A Vision of United India

Chapter 9

Summary of causes of Partition

We may summarise the chief causes of the Partition of India

The policy of divide and rule of the British

The aggressive attitude of the Muslim League

The Congress policy of appeasement of the Muslims

The psychological foundation of the different parties

We have described briefly the events that ultimately led to the partition of the country. But events are after all only manifestations of the psychology of the people and the vision that the leaders have of the nation. It is, therefore, important to see the vision of India that the different parties had and the inevitable consequences that it has had on the nation's development. It is also evident that if any meaningful and lasting change has to take place on the ground, it has to be preceded by a psychological change in the mass; otherwise it will not last and will only make the situation worse than before.

It is evident that there were great differences of perception regarding the very essence of Indianness - what India stood for, what were the means of its attainment and finally what the future vision of India was. We shall study this in the case of the Muslim League who more or less represented the Muslim community in India and the two sections of the Congress party who claimed to represent the whole nation but ultimately seemed more to represent the Hindus and to a great extent, the other religious groups. The two groups in the Congress had radically different perceptions. On one side was the Gandhian thought and on the other was the Nationalistic or Swadeshi wing of the Congress in 1905 led by Sri Aurobindo and Tilak. It would be useful, therefore, to see in some detail these perceptions.

At the very outset we must point out that we shall not take into account the British factor although it played a significant role in the partition of India. For, the British vision of India was entirely coloured by self-interest. As colonial rulers, their chief and only interest in India was as a colonial master and as a source of revenue and exploitation. And even after India attained independence, they have continued the same game of equating India and Pakistan in order to secure greater leverage in the subcontinent.

The Nationalistic view

The term Hindu 'revivalism' is a complete misnomer; it should really be called the Indian Renaissance. It took place in the 19th century and was essentially a resurgence of the national spirit of a people native to the land, who had suffered terribly and for a long time from successive foreign invasions. The Indian society was aspiring to reform and renew itself in the image of its ancient ideals, which had endowed it with strength and stability. It took a political form in the beginning of the 20th century, between 1905 and 1910.

In this political phase, led by Sri Aurobindo, Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal, the movement took a new orientation. In contrast to the first phase of the Congress movement led by Dadabhai Naoroji and his colleagues, the Swadeshi Movement, as it was then called, attempted to base its political creation on the Indian spirit and not on imitative European lines. This movement pursued a new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but as a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. No doubt it failed, but that was not due to any falsity in its inspiration, but rather due to the strength of a hostile pressure and the weakness still left by a past decadence. Although its incipient creations were broken or left languishing and deprived of their original significance, they remain a fingerpost on the roads. And it must also be noted that this movement stands out as one of the most important events in Indian political history. For the growth and development of Nationalism, during that brief period of three years through the instrumentality of Sri Aurobindo's Bandemataram is a political phenomenon unparalleled by any similar movement in the world.

Let us now see what the contributions of this movement were.

First, it was fundamentally a Nationalist movement which succeeded in creating a powerful sentiment among the masses; it awoke the sense and spirit of Indianness that was at once a reawakening of the ancient Shakti of India and a new pulsation to recover the Spirit and give to it new and creative instruments of thought and energy.

Second, the subsequent movement of the Congress from 1920 onwards was guided and inspired by the principal ideas and programmes of the Nationalist movement; unfortunately, that movement deviated in its spirit and force from the sublime and daring vision of the early Nationalists like Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and others.

The vision of India

In 1907, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

"For this thing is written in the book of God and nothing can prevent it, that the national life of India shall meet and possess its divine and mighty destiny". 19

In this view the nation is not a piece of land or a collection of individuals; it is a soul with a destiny.

This is what Sri Aurobindo wrote in one of his letters:

"While others look upon their country as an inert piece of matter - a few meadows and fields, forests and hills and rivers -- I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore Her; I worship Her as the Mother". 20

The methods to be adopted

Regarding the methods to be used to attain freedom, this passage sums up the vision of Sri Aurobindo:

"In some quarters there is the idea that Sri Aurobindo's political standpoint was entirely pacifist, that he was opposed in principle and in practice to all violence and that he denounced terrorism, insurrection, etc., as entirely forbidden by the spirit and letter of the Hindu gospel of Ahimsa. This is quite incorrect. Sri Aurobindo is neither an impotent moralist nor a weak pacifist.

