WHILE we are never told about the Calcutta uprisings or about the naval mutiny, we are constantly told and reminded of the communal holocaust of August 1946-September 1947. But there is a crucial link between the two. The Partition of India cannot be understood without knowing the circumstances and the different components of the freedom struggle. Both the naval mutiny and the Calcutta uprisings demonstrated remarkable communal unity - a unity that, since Gandhi's calling-off of the non-co-operation movement, was more or less missing in the freedom struggle. It was only six months after the crushing of the February 1946 joint Hindu-Muslim demonstrations in Calcutta that, in the same city, the communal massacres began. How could this happen?
We do not have the space here to chart out in detail the growth of communalism in India, but it is improper to leave the subject without comment. The picture we are consistently given by Indian official and semi-official historians, as well as some propagandists, is that: (i) the Congress was an utterly secular organisation; (ii) in order to split the Congress and therefore the freedom struggle, the British encouraged the Muslim League; (iii) the League, under the leadership of the power-hungry Jinnah, carried out communal massacres in order to blackmail the Congress into conceding Pakistan; (iv) the Congress eventually and extremely reluctantly conceded this demand in order to stop the massacres.
For example, Arun Shourie, in a recent series of articles (Illustrated Weekly, October-November 1985) which attempt to whip up communal feeling, writes: "The speeches that our leaders made at the (June 14-15, 1947 A.I.C.C.) session tear one's heart. Here were patriots of the first water, men and women who had sacrificed for the country. But they were now tired, exhausted, beaten. The British had the State, Jinnah had the pistol. And we had only words. The speeches show how Jinnah's Direct Action had completely unnerved the Congress leaders, how by paralysing the Interim Government Jinnah had broken their patience, their will itself. All they wanted now was to get it over with and to put on as brave a face as possible while doing so."
This romantic picture of the Congress leaders does not conform to the facts. First, from all that we have described, it is clear that the Congress itself served imperialism by splitting and diverting the freedom struggle. It was not in order to split the Congress, but in order to split Hindus and Muslims in their joint struggles against the Raj that the Congress and Muslim League were set on each other.
The Congress was only superficially a secular body. As we have seen in post-1947 India, the mere inclusion of Muslim office-bearers does not constitute secularism. In the first place, the real fostering of Hindu communalism in the crucial early period around the turn of the century was carried out by Congress leaders such as Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai. Not until December 1938 did the Congress bar Hindu Mahasabha members from Congress membership; even then the rule was not enforced.
Wherever there was a clash of interests between the exploited who in a particular region happened to be Muslim, and the exploiters who in that region happened to be Hindu, the Congress came down consistently and strongly in favour of the exploiters.
Most of the Punjabi peasantry, especially in the north-western half of Punjab, were Muslims; their direct exploiters happened to be Hindu moneylenders and traders. The Punjab unit of the Congress was entirely dominated by these moneylender/trader Hindu sections, ably represented by men such as Lala Lajpat Rai. The Punjab Congress firmly opposed even the British Raj's own very mild measures to restrict exorbitant rates of interest and rampant land alienation. Naturally the Congress won no support from the Muslim peasantry. We have also described earlier how even the anti-landlord/moneylender revolt of the Muslim peasants of Malabar was treated by the Congress as a communal riot.
In East Bengal, the vast majority of tenants were Muslim, the zamindars were Hindu. The Bengal Congress consistently opposed any legislation restricting the rights of the zamindars. The entire Bengal Congress, including Subhas Chandra Bose, took a totally pro-zamindar stance during the several discussions in the Bengal Assembly on the tenancy amendment during the 1920s. They thus contributed heavily to Muslim alienation in the region.
The Muslims' experience of the Provincial ministries (1937-38) only heightened their apprehensions even in areas where the Congress got their support. A.K. Gupta notes how, even in one Muslim-majority province under Congress rule, the North West Frontier Province, Khan Saheb's ministry began to lose support among the peasants for failing to take adequate measures to reduce rural indebtedness in the face of opposition from Hindu and Sikh traders and moneylenders.
