Why Pakistan

Why Pakistan

Muslims ruled India for some eight hundred years. Initially they came as raiders. There were rich pickings in the fabled land. The country was divided into large and small kingdoms at odds with each other. Some fought fiercely, others acquiesced after a token resistance. Among the invaders, a few came with religious zeal, with a mission to spread the word of God, and resorted to violence only if the natives hurt the proselytizers. Others used the banner of faith as a subterfuge for aggression. But most came for conquest, and spread of the faith was an added bonus.
Before setting their eyes on establishing an Imperium, Muslims had come as traders. Their relics exist to the day in West India in a predominantly Muslim enclave of Moplahs. Arabs famously traded with Sind. The local pirates had looted and killed some of them. The Rajah, foolishly as it turned out, haughtily refused to punish the miscreants and insulted the envoys of the Governor of Basra. He sent his teen-age nephew Muhammad Bin Qasim on a punitive Expedition. Rest is history.
The British elevated this technique of conquest to an art form. They also used the missionaries as stalking horses.
Only Sufis brought a message of love, tolerance and accommodation. They came with a few disciples, some times alone, on foot. No armed retainers escorted them. They attracted a following with their exalted mien, piety and sublime teachings. People flocked to them every place they visited, and begged them to stay. A local ruler would at times get perturbed at the influence they wielded. He would prohibit them from his land. The Sufi would comply with grace. Adherents would follow. The ruler would have to give in. The Sufi would not insist on conversion to his Faith. The teaching was that one could be good with any belief; God belonged to all, all belonged to God. This created an anomalous situation at times. Till late nineteenth century, a large section of the population in the environs of Delhi and in the Punjab did not know if they were Hindus or Muslims. When the British led census takers insisted on a definition, most in honor of their Pirs opted to be classed as Muslims.
A glance at the demographic map of India tells the story of the influence of Sufis. Muslims came to constitute the majority of the population in the North West and the North East of the country, with a solid Hindu belt in between. Muslim conquest started in the North West and proceeded to North-Central India. South came next and North East was the last to fall under their dominion. If conversion were at the point of the sword, as some chauvinistic Indians would have it, few Hindus would survive in Central/North India, which was impacted the most by Muslim rule. People of Bengal and Assam converted under the influence of a Saint, Bayazid Bustami (RA), as others responded to their own Pirs.
The concept of nationalism had not developed yet. Regions with inhospitable climes, harsh winters and desolate deserts geographically surrounded India with its fertile soil, plenty of water, generally temperate climate and peaceable populace. She had been the destination of resource-starved neighbors from times unknown. Aryans, Huns, Iranians, Central Asians and Mongols all came and stayed.
An invader was taken at his face value. If he was successful in establishing his dominion, he was obeyed like any other ruler, regardless of color, race or creed. People had only one measure. They gave their allegiance willingly if the ruler was just, served in
his army paid him tribute and even put him on a pedestal after a while. They suffered cruel rulers till they could encourage an outsider to get rid if him.
Most of the invaders settled in the land. They consorted with their own kind for a while. Gradually exclusivity was lost. The new arrivals gave some of their mores and norms to the natives and accepted others from the natives. They inter married. No one thought of going back to his or her native land. There was little to return to.
Not all the conquerors were that benign. Generally the larger their number, the more cruel they were. The Aryan hordes drove the natives to the south, made them do all the menial and scavenging work and called them untouchable for their trouble.
Before the advent of Muslims in India, religion had been esoteric, with all kinds of divinities. Natural phenomena were worshipped. New deities were readily adopted in the pantheon. There was a rather vague concept of a central divinity, governing all the lesser ones, in a hierarchy patterned after what obtained in the world. Idols of different stature, representing the gods abounded. One had own personal idols in a niche at home. The teachings of Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jain faith) were given the local shroud. They exist in their near pristine form only in the Far East, China and Japan.
Islam was the first divinely inspired faith to affect Indians in a major way. Jews and Christians had preceded them by centuries, but were insignificant in number and influence. The religion was egalitarian with concepts, at least on paper, of equality before God, amity and brotherhood among the faithful. This attracted some "lower class" Hindus. It was apparently not an overwhelming influence. Eighty five percent of Hindus still belong to lower classes. The upper fifteen percent Brahmins and Rajput warrior class have historically repressed them. The stigma remained attached to them even after they converted to Islam. The Brahmin Hindus of Bengal had demanded of the British that Muslims not be given the weightage of their numbers in provincial assembly seats, as they were the progeny of lower class Hindus. The view reverberated in historical memory. West Pakistanis never agreed to accede to the demand of East Pakistanis for seats in the constituent assembly proportionate to their population.
