Admin Note: This is a Precedent Thread (with regard to QeA).
BB made a comment calling the Quaid-e-Azam “pure evil“. This is a-historical and triggering to Pakistanis.
Partition is a topic that demands nuance. To call the Quaid (or Pandit Nehru) “pure evil” just reveals a lack of historical knowledge. Quaid-e-Azam was not Hitler. He was not sending people to gas chambers. Historians probably wouldn’t even call Hitler “pure evil” but perhaps that’s the historical figure about whom the strongest case can be made.
I will take the opportunity to quote from my own writing:
In hindsight, perhaps the decision to Partition India was not the best one, yet there is no way that Jinnah could have known what form the future Indian Constitution would take or Pakistan’s struggles in establishing its identity and defining what it means to be a Muslim homeland. The only character in the play who seems to see what the politics of exclusion will lead to is Maulana Azad, who argues passionately against Jinnah’s “two nation theory” and later begs Nehru to avoid Partition at any cost. Azad is worried about the Muslims who will be left behind in the Hindu majority provinces that will remain part of India. He also firmly believes that once one starts on the road to a politics based on differences, there is no telling when the process will end. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 showed that religion was not enough to hold Pakistan together and that ethnicity is also an extremely important factor. Ethnic conflict remains a fault line in today’s Pakistan, as well as to a lesser extent in India. Thus it can be forcefully argued that Azad was right in saying that Partition would not really solve anything.
Overall, “Tryst” is an extremely thought provoking play that compels the audience to reflect on the complex history of the years leading up to Indian independence. What a united India would have been like is a hypothetical question that can never be successfully answered, yet the play shows us that Partition was by no means inevitable and was very much an outcome of specific historical circumstances and personality clashes between flawed individuals
I will also refer readers to my review of Sam Dalrymple’s excellent book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia.
Finally, to address naam de guerre’s objection that Sam Dalrymple is not the “gold standard of Indian historiography”, I will refer readers to Maulana Azad’s book India Wins Freedom (Orient Longman 1988). Maulana Azad was a member of the Congress and as such is definitely not uncritical of the Quaid. Incidentally, Maulana Azad is generally reviled in Pakistan since he was a “Congress Muslim” and against the policies of the Muslim League.
The point is that any serious discussion of history requires the understanding of nuance.
SD lol
His book is excellent. It has been very well-reviewed.
obviously because his father had all the connections. Kabir you need to learn how to win a room
That’s not fair.
Whatever happened in your interaction with him, his book contains footnotes and an index.
Books like this go through fact-checking and editorial review. He couldn’t just write whatever he wanted.
probably could..
My point is his Substack doesn’t go through fact checking or editorial review.
A book that is published by a major publisher has to go through both these things.
credibility is key..
also the presumption that Editorial reviews have no biases is so Neo-colonialist.
His book is an academic work. All of his claims are cited. There is a bibliography.
His book is not the same as his Substack.
Of course the new “White Moghuls” are too suave to make factual errors but history is lot more than just stating facts, you know that very well. The trick is all in editorializing and I have it on good authority that WD has enough influence to push through almost entirely whatever he wants.
Father and son have a habit of playing to the gallery and conveniently shrugging criticism as Hindutva motivated. WD is on the record that his motivations for writing the Golden Road were to get ahead of non-Left aligned native historians from leading the charge on decolonizing the history of India’s ancient past and its glories. I usually wouldn’t appeal to authority but I have friends in Ivy League history departments who lament the dominance the self-proclaimed Goat-herd of Mehrauli has over what can be most charitably described as Indian historical non-fiction.
+1
We have personal experience of this; just before BP’s 15yr anniversary. SD tried to attribute stone carving in Bihar to Alexander’s peeps.
Absurd; it was riddled with errors. We took down the posts as a courtesy (we never want controversy on BP) but odd of Kabir to quote it so extensively.
Completely undermines his argumentation.
Yes Kabir’s veneration of the Dalyrymples is very odd ..
It’s very divide and rule
You are free to have your opinions. I can’t convince you of anything.
I find William Dalrymple’s books very engaging and I’ve learned a lot from them. I have a signed copy of “The Last Mughal”.