Similarly, Sumit Sarkar observes that, in the crucial area of U.P., from which the League rebuilt its strength in the late 1930s, Nehru's plan for Congress "mass contact" with the Muslim peasants was ineffective: " ... what proved disastrous was not the rejection of a coalition (the Congress had rejected the League's offer of a coalition ministry in U.P.) but the failure to develop and implement genuine socially radical measures. Muslim `mass contact' remained largely on paper, and socialist and radical rhetoric in the end merely alarmed Muslim vested interests without winning over the Muslim masses."
So, first, it is in the light of the Congress's betrayal of their class demands that Muslim masses were alienated. Secondly, it is worth noting that the electorate did not turn to the Muslim League immediately. In East Bengal, it was the Krishak Praja Party - a party which claimed to represent peasant interests - that obtained votes. In the Punjab, the electorate voted for the Unionist Party, also claiming to represent peasant demands. Significantly, it was in U.P. that the Congress at least made a show of supporting tenant demands; it was in the U.P. that there was a significant section of Muslim landlords; and, as a leading League politician (Khaliquzzaman) put it, "it was from the U.P. that the League was reorganised".
In other words, both the League and the Congress represented landlord and other exploiting sections of the Muslim and Hindu communities, respectively. It was the eagerness of each not to allow the class issues to be resolved that led them to allow or promote communal hatreds. (It is revealing that the May 1938 session of the militant All-India Kisan Sabha, held in the heart of Muslim East Bengal, faced fierce opposition from both the League and the Congress.)
It is worth recalling in this context the 1920-22 non-co-operation movement: the extraordinary mass unity between Hindus and Muslims, their remarkable gestures of fraternisation during the joint struggle, the sharp sense of betrayal when the struggle was called off at its height, and the absence thereafter of such unity. Again the Congress's refusal to put up a serious anti-landlord, anti-imperialist struggle which would unite Hindu and Muslim masses was crucial in promoting communal hatreds.
For Gandhi the unity of the Hindu and Muslim "rabble" was an "unholy combination"; if Hindu and Muslim combined, it would have to be "from the top"; and since, at the top, there necessarily were continual quarrels about the division of the spoils, the Congress and the League never had the desire (leave alone the capacity) to unite the masses of the two communities. No amount of anti-communal rhetoric by Nehru or bold individual actions by Gandhi could compensate for this fundamental complicity in the politics of communalism.
As for the responsibility for the partitioning of India, there is no doubt that Jinnah and the League were thoroughly involved. But the general ascribing of sole responsibility to Jinnah (Shourie, for instance, titles his articles on Jinnah "The Man Who Broke Up India") is a distortion - a distortion which has had a particularly long life because the governments of both India and Pakistan have their (separate) interests in perpetuating it.
The ruling classes of a country often split into factions, fiercely battling each other for larger shares of the spoils. The fact is, major Hindu backers of the Congress were perfectly willing to partition India rather than have to share power with the backers of the League. They knew that any such division would hardly subtract from their present properties and would render the new Muslim State territorially divided and much weaker than the Hindu-dominated area. Most crucially, a businessman, such as Birla, could have a thorough monopoly of governmental favour if there were clear Congress domination (it was in this context that the Congress was insistent on a strong central power), whereas with the League to counterbalance the Congress, such monopoly would be more difficult.
We thus find Birla writing to the Mahatma's personal secretary as early as in July 1942: "You know my views about Pakistan. I am in favour of separation, and I do not think it is impracticable or against the interests of Hindus or of India."
Shourie argues that it was the Jinnah-inspired communal killings in Calcutta from August 1946 on that forced the Congress to consider partitioning India. But actually Nehru, even in his jail diary, expressed his willingness to accept partition if only to get rid of Jinnah.
Jinnah, by contrast, wanted the shape of the demand to remain ambiguous: if there actually were a partition, he knew that it would be relatively unfavourable to the Muslims, even to the Muslim elite (for example, the fertile territories of Punjab went to East Punjab, and the crucial city of Calcutta went to West Bengal). Thus the famous 1940 League resolution demanding Pakistan was nebulous, and could suggest in fact a scheme of autonomous Muslim-majority regions within a loose Indian federation.