The rule of confining political action to passive resistance was adopted as the best policy for the National Movement at that stage and not as a part of a gospel of Non-violence or pacific idealism. Peace is part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than before. He is in favour of an attempt to put down war by international agreement and international force, what is now contemplated in the "New Order", if that proves possible, but that would not be Ahimsa, it would be a putting down of anarchic force by legal force and even then one cannot be sure that it would be permanent. Within nations this sort of peace has been secured, but it does not prevent occasional civil wars and revolutions and political outbreaks and

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repressions, sometimes of a sanguinary character. The same might happen to a similar world-peace. Sri Aurobindo has never concealed his opinion that a nation is entitled to attain its freedom by violence, if it can do so or if there is no other way; whether it should do so or not, depends on what is the best policy not on ethical considerations. Sri Aurobindo's position and practice in this matter was the same as Tilak's and that of other Nationalist leaders who were by no means Pacifists or worshippers of Ahimsa".21

The spiritual approach

However, the most important point in this vision is the stress on the spiritual approach. It has to be made clear and cannot be sufficiently emphasised that the uniqueness of India lies in its spirituality. Spirituality is the very essence and purpose of India's existence. Thus spirituality is the means and road to the Indian salvation.

The true solution will come only when man accepts the spiritual aim of life, which fulfils itself in the fullness of life and man's being in the individual and the group. It will not proceed by a scornful neglect of the body, nor by an ascetic starving of the vital being and an utmost bareness or even squalor as the rule of spiritual living, nor by a puritanic denial of art and beauty, nor by a neglect of science and philosophy; it will be all things to all, but in all it will be at once their highest aim and meaning and the most embracing expression of themselves in which all they are and seek for will be fulfilled.

Finally, on the communal problem, Sri Aurobindo is clear that harmony has to be established between all the communities; but compromising on fundamentals cannot do this. It has to be based on deeper levels and no attempt to placate or appease other interests in the name of harmony will serve the purpose. Here is an extract from a letter written by Sri Aurobindo in April 1936:

To sum up the political vision of Sri Aurobindo:

Spirituality must be made the chief motivating force of life; a spirituality which is not a rejection of life, but all-inclusive and consists of an integral development of the being.

The Indian nation is not just a geographical entity, but also a cultural and spiritual concept. This includes the whole of the sub-continent.

This cultural and spiritual entity must now be converted into a political, economic and military unity. The division of the subcontinent must be undone. Every means, political, economic, cultural and military has to be used to bring about this unity. As a nation it is our duty to defend our own legitimate interests, political, economic, cultural and military.

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In this context, I quote a passage from a talk of Maj Gen Vinod Saigal (Retd): 'India's natural frontier is at the Hindu Kush. The subcontinent of India begins at the Hindu Kush - historically, culturally and tectonically. Irrespective of what happened in the past, irrespective of the partition of India in 1947, and irrespective of the worldview of the global powers of today the global equipoise of the next millennium can only be attained through a stabilisation of the subcontinent - preferably along the northern perimeter, as defined earlier'.

As far as possible, this unity has to be brought about by peaceful methods; but the use of force cannot be ruled out; it does not go against the core values of Indian culture." "The basis of this oneness is 'Unity in Diversity'."

The Muslim attitude

When analysing the attitude of the Muslims, we must remember that for over 800 years before the British conquest of India, the Muslims were the rulers of almost the whole of India. In the later part of their rule, however, as part of the cultural revival, they met with strong resistance from Hindu rulers like Shivaji, Krishna Dev Raya and others. The Hindu mind had awakened to the danger of Islamic domination. Then came the British conquest as a result of which both Hindus and Muslims became subjects in the British Empire. With the Hindu revival having taken place in the nineteenth century, the Muslims were in a state of total despair. There began a Muslim revivalism. But, unlike the Indian renaissance, this 'revivalism' in India was the frenzied reaction of a foreign religion, which had failed to convert a majority of the native population to its own creed, and which was, therefore, feeling terribly frustrated. The descendants of Muslim rulers were now reviving dreams of an empire, which their forefathers had built with so much bloodshed but which had been lost in the last round. They called upon their confused comrades and converted victims to revert to the old medieval ways when Islam had converted the pagan and peace-loving people of Arabia into a group of marauding conquerors.