While South Asians were too busy becoming engineers and computer scientists, WD researched in the archives in Delhi and used previously unknown Urdu and Persian sources to tell the story of the 1857 Rebellion.
interestingly enough K- you are almost never convinced of anything.
it would be interesting to note, that as most Veteran Commentator on BP (along with Sbarr); if you have every changed your opinions on account of reading and engaging here?
Has anyone ever changed their opinions on account of engaging here?
What I see is Indians and Pakistanis talking past each other and defending their respective national positions.
This is me being brutally honest.
then it makes BP a waste of time. Evolution is the name of the game; our views are like a flowing river.
I don’t think BP is a “waste of time”.
As you’ve said multiple times, it’s one of the few places where Indians and Pakistanis are at least talking to each other–even if mostly at cross purposes.
Also unlike a lot of Substacks, the posts here actually generate commentary.
People would be more inclined to change their views if the posts and the commentary followed more academic norms ex. claims being cited etc.
But invective against each other’s countries and religions doesn’t lead to changing one’s POV.
I feel like there is a very specific variable that is missing in this discussion here: the issue of historical specialization. The main issue (from my perspective at least) that appears in most modern academic study of Indian historiography stems from how hard it is to provide a clear generalist explanation of history. Due to the absurd number of kingdoms, cultures, religions, languages and scripts that exist; you kind of need a deep understanding of different periods that only comes with specialization. For example, if I wanted to know about pre-12th century court culture, I would read works by Daud Ali or I want to know the historical shifts between early Gupta until Harsha period, then I would refer to Hans Bakker’s works. These historians can break everything down into finer details and maintains all the nuances.
The problem starts when historians specialized in specific areas tries to make general explanations about areas outside their expertise; only using their understanding of their niche field. I remember when Audrey Trurschke tried to compare temple destruction in the late Mughal empire to the ones in the 8-12th century. Ignoring whatever opinion people have about her, there is a fundamental problem hidden in this argument; the difference in religious practices. The temples of the 8-12th century were created during the high point of tantra and the Kaula sect, which tended to focus more esoteric religious practices. While the temples of the Mughal empire were made during the high point of the Bhakti movement that emphasized communal devotion worship. Most of the Tantric shrines (like the one at Khajuraho) would have dynastic or sectarian shrines that wouldn’t have been open to the ordinary masses. The Bhakti related temple was more open to common groups since medieval era devotional movement had broken down traditional caste constraints for communal worship. None of this includes differences in how temple sackings worked.
Nonetheless, Mughal era destruction would have had a greater impact than the ones in the pre-12th century since it affects broader community as opposed to a specific political dynasty. Also, the shrines within the Mughal empire played a role in legitimizing the empire in front of the non-Islamic masses. For example, “the tidings of a king”; a piece of court history made in the post-Vijayanagar states of south India talks about how the Mughal patronage of the Viswanatha temple gave religious and social legitimacy over the Deccan sultanates. Basically, there are clear difference between the period, one that Audrey seems to miss in most of her argument. I myself would have missed key information as well since I only have basic understanding of these subjects.
The main issue was that Audrey specialized in medieval era inter-religious history between Hindu and Islamic groups, she doesn’t have depth in pre-12th century history since she isn’t specialized in this area. This is the main problem; people who understand classical period do not know enough about medieval history and vice versa. Furthermore, there is a broad lack of connectivity in Indian historiography between the classical, medieval and early modern within academia, which still doesn’t prevent people from commenting about stuff they don’t specialize in. General historians suffers the same problem since then have breadth of knowledge but lack depth about the key details.
do you want to make this into a post? we can give you Authorship?
Yeah, I think that might work for the better since it is a lot of information. I am kinda new to this format of things, how do posts work here exactly.
we will write a New Author’s Guide soon but we have updgraded your account to Author.
You are a New Author. Please feel free to ask us any questions (email on the left)
I think might do the post a later time. I think was an error with gmail for sending emails back and forth.
Where can I find the New Author’s guide? Have a few vague ideas to write on but want to know the framework within which to operate.
+1
I guess they were all products of that time. All with shades of grey and probably quite unaware of the domino effect that their decisions would have on the fate of billions. Just like puppeteers inventing a story on the go.