Gandhi Ji was the first person to foresee the profound effect it would have on body politic of India if lower class Hindus were not assimilated, at least in political terms, in mainstream Hindu flock. He went on hunger strike to have his demand accepted, and literally overwhelmed the lower cast Hindu leaders to submit to him. He started calling them Hari Jans (progeny of god). For all his crusades, discrimination persists, though successive Indian Governments under electoral constraints have had to concede affirmative action in their favor.
At a personal level, denigration persists. I once visited my Brahmin friends in long Island NY. They were entertaining a visitor. I noted a stricken look on their face. After the visitor had left I asked them what the problem was. My friends’ wife whom I called Bhoji (Bhabi in Urdu) nearly stated crying. The visitor had been an untouchable-in A BRAHMIN house. This would never happen in India. I tried to console her. I was a Muslim; they always welcomed me with open arms. But my Bhoji expostulated; you are Syed. We would never contemplate inviting a lower class Muslim in our home in India. And these were liberal people. They had once tolerated meat in their house when my daughter, seven at the time had artlessly protested that there was no meat dish on the table.
Untouchables have started coming into their own politically, only lately. To date India had one President from their ranks. There have been a few Chief Ministers in UP and Bihar.
To get back to Muslims in India, the religion was also largely nativised. It even adopted a caste system Syed, Shaikh, Moghal, and Pathan, though not as rigidly enforced that two casts could not dine together, yet they would not intermarry. Even as late as the sixties an engagement was broken by a Pathan family when they learnt that the prospective bride was a Syed. The mother of the would be groom said that it would be a sin if she uttered a cross word to her daughter in law. It was, of course, her right to discipline her son's wife. She would rather break her son's heart than forego this privilege!
Muslim rulers were by and large tolerant to the native faith. They were wont to use their faith for statecraft, and to garner support. Aurangzeb marshaled his forces against his father on the ground that the crown prince was not a good practicing Muslim. After overwhelming the royal army, he proceeded to perform un-Islamic acts of imprisoning his father, killing two brothers and banishing the third.
He imposed Jazya (poll tax in lieu of military service) on Hindus, but kept Hindu generals in his army. He spent most of his life fighting with fellow Muslims Nawabs of Deccan. Contrary to common belief Shiva Ji, who looms so large in current revisionist Hindu folklore, was small fry at the time. I might as well debunk a myth, given wide currency by fanatic Hindus, that Shiva Ji was a champion of the Hindu faith. He had Muslim Generals in his army and Muslim ministers in his administration. Later too, when Ahmad Shah Abdali took on the Marhatta forces out side Delhi, a Muslim General in the Marhatta army would have out flanked the Abdali troops, had he not been prevented from doing so by a jealous superior. That would have led to a rout of the Afghans. Indian history might have taken a different turn.
The Moghal rule was emasculated by the incessant warfare conducted by Aurangzeb. He, conscious of the treatment he had meted out to his father, did not give military training to his sons. The edifice started crumbling soon after his death. The Moghals had been enervated by long years of luxurious living. They took to leading their army sitting not on horseback, but lounging in a palanquin. Aurangzeb was the last functional General they were to have.
Further blows of Marhatta incursions, Nadir Shah's raid and subsequent massacre on Delhi residents left but a hollow facade of the once mighty empire.
Foreign vultures had long been hovering over the horizon. They now descended, fought among themselves, one overwhelmed others, and the victorious British grabbed the richest pickings in history.
The new rulers, not sure of their ground, initially made a good faith attempt to nativize themselves. They wore the local garments, took native wives and mistresses, and became regular visitors to the houses of dancing girls. They were not Brothels, though discreet liaisons did exist, but the regular business was floorshows of song and dance, with patrons offering jewellery off their own bodies to the favorites. Money was showered too, but for art not flesh. Respectable citizens sent their children to these houses to learn culture and diction. The British even wrote poetry in Urdu and boast of some notable Poets in their ranks. (Suggested reading- the Book White Moghals).