India with her powerful assimilative capacity had absorbed the earlier aggressions of the Greeks, the Sakas, the Kushanas and the Hunas; and it is certain that in normal circumstances, the culturally and temperamentally compassionate society of the Hindus would have absorbed the Arab and Turk invaders too after their conquest. But the new invaders - the Arabs and Turks themselves had been swallowed by the aggressive ideology of Islam. Consequently, the Muslims were always dreaming of reviving their empire in India. Their whole behaviour pattern has thus been dominated by this psychological attitude of reconquering India and converting it to Islam, something they failed to do in their earlier attempt. It may be noted that whenever and wherever the Muslims conquered a civilization, whether in Egypt or in Persia, it had been converted wholesale to Islam. The only exception was the Indian civilization. They were thus determined to reconquer India and complete the task of converting the whole of India to Islam after driving out the British and partly with the aid of the British. In order to do this, the fiction was invented that the Hindus and Muslims constitute two separate nationalities in the Indian subcontinent. This attitude was the chief motivating factor in the days before partition and it remains so even today. Shri Shiva Prasad Roy, a perceptive Bengali writer, summed it up thus: "Pakistan and Bangladesh are their fixed

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deposits. Those are Islamic states. No one else can lay a claim on them. India is a joint account. Plunder it as much as you please."

Some warning voices

This behaviour pattern had been noticed by many eminent and perceptive personalities long before partition. The great poet, Rabindranath Tagore, in an interview to The Times of India published on April 18, 1924: "Another very important fact which according to the poet was making it almost impossible for Hindu-Mohammedan unity to become an accomplished fact was that the Mohammedans could not confine their patriotism to any one country. The poet said that he had very frankly asked many Mohammedans whether, in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, they would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common land. He could not be satisfied with the reply he got from them. He said that he could definitely state that even men like Mr. Mohammed Ali had declared that under no circumstances was it permissible for any Mohammedan, whatever his country might be, to stand against any other Mohammedan." Similarly, Lala Lajpat Rai came to the conclusion that this behaviour pattern had its primary source in the Quran and the Hadis. Lalaji wrote as follows in a confidential letter to Deshbandhu C.R. Das: "I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim history and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think that Hindu-Muslim unity is neither possible nor practicable. Assuming and admitting the sincerity of the Mohammedan leaders in the Non-Co-operation Movement, I think their religion provides an effective bar to anything of the kind. There is no finer Mohammedan than Hakim alias Ajmal Khan Sahab, but can any Muslim leader override the Koran? I can only hope that my reading of the Islamic Law is incorrect and nothing would relieve me more than to be convinced that it is so. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity and desirability of Hindu-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Koran and the Hadis? The leaders cannot override them."

Shri Sarat Chandra Chatterji, the noted Bengali novelist and a Congressman of long standing, had commented on the overt behaviour of Muslims ever since Islam arrived in India. Pained by the humiliations which Muslim hooligans had heaped on Hindus in the countryside of East Bengal, he had written as follows in October 1926: "If we go by the lessons of history we have to accept that the goal of Hindu-Muslim unity is a mirage. When Muslims first entered India, they looted the country, destroyed the temples, broke the idols, raped the women and heaped innumerable indignities on the people of this country. Today it appears that such noxious behaviour has entered the bone marrow of Muslims. Unity can be achieved among equals. In view of the big gap between the cultural level of Hindus and Muslims which can hardly be bridged, I am of the view that Hindu-Muslim unity which could not be achieved during the last thousand years will not materialise during the ensuing thousand years. If we are to drive away the English people depending upon this elusive capital of Hindu-Muslim unity, I would rather advise its postponement."

And finally, Sri Aurobindo too remarked in 1923: "Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of the Hindus. Every time the mildness of the Hindus has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organise themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself, it would automatically solve the problem. Otherwise we are lulled into a false sense of satisfaction that we have solved a difficult problem, when

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in fact we have only shelved it. You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is 'I will not tolerate you.' How are you going to have unity with these people? Certainly Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be arrived on the basis that the Muslims will go on converting Hindus while the Hindus shall not convert any Mohammedan. ... You can't build unity on such a basis. Perhaps, the only way of making the Mohammedans harmless is to make them lose their fanatic faith in their religion."

When he was asked: "Can this be done by education?"

"Not by the kind of education they receive at Aligarh today but by a more liberalising education. The Turks, for instance are not fanatical because they have more liberal ideas. Even when they fight it is not so much for Islam as for right and liberty."