They were all also deified by the respective factions that supported them.
In my opinion, Ambedkar was critical of all three, and possibly objectively so. Its a pity his inputs were not considered to the extent they ought to have been.
Ultimately the Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah trio decided the fate of the peoples of the subcontinent. No amount of hindsight can undo what happened, so perhaps it is best to treat it as a lesson of history and leave it there.
Ambedkar had huge impact on the Constitution.
Gandhi was definitely a Saint.
Oh yes, he did undoubtedly. What I meant was, more of a voice at the high table of just the three. It should have been more than three individuals deciding the fate of millions.
I think Gandhi was an astute politician, nobody has come close to how he had everyone believing he was a saint when he was far from one. That too decades after Independence! Sorry, disagree with you on that 🙂
he saved the Bengal from bloodshed; they were playing cricket on the Maidan, the day after Partition.
Definitely, they were all products of their time. And they all had “shades of grey”.
I’m not insisting that Indians admire Jinnah. But calling him “pure evil” reveals a lack of understanding of history.
Incidentally, in his book “Pakistan or the Partition of India”, Ambedkar lays out the case both for and against Pakistan. He ultimately argues that Partition is inevitable.
https://franpritchett.com/00ambedkar/ambedkar_partition/index.html
You are downplaying the role of the colonial power. Ultimately, it was Lord Mountbatten who advanced the date of the British departure from India by a year. The June 3, 1947 Partition Plan was basically handed down to the Indian leaders as a fait accompli.
I’m all for the Partition being discussed academically but painting one side or the other as “pure evil” is not the way to go about it.
Fair point on the colonial power. They were the ones who benefitted the most from the situation. Still are benefitting ironically…
I just wish they had pushed back against the British “fait accompli”. Perhaps then the partition need not have been as terrible as it was. But we can only speculate…
this is BB trying to push the Overton envelop.
It’s a non-serious argument.
History cannot be reduced to caricature.
I feel Gandhi was a cut above the two
Do NOT comment on my threads.
You have been banned. I will not tolerate your anti-Pakistan comments and passive aggression directed towards me.
I think Nehru was the greatest of them all. Possibly out matched in intellect only by Ambedkar. But I rate Nehru higher than Ambedkar, or Patel, or even Azad. He made a few mistakes re China and socialism but he made them in good conscience.
Read the books and letters of the three of them and Nehru’s clarity and wisdom shines through.
I’d rank lower him than Churchill.
was he greater?
“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.” Winston Churchill
BB– Why are you commenting on my post?
Didn’t XTM tell you that that meant deletion of all your comments and revocation of authorship?
First of all this is actually something Indians are guilty of – hating on Muslims and other people of color and supporting white nationalists despite being despised by them and even more so than most other ethnic groups, including Pakistanis.
Your accusations of “dravidian bashing” is ironic and funny coming from someone that engages in Pakistani bashing everyday.
What Churchill said about Indians was bad but nowhere worse than the erotic softporn article you wrote on here about Pakistani women. So you have no moral high ground to complain about racism when you engaging in the racist and dehumanizing fetishization of Pakistani and Muslim women, which is very common in Hindu nationalist circles. Several of your subreddits, telegrams and discords sexualizing Muslim have been banned. We’re aware of the language and dogwhistles you guys use about Pakistani women so I’m surprised you’re allowed to post here at all given the academic backgrounds of the founders of this blog.
he had emailed us and asked for his comments to be removed; we left it to you.. though can’t one remove or delete their comments after posting?
OK.
I will be sticking with my policy of completely banning him and RNJ from my threads.
It’s not possible to delete your own comments. Only the author of the post or admin has the ability to do so.
I don’t know where you got the assumption I like Churchill lmao. I’ve never thought highly of Churchill and have jokingly compared him to Hitler and Stalin in front of some of my white friends back in college, although he was very popular among white anglos. When I say I rank Nehru lower than Churchill, it means, I see him as even worse than someone I already despise.
Churchill stopped Hitler? Since when?
People be reading too much western propaganda.
