Horror Day: Was the Partition of India inevitable in 1947?

75 years of independence. Every year on 14th August it was decided to celebrate Vibhisika Diwas.

Before coming to the horrors this question: Was the partition of India inevitable in August 1947?

Before answering this, we have to go through a few more questions.

If the British army was defeated in the Battle of Palaces in 1757, what would have been the nature of India?

Was the birth of a stable, united, republican India possible from the womb of the first war of independence in 1857?

The indigenous forces who stood against Britain in 1757 had no idea of ​​an Indian nation-state.

Read the declaration issued in the name of Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857 and you will get the answer.

It is also noteworthy that during 1857 Hindu-Muslim riots were taking place in western Uttar Pradesh and those powerful princely states were engaged in suppressing the freedom struggle, which should have taken up arms against the British.

Horror Day: Was the Partition of India inevitable in 1947?

With the decline of the Mughal Empire and the spread of the British across India, the two currents run parallel.

A large section of Hindus was looking for freedom from Muslim rule, while a section of Muslims was not mentally prepared to give up the privileges of hundreds of years and stand in the line of common people.

The third stream of national integration was relatively weak. One must read the novel Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay to understand the Hindu psyche.

The Muslim society could never accept Anandmath’s famous song ‘Vande Mataram’. Muslims saw the blueprint of a Hindu nation at Anandamath.

But in the same Bengal, Congress leader Rezaul Karim, a prolific intellectual and writer, wrote a book praising Anandamath – Muslims indebted to Bankim Chandra.

There was a lot of controversy over Anandmath, but during the same period, the 1857 book Dashab-e-Bagwat-e-Hind by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan escaped the national focus.

Horror Day: Was the Partition of India inevitable in 1947?

Sir Syed took a jibe at the British for creating unity between Hindus and Muslims, writing, ‘Our government has given jobs in the army to two dissimilar communities, Hindus and Muslims.

They started living mixed in every platoon, every division. Unity and brotherhood started developing among them.

There was no distinction between Hindu and Muslim among the soldiers. They became supportive and supportive of each other.

Pakistani-origin historian Ishtiaq Ahmed writes that after this the British closed the collective kitchen.

The food of Hindus and Muslims began to be different. Sir Syed continued to instigate the Muslims to stay away from the Congress and support the British.

In this way, he contributed a lot in weakening the stream of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Horror Day: Was the Partition of India inevitable in 1947?

In the face of the deadly blows of separatism, the great united front of Mahatma Gandhi, of the ‘Khilafat Movement’ against the colonial authority, collapsed.

Between 1920-24, there were fierce riots in many parts of the country. The logical culmination of these riots was first seen by ‘Shere Punjab’ Lala Lajpat Rai.

An ardent supporter of Hindu-Muslim unity and Akhand Bharat, Lala Ji expressed national anguish and despair in his 1924 article published in the English daily Tribune in Lahore, ‘The idea of ​​a united India demands that the issues on which different religions are Let there be unity, the emphasis should be on them, not on the divisive differences.

It is an essential demand of Akhand Bharat that religion and religious practices should be rationalized as much as possible.

In which Hindus and Sikhs are in majority. Muslims got four provinces: Frontier Subah, West Punjab, Sindh and East Bengal. But it should be clearly understood that this will not be Akhand Bharat.

Horror Day: Was the Partition of India inevitable in 1947?

Given the geopolitical importance of potentially independent Muslim provinces, the British government was working to spread the gangrene of separatism.

Allama Iqbal wrote thirteen letters to Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the four years before the Pakistan Resolution was passed in 1940.

In a letter, he wrote, “It is impossible to implement Shariat in this country without a free state/princely state of Muslims; I have been convinced for years that this is necessary for a peaceful India and for resolving the issue of livelihood of Muslims.

If it is impossible in India, then the alternative remains civil war, which is already going on in the form of Hindu-Muslim riots.

Jinnah in his concluding remarks at the Patna Conference of the Muslim League on 29 December 1938 said, ‘I am thinking of direct action, but patience is needed so that nine crores Muslims can be brought under the flag of Muslim League. ‘

Horror Day: Was the Partition of India inevitable in 1947?

The world saw the disastrous form of Jinnah’s direct action on August 16, 1946, in Kolkata. The riots that started in Kolkata spread across the country.

After this, the remaining hope of unity also ended. Due to the various plans of the British government and the stubbornness of Jinnah, the way to keep India united was closed.

The top fighters of the freedom struggle, Jawahar Lal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel could not accept any flimsy federation that outlined the fragmentation of India.

To get a glimpse of the horrors, it would be enough to look at the demographic patterns of British Punjab and present West-East Punjab.

Human tragedy within thousands of miles and unprecedented brutality on this earth cannot be explained by emotionless, dry data. The list is long, but Bhishma Sahni (Tamas), Yashpal (False Truth), Badiuzzaman (Chhako’s Return), Manto (Only Toba Tek Singh and Khol Do will suffice), Rahi Masoom Raza (Half Village) Born in Western Uttar Pradesh Intezaar Hussain (Trilogy: Basti, Naya Ghar and Ahead is the Sea), Ismat Chughtai, Faiz and Khushwant Singh, one can see the ravishing demon of obsessive religiosity, feel the tinge of displacement and finally love and harmony. . We cannot reach the pinnacle of sublime feelings by continuing to scratch our wounds.