The contribution of Muslims to the Freedom Movement

At the same time, we must take note of the contribution of the other section of the Muslim community both to the freedom movement and to independent India. They represent an important segment of the Muslim population and can play a very important role in the future unity of India. These are the Nationalist Muslims who were against the partition of India. They played an important role in the freedom struggle and in evolving the ethos and concept of composite nationalism. The writings and efforts of personalities like Shah Waliullah, Maulana Mohd. Qasim Nanotvi and Shah Ismail Shaheed represent the beginnings of the anti-colonial movement. Their spirit found manifestation in Abul Kalam Azad, Mohmoodul Hasan, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr. M.A. Ansari and Maulana Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal who provided vital support to Gandhi's movement for building national unity on the principles of non-discrimination and social justice. In this context, the contribution of Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni is worthy of special note. His was the first effort at articulating the thesis that modern nationhood is determined by territory and not by religious faith. The idea was spelt out more clearly and precisely by Abul Kalam Azad when he reconciled his duties as part of the Indian nation and a legatee of universal Islamic heritage. His approach has been a major factor in building a nationalism, which seeks to advance human welfare.

Imperialist occupation of the country in the wake of the decline and fall of the Moguls saw the Muslims standing shoulder to shoulder with their Hindu compatriots to regain freedom from alien rule. If Rani Laxmibai's forces fought in Bundelkhand, Begum Hazrat Mahal led the uprising at Lucknow.

During the freedom struggle, if intellectuals like Abul Kalam Azad and Hasrat Mohani set standards in intrepid patriotic journalism, poets like Josh Malihabadi and Qazi Nazrul Islam kindled and strengthened the spirit of patriotism.

The fortitude that the Indian Muslim community has shown in facing the blight of Partition is a great tribute to their patriotism. The Muslims of free India are here not just by accident of birth but also by deliberate choice. They rightfully claim the inheritance of their contribution to the making of the Indian nation-state. No less is their contribution to the endeavours for national reconstruction in the wake of the unfortunate Partition. Today, they are in the forefront of the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country. Indeed, there is no field where they have not contributed in a big way to the national development and growth. It is not necessary to mention names, as there are too many. It is sufficient to mention that it is with this section that the hope of the future lies

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and it is they who will be in the vanguard of the movement to bring out a deeper harmony between Hindus and Muslims.

The Gandhian Congress view of India

Finally there is the view of the Congress party, which was still powerfully under the influence of Gandhi.

This phase began with the advent of Gandhi. It seemed at one point of time that there would be a continuation and development of the movement started in the second phase. Gandhi with his enormous popularity and hold on the Indian masses seemed poised to continue the spiritual turn given in the previous stage. But that was not to be. There was a distinct shift from the Indian spiritual turn to a moral and, in some ways, a foreign turn, however well garbed it was in the Indian attire. Gandhi gave a completely different interpretation of the Indian spirit and it is this vision that stills holds sway among a very large section of the Indian intelligentsia and political elite. This deviation was the cause of much of the confusion and tardiness of the movement of non-cooperation, Satyagraha and non-violent struggle. Ultimately, India muddled through an uncertain terrain of thought and action as also much suffering and violence and attained freedom that left her divided amid the communal tensions which are crippling her even today, more than fifty years after Independence. The solution to this state of affairs is to bring back the spirit of the Swadeshi movement. The attempt to revive the deeper and genuine Indian spirit is bound to be renewed as soon as a wider gate is opened under more favourable conditions. Till that attempt comes, a serious danger besets the soul of India.

Let us briefly state the political philosophy of Gandhi's movement. This political philosophy was based on three planks, namely non-violence, non-cooperation and Hindu-Muslim unity.

Each one of these contains a truth and yet in the hands of the Congress party and in particular in its application by Gandhi, they became instruments not of truth and unity but of falsehood and disunity. And this happened because they were used as absolute dogmatic tools instead of as tactics and instruments of policy.

Non-violence

For Gandhi, non-violence was not a policy; it was a creed and dogma to be applied in all circumstances.

Here is an illustration of this attitude in the letter written by Gandhi during the Second World War to the Prime Minister of England:

"I appeal for the cessation of hostilities. Because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours are not as thorough as the Germans. I venture to present you a nobler and a braver way, worthy of the bravest soldiers. I want you to fight Nazism without arms or with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. ... Invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give them all of these but not your souls nor your minds". (Amrita Bazar Patrika, July 4 1940). Thus we see that according to Gandhi, Indian culture was synonymous with absolute nonviolence; recourse to violence was wrong even in as grave a situation as the British were facing, and therefore, non-violence was an absolute law to be followed in all

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circumstances. This attitude has been influencing the political decision even today in  independent India.

