone by the time ethnic divisions cut through the religious bond that had connected the two wings of Pakistan in 1971. Had they known what Partition was going to unleash, Nehru and Jinnah might have felt differently about Partition.
The fear of Hindu dominance had driven the Quaid to Partition. Among its unintended consequences was the permanent enmity between the siblings and the second partition of 1971. And as religious fundamentalism rose in Pakistan, Hindu fundamentalism rose in India.
Could these problems have been avoided if India had stayed united? In 1946, Maulana Azad had stated that the Hindu-Muslim divide would not be healed by Partition. He had also predicted that Pakistan, faced with innumerable problems, would turn into a military dictatorship. And he had said that it was just a question of time before East Pakistan would split secede.
Today, it’s incumbent on Pakistan’s leaders to make the most of what they have now. The task won’t be easy. But it has to be undertaken if the myriad domestic problems that afflict the country are to be resolved. There is no alternative but to bury the hatchet.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]