Was Pakistan a British Creation?

The furore in the BJP camp in India, triggered by L K Advani's recent remarks about Jinnah being a secular person and yet the founder of Pakistan, seems to have subsided. What is the real, historical truth? Recently unsealed British top-secret archives provide a stunningly different version of what really happened during the cataclysmic partition, in 1947, of India into three separate and distinct entities.

Prior to India's independence, it was widely believed that India was not likely to survive as an independent nation. The Muslim League dreamt of restoring Muslim political dominance in India and did not originally envisage a partition of the country into independent Muslim states. The Leaguers, in fact, felt that Partition would mean that Muslim power would get withdrawn to two distant corners of the subcontinent?considered by many an embarrassing retreat for Islam, which enjoyed 800 years of conquest. Since Muslims were nearly 40 per cent of the population of pre-partition British India and the non-Muslims were fragmented into innumerable faiths and castes, the concept of re-establishing some degree of Muslim dominance and control over the entire subcontinent seemed enticingly possible.

According to widely accepted notions, in India and Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the architect of Pakistan. Actually, it was the British who threatened to conduct a referendum in every province of the subcontinent and it was Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel who surrendered to the pressure, setting the stage for Lord Mountbatten, the British Viceroy of India, to formally propose the Partition Plan and get the Congress and Muslim League to accept it. On February 20, 1947, the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, announced that "Britain might have to consider handing over power to the existing provincial governments". This left the Congress with no choice but to accept partition.

At that time, very few persons imagined that India would not only survive but actually flourish as one of the world's strongest and longest lasting democracies and that Sardar Patel, the "Iron Man of India" would succeed in orchestrating the almost unimaginable task of so swiftly and decisively integrating over 600 former princely states into the Indian Union, at the time of Independence, in 1947.

According to Narendra Singh Sarila, the ADC to Lord Mountbatten in 1947, whose forthcoming book exposes the truth, the Partition of India was actually decided in February, 1946. This means that it was not Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the British Chairman of the two Boundary Commissions which partitioned India and created East and West Pakistan, who masterminded the plan. He arrived in India, for the first time only on July 8, 1947. By August 17, 1947, just two days after India's day of independence, Mountbatten had presented the Boundary Commission Awards to Indian leaders.

In fact, Jinnah, the "Quaid-i-Azam" could do no more than to console his countrymen?"we have been squeezed in as much as was possible and the latest blow that we have received is the Award of the Boundary Commission. It is an unjust, incomprehensible and even perverse Award. It may be wrong, unjust and perverse; and it may not be a judicial but a political Award, but we have agreed to abide by it and it is binding upon us. As honorable people we must abide by it. It may be our misfortune but we must bear up this one more blow with fortitude, courage and hope." Lord Wavell, then the Viceroy of India, had all along encouraged the concept of partition, and recommended, as far back as February 1946, a truncated Pakistan - excluding from it one-third of the Punjab, half of Bengal and almost the whole of Assam - which thereafter became the final blue-print for the Award which enforced the partition of India.

Jinnah may actually have been just a tactical instrument for the British to use against the Congress. In the Cold War that ensued later between the West and the Soviet Union, it came as no surprise to enlightened political leaders, worldwide, when Pakistan became a much-used base for the West's overt and covert confrontations with the Soviets and their allies or victims.

References:

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/before.html

http:/ /www.mail-archive.com/hsc@mit.edu/msg00005.html

http://www.pakistan.gov.pk/Quaid/leader18.htm< /p>

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mp/2003/03/03/stories/2003030301380200.htm

http://www.mail -archive.com/hsc@mit.edu/msg00005.html

http://www.hvk.org/articles/0301/126.html

http:// www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=48969

http://esamskriti.com/html/new_inside.asp?cat_ name=history&sid=54&count1=10&cid=324

url: www.ranjithira.blogspot.com

Ranjit Hira
Writer, Editor, Journalist, Photographer, Digital Artist
Based in Mumbai, India

---

Water at the Roots of Twenty First Centurys Conflicts

According to a postulate made by Ignacio Ramonet ecological resources... Read More

Reprisal of the Bill of Proposed Electronic Crime Act 2004

The clause (c) of Electronic Crime Act 2004 has been... Read More

Open Source and Post-Capitalistic Society

Capitalism as the social structure was founded in order to... Read More

Political Branding and Marketing

Political strategists, branding gurus and image consultants could learn a... Read More

Osama bin Laden Needs a Pay Raise

Osama bin Laden probably needs to get a pay raise,... Read More

California Attorneys and Politicians

California Attorneys and politicians are to blame for the energy... Read More

John Roberts ? Supreme Court Nominee

President Bush's selection of the Hon. John Roberts is an... Read More

Globalization

Often we see protests at the sites of global leader... Read More

OSHA is just more BS from the Blob of Bureaucracy

Is Ohio Manufacturing Sector really unable to compete in the... Read More

Regional Grid Power Backup; Energy Ideas

Our Hydro-electricity accounts for some 20% of our current needs.... Read More

Iranian Elections and Boiling Points

The Iranian elections are certainly interesting indeed. The ruling party... Read More

Federal Trade Commission Will Not Monitor MLM Companies

Having been to every city in the country over the... Read More

Elliot Spitzer Sued By Feds

It appears the Feds are suing Elliot Spitzer over his... Read More

Mexican Living: A Disabled Man Speaks for Terri

I am an incurably ill American male forced to leave... Read More

Dealing with Massive Prisoners of War

In the last Gulf War we saw thousands of enemy... Read More

Chinese Military Build Up - Sun Tzu and Chinese War Machine

We are currently seeing a build up in China of... Read More

Fraud From FTC Insiders, Who Can You Trust?

The FTC franchising division purports their law enforcement experience in... Read More

Upcoming Palestinian Elections Might Put Extremists In Power

The Palestinian Fatah Movement is doing whatever it can to... Read More

Does America Get It about Terrorism?

I have to be honest. It is time to come... Read More

Telemarketing and Job Losses

Telemarketing and DO NOT CALL lists sure made headlines, but... Read More

Between Hiroshima Japan 6 August and the NY 11 September!

Japan lit its candles of pure, "noble sadness" on the... Read More

Ex-CIA Folks are Problematic

Those who are above the law or act as such... Read More

Mommas, Dont Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Lobbyists

For many years now, I have been the proud holder... Read More

Slovenia - The Star Pupil

The most exciting event in Slovenia last week was when... Read More

Trade Wars, China and Over Regulation At Home

We are seeing some trade wars brewing as American trade... Read More

The Options For Regime Change In Iran

If recent speeches by US officials on Iran's plans to... Read More

Thune Republicans: Sudden Friends of the Working Person?

The Right's defense of John Thune in the Dan Nelson/MetaBank... Read More

Global Entrepreneurs, Mining and Raw Materials

There are many mines around the world, which are owned... Read More

Lyndon Johnson - The Day After Dallas

J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ used to enjoy watching Hoover's... Read More

Doorstops and Paperweights

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has... Read More

Enlightenment Experiments

Pierre Dupont de Nemours:After arranging the Armistice that ended or... Read More

Bird Flu may kill you and your family

We have heard a lot about the coming bird flu... Read More

Lawyers and Franchising

It is amazing how the Federal Trade Commission has destroyed... Read More