Nehru and Jinnah made Indian politics their personal quarrel. Partition was a consequence

File photo of Jawahar Lal Nehru and Mohammed Ali Jinnah | Commons

Pakistan was the one-man achievement of Mohammad Ali Jinnah,” wrote Leonard Mosley in his memorable book The Last Days of the British Raj. It is ironic, though, that Jinnah, who secured the creation of a country in the name of Islam, had a completely secular taste. Nehru was not off the mark when he said: “He wasn’t really a Muslim at all. I know Muslims… Jinnah couldn’t even recite a Muslim prayer and had certainly never read the Koran.” Indeed, Jinnah’s thinking, conduct and convictions were all far from Islam.

Jinnah’s way of life was European and upper-class. When he entered politics in 1906, at the age of 30, he chose the Congress. His objective was to secure self-government for India within the British Empire. It was a big enough aim at the time. He liked British-style constitutional politics and moving gradually through concrete gains. He opposed bringing religious elements into politics. In 1920, Jinnah was among the Congress leaders who strongly asked Gandhi not to support the Khilafat movement and not bring mullahs and maulvis into politics. He considered the political use of ignorant crowds dangerous and harmful. But with Gandhi’s arrival, the culture of the Congress began to change. Displeased with Gandhi’s crowd-oriented, monopolistic, and wonder-seeking style of politics, Jinnah eventually left the Congress.

He remained engaged with politics and helped foster interaction between the Muslim League and Congress. But by 1928–29, he became disillusioned with the Congress. In 1930, he left for England for good. However, in 1933, Muslim League leader Liaquat Ali and others proposed to make him the League’s permanent, sole leader, and persuaded him to return. He remained a lifelong leader of the League.

True, Jinnah had arrogance. But he showed no signs of any sentimentality, pretensions, ideological dogmatism, or liking for flattery. Gradually, though, on behalf of the Muslim League, his stance became hardline. One of the reasons behind this transformation—from being ‘the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ to the divider of the country—might have been the humiliation Jinnah suffered when Gandhi entered Indian politics and monopolised the Congress.

Before Gandhi’s entry into Indian politics, Jinnah was among the top Congress leaders. In 1915, when Gandhi arrived from South Africa, Jinnah was among the leading members of Gujarati society welcoming him. The meeting in Bombay on 14 January 1915, where Jinnah first met Gandhi, was presided over by Jinnah. But at Gandhi’s very first words, Jinnah was taken aback.  Gandhi said that he was “glad to find a Mahomedan not only belonging to his own region’s Sabha, but chairing it.” It was a patronising barb, even though an unconscious one, that assumed Gandhi’s own superiority to judge one and all in ways he liked. Stanley Wolpert, in his comprehensive book Jinnah of Pakistan, wrote, “That first statement of Gandhi’s set the tone of their relationship, always at odds with deep tensions and mistrust underlying its superficially polite manners, never friendly, never cordial.”

Gandhi’s ways and manners were also distasteful to Jinnah. He was irked by Gandhi’s authoritative attitude toward his colleagues and the people. Gandhi’s dress and many of his statements seemed artificial to Jinnah. Once, when press photographers surrounded Jinnah and Gandhi to take pictures, Gandhi said to Jinnah, “You like this, don’t you?” Jinnah promptly replied, “Not as much as you do.”

In a special MG Ranade Memorial Lecture in 1943, Ambedkar said that both Gandhi and Jinnah were afflicted with an authoritarian attitude, avoiding those who behaved on equal terms, preferring to open up and deal only with those who considered themselves beneath them. Ambedkar regarded both Gandhi and Jinnah as suffering from ‘colossal egotism’, who made Indian politics a matter of their ‘personal quarrel’ and brought it to a standstill.

Of course, Jinnah had faults, but he also had strength and determination. In realpolitik, Jinnah was a skilled negotiator, picking up exactly his own side’s strong points as well as the opponent’s weak ones. He stuck to his demands and refused to compromise. But none of this could have won him Pakistan if, along with a separatist mindset, a Muslim society had not firmly stood behind him. In fact, Jinnah could become the leader of the Muslims only when he adopted their communal approach. To gain popularity among Muslims, he had to abandon his secular convictions. Aziz Ahmad put it beautifully: “It was not Jinnah who led the Muslims, but Muslim consensus that led Jinnah. His role was that of an honest, clear-headed lawyer who could present his client’s wishes in perfectly precise words.”

Yet, in the end, the creation of Pakistan was not solely the result of Jinnah or Muslim obstinacy. If the Congress leaders had possessed the right political qualities and a correct understanding of political Islam, the result could have been different. Whether India would have been better off united can be debated endlessly. But it is undeniable that during 1946-47, there were many factors, any one of which, had it been absent, could have made the Partition impossible.

How the Empire was divided

India was very close to being independent unitedly. In February 1947, the British government announced in the British Parliament that it would transfer power to India by June 1948. Partition was never a British plan, nor did the British officials working in India ever want it. All evidence shows that the British government made various attempts to ensure that the ‘beautiful empire’ they had built, the ‘jewel of the British Crown’, would remain intact.

