Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Partition myths must be broken to achieve peace
Sixty three years down the line, the two partitioned countries of the Indian sub-continent, India and Pakistan continue to harbor myths and keep feeding them to their people --- myths that cannot be substantiated by hard facts of history.
While Pakistan holds that partition was the solely created by their founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s astute leadership, people of Pakistan are not informed that the major credit/debit for carving out a part of British India --- though under the false and fraudulent pretext that it was to create a Islamic Homeland for the discriminated Muslims of India --- was in fact, the long term need of the western powers, Great Britain and the USA, to hold on to some perch on the sub-continent, as a military outpost, to safeguard their future interests in the region. Though Germany was defeated by Allied forces and Communist Russia and Europe was run over by the two sides, the rivalry between them in holding on to more and more conquered territory bode ill for the future cooperation between them. Soviet Union’s successes in war zone had alarmed Churchill and he rightly feared that a strong Russia will move south and may tread on Western area of colonial regimes. Besides, a ravaged and exhausted West had to rebuild and they were aware that Persian Gulf’s oil resources were the key to their rebuilding success. The ‘wells of power’ therefore had to be defended and even though they tried their best with the leaders of Indian National Congress, Nehru and Patel, to keep links with the Wealth, both fresh with heady intoxication of coming freedom, thought it best to get rid of the colonists one for all. They were prepared to burn their boats with their erstwhile colonizer and its allies in the West. That forced Churchill to exhort Lord Wavell, the then Viceroy of India, to ‘keep some part of India for us’. They both planned and moved fast and picked up Jinnah’s Muslim League as the pretext to truncate India and rebuilt a military outpost that would serve their interest in days to come. Mahatma Gandhi was fully aware of their ruse and had offered Prime Ministership of Free India to Jinnah in an apparent bid to avoid partitioning the country where the communal divide was getting more and more violent and bloody.
Nehru and Patel were more concerned with governing the country that was coming to them and thought the twin irritants of Colonial Britain and Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan had to be cut off once for all to secure a more manageable India with a majority of Hindus securely ensconced with unshared powers, to usher in the New Free India. (Little did they imagined that they cannot change the geography and would have to fight 3 wars with their neighbor, who they have thought to become so weak in days to come, that they could easily swallow back into their country ---- either by force of arms or by force of diplomacy. )
Pakistan as a new nation created outwardly as an Islamic haven for the Muslims of India was in fact had to fall back on the same West that had an old colonial agenda while facilitating the creation of Pakistan. The first check to pay for Pakistan’s civil service payroll and other budgetary allocations came from the USA. An especial emissary was sent to the US to collect the check, as soon as Mohammad Ali Jinnah was sworn in on August 14, 1947. That was only the first of many and many disbursements that Pakistan will receive in 63 years of its independence. The donors and funders, mostly the US, however, extracted their pound of flesh and heavily invested only in Pak Army as a bulwark for their own strategic agenda. That ‘farsightedness’ of their strategic planning in partitioning of Indian subcontinent did become relevant, when Pakistan was enlisted to wage an unconventional war against the occupying Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
[ Now Obama has come to court India, with its vast resources, both to exploit it in economic terms, but mostly to enlist India’s services to bolster Western strategic interests and involvement in the region, in the wake of another rising power, China, that US is treating as a potential adversary in days to come.]
For 63 years, Indian democracy has been immorally based on the hatred of an artificially created ‘The other’. The insidious propaganda to demonize Muslims and treat them as new out castes, in fact has sapped the energies of a great nation. That artificially generated hatred has not only poisoned the psyche of a major section of Indian people, but isolated India from its immediate neighbors in ways that is not conducive to a healthy living on this planet.
The myth of Muslims dividing the nation has been used to perpetrate a diseased vision of exclusive India. The limits of that diseased vision are fast approaching and are fraught with dire consequences.
Think of a United India, with Indian National Congress having farsighted vision to treat all its native people as assets and ready to accommodate the aspirations of the Muslims when it was apparent that both British and US are siding with Muslim League, just to get a toe-hold on the subcontinent. Their flawed decision to build a closed nation, robbed India of the headway that could have rivaled Chinese resurgence much early in the day.
Pakistan and Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of the partition. It must be viewed as unnatural developments, arising out of the narrow vision of the Indian leaders. At least some of the leading minds in the present ruling coterie are aware of the pitfalls and potentialities of the alternatives available to both India and Pakistan. They must gather up courage, rise above narrow religious, historical and ideological hang-ups and view the India of tomorrow with its multicultural society blooming in a heady march to a peaceful and prosperous future and make bold moves to settle differences with a new set of ideas to embellish the Idea of India, in more inclusive and expanding terms.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
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