British Mischief in Partition
By Jalal Ahmed

AFTER ruling over India for more than 150 years using the ‘divide and rule’ policy by pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslims, the British rulers partitioned the subcontinent into Hindustan and Pakistan and explicitly Pakistanis and the Kashmiris in the process.

Just as the Arabs were stabbed in the back because of being Muslims, the British rulers hurt the Muslims of India too. The British rulers and Nehru, were blinded so much by their keenness to hurt the Pakistanis and the Kashmiris, that they failed to foresee that Kashmir would become a disputed territory and cause the defence budgets to bloat at the expense of the economic uplift of India’s common masses, now around 700 million comprising the poor and the far from rich.

The Partition Plan was announced by Viceroy Louis Mountbatten on June 3 1947. Instead of using his position as Viceroy to act equitably between both Hindustan and Pakistan, he conspired with Jawaharlal Nehru. As Nehru was going to head the Indian administration after partition, it made no difference to him whether the Viceroy transferred power to both India and Pakistan forthwith or later on. As for Pakistan it had to start literally from the scratch.

The Muslim League needed ample time of about a couple of years for the transfer of power. To create as many difficulties as possible for Pakistan, Nehru pressurised Mountbatten to advance the date of tramsfer of power. He also planned to withhold Rs 550 million which was Pakistan’s share out of British India’s liquid assets.

Thereby, he hoped Pakistan would collapse and be forced to fall back into the lap of India. The British PM, Clement Attlee had initially decided upon the date of June 15, 1948 for the transfer of power but Mountbatten prevailed upon him to advance the date by ten months.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer with no knowledge about India was appointed to be the Chairman of the Boundary Commission. The representatives of the two countries on the Commission found it difficult to agree on any point.

Radcliffe had to decide singly more or less at every point. Of the many adverse decisions he made against Pakistan and Kashmir, not initially but eventually, the gravest pertained to the Muslim majority areas of Gurdaspur District. Well before August 15, he assigned them to Pakistan correctly applying the principle of the Partition. This was somehow leaked to Nehru and Mounbatten. The Muslim-majority State of Jammu and Kashmir ruled by a Hindu, had no land access to India whatsoever, while it has a considerably long boundary in common with Pakistan.

Nehru, who happened to admit to General Franck Messervy four months after the Partition that Kashmir was written on his heart like Calais was written on Queen Mary’s heart, which is why he had to go after Kashmir, pressurised Mountbatten to provide land access between India and Kashmir.

This makes it abundantly clear that Nehru had planned well before the date of the Partition, August 14, 1947, to occupy Kashmir at the earliest opportunity. Mountbatten responded by forcing Radcliffe to withhold the Boundary Commission reprt till a few days after the transfer of power. Meanwhile he manipulated the transfer of the Muslim-majority part of Gurdaspur District to India to confront Pakistan with a fait accompli a few days after August 15.

Inspite of being fully aware that the Kashmiris wanted to join Pakistan, Nehru used the pretext of tribal Pathans’ so-called intrusion into J&K, to despatch the Indian Army into J&K on Oct 26,1947. It occupied two-thirds J&K. The remaining one-third is on the Pakistani side of the LoC. Lacking in statesmanship, he failed to foresee that his action would lead to a no-war, no-peace situation with Pakistan which in turn would deny economic uplift to the common masses because funds would be diverted to the unproductive defence budgets.

A couple of days after the occupation of a part of J&K, Nehru promised the Kashmiris in a public meeting in Srinagar that they would be allowed to decide about Kashmir’s accession on return of peace. In his 17-year rule he avoided his promised referendum or the plebiscite prescribed by the UNSC in Kashmir on one pretext or the other. His successors have been continuing his Kashmir policy. The British rulers created the Kashmir dispute primarily to hurt Muslim Pakistan.

In short, the Arab and Pakistani Muslims are suffering because of the policies of the British rulers’ due to their sub-conscious enmity are of the order of 300 million and the Indians that are getting hurt collaterally and inadvertantly are 700 million. The total population now suffering due to wrong policies of the British rulers is of the order of about one and a half billion compared to the British population of forty million. No wonder, therefore, that the British rulers are seen as a pain in the neck to such a huge population.●

© 2005 Jalal Ahmed