So at Jinnah's very first meeting with the Cabinet Mission (April 4, 1946) he demanded partition but quickly conceded foreign affairs, defense and communication to the Centre.
Three weeks later he was offered two alternatives: Pakistan as it eventually came into being, or an Indian Union under which Muslim provinces would function. Jinnah rejected the first one (i.e., Pakistan) and said he would consider the second if the Congress did, too.
On May 12 he presented proposals envisaging not an independent Pakistan, but a confederation of states.
The Cabinet Mission itself presented its scheme on May 16, 1946, rejecting Pakistan and proposing a Union based on groups of provinces, confining its powers to defense, foreign affairs and communications.
While Jinnah accepted the proposal, Gandhi steadfastly opposed it. The Congress claimed to accept the proposal, but raised enough problems about the grouping concept for the proposals to fall through eventually.
As early as June 10, 1946, Nehru said he "did not think Mr. Jinnah had any real place in the country".
Thereafter, it was the Congress that insisted on partition, partition on its terms: Jinnah wanted a united Punjab and a united Bengal under his rule but within a confederation; however, the Congress was clear that it could win a division of the two provinces and the discarding of the Muslim sections.
Thus, before Mission Plan had been declared dead, before the new Viceroy had arrived in Delhi, and three months before the Mountbatten Plan, on March 8, 1947, the Congress Working Committee demanded the partition of Punjab and Bengal on communal lines:
"It has been made clear that the constitution framed by the Constituent Assembly will apply only to those areas which accept it.... It must also be understood that any Province or part of a Province which accepts the Constitution and desires to join the Union cannot be prevented from doing so."
It invited the League to a conference to divide up the two provinces. By March 10, Nehru, told the Viceroy in private that though "the Cabinet Mission was the best solution if it could be carried through - the only real alternative was the partition of Punjab and Bengal". He easily reconciled himself to the latter alternative.
On April 18, he declared: "The Congress... have recently on practical considerations passed a resolution accepting the division of the country." Later in the month he stated: "The Muslim League can have Pakistan if they want it but on the condition that they do not take away other parts of India which do not wish to join Pakistan."
Gandhi remained silent during the debate. He had initially come out against Partition, but it seems that the opinion of men such as Birla and Patel led to a change of heart. Although Gandhi's public stand remained against Partition, Nehru informed Mountbatten on May 1, 1947, that Gandhi had accepted "the principle of partition" provided it involved "the partition of Bengal and Punjab".
As the eventual A.I.C.C. debate on the Mountbatten Plan for partition (June 14-15, 1947), Gandhi refused to challenge the decision arrived at by his two lieutenants Nehru and Patel. Patel delivered the keynote address. He used the analogy of a diseased body and argued that if one limb was poisoned it must be removed quickly lest the entire organism suffer irreparably.
Thus, while there is no doubt the League's machinations, propaganda, and gruesome actions played their role, it is absurd to believe that the Congress was dragged unwillingly into partition. The most recent detailed study written of the relevant documents in fact arrives at the conclusion that "It was the Congress that insisted on partition. It was Jinnah who was against partition". (Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, 1985)
Jinnah was to obliquely refer to his dissatisfaction with the settlement in his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947: "I know that there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Much has been said against it, but now that it has been accepted it is the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it.... "
At any rate, it is not a question of who took the first step. The League and the Congress both acquiesced to the partitioning of the country on communal lines. The flimsy excuse that this was done in order to save lives will not do; the number of those who died in Punjab before partition (about 5,000) pales into insignificance beside the over 500,000 who died in Punjab alone and 10 million who were uprooted immediately after partition. Nor will the excuse do that the consequences were not predictable. On the contrary, they were clearly predictable. As the Superintendent of Police, Delhi, tersely put it at the time, when asked his advice as to what would happen in the case of partition, "once a line of division is drawn in the Punjab all Sikhs to the west of it and all Muslims to the east of it will have their - chopped off." Gandhi's non-violent politics, which had managed for three decades to restrain Indians from a violent assault on the British Raj, countenanced a situation where Indians committed unimaginable acts of violence on one another.
