Noonan & Freedom at Midnight

Long-time mutineer KXB points us at a wonderfully written column by Peggy Noonan with her reflections on the classic Freedom at Midnight and its lessons as we grapple with Iraq –

I have been reading “Freedom at Midnight,” the popular classic of 30 years ago that recounted the coming of democracy to India. The authors, journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, capture the end of the Raj with sweep and drama, and manage to make even the dividing of India and Pakistan–I mean the literal drawing of the lines between the two countries, by a British civil servant–riveting. But the sobering lesson of this history, the big thing you bring away, is this: They didn’t know.

Mountbatten and Nehru and Jinnah were brilliant men who’d not only experienced a great deal; they’d done a great deal, and yet they did not know that the Subcontinent–which each in his own way, and sometimes it was an odd way, loved–would explode in violence, that bloodlust would rule as soon as the Union Jack was lowered.

…The only one who knew what was coming was Gandhi, mystic, genius and eccentric, who drove the other great men crazy by insisting on living among and ministering to the poor, the nonelite. He knew their hearts. He had given his life for a free and independent India but opposed partition and feared the immediate chaos it would bring. He spent the eve of Independence mourning. Six months later he was dead.

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p>What follows is a wonderful, treatise one of the perils of leadership – distance. Noonan reminds us that elites across societies and throughout history walk a fine line between leading people to a better future vs. the folly of trying to impose a possibly unattainable ideal.

And yet, it’s an intrinsic curse of humanity that excess in the service of progress will always be a risk. The only surefire way to avoid any cost is to nihilistically abandon the quest itself.

40 thoughts on “Noonan & Freedom at Midnight

  1. What was most interesting in the essay were the suggestions that:

    • British socialists screwed up the subcontinent yet again by infecting an impressionable Nehru in Cambridge, and

    • Had Mountbatten slowed down Partition, Jinnah would have died of tuberculosis, and it might not have come to pass

    In international actions great nations should, in general, go slow, think dark, assume the worst.

    Wow, Reagan’s speechwriter is an anti-American media traitor who fails to report the progress we’re making in Iraq every day? πŸ˜‰

  2. Oh man, I’m glad you put this up.

    One of the boldest columns I’ve seen in an American newspaper from an American columnist.

    I’m impressed. If only the NYT could come up with something as insightful.

  3. “Had Mountbatten slowed down Partition, Jinnah would have died of tuberculosis, and it might not have come to pass”

    The book goes into great detail that Jinnah’s chest x-rays were hidden in a bank vault. On August 14, 1947, when he said “Pakistan Zindabad” during the radio address, it sounded to most of the people “Pakistan is in the bag” since he was so much a Brown sahib and hardly knew Urdu.

    I think at the time Partition was inevitable but the booldshed could have been avoided. In the book, you will find that everyone was taken by surprise and tells some painful stories.

    FAM is a very interesting book – some of them might feel that it is sugar-coated and is partial to Mountbatten and Gandhi, and paints Jinnah in a bad light. Maybe it does, but I think anyone interested in modern South Asian history should read it.

    I always even tell Pakistanis/ Pakistani-Americans to read it.

  4. Kush – “some of them might feel that it is sugar-coated and is partial to Mountbatten and Gandhi, and paints Jinnah in a bad light. “

    but jinnah WAS the “bad” guy. but for his reckless avarice, the horrible event would never have come to pass.

  5. Parikshit,

    If you interested in South Asian history, once you start the book, you cannot keep it down. Do read it.

    It does have some controversial issues too – you’ll find out.

  6. I started reading Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’ once. Unfortunately, I never completed it… I WILL read this one thouogh.

  7. Imperialism was over, Mountbatten was given his charge: get Britain out with grace and dignity, part as friends, preserve the special ties between London and Delhi.

    I think Gandhi had a LOT to do with the “freind” part, not the British

  8. I had some friends who read this book in back in Univ and were fawning all over it. I heard a bit about it and it was enough to turn me off – this kind of sloppy history telling that perpetuates easy and simplistic myths about the past is really tiring!

    (Those salons damaged him more than any British prison ever did.)

    Yeesh, what an incredibly elitist and clumsy statement! Socialism in India was/is far more diverse than the Fabian influence from Cambridge/LSE. And also, pleeeeze enough of the tired old Fabian influence argument – Nehru was a near contemporary of Alfred Marshall at Cambridge. Plus, during the height of the independence movement, Keynes was producing his alternative economic theory – isn’t it a much more important question to ask why Nehru didn’t seem entirely impressed with either Classical or Keynsian theory?