But times were a changing. With the advent of steamships, the journey from Britain to India had been cut down to several weeks from many months. If transport had not so developed the British would not have been so successful any way. The British in India were enabled to visit their native lands fairly frequently. The lure of language, race and culture was irresistible. Then British girls, allured by tales of riches beyond dreams of avarice, descended in veritable hordes and put a stop to their men’s' carousing in short order.
After the battle of Plassey in 1757, only Hyder Ali and his son Tippu sultan offered credible opposition to the British juggernaut. By the early nineteenth century they had mopped up various princes. They had taken over principalities on one pretext on another, exiling the Nawab of Oudh Wajid Ali Shah, making a faithful ally of the Nizam of Hyderabad for stabbing Tippu Sultan in the back, subduing Marhattas and pensioning off the Marhatta Peshwa. They were able to annex the Punjab after Ranjit Singh died, and his successors succumbed to the royal pastime of infighting. They had little trouble in getting the better of the Talpurs of Sind.
They were monarchs of all they surveyed. But it is a curious historical fact that they were still acting in the name of the Moghal King in Delhi, whose writ was accepted only in the few acres of the red fort. But the prestige of the crown was such that the British Governor General had to pay humble homage to the Emperor once a year bearing gifts and message from the British king. He was kept standing during the audience, and had to walk backwards when dismissed. One Governor General sought permission to sit in front of the Royal personage and exemption from having to walk backwards. Bahadur Shah, destined to be the last of the Moghals, haughtily dismissed the request.
Persons better and more exalted than him, scions of ruling houses had to stand and walk backwards. The British supplicant was only a humble commission holder of the Indian Crown.
Unrest had been brewing. Princes had been supplanted. The British were not as sensitive to Indian mores. The Rani of Jhansi, destined to play a heroic role in 1857 war of independence, was child less. The British would not accept the child she had adopted as legal heir. Hindus, contrary to Muslim practice, had treated adoptive children as very much rightful heirs. (Why Muslims do not do it is a rather touchy topic). The Marhatta Peshwa had his own gripes. The Begum of Oudh, a redoubtable lady had her own designs. The erstwhile ruling class had come to realize that their King had not only lost his paramountcy, but they themselves had to scrape and bow to low born foreigners. Soldiers used to the paternalistic behavior of Indian officers, whom they used to call "Mai Baap", roughly benefactor, were put off by the officiousness of the British subaltern. The Muslim Mullah and the Hindu Pandit, contrary to their norm of tagging along with the current ruler, gave religious sanction to the rebellious thought.
Mindless of Indian sensitivity to animal flesh-Hindus regard the cow as sacred, and Muslims would rather starve to death than lick pig fat-the British introduced a cartridge whose cap had to be bitten off before being inserted into a rifle. The cap had fat grease lubrication. Soldiers grumbled. British officers threatened them with cruel punishment. A few soldiers were hanged, one a legendary figure subject of a recent movie, Mangal Pande.
Rebellion, brewing already, took on a life of its own. Some thought was given to organization. The then equivalent of Internet, messages wrapped for security in chapati, were taken from village to village. The titular King Bahadur Shah was unanimously accepted as the leader of the insurgency. He reluctantly accepted command, and designated a commoner as commander in chief of the forces. He took another statesman like decision. He forbade cow slaughter during the Muslim festival of sacrifice. These were about the only two rational measures of the whole campaign. The princes of blood refused to fight under a commoner. The King was physically and mentally incapable of taking the field himself.
The rebellion failed. The reasons of failure are an independent study and there is vast literature on the subject. The British and the Indians naturally differ on the reasons, but both agree on two points. Indian forces lacked coherent leadership and the Northwestern region of India gave critical support to the rulers. Why the people of the Northwest fought on the side of the foreigners is also a contentious and much debated issue. For the purposes of this paper, suffice it to say that for the non-Muslims in the region, one overlord (Muslim) was as good as another. The Muslims had been out of the main stream, and under ferocious Sikhs for several decades. The British had actually freed them from the iniquitous rule of the Khalsa.
