New Delhi: In a tightly packed conference room at the India International Center, the blame for India’s Partition in 1947 was placed firmly in the hands of the Indian National Congress.
“It was Congress who said they wanted Partition,” said Anil Seal, founder of the Cambridge School of Indian History, at a speaker session ‘Between the Crown & Congress: Rethinking the Politics of Late Colonial India’ on 24 February, co-hosted by Caucus: The Discussion Forum, Hindu College. “Why? If you did not have Partition, you would have to give the Muslim-majority provinces a degree of provincial autonomy.”
The silence in the room was palpable after Seal’s declaration. He was met with stares and frowns from the audience, some of whom asked whether Muhammad Ali Jinnah was at least partly to blame.
Holding court at the centre of a long table, Seal started off with a solemn, passionate speech on the cruel rise of imperialism in India, before transitioning to the national movements that were inherited from it.
“Every country has to have an enemy,” said Seal. “Jinnah didn’t even know the Quran. I remember as a child, him coming to our house saying he had a bad day and needed a glass of whiskey.”
Imperialism and politics
Seal, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, initially downplayed the impact of imperialism before proceeding to analyse its mechanisms.
He claimed there was one thing in common between the apologists and critics of imperialism—they both exaggerate its omnipotence.
“Imperialism’s power to do bad, we’ve all heard about. Steal, rob, loot, rape – yes,” said Seal. “But to fundamentally reshape society – no.”
He went on to explain how the British Empire, formed for “profit, power and prestige”, thrived in India.
“The rule or dominance of the alien few over the indigenous many depends on the collaboration with people in whose interests it is to work with the British Raj,” said Seal.
He was referring to princely states, prominent businessmen and landowners of the time, who decided to align with the British for their self-interest.
Even neutrality, the keeping quiet of the many, helped solidify Britain’s chokehold on the Indian subcontinent.
“If all of you, during the freedom movement, stood together and I said ‘spit’, you could have drowned the 3,000 British ruling India in a sea of phlegm,” said Seal, soliciting laughs from the audience.
“There are more British running Cambridge University’s student body of 12,000 today than those governing colonial India in the 1900s,” he said, underscoring this point.
Hindu College students, many of whom were Indian Administrative Services (IAS) aspirants, furiously took down notes as Seal expounded on just how the British maintained the neutrality of India’s population.
First, they kept places localised and unconnected. “They didn’t rock the boat,” said Seal. “They left people sitting on their own thrones, whipping their own dogs.”
And finally, to extract power and profit, the British could not govern a hundred different localities. Instead, they strengthened the chain of command from the district level, through provinces all the way back to their homeland.
“That is why the British built all these roads, railways and telegraphs. Not for the benefit of the people, but to strengthen the centralised state,” said Seal, emphatically slapping the table to drive home his point.
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Partition propaganda
The British Empire’s decline, spread over nearly half a century, was caused by both international forces and internal pressure.
During this time, pushback from national movements picked up, and India’s political movement employed a dual strategy, according to Seal.
“Agitation and constitutionalism are often put as choices. But they were two tactical sides to the same coin,” he said, before adding that non-cooperation, civil disobedience and the “Quit India” movement were not opposing forces to constitutional politics.
However, according to Seal, Indian politics until Independence and even after, have not been mass movements.
“The idea that Britain was driven out of India by mass movements is wrong,” he commented. “We are still waiting for a mass movement that energises the base of the pyramid.”
His focus shifted briefly to contemporary India, where he commented that even the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and INDIA are a khichdi (mixture) of many different elements. To him, the broader an alliance’s base, the weaker its ideology becomes.
But it was the big question of the night—who was responsible for the Partition—that elicited an emotional response from Seal. He questioned whether the horrors, bloodshed, loss of lives and property could have been avoided.
“I am going against all the present things you are fed in films, propaganda,” said Seal. He also joked with the audience that they all may have to accompany him to jail for being ‘anti-national’.
“It was not what Jinnah had spent his life fighting for,” said Seal, absolving Jinnah of responsibility for the Partition. “It wasn’t even the Brits in the end game.”
According to him, Britain was bankrupt at this time. “Mountbatten was ready to lay anything on the table, including his wife, to get out of India quickly.”
It was the Congress high command who demanded Partition, afraid of the power from Muslim-dominated states that would challenge the central government, he insisted.
“The great prize for which every nationalist movement has been fighting is to inherit the one real legacy of imperial rule – the mechanism of a centralised state,” said Seal, arguing that this is what the Congress wanted, and what the BJP is striving for today.
He said it suits India’s political and national narrative to blame the Partition on Jinnah, which has fueled animosity toward Pakistan to this day.
“Change it. Challenge it. Look at the truth”, said Seal.