Stalin is the one who stopped Hitler. USSR defeated the Germans. Not your Americans or the British who were minor nuisance on the Western and Southern borders of Europe and only became relevant one the Soviets started turning the tide against Germany at the end of the war
+1
Is the whole notion of Jinnah being “pure evil” predicated on Direct Action Day? While he’s been criticized for not being explicit enough demanding the rank and file to adhere to non-violent methods, do we have any evidence that he wanted to see blood on the streets of Calcutta?
Arguably CM Modi’s (at the time) hands were similarly tied in Gujarat?
Apples and oranges. Kind of insulting to compare QeA to Modi.
Absolutely agree. The Quaid was a constitutionalist and a lawyer.
“Hindu Hriday Samrat” has Muslim blood on his hands from the 2002 Gujarat pogroms (NOT “riots” as the Indians on here like to say).
I am not uncritical of the Quaid. He obviously didn’t think about the implications of his policies. Both the Quaid and Pandit Nehru should have realized that Partition was going to lead to mass ethnic cleansing.
But the Quaid thought he could set up Pakistan and then retire back to his house in Bombay.
yes that is very irresponsible and foolish..
QeA and Nehru were mere men; Gandhi though was a Mahatma.
It should have been clear to everyone that the way Partition was carried out and the fact that it was brought forward by a year was going to lead to bloodshed.
Had the British left in 1948 instead, Partition could have been carried out in an orderly fashion. At least, everyone would have known where the borders of India and Pakistan were.
“But the Quaid thought he could set up Pakistan and then retire back to his house in Bombay.”
This is a very good insight into the lawyer mind that was Jinnah. I don’t think he quite realized what creating another country actually entailed. Almost blasé in a sense. It almost comes across as setting up a company and then leaving it in the hands of a CEO to run.
Had the massive ethnic cleansing not occurred in August 1947, it was not unreasonable to presume that the relationship between “Hindustan” and “Pakistan” would be like that between the US and Canada. There would have been no reason why the Quaid could not have gone back to live in Bombay.
Obviously, all parties should have thought about the fact that their rhetoric was going to lead to bloodshed.
How I wish this would’ve been the case…
But yes, all parties lacked the foresight to see the horrors of a rushed partition. And here we are 80 years on dissecting what cannot be undone and trying to move on.
A similar thought crossed my mind. Jinnah wore better suits and could probably cite the entire breadth of canonical english liberal political philosophers, so he “wore” it better. In fairness, we should ask if he shed the pretense of being a leader to anyone other than muslim leaguers by 1946, unlike Modi, who was duty-bound in his role as CM to oversee the security of his constituents.
Humza’s contention that Modi = Jinnah is not off
+1
None of this would have happened if Punjab was not divided.
Congress insisted on dividing Punjab. Jinnah should have never agreed.
Punjab as Muslim majority province should have been part of Pakistan.
Sikhism is a syncretic response to Islam?
The violence in Sialkot was due to refugees from Jammu who were being slaughtered by the Dogras. A massive influx of Pahari/Dogra Muslims was triggered by these massacres. The Sialkot-Gujranwala area also has a lot of Kashmiri Muslims who remember the oppression they faced under both the Sikhs and Dogras and were driven out of their homeland across the Jhelum. The Sialkot-Gujrat-Gujranwala area is the heartland of the Kashmiri diaspora. As well as for Dogra Muslims like Rashid Minhas shaheed.
Mountbatten has a lot of blood on his hands.
Yes, the first Governor-General of an independent India does have blood on his hands and he also thought Pakistan wasn’t going to survive for very long yet here we are 80 years latter, going strong.
We gained independence in 1947 – that’s approximately 80 years ago.
going strong is an overstatement. Pakistan was richer than S. Korea in the 60s
It’s not all about economics.
Pakistan is the only Muslim-majority nuclear power.
It is clear at this point that Pakistan cannot be undone.
it is easy to write that from the vantage of the elite.
it is like how the Pakistani Commentariat, trip over themselves, to defend the IRGC..
so long as they don’t have to bear the burdens of living under Islamic mores.
I am only saying that economics is not everything.
National security is also very important. The ability to deter India (which is what the nuclear bomb is) is very important.