Communal violence, of course, suited the imperial interests eminently. The earlier, joint Hindu-Muslim anti-imperialist upsurges at Calcutta and Bombay had also been part of a great strike wave. Strikes in 1946 totalled 1,629, involving 19,41,948 workers and a loss of 1,27,17,762 man-days. These figures were virtually double those for any earlier year. Less than three weeks before the Great Calcutta killing of August 16, Calcutta witnessed a total and united bandh under Communist leadership in sympathy with the postal employees' strike.
Despite the setbacks suffered due to their disastrous 1942-45 policy, the Communists were now emerging as a major anti-imperialist force, and one with a chance of forging Hindu-Muslim unity in the course of such struggle. Viceroy Wavell noted privately on May 30: "We must at all costs avoid becoming embroiled with both Hindu and Muslim at once."
Sumit Sarkar notes that "a glance through the Home Political (Internal) files immediately reveals how completely the CPI had displaced the Congress as Enemy No.1 already by the end of 1945".
Michael Brecher notes that the British Government "believed that the Congress was in danger of disintegration which would create a vacuum for Communist influence". Prime Minister Attlee had told Mountbatten on December 18, 1946, that
"If we were not very careful, we might well find ourselves handing India over not simply to civil war, but to political movements of a definitely totalitarian character. Urgent action was needed to break the deadlock..." (emphasis added).
How clear it is: civil war between Hindus and Muslims was preferable to "political movements" of a supposedly "totalitarian character" (by which was meant Communist). The Congress, the League, and the British rulers "saved" India from Communism and plunged it into fratricidal bloodshed - a bloodshed that continues to date.
So the British rulers gazed serenely on as the butchery continued. Sumit Sarkar pointedly remarks:
"The British, who as late as June 1946 had been making plans to bring five army divisions to India in the context of a possible Congress movement, made no such move while presiding over this awesome human tragedy. In Calcutta in August, in sharp contrast to November 1945 or February 1946, the army was called out only after 24 hours.... Wavell commented on November 9, 1946, in the context of Bihar Muslim requests to use aerial bombardment to stop the riots: `Machine-gunning from the air is not a weapon one would willingly use, though the Muslims point out, rather embarrassingly, that we did not hesitate to use it in 1942'. In March 1947, the two main bazaars of Amritsar were destroyed, while `not a shot was fired by the police' - and this, Penderel Moon pertinently recalls, was the city of the Jallianwalabagh massacre."
It is ironic that the Congress response to these massacres was to lean even more heavily on the British for help. Less than a month after "Independence", Nehru and Patel asked Mountbatten to return to Delhi to handle the riots. Mountbatten's Press Attache noted in his diary: "the view of Nehru, Patel, and all the responsible Ministers was that the situation was now so serious that his (Mountbatten's) presence alone could save it." Mountbatten returned at once and proposed an Emergency Committee which would effectively be a military headquarters command. Nehru and Patel agreed and insisted that Mountbatten assume the chairmanship, which he did.
Which way could communal violence have been avoided or ended - by actions such as those of the naval ratings and of the Calcutta INA demonstrators, or the Congress Government's? Indeed, the "rabble" had offered India a path towards freedom and unity. B.C.Dutt points out:
"Everywhere the ratings hoisted the Congress and Muslim League flags tied together. Their desire for national unity against foreign rule spread to the workers who went behind the barricades. I heard that they too carried the flags tied together. This happened perhaps for the last time on the subcontinent. But the leaders of both the major political parties found themselves on the wrong side of the barricades."There might have been a terrible bloodbath if the ratings had refused to surrender. There would have been damage to property. But undoubtedly the damage and death would have been insignificant compared to the horror and monstrosity that overtook India in the wake of the partition of the subcontinent.
"...How our battle would have ended is a debatable matter. It is possible, however, that the national struggle for independence might have taken a direction other than that of fratricidal warfare if we had not surrendered. The partition of the subcontinent might have been avoided. Such gigantic events might have produced leaders different from those who were responsible for the tragedy that the subcontinent experienced in the wake of the British withdrawal."
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