The British exacted ferocious revenge. The King’s sons were slaughtered in cold blood after they had been promised mercy if they came out of their hideout. Muslims naturally bore the brunt of the British thirst for blood. (Real retribution waits). Thousands were hanged, bodies floating in rivers and streams for as far as the eye could see, and swinging from trees for miles and miles. Leading Hindu partisans were victimized too, but the general populace was spared. Traitors, the faithful from the British point of view, were duly rewarded. People from the Northwestern region were declared martial race. The ranks of the rebellious army, as that of the Moghal forces, had been driven from Delhi, the UP, Bihar and Bengal. The more prominent among the supporters of the rulers became nobility over night. The most talked of example is that of Tiwanas of the Punjab.
The surviving members of ruling houses, which had supported the rebellion, were reduced to penury. Many Moghal princesses had to resort to prostitution. Others took to procuring, begging, and stealing. Muslim upper and middle classes had a very rough time for the next several decades.
Having supplanted Muslims, the British naturally favored the Hindus. The latter had managed the Moghal Empire and were already accomplished administrators and accountants. They displaced Muslim landlords in Bengal and acted as deputies to the British over lords all over India. They already harbored historic hostility to their erstwhile Muslim rulers. Hindu revivalist and reformist movements de-Islamized the Hindu upper and middle classes in short order and developed a cultural synthesis of ancient Indian and current European mores. The lower Hindu and Muslim classes continued to be treated as movable assets. Greater percentage of Muslims of India had been Hindu untouchables before conversion. Whatever little emancipation from their lot they had obtained as a result of conversion, was now lost.
Hindu upper and middle class took to education, finance and industry in a big way. They dreamt of the glory that ancient India had been. They were no longer content with playing second fiddle to the British. They were as comfortable in the role as they had been under the Muslims, but they wanted to be powerful. The general feeling led to development of independence movement.
The emerging professional class of Hindus, largely London trained Barristers and a few others led the movement and gained strength in astonishingly short time. Indian National congress (INC) though launched by a British civil servant, and led initially by a Parsi gentleman was their vehicle. They were able to reverse the partition of Bengal imposed by the Viceroy Lord Curzon in 1905 for administrative reasons. Muslims of Bengal favored the divide as they were under severe economic, social and political domination of Hindus, even though they were in overall majority in the province. Hindu elite of the rest of India supported the movement to annul partition of the province.
Muslims saw the writing on the wall. Even the invincible white rulers had to give in to Hindu protests. They reacted by founding the Muslim league (ML). Salimullah, the Nawab of Dacca who had led the Muslim support of partition, presided over the birth of ML. The leadership consisted entirely of a Corp of Muslim landowners who had either sided with the British in 1857, or were the creatures of the upheaval. The Agha Khan, in the current incarnation, entirely the creature of the British, was prominent among them. He was to lead a delegation of Muslim notables to the Viceroy in, what sounds a quaint expression now, presenting humble memorials. (Please refer to the Book the Agha Khans by Mihir Bose)
The British who had taken advantage of the latent hostility between the two communities, now woke up to the fact that had empowered the Hindus nearly beyond control. Muslims had been begging them for a glance of favor. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s effort had created a sizeable group of young men educated on the British pattern. Muslims had a reputation of being more effective security agents. They started favoring Muslims and their political party and insisted on assigning reserved seats for the community.
Hindus, by and large vegetarians, except in Bengal where they ate fish and goat meat and certain areas in the south where they relished lamb, were considered physically and temperamentally unsuitable for police jobs. The Rajputs did eat meat of all kinds. But the percentage of carnivorous Hindus was very low. Muslims came to dominate these services in the Muslim minority provinces. In the UP, for instance, Muslims occupied 24% of junior jobs over all, but dominated the police services. They were only 9% in the population.
The plight of Muslims in the provinces where they were in over all majority, contrary to expectations, was in a sorry state. Here I would refer to two books both by non-Muslims. Both regard partition as a great tragedy. The authors place the blame of partition of India squarely on their own community. If, they contend, Muslims had not been treated as untouchables, they would not have heeded the call of the Muslims of minority provinces for an independent homeland. (Autobiography of an unknown Indian by Nirad Chaudhury and The Other Side Of silence by Urvashi Butalia). The situation was a consequence of deliberate policy. The colonists tried to promote the minority at the cost of majority.
Hindus as well as secular Muslims, among whom Jinnah was the most prominent, disdained communal politics. Together they were able to keep INC on a non-religious track. Politics was yet a gentlemanly pastime and confined to drawing rooms. Passion and zeal would be unseemly in the assembly houses and well disciplined public meetings where Decorous speeches were made in well-disciplined public meetings. Jinnah who had served as secretary of Dada Bhai Nauro Ji, the grand old man of INC, was instrumental in getting INC and ML to agree to a formula to safe guard minority rights in jobs and assemblies.