These are not “elite” opinions. If polls were carried out, probably most Pakistanis would agree that our having nuclear weapons is a net good.
The point is that no hostile power can undo Pakistan.
If Iran had been a nuclear power, none of what is happening today would be happening.
Congratulations; you have the ability to potentially destroy your Motherland, which is where your own ancestral origins stem from (Amritsar etc).
Big Whoop
His country is Pakistan regardless of where his roots are from. German-American soldiers fought against Nazi Germany despite their German heritage, which was called into question and led to the Anglicization of German last names in America and the decline of German from being the second most spoken language at one point in America to being nearly non existent.
Yes, my country is Pakistan.
Let’s not bring my ancestral origins into this. I’m only one person and I’m not above the national security of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Many many Pakistanis have ancestral origins in East Punjab. Doesn’t prevent us from being patriotic Pakistanis.
Also, my father’s family originally came from Iran and from thence to Kashmir.
The nuclear weapons are meant to be a deterrent. One hopes they never actually have to be used.
Definitely much stronger than what we inherited and started with in 1947.
Just like Muslims in UP, Bihar, CP AND Hyderabad agreed to it.
Punjab and Bengal were Muslim majority, they should have gone to Pakistan. But Mountbatten at the insistence of Nehru forced Jinnah into accepting their partition. Jinnah should never had agreed but perhaps he was dying and wanted to get things done.
There was no united India before the British so all this insistence about united India is just reimagining history.
@Kishore Kumar
Well duh, that is the entire point: they didn’t agree but that’s how it would have been.
Nehru denying Pakistan would have lead to a civil war, which I don’t think either Nehru or Patel were sure they would win seeing that the bulk of the soldiers were Punjabis whom they did not trust.
Hyderabad was a Muslim minority state, and the Nizam was more interested in retaining independence. Patel did not offer anything to anyone officially, and even if he had done, it was a joke since Hyderabad was not contigious to Pakistan and was landlocked by India. Kashmir was and remains important to Pakistan.
The fact remains:
1) Jammu & Kashmir – overwhelming Muslim majority
2) United Punjab – significant Muslim majority
3) United Bengal – significant Muslim majority
4) Sindh – overwhelming Muslim majority
5) KP – overwhelming Muslim majority
6) Baluchistan – overwhelming Muslim majority
These should have been the original states of Pakistan. We were robbed because Jinnah chickened out early because he thought he was dying. The British conspired with the Congress to make Pakistan as weak as possible so that it would capitualte. But Pakistan turned out to be resilient and is now thriving.
Partitioning of Punjab caused violence in Punjab, not partition of British India. Hindus of other provinces who have nothing to do with this keep forgetting this point for whetever reason.
you were robbed of Calcutta?
Calcultta was capital of Bengal province which was Muslim majority. The entire province should have been part of Pakistan or United Bengal State
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Bengal
Agreed.
The division of Punjab and Bengal was not fair.
Both provinces were Muslim-majority and should have gone to Pakistan in their entirety.
this is the underlying mentality that “secular” hindus fail to see. This mentality that the moment a political entity becomes more than 50% muslim then remaining significant minority (could be 40 or 45%) they should accept dhimmitude. But the moment the question comes to the Muslim minority then they become zealous advocates of Liberty, Egalite and Fraternity.
The Quaid envisioned Pakistan’s minorities as equal citizens of Pakistan just as the Muslims left behind in the Hindu-majority provinces were supposed to be equal citizens of India.
This is all on record.
Of course, it has been negatively referred to as the “hostage theory”.
“The Quaid envisioned Pakistan’s minorities as equal citizens of Pakistan”
For Sure !
This is in the historical record. It is not in dispute.
See the August 11, 1947 speech to the Constituent Assembly.
that Principle makes no sense.
Muslim wings of India wanted to Partition thus their contiguous non-Muslim districts did not want to secede.
East Punjab & West Bengal are coherent states.
The Partition was supposed to be done on the basis of provinces. Punjab and Bengal both had Muslim majorities. There was initially no question that provinces would be divided. Later, this became a possibility.
This is why the Quaid referred to Pakistan as “moth-eaten”.
Anyway, this is academic now.
