The Division of India
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How did India reach this catastrophic conclusion? Was it the result of failure of leadership on both sides? Though it is now an academic pursuit and a matter of history, the importance of knowing all sides of this upheaval is still relevant and extremely pertinent for the younger generation who must know where the leadership went wrong and how they failed to preserve the unity and integrity of India. The question is: Are the people of India and Pakistan ready to know the sore facts of India’s division by probing roles played by their heroes who produced the disastrous prelude to freedom?
Whether they are ready or not The Division of India takes an in-depth look at the roles played by the top leadership and intensely scrutinises their policies, motives and conduct over a very long period of negotiations. This book is not adulation or a eulogy of the leaders or praise how great they were or how magnificently they achieved freedom from the British imperialists. On the contrary, it is a critique of their policies and a probe into their motives to understand where and how they failed to keep India united.
Blaming Jinnah or the Muslim population is an easy escape from reality. The fact of thee matter is that there were others, too, more influential and powerful than Jinnah. People like Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, who wielded enormous clout over both the Hindu and Muslim masses. They could have exerted influence and used their power to take a middle-of-the- road approach in order to find a compromise. Why did they not use their clout effectively enough? What were their prejudices or motives that held them back from fulfilling their national obligation or duty to keep India a united country?
Jinnah was an ardent Indian nationalist who worked tirelessly for over thirty years to see India grow into a united, multiracial, multicultural and multi-religious country. His formula was an appreciation and protection of all minorities through a constitutional compromise, which is why he was hailed as one of India’s best ambassadors of unity. How did such a man become a separatist in the last seven years of his career? Was his slogan of separation a desperate cry to bring Hindus and Muslims closer and tie them together by the fear of India’s vivisection? How was he compelled to use a negative tactic in order to achieve his ultimate positive goal?
The Division of India is not for those who might want to idolise India’s heroes of the freedom movement or the founder of Pakistan. This book is for those who have appetite to know facts about what divided the Hindus and Muslims and learn about failures of the leaders in overcoming those differences. Were they heroes of the freedom movement or villains of the tragedy of the partition?
