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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes decided to make it public after Independence Day, so that the responsibility would not fall on the
British. Independence Day in Punjab and Bengal saw strange scenes. Flags of both India and
Pakistan were flown in villages between Lahore and Amritsar as people of both communities
believed that they were on the right side of the border. The morrow after freedom was to find
them aliens in their own homes, exiled by executive fiat.
Congress and Partition
Why and how did the Congress come to accept Partition? That the League should assertively
demand it and get its Shylockian pound of flesh, or that the British should concede it, being unable
to get out of the web of their own making, seems explicable. But why the Congress wedded to a
belief in one Indian nation, accepted the division of the country, remains a question difficult to
answer. Why did Nehru and Patel advocate acceptance of the 3rd June Plan and the Congress
Working Committee and AICC pass a resolution in favour of it? Most surprising of all, why did
Gandhi acquiesce? Nehru and Patel’s acceptance of Partition has been popularly interpreted as
stemming from their lust for quick and easy power, which made them betray the people. Gandhiji’s
counsels are believed to have been ignored and it is argued that he felt betrayed by his disciples
and even wished to end his life, but heroically fought communal frenzy single handedly — ‘a one
man boundary force,’ as Mountbatten called him.
It is forgotten that Nehru, Patel and Gandhiji in 1947 were only accepting what had become
inevitable because of the long-term failure of the Congress to draw in the Muslim masses into the
national movement and stem the surging waves of Muslim communalism, which, especially since
1937, had been beating with increasing fury. This failure was revealed with stark clarity by the
1946 elections in which the League won 90 per cent Muslim seats. Though the war against Jinnah
was lost by early 1946, defeat was conceded only after the final battle was mercilessly waged in
the streets of Calcutta and Rawalpindi and the village lanes of Noakhali and Bihar. The Congress
leaders felt by June 1947 that only an immediate transfer of power could forestall the spread of
Direct Action and communal disturbances. The virtual collapse of the Interim Government also
made Pakistan appear to be an unavoidable reality. Patel argued in the AICC meeting on 14th
June, 1947 that we have to face up to the fact that Pakistan was functioning in Punjab, Bengal and
in the Interim Government. Nehru was dismayed at the turning of the Interim Government into
an arena of struggle. Ministers wrangled, met separately to reach decisions and Liaquat Ali Khan
as Finance Member hamstrung the functioning of the other ministries. In the face of the Interim
Government’s powerlessness to check Governors from abetting the League and the Bengal provincial
Ministry’s inaction and even complicity in riots, Nehru wondered whether there was any point in
continuing in the Interim Government while people were being butchered. Immediate transfer of
power would at least mean the setting up of a government which could exercise the control it was
now expected to wield, but was powerless to exercise.
There was an additional consideration in accepting immediate transfer of power to two dominions.
The prospect of balkanisation was ruled out as the provinces and princes were not given the
option to be independent — the latter were, in fact, much to their chagrin, cajoled and coerced into
joining one or the other dominion. This was no mean achievement. Princely states standing out
would have meant a graver blow to Indian unity than Pakistan was.
The acceptance of Partition in 1947 was, thus, only the final act of a process of step by step
concession to the League’s intransigent champioining of a sovereign Muslim state. Autonomy of
Muslim majority provinces was accepted in 1942 at the time of the Cripps Mission. Gandhiji went
a step further and accepted the right of self-determination of Muslim majority provinces in his
talks with Jinnah in 1944. In June 1946, Congress conceded the possibility of Muslim majority
provinces (which formed Group B and C of the Cabinet Mission Plan) setting up a separate
Constituent Assembly, but opposed compulsory grouping and upheld the right of NWFP and
Assam not to join their groups if they so wished. But by the end of the year, Nehru said he would
accept the ruling of the Federal Court on whether grouping was compulsory or optional. The
Congress accepted without demur the clarification by the British Cabinet in December, 1946 that
grouping was compulsory. Congress officially referred to Partition in early March 1947 when a

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