The Partition was not supposed to be done at all. but once it was agreed to, everything was up for grabs. (Just because Jinnah’s overall TNT demand was accepted doesn’t mean all of his specific sub-demands had to be too.) The sanctity of provinces did not enter anybody’s mental picture. Just the security of people, and the countries being created for those people.
The logic of Partition was that the Muslim majority provinces would go to Pakistan. This is not in dispute.
The option of splitting Punjab and Bengal was only given later.
Pakistan was “moth eaten”.
I dont get this? Why is decision at an province level okay but not at all sub province level?
Can you explain why hindus in modern west bengal, assam and larger northeast should not have their wishes of not being part of pakitan respected but muslims at all province level should have their wishes respected?
The initial agreement was that the split would occur at the provincial level. Punjab, Sindh, KPK, and Balochistan would form West Pakistan while Bengal would form East Pakistan.
Obviously, later a decision was taken that Punjab and Bengal would be split.
The Quaid was particularly upset to lose Calcutta.
The Quaid didn’t think that a Muslim-majority Pakistan was inherently unsafe for non-Muslim minorities.
You can look at the August 11 speech given three days before independence. “You are free to go to your temples… In time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims. That has nothing to do with the business of the state”.
//The Quaid didn’t think that a Muslim-majority Pakistan was inherently unsafe for non-Muslim minorities.//
And did Direct Action Day not convinced him of these dangers?
It looks more and more likes Jinnah really did not understand what he wanted except a country where he would be a PM
British India was a continent not a country. Provinces were the most similar to countries with same language, ethnicity and similar cultural groupings. They even had their own legislative assemblies and governments.
The partition was of Punjab and Bengal, not of India.
And both were Muslim majority.
British India was not a “continent” the way Africa was..
Did the Mughals see themselves as Rulers of a Continent?
Is Australia, a continent or a country? And anyways, what I cant understand is that what is so special about a handful of elites from muslim community wanting to seperate that everyone should have gone along with that.
One of the many reasons that partition vote is unfair is that the fate of millions of people is decided by a 50% of active voters, would you as a modern citizen in Pakistan accept a decision that impacts you but takes into account only the elite and requires at most 50% of the elite to agree on something. Is this reasonable, democratic or even fair?
Plus punjab was 51% muslim majority, as was Bengal, can a small section of that 50% really be taken as representative of all people?
the voting seemed fair
For a decision as monumental as what country you are in excluding upwards of 60% of the male population and accepting simply majority as the will does not seem fair
excellent point re Oz
Nope….the “two nation” theory, once accepted, had to apply to provinces too, especially those where there was no overwhelming majority of one religious group.
and should then have applied to J&K. Jammu & Ladakh to India, Valley, Kargil and Muslim bits of Jammu to Pakistan?
One either has to be fair and invoke a common Principle or just say Might is Right
Technically, Kashmir was a princely state. Partition on a demographic basis only applied to British India.
Princely states were supposed to have become independent when the British left but were encouraged to accede to one dominion or the other.
The Valley, AJK and GB going to Pakistan while Jammu and Ladakh go to India would have been a workable plan.
This is my thread. I have full rights to manage it as I see fit.
I am very clear that anti-Pakistan commentary is not allowed.
I’m leaving this comment here for the record:
“What is wrong with you”?–
With all due respect, you used the “F word” for Pak Fauj. I think my assumption that you are anti-Pakistan is correct.
You are new to BP so you are not aware of all the drama that has gone down in the past. It’s a long story and I don’t want to get into it here but there are good reasons why I have banned two Indian commentators from commenting on my threads. I have made it very clear that anti-Pakistan commentary is not allowed on my threads. You can express those views elsewhere on BP.
Please note that I have not blanket banned Indian commentators. Those who comment in a civilized manner without anti-Pakistan commentary will not have any problems with me.
Also, if you are genuinely interested in BP’s policies, please look at the Precedent posts. You can see what is acceptable discourse and what is not.
This whole notion of partition itself was a mistake.
And this whole notion of tit fot tat violence is tiresome and horrid. So because the dogras caused a lot of muslims to leave Jammu and Kashmir, the muslims of punjab should do the same to hindus in west punjab and because the majoroty of hindus in modern west bengal,assam and large north east did not want to be part of Pakistan, their right to self determination ahould be ignored in favor of muslim right to self determination?