The Gandhian view of the Nation

As far as Gandhi's vision of India was concerned, it came out clearly first during the Khilafat movement. This thinking even in independent India has moulded the Congress party and it has led to the appeasement of the Muslims and other minorities.

During the Khilafat Movement, Gandhi made it clear that the Khilafat question was in his view more important and urgent than that of Swaraj. He wrote: "To the Musalmans, Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question.... It is impossible not to sympathise with this attitude.... I would gladly ask for postponement of Swaraj activity if thereby we could advance the interest of the Khilafat." Thus it becomes clear that the nation was less important than the interests of the Muslim community.

Again it must be noted that the Khilafat Movement was a movement that had nothing to do with Indian Nationalism. On the contrary, it encouraged the Pan-Islamic sentiment and went against the very grain of Indian Nationalism.

We thus see the great difference between the two movements, one led by Gandhi and the other led by Sri Aurobindo. The future India will have to decide which of these two visions it will follow and accept.

We shall conclude this chapter with a note from Sri Aurobindo. In April 1936, Sri Aurobindo had remarked about the consequences of the movement led by Gandhi in the following words:

"It (the Swadeshi movement of 1905) laid down a method of agitation which Gandhi took up and continued with three or four startling additions, khaddar, Hindiism, Satyagraha -getting beaten with joy, Khilafat, Harijan etc. All these had an advertisement value, a power of poking up things, which was certainly livelier than anything we put into it. Whether the effects of these things have been good is a more doubtful question.

As a matter of fact the final effects of Gandhi's movement have been:

A tremendous fissure between the Hindus and Mohamedans, which is going to be kept permanent by communal representation;

A widening fissure between the Harijans and caste Hindus, to be made permanent in the same way;

A great confusion in Indian politics which leaves it a huge mass of division, warring tendencies, no clear guide or compass anywhere;

A new constitution which puts the conservative class in power to serve as a means of maintaining British domination or at least as an intolerable brake on progress; also divides India into five or six Indias, Hindu, Moslem, Paria, Christian, Sikh etc;

A big fiasco of the Non-co-operation movement, which is throwing politics back on one side to reformism, on the other to a blatant and insincere Socialism.

That, I think is the sum and substance of the matter. I am referring to my prophecy made at the beginning of the Non-co-operation movement "it will end in a great confusion or a great fiasco. " I was not an accurate prophet, as I have pointed out before. It should have run "It will end in a great confusion and a great fiasco. " 23

Let the reader decide whether all this has come true.

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Conclusion

We may conclude that although India had developed a cultural and spiritual unity right from the ancient times, it failed to evolve a political unity. However, it is certain that this too will come in due course.

We shall conclude with the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"But the most striking example in history is the evolution of India. Nowhere else have the centrifugal forces been so strong, numerous, complex, obstinate. The mere time taken by the evolution has been prodigious; the disastrous vicissitudes through which it has had to work itself out have been appalling. And yet through it all, the inevitable tendency has worked constantly, pertinaciously, with the dull, obscure, indomitable, relentless obstinacy of Nature when she is opposed in her instinctive purposes by man, and finally, after a struggle enduring through millenniums, has triumphed. And, as usually happens when she is thus opposed by her own mental and human material, it is the most adverse circumstances that the subconscious worker has turned into her most successful instruments. The beginnings of the centripetal tendency in India go back to the earliest times of which we have record and are typified in the ideal of the Samrat or Chakravarti Raja and the military and political use of the Aswamedha and Rajasuya sacrifices. The two great national epics might almost have been written to illustrate this theme; for the one recounts the establishment of a unifying dharmarajya or imperial reign of justice, the other starts with an idealised description of such a rule pictured as once existing in the ancient and sacred past of the country. The political history of India is the story of a succession of empires, indigenous and foreign, each of them destroyed by centrifugal forces, but each bringing the centripetal tendency nearer to its triumphant emergence. And it is a significant circumstance that the more foreign the rule, the greater has been its force for the unification of the subject people. This is always a sure sign that the essential nation-unit is already there and that there is an indissoluble national vitality necessitating the inevitable emergence of the organised nation. In this instance, we see that the conversion of the psychological unity on which nationhood is based into the external organised unity by which it is perfectly realised, has taken a period of more than two thousand years and is not yet complete".24

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