The author graduated from Batch 1 of ThePrint School of Journalism.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
The Quite India movement, the Civil Disobedience movement, and the Non-cooperation movement weren’t mass movements? It was for no reason that Viceroy Linlithgow called the Quit India movement the “most serious rebellion” since 1857 (‘India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat’ by Devendra Panigrahi)? Why did the prominent historian Will Durant use the term “revolution” to describe the movement being led by Mahatma Gandhi in ‘The Case for India’? What about the fact that the Civil Disobedience movement saw the large-scale participation of women in any movement of this kind for the first time? Wealthy lawyers left this jobs for these movements, and we are supposed to believe that they weren’t deeply rooted in the public consciousness? I am sorry, but this is just disappointing. Others have already done an excellent job responding to what was said about the partition.
Mischivous & Childish article. The real culprit were religious fanatics ( both Hindu & Muslims) who made co-existance it nearly impossible. Jinnah & Ambedkar too too became a victim of this situation. Gandhi was the last to give up.
Its been hours since the article has been uploaded and theprint is yet to add any facts, context, differing views or even a basic historical narrative cross examination that counters these malicious utterances. Udit Hinduja has written the article without the bare minimum counter examination and with an utter and abject dereliction of even the most minimal veracity that passes off as journalism these days. This article should be have had comments from historians holding alternative views than Anil Seal and atleast one small paragraph of narrative history detailing the obvious factual mendacities in Anil Seal’s argument. Cambridge school is notorious for its denial of nationalistic aspirations of Indians and known to parrot British point of views like the mission to civilise us, how the empire stayed back only because we couldn’t agree amongst ourselves about post brexit future and how partition is a result of nationalistic leaderships’ failure to accommodate other legitimate aspirations. The intellectual hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of this school has been painstakingly exposed by Indian historiographers for last 7 decades. To allow these pernicious views uncontested space is an act of criminal idiocy or vested maleficence. Please do better and update the article appropriately.
Why are such blatant baseless fictions passed off as historical works? Yes the Congress high command wanted partition of Bengal and Punjab, but that was to save the nearly 44 and 48% of the population from the tyranny of the barely numerical majority. If Jinnah couldn’t abide by the rule of all India Hindu majority, why should non-muslims in those provinces be consigned to the whins of the Muslim majority?
From Lahore declaration onwards, verbally atleast Jinnah had declared his endgame was a separate country with whole of Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Bengal (with Assam) along with the princely principalities. It could have been a very dark joke, a cynical bargaining tool, it could have been the whole truth. Since we are not mind readers and Jinnah kept no honest journals, there is no way either we not this fake historian can claim to divine Jinnah’s thought process. To say that we should not treat his pronounced words as his true stand shows you the kind of duplicitous person he was.
Since the advent of limited self rule in India, Muslims have received “communal awards” Far greater than their population representation in the central government as well as the provincial governments like in UP. While they had statutory majorities in Bengal and Punjab, they protested against the same formula being applied to central government. At nearly every step of the way, the Congress always took a lesser bite of the pie in the hope of joint mobilisation with the Muslim league to accelerate British handover of power (or their own eventual gain of power) and at every step the Muslim league took their share and immediately asked for more. Even after Cripps mission Jinnah never unequivocally acquiesced to the federal structure. There was no guarantee that even granting a loose federal Constitution with only 3 central power (defence, finance and external affairs) would have satisfied his urge.
The factors were myriad and the context was nuanced. But ultimately it was an unmitigated avarice for power by the upper class Muslim landed gentry of gangetic India under their mendacious, nominally shia and actually atheist leader that cynically flamed Muslim irredentism and eventually inflamed fellow Muslims and non-muslims in the fanatacism that resulted in partition of India.
Half truth is dangerous than lies. Mr Seal proves that line very well. Congress high command wanted a federal state but it was not mutually exclusive from Mr Jinnah’s demands in the Shimla Conference. In fact it drove it. Nehru along with then Viceroy General Wavell wanted to give some degree of autonomy . He even discussed it with Liaquat Ali Khan to convince Jinnah about it. Little did he know that Mr Francis Muddie had a mind of his own to convince Jinnah that it was Nehru’s trap. Nehru still did not accept Pakistan even after that fallout and Jinnah pushed for it. Nehru did not plan Direction Action day. Jinnah and his coteries did with some bad faith English civil servants. The mental gymnastics to deliver this level of nonsense is mind blowing.
The first plan that almost got passed was the Balkan plan which nearly got approved if not for VP Menon’s last minute maneuver to inform Nehru about it. It was pushed by the imperialists using Mountbatten as the sheep for their wolfish intentions.
So to absolve the British is irrational but not surprising from people like him. it is a new method to ensure revisionism to undermine the legacy of the nationalist movement by the established gentry and the elite of the so called liberal West. And it was not just Pakistan. The head of the political agents in Internal Affairs kept on instigating the princely states to seceded until he was unceremoniously fired by Patel after it came under the Home Ministry.
How spineless and ignorant our people are! Years of politicised history (with the current dispensation included) have led to this. And the Print is reporting as if this is the holy grail of truth without an iota of fact checking. It is certainly disappointing. Willingly spreading propaganda by people who want to muddle the very existence of our country.