Why is it right for muslim majority areas to on an subcontinental level to get their own country but hindu majoroty areas on regional levels cant decide where they want to go?
Either this whole notion of seperation is wrong or we should allow seperation at more atomized levels.
Interesting did the Dogras trigger the violence in the Punjab?
According to one of S. Qureshis comments yes, they did.
I have to look into it separately but even if they were the first, this tit for tat retaliation is just ridiculous and tribalistic.
It’s not true – Direct Action Day was the initial precursor
The Jammu massacres resulted in a lot of Muslims fleeing into what is now AJK.
The burden on the violence was squarely on the mismanagement of the British, they refused to stopped the Dogras from committig genocide, and then refused to stop revenge attacks on Hindus and Sikhs and refused overall to intervene in Punjab riots.
However Indians blame Jinnah for causing it by demanding Pakistan.
Remember than Jinnah had agreed to a federation but socialist Nehru wanted a Lenin style centrally planned state.
Absolutely.
The Quaid agreed to the Cabinet Mission Plan. It was Pandit Nehru who said it could be renegotiated in ten years.
The CMP would have avoided Partition.
But it’s much easier for Indian nationalists to simply demonize the Quaid.
//The Quaid agreed to the Cabinet Mission Plan. It was Pandit Nehru who said it could be renegotiated in ten years.//
So what exactly is so scary about this negotiation that it would weaken what is a strong and prosperous muslim community? Is there any indication that the initial terms could not be extended for another ten years or Muslims in then united India could not create an electoral, economic and political base to protect themselves?
QeA was substantively older; he wasn’t around in 10 yrs.
The point still stands other than him not getting to be PM of a country what exactly is so scary about a renegotiation that may very well have perpetuated the status quo.
Kabir – r u deleting Calvin’s comments?
No.
I deleted some by NDG.
Calvin is writing with an appropriate tone.
The point was that QeA did not trust Pandit Nehru.
If you and I agree on a deal and then you say “This deal can be re-negotiated in ten years”, I wouldn’t trust you either.
So Jinnah is the leading force behind Partition and it is his speeches in Calcutta on Direct Action Day that led to violence, which as X.T.M said cascaded elsewhere. Did none of the killings of muslims matter to Jinnah that we need to step back and think this through properly?
Nehru, and Patel only acceeded because the ML showed no remorse that its demand for Partition caused. Made worse by the fact that Pakistan eventually closed its border to Indian muslims in the 1950s.
“Pakistan eventually closed its border to Indian Muslims in the 1950s”
We created a nationality law. There is nothing wrong with that. Partition was not open ended. Those who did not migrate to Pakistan in a timely manner are not Pakistanis.
I have relatives in Agra who sent their daughters to Pakistan to be married (within the extended family). This happened perhaps twenty years ago. Those women are now Pakistani by virtue of marriage to a Pakistani citizen.
> Partitioning of Punjab caused violence in Punjab, not partition of British India.
This is an important point and should be unpacked further, maybe in another post. Not only does the deep enmity radiate from the trauma of this very Punjab-specific event, but I would go so far as to say that the Kashmir fixation started in that province as well. The Kashmiri diaspora in north Punjab and Lahore was huge and influential pre-partition, and some were ethnically cleansed out of east Punjab like other Punjabi muslims. Likewise, Punjabi Sikh/Hindus are ( besides being ethnically proximate to dogras) also are responsible for the amalgamation of greater kashmir as a political unit and we can only assume, it remained in their imagination during the partition. The other axis of India-Pakistan adversity is the intellectual/ideological rooted in dual elite paradigms of the gangetic plains. The latter TNT framework may fuel a lot of justifications residually, but it is it as potent as the tribal/ territory contest that’s essentially intra-Punjab?
+1
The TNT is overrated, mostly by RW indians because in their minds a sgnificant Muslim miniorty (and OBCs) in India are preventing them from Hindu Swaraj.