Indians made slow but steady progress towards home rule, and expectation was that in due course India would emerge as a dominion on the pattern of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Now Gandhi appears on the scene. He had actually supported the British war effort in WWI and had been awarded “Qaiser-e-Hind” medal for services rendered. But he had tasted success in his civil disobedience moves in South Africa. He had a much larger arena now and wanted to test his skills honed in Natal. He already had a sort of halo around his head and used it to full advantage to garner support of INC leaders. He was able to convince them that only a grass roots campaign will be strong enough to dislodge the British and that it would be impossible to take them on with sheer physical force. They had all the guns, soldiers and money to fund both. Non-violence will exert moral pressure and civil disobedience/non-cooperation will hurt the pockets of the rulers. 85% of India lived in villages. Vast majority were illiterate. They lacked political consciousness but were endowed with native shrewdness. They would only respond to the political process if appeals were couched in economic terms with a tint of religion. Vast majority were Hindus so imagery of the creed will have to be used.
Gandhi used the technique very effectively, but failed to take into account the feelings, prejudices and history of 25% of the population who were of the Muslim faith. Muslims abhorred idol worship. Expressions such as Ram Raj were anathema to them. Gandhi did realize the hazards of such an approach. He tried to explain them away by saying that Ram Raj meant Insaaf Raj-rule of justice- but Muslims, by and large did not accept it. He did manage to catch the imagination of Muslims by coming out strongly in favor of Khilafat movement. But the alliance was short lived. Turkey abolished the Khliafat and the movement collapsed. Gandhi unceremoniously ditched the Ali brothers. Alienating the majority was not practical politics. Nearly the whole Hindu populace fell under his spell.
Secular politicians, both Hindu and Muslim vehemently objected to introduction of religious imagery in politics. Gandhi was able to brush aside all opposition. Jinnah was the most vocal of the opponents. Gandhi sidelined him in 1921 INC convention. Shaukat, the elder and the more emotional of the Ali brothers actually threatened Jinnah with physical assault, if the latter were to persist in opposing Gandhi. The “pragmatic” dismissal of Ali bothers by Gandhi was the last nail in the coffin of Hindu-Muslim unity.
Jinnah left for England to a self-imposed exile. Maulana Azad was the now the only Muslim leader of national stature in India. But he was firmly in the INC camp. Minus Jinnah ML fell into disarray, dividing into provincial and sub-provincial factions. Muslims as a group were rendered rudderless. INC had the whole arena to itself. Then party made another of its major blunders. A commission presided over by Moti Lal Nehru, the future PM’s father, repudiated the 1916 INC-ML agreement on safeguards of minority rights. That buried any residual hope of Hindu-Muslim united platform.
Muslims of India went into profound depression. INC leaders at the local level started telling Muslims to get their act together, support them otherwise justifiable retribution will visit them. All the wrongs inflicted on Hindus by Muslim rulers over a thousand years will be avenged. The ones on the lunatic fringe gratuitously pointed out the advantages of “Shuddhi”, literally purification but used for re-conversion to Hindu creed. Some working class Muslims might have considered the “offer” but the catch was that the convertees would be relegated to untouchable status. They could, of course do good deeds and hope to be reborn in a higher caste! Progeny of immigrant Muslims were advised to make their way back to Iran and Arabia.
What differentiated this depression of Indian Muslims from their usual state of hopelessness was that the affluent among them also lost faith in British omnipotence.
A delegation led by the Agha Khan and Liaquat Ali Khan visited Jinnah in London and begged him to return to take over the helm of the floundering ship of Muslim India. What mental anguish must the latter have gone through; he was being asked to shed all his secular beliefs and to carry the burden of a forlorn cause. He must have been aware of the class allegiance of his would be followers. He would be dealing with the creations of the imperial power, the power that he regarded as illegitimate. When Gandhi was fawning on the British rulers, he had snubbed the wife of the Governor of Bombay, who had slyly offered a shawl to Mrs. Ruttee Jinnah on the thin excuse that she must be feeling cold. Ruttee had an audacious, for the times, bare shouldered dress. But accept the invitation he did and soon after return to India made short work of regional ML leaders. Taking revenge on Gandhi must have figured in his calculations; I do not think he could visualize a place in history yet.
