Why Congress Accepted Partition

● The Congress was only accepting the inevitable due to the long-term failure to draw the Muslim masses into the national movement. The partition reflects the success-failure dichotomy of the Congress-led anti-imperialist movement. The Congress had a two fold task—(i) structuring diverse classes, communities, groups and regions into a nation, and

(ii) securing independence for this nation. While the Congress

succeeded in building up sufficient national consciousness to exert pressure on the British to quit India, it failed to complete the task of welding the nation, especially in integrating the Muslims into the nation.

● Only an immediate transfer of power could forestall the spread of ‘direct action’ and communal violence. The virtual collapse of the Interim Government also made the notion of Pakistan appear unavoidable.

Views

The British were neither the foes of the Hindus nor friends of the Muslims. They set up Pakistan not as a gesture of friendship towards the Muslims, but under the compulsions of their international policies.

Wali Khan

It was not so much that Britain pursued a policy of divide and rule as that the process of devolving power by stages in a politically and socially desperate country was inherently divisive.

R.J. Moore

The truth is that we were tired men, and we were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going to prison again—and if we had stood out for a united India as we wished it, prison obviously awaited us. We saw the fires burning in the Punjab and heard every day of the killings. The plan for partition offered a way out and we took it.

Jawaharlal Nehru

I felt that if we did not accept partition, India would be split into many bits and would be completely ruined. My experience of office for one year convinced me that the way we have been proceeding would lead us to disaster. We would not have had one Pakistan but several. We would have had Pakistan cells in every office.

Sardar Patel

Congress, as well as the Muslim League, had accepted parti- tion...The real position was, however, completely different...The acceptance was only in a resolution of the AICC of the Congress and on the register of the Muslim League. The people of India had not accepted partition with free and open minds. Some had accepted it out of sheer anger and resentment and others out of a sense of despair.

Maulana Azad

● The partition plan ruled out independence for the princely states which could have been a greater danger to Indian unity as it would have meant Balkanisation of the country.

● Acceptance of partition was only a final act of the process of step-by-step concessions to the League’s championing of a separate Muslim state.

— During Cripps Mission (1942), autonomy of Muslim majority provinces was accepted.

— During Gandhi-Jinnah talks (1944), Gandhi accepted the right of self-determination of Muslim-majority provinces.

— After the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) Congress conceded the possibility of Muslim majority provinces setting up a separate constituent assembly. Later, the Congress accepted, without demur, that grouping was compulsory (December 1946).

— Official reference to Pakistan came in March 1947, when CWC resolution stated that Punjab (and by implication, Bengal) must be partitioned if the country was divided.

— With the 3rd June Plan, Congress accepted partition.

● While loudly asserting the sovereignty of the Consti- tuent Assembly, the Congress quietly accepted compulsory grouping and accepted the partition most of all because it could not stop the communal riots.

There was nevertheless much wishful thinking and lack of appreciation of the dynamics of communal feeling by the Congress, especially in Nehru who stated at various times— “Once the British left, Hindu-Muslim differences would

be patched up and a free, united India would be built up.” “Partition is only temporary.”

“Partition would be peaceful—once Pakistan was conceded, what was there to fight for?”

The communalism of the 1920s and the 1930s was different from that of the 1940s. Now it was an all-out effort

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I alone with the help of my Secretary and my typewriter won Pakistan for the Muslims.

M.A. Jinnah

for an assertive ‘Muslim nation’. Congress leadership underestimated the potential of this type of communalism.