In Pakistan, military accounts online use it to advance the cause of Kashmir and while it is also taught in high school as the basis of creation of Pakistan, its relavance is limited in Pakistan and people don’t pay too much attention to it.
The prior antagonism between the two countries was mostly Punjabi & Bengali centric and it showed in periods of love hate relationship over the decades. However now its not Punjab centric anymore, Modi govervnemnt in India seemed to have weaponized anti Pakistan sentiment to win elections and now it appears that other Indian ethnic groups are more antagonistic towards Pakistan than Punjabi or Kashmiri Hindus. I don’t think there will be much love anymore, just hate or a cold peace.. because Indian Punjabis are not calling the shots now.
Violence in both Bengal and Punjab started well-before it was known or agreed-on that those provinces would be partitioned. You really think, after the massacres in Noakhali, and then later in West Punjab, the Hindus of Bengal and the Hindus and Sikhs of Punjab would have submitted themselves to the tender mercies of their Muslim neighbors?
When Hindus could be murdered in these provinces while they were part of a (British-ruled) Hindu majority India, you really think they would somehow escape an even worse fate in a Muslim-majority Pakistan?
So no, an undivided Punjab going to Pakistan would not have resulted in no murder. Things would have unfolded pretty much as they did, and we would now have an LoC where the Punjab-Pakistan border lies.
Why do Indians forget that Hindus killed as many Muslims as vice versa in those riots. Bihar riots against Muslims were particularly brutal.. and yet Muslims in Bihar continued there, right? So where does this impression come from that pits Hindus as victims and Muslims as subjugators for wanting government in areas they were a majority in?
Punjab bled because Sikhs did not get a country of their own and they were soldiers returning from WW2 and were more inclined to fight and cause trouble. Punjab violence therefore was primarily a fight between Sikhs and Muslims with Hindus caught siding with Sikhs (due to them not wanting Pakistan)
//Why do Indians forget that Hindus killed as many Muslims as vice versa in those riots. Bihar riots against Muslims were particularly brutal.. and yet Muslims in Bihar continued there, right? So where does this impression come from that pits Hindus as victims and Muslims as subjugators for wanting government in areas they were a majority in?//
India despite its failures tried to integrate all its minorities in all levers of power, the muslims in bihar stayed and grew, primarily because the state never tried to make them go away neither did society at large.
Can the same be said about non muslim minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh?
Jinnah was a great leader who inspired tens of millionsof people within a short time, he is very much comparable to the likes of Ataturk. He made an argument for Pakistan and created it — almost singlehandedly- from the dying embers of the British colonial empire.
His only shortcoming was that he died soon after victory.
Agreed. The Quaid can be compared to Ataturk.
Ataturk won military campaigns agains the Greeks against all the odds.
He essentially beat the Allies in WW1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence
QeA sided with Colonial Powers whenever given the chance (he piggybacked on the Independence Movement).
and like a lot of western Turks he had Greek and/or Illyrian (Albanian) ancestry but was never guilt-ed for fighting his ancestral kin or crafting a new identity and national project.
I think Ataturk’s ancestry is still up for grabs (based on my reading), though it’s probably likely that he had Balkan ancestry on his mother’s side. So it wasn’t obvious at all that Ataturk was fighting his ancestral co-ethnics as he would have denied the charge of not being fully Anatolian. Also, I don’t think the Greeks or other Balkan groups ever tried to claim him as one of theirs.
Jinnah on the other hand, looked 100% Indian, and never denied his Gujarati heritage. Gandhi interacted with him at times as a fellow Gujarati. So the situations aren’t exactly similar.
Its a credit to Jinnah that he won Pakistan without any military campaign, or without even going to jail. Its incredible.
I don’t think they’re that similar. Keep in mind that Ataturk was a war hero, a military strongman on horseback archetype similar to George Washington and Simon Bolivar – ironically all three fought for their new nations freedom from their ethnic/ancestral kin (the Greeks, British and Spaniards).
Jinnah was a suave political maverick, a charismatic lawyer, speaker and interlocutor. He was a tactical genius, I think Lee Kuan Yew shares a lot of similarities with him but I think Charles Stewart Parnell is the closest comparable historical figure to Jinnah – both were very strong advocates for the independence of their respective countries.
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