Jinnah set about organizing the ML. It was a gigantic task. But the period till 1936 elections was not adequate. ML did poorly even in seats reserved for Muslims. INC, which had a penchant for committing grave mistakes, took a leaf from its past history and spurned the advances of ML leaders from the UP, the only province in which the party had done well. Pandit Nehru, whose head usually remained in the clouds till the Chinese brought it down to earth in 1961, told them that the price of a seat in the cabinet would be membership of INC and dissolution of the ML. That was too much even for the feudals to stomach.
That gave a new lease of life to ML. Small men who occupied offices of profit under INC ministers now started harassing and discriminating against Muslims. Jinnah commissioned an enquiry committee under the Raja of Alipur, which established to his and the satisfaction of the average Muslim, that these acts, if not actively abetted by INC ministers, had their covert blessings. Muslims were finally recognizing Jinnah as their last hope. No less a person than Allama Iqbal accepted him as the leader.
A popular saying has it that if you have a particular kind of friend, you do not need an enemy. I will paraphrase it. With INC as his enemy, Jinnah did not need any friends. WWII was looming. The British asked the INC for cooperation. Power drunk, the latter decided to take on the British Empire and demanded an equal status and pledge of independence after the cessation of hostilities. Though they had their backs to the wall that was too much to concede for the rulers. INC ministries resigned and the party launched its usual non-cooperation campaign. The government retaliated by putting all the INC leaders, along with hundreds of thousands of their followers, in jail. The party was suddenly rendered bereft of its entire infrastructure.
Jinnah celebrated a day of deliverance. He had the field to himself. He worked tirelessly and was finally able to develop a credible grass roots organization. The British government sent commissions, which were widely boycotted. WW II ended. Another election saw ML capturing most of the Muslim seats. An interim cabinet with the viceroy at its head and Pundit Nehru as virtual PM was set up. INC added to its lengthening litany of errors and offered the critical finance portfolio to ML. Liaquat heading the ML faction of the cabinet presented a capitalist baiting budget. It was in line with the professed INC socialist stance. But all the INC backers were moneymen. That properly put the cat among pigeons.
The British sent a high-powered cabinet mission which after consulting all the leaders presented a formula, which would retain Indian unity. Federal government would keep foreign affairs, defense, communications and currency. Regional governments would have autonomy over other portfolios. ML and INC duly signed on to the arrangement. Pandit Nehru ever the maverick, repudiated the agreement publicly. It would be unproductive to speculate if this was an impulsive statement. That he was not taken to task, however, does indicate that he spoke with full agreement of his comrades. Jinnah whose greatest strength was to wait for his opponent to make a mistake, he had a willing partner in Nehru, pounced on the declaration and announced that all the deals were off.
Jinnah now uncharacteristically took a decision to call for direct action. His instructions were clear. Protests were to be disciplined and peaceful. Muslims took to the streets in unprecedented numbers. Widespread rioting, especially murderous in Calcutta, followed. INC cried foul. They blamed Jinnah for unleashing violence. International opinion tended to agree with them. Gandhi had called people out on the streets many times causing hundreds of deaths and injuries. Scores of thousands had been rendered destitute. But the whole world acclaimed him for non-violence. He practiced, to Western eyes an esoteric political methodology. They were impressed. Jinnah had stuck to parliamentary methods, which had lost their novelty centuries ago. They would not put Jinnah on a pedestal. But the demand for partition of India could no longer be ignored.
Among congress leaders Gandhi and Azad remained steadfast. The former solemnly declared that the country would be divided over his dead body. Nehru and Patel had other ideas. They had decided that an undivided India was not worth co-existence with Jinnah. Patel was especially sanguine that Pakistan would collapse with in days, weeks or at the most in months. He made public prediction of the collapse of the country. That incompetent appendage of the British royal house, Mountbatten encouraged him. Why bother negotiating with Jinnah when he would come begging to be taken back in the union in the near future?
It is again speculative, but that was the most likely reason Gandhi gave his consent to the partition plan. Why a person who prided himself on keeping his word would suddenly turn around so abruptly and give his blessings to a vivisection, which he had pledged to fight against, with his very life? To save his sensibilities Azad was probably not made privy to the idea behind acceptance of Pakistan. But he had nowhere to go any way.
India was duly divided.