The partition of the Indian subcontinent was one such event that still influences the geopolitics of the region. Be it the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir or be it NRC-NPR-CAA – the roots of such recent issues can be traced to Partition. The mainstream narrative centering Partition vilifies Jinnah and the Muslim League as primarily responsible for that unfortunate event which created the two states – India and Pakistan at the cost of millions of innocent lives. Congress, being the ruler of this country for several decades after the sham independence, propagated this one-sided view, suppressing its own role in the process. On the other hand, BJP – the electoral front of militant right-wing organizations – vociferously blames Congress for Partition and directs a hardline communal politics with an absurd promise of ‘Akhand Bharat’. The historicity of both these narratives must be challenged and the real class characters of all these forces has to be analyzed properly.
The Congress was founded in 1885, in the backdrop of continuous armed resistance against British rule throughout the subcontinent. Allan Octavius Hume – then a retired secretary of British-India and the would-be father of the Congress party – noted that “A safety valve for the escape of great and growing forces, generated by our own action, was urgently needed and no more efficacious safety-valve than our Congress movement could possibly be devised.” The subsequent history of Congress, with a few exceptions of its revolutionary factions, is the history of that “safety-valve”, with comradely negotiations with the British in the garb of ‘non-violent’ resistance. This party and its principles were influenced and funded by the interests of native landlords, usurers, and Marwari- Gujarati-Parsi big bourgeoisie, all of who envisioned Partition in religious line and dreamt of a Hindu-majority state, with a strong Centre enjoying ‘overriding powers’ over the provinces, as a remarkable market for their business. Thus, one should not be surprised by observing Birla – who significantly financed Gandhi’s ashram and other organizations, besides his political, social and moral campaigns – constantly putting pressure on Gandhi and Congress to agree to the Partition. He even suggested “we should consider Hindustan as a Hindu State with Hinduism as the State religion.” to Patel. By 1945 other compradors like Tata were also expressing their views in support of partition.
In Bengal, the Partition question took a complex shape, as there was a strong demand for United Bengal, which would neither join India, nor join Pakistan after Partition. This could have avoided numerous communal riots, and thus, could have saved millions of innocent lives. Jinnah-led Muslim League was ready to accept the demand. However, the Congress high command and the landlord-capitalist class they represent were vehemently opposed to the demand. Bengal had a glorious past of revolutionary uprising against oppression. Since the 1920s a shift towards communist principles was observed there too, with concrete demands like “abolition of zamindari without compensation”, “immediate steps for the fixing of a minimum price of raw jute” etc. The Tebhaga peasant rebellion of 1946-47 in rural Bengal, under the leadership of All India Kisan Sabha – the peasant front of the undivided Communist Party of India was creating burning examples of Hindu- Muslim peasants fighting unitedly against the unjust oppressions of landlords, with the revolutionary demand of langol jaar, foshol taar (crop belongs to the tiller). In towns, thousands of workers from mills and factories were organizing back-to-back strikes, keeping aside their religious differences. Undoubtedly, a United Bengal, with such a religious and class- based unity would be detrimental to the interests of the landlord-capitalist class. That is why we can find Birla happily congratulating Patel for the adoption of the Mountbatten Plan of Partition, telling him “things have turned out according to your desire… I am very happy that the Bengal partition question has also been settled by you.” A settlement that soon led to the death and displacement of millions!
The position of Muslim comprador bourgeois was no different. Let us look at Ispahani and similar Muslim businessmen, who were entrusted with the task of organizing the League in Bengal. Ispahani was a member of the League Working Committee, and a close associate of Jinnah as Birla was of Gandhi. In the veil of “self-advancement of Muslims” and “economic emancipation of Muslims” these Muslim capitalists envisioned their business interests in partitioned “moth-eaten” Pakistan, where they would not face competitions from their Marwari, Gujarati and Parsi counterparts. In August 1946, the League’s general secretary Liaquat Ali clearly expressed such feelings towards a member of Viceroy’s Council. He said, “so long as Marwaris and other Hindu capitalists had a money stranglehold anywhere in India, Muslims could never improve their lot.” Even the then Viceroy and Governor General of India, Lord Wavell wrote to Pethick-Lawrence – a British Labour politician, “The whole question of Central control over industry in India is bound up with the political problem… the Muslims in the Pakistan Provinces believe that their industrial development may be strangled by a Hindu centre.” Following their fund-providers’ interest, the communal leaders of League manipulated the mass with slogans of “Islam is in danger” and paved the way for Partition from their side.
Partition was not a demand of common Hindu and Muslim masses, who not only lived peacefully, but also waged war against the Raj together multiple times in the past. The Pakistan resolution of 1940 was not even Jinnah’s brainchild. Rather, the root of two-nation theory could be found in various places that precedes 1940, starting from the Hindu nationalism of the 1860s to the words of Savarkar in the 1930s, who by then had become the ‘Veer’ father of communal Hindutva’ politics. It must be noted that the success of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 influenced the anti-British struggle in India to adopt a red path, with anti-feudal peasant movements and working-class movements gaining significant momentum. This shift caused the brewing of reactionary communal politics of ‘divide and rule’. The emergence of this communal politics was supported and funded by the comprador capitalist class, in order to fulfill their imperialist masters’ dream to establish neo-colonies in partitioned Indian subcontinent, in the changed geo- political scenario post-WWII. The Thakurdas-Tata- Birla-authored Bombay Plan of 1944 – an outline of creating a close association between themselves and foreign capitalists, mainly British, in the name of economic development for ‘India’ – and its successful transformation into foreign capital influx and anti-people policies in ‘sovereign’ and ‘republic’ India, bear evidence of the above thesis. In a nutshell, partition of the Indian subcontinent was a collaborative project executed by both Hindu and Muslim comprador bourgeoisie. Their successors are still reaping the benefits of it by exploiting the working class in their respective
countries using similar means.