The problem was with the Indian leaders, both from the Congress and the Muslim League. There was great prejudice between Jinnah and the Congress leaders. As late as March 1947, Nehru dismissed Jinnah as insignificant, “A mediocre lawyer with an obsession for Pakistan”. He made this remark to Mountbatten when he arrived to take charge as the new Viceroy. Nehru also considered Jinnah to have ‘no real education’. Conversely, Jinnah regarded Nehru as “an arrogant Brahmin who covers his Hindu trickiness with a veneer of Western education”.

Jinnah had the faults of stubbornness, rigidity, brusqueness, intolerance of personal humiliation, and a quick temper. But he also had qualities like self-confidence and firmness. There was no frivolity or empty bluster in him. Thus, Nehru made a grave error of judgement in thinking that Jinnah was not serious about Pakistan and was merely playing high stakes to raise his own importance. In this misunderstanding, Nehru ignored Jinnah and the Muslim League. Only by this error did he, after first accepting the Cabinet Mission plan, go back on it at a press conference on 10 July 1946 in a casual manner. Nehru’s biographer Michael Brecher has rightly called it ‘one of his most fiery and provocative statements in his forty years of public life’.

The consequences were disastrous. Jinnah reacted to Nehru’s statement “like an army leader who has come in for armistice discussions under a flag of truce and finds himself looking down the barrel of a cocked revolver”.  Immediately, Jinnah held a meeting in Bombay on 27 July 1946 and announced withdrawal of his support for the Cabinet Mission plan. He called for observing ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August 1946 to press the demand for Pakistan and openly indicated the use of violence, “Today we have forged a pistol and are in a position to use it.” At the time, the provincial government of Bengal was under the Muslim League. Huseyn Suhrawardy was the Prime Minister of Bengal, who methodically incited Muslims to violence, and on Direct Action Day, a massacre took place in erstwhile Calcutta. Within two days, over 4,000 corpses lay in Calcutta, and thousands were injured.

After such a horrific event, only then Viceroy Lord Wavell went to comfort suffering people and encourage those who were trying to maintain harmony. Neither Gandhi, nor Nehru, nor Jinnah—whose decisions led to such a carnage—visited the region. Even after the widening distrust between the Muslim League and Congress, Lord Wavell kept trying to preserve a united India. For this, he had to suffer humiliation and be removed from his post. The British government did not want to wait endlessly for Congress and the Muslim League to reach an agreement. In February 1947, it announced the appointment of Lord Mountbatten as the new Viceroy and the date of transfer of power to India by June 1948.

Mountbatten arrived in India on 22 March 1947. He charmed everyone with his personality. If there was anyone completely unaffected by Mountbatten’s charms, it was Jinnah. He was in the habit of observing every person, event, and statement with full attention. He was extremely careful about something to which Nehru was completely careless—never to let a rival know one’s feelings, which they may exploit. That is why no praise or excessive courtesy had any effect on Jinnah. Not even Mountbattens’.

In their very first meeting, Gandhi proposed to Mountbatten that Jinnah be appointed head of the interim government and be left free to decide whom to take or not take into his cabinet. So that the wrangling would end and the way for the transfer of power would be cleared. At first, Mountbatten welcomed it and assured consideration, but after seeing the attitude of other Congress leaders, especially Nehru, he considered it impractical. He found that Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had already made up their minds to accept Partition, even without Gandhi’s consent. So, on 3 June 1947, Mountbatten presented the Partition proposal, which both sides accepted. After Nehru and Patel accepted it, Gandhi also gave up his opposition.

According to Ram Manohar Lohia, in the impatience for power, Nehru and Patel had already decided to accept Partition without taking Gandhi into confidence. Gandhi himself charged them with this in the Congress Working Committee meeting (14–15 June 1947), which accepted Partition. Lohia was present at that meeting and wrote in detail about it in his book Guilty Men of India’s Partition (1960). So, the top Congress leaders had already made up their mind to go ahead with the Partition rather than share power with the difficult Muslim League leaders. This was all decided when Lord Wavell, a firm opponent of Partition, was still in office. They even broke the promise they had given Wavell by accepting a proposal to satisfy Jinnah for a united India. Viceroy Wavell wrote sadly in his diary in February 1947: “There is no statesmanship or magnanimity in Congress.”

Thus, the task for which the British government had allotted sixteen months was completed by Mountbatten in less than five months. His energy and self-confidence were one factor. But the uncertainty, exhaustion, and impatience for power of the Indian leaders played a role too.

The blame for the violent nature of Partition, however, lies with Mountbatten for arbitrarily advancing the date of transfer of power from June 1948 to August 1947. He secured agreement from all parties for this accelerated timeline. As a result necessary arrangements that should have preceded the Partition were never completed. It became horrifically violent, disorderly and chaotic. Thousands of miles of boundary demarcation had to be completed in just five weeks, with no prior preparations. In Punjab, even two days after 15 August 1947, millions of people did not know whether their village or town was in India or Pakistan. For this, and for many other reasons, the Partition proved to be a lasting tragedy, for which the Indian leaders were fundamentally responsible. Our leaders’ personal traits and limitations played a huge role in bringing about the civilisational disaster upon the country.

Lord Wavell repeatedly made it clear, from 1940 up to March 1947, that Partition would not resolve the Hindu-Muslim problem. It would only lead to mass violence, administrative collapse, and long-term hostility. His words proved prophetic. He had consistently advised that the British government should not consent to Partition unless absolutely forced. Tragically, that is exactly what happened.

Shankar Sharan is a columnist and professor of political science. He tweets @hesivh. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)