    He ate bacon with his eggs, liked whiskey at night, and seems never to have had a personal religious impulse he could not squelch.

    Aaah the ol’ Jinnah as Dracula/Judas/Faust theme – imagine that making its appearance here! Fortunately Ayesha Jalal and others have produced serious work on Jinnah that’s given some real insight into the man and documents the process of partition based on actual reseach and not popular opinion. Blame Jinnah? You might as well blame Canada!

    Gandhi, mystic, genius and eccentric,

    I’m sorry Peggy I didn’t catch that – did you mean that he was as mystic as bhang, clever as a mongoose, and eccentric as a star fruit achar? Ah so since the intellectuals/leaders didn’t know let’s jump to the eccentric mystic genius – after all we are talking about India!

    Ok I’m sorry for the sarcasm, but this sort of stuff really gets under my skin! So my critique of Noonan’s comparison with Iraq – before taking issue with elitist governance, I think she really needs to re-examine her own elitist perspective on history!

  9. While I agree with the idea that the elite sometimes donot have their ears to the ground, I am not sure how it applies to the subcontinent’s partition and independence. I dont think any of the principal protagonists in “Freedom at Midnight” failed because they were removed from reality. Why exactly should Mountbatten have slowed down? – How exactly would he have known that the Jinnah was dying? How would the prevention of partition in 1947 have precluded the communal frenzy? And I dont think Nehru was removed from reality when he opted for a free, democratic, partitioned India. He got what he wanted and that entity has survived and grown stronger over the past 60 years. Jinnah perhaps didnt have enough time/effective lieutenants to make a working, non-theocratic democracy for the muslims.

  10. He ate bacon with his eggs, liked whiskey at night, and seems never to have had a personal religious impulse he could not squelch.

    Aaah the ol’ Jinnah as Dracula/Judas/Faust theme – imagine that making its appearance here! Fortunately Ayesha Jalal and others have produced serious work on Jinnah that’s given some real insight into the man and documents the process of partition based on actual reseach and not popular opinion. Blame Jinnah? You might as well blame Canada!

    I dont see anything Faustian in that. If normative Muslim=good, then yes, perhaps. But I don’t think anyone has yet denied that Mr. Jinnah was not exactly orthodox.

  11. Well, the Jinnah-as-Faust myth is more about how he ostensibly sold the nation’s soul to further his own status/power. The bacon-eating/whisky habits, true though they may be, are often used as illustrative symptoms of this mythic pathology.

  12. are often used as illustrative symptoms of this mythic pathology.

    Dude you must be mad; you’re starting to sound like a humanities term-paper πŸ™‚ Okay, I see your point.

  13. The predictable fawning over Gandhi is also incredibly irritating. Desis need to get a clue about Gandhi. He employed some strategies that were effective and accomplished some things, for sure – but he was hardly the mystical god-like figure desis and non-desis believe him to be. Gandhi was a shrewd politician, particularly when he did things like fast to keep Dalits from getting separate representation (thus ensuring upper-caste domination of positions of power)… or scheme to kick a duly-elected Subhaschandra Bose out of office in 1938. He did a lot of behind-the-scenes manipulation, and he had a lot of damn problems. I’m not saying other leaders don’t, but he (and Nehru) are always raised to divine status. This idea that Nehru and Jinnah were innocently surprised when the subcontinent exploded in violence is completely ridiculous. They knew what time it was. Wouldn’t you? Let’s get some perspective please.

    As for the Noonan article… didn’t get me that excited. This was a classic line: “Mountbatten was given his charge: get Britain out with grace and dignity, part as friends, preserve the special ties between London and Delhi.” Preserve the “special ties”? Give me a break. London was raping Delhi. The British Vampire had been draining India for two centuries. You know how many millions died due to famine – directly connected to colonization – alone during the Raj? “Special ties” my ass.

  14. Badmash, Please take Ms.Jalal’s take on partition with a pinch of salt and some masala while you are at it. I would suggest reading up on the American writing of that era. Since they, then at least, had no horse to back. And were quiet objective. Philip Talbot who was a scribe or the Chicago tribune [I think] would be a good start. So would the declassified correspondence between the [pre 47] American consulate at Calcutta/Bombay and one more place? and Roosevelt’s state dept. And also very interesting – Truman’s and Marshall’s response to the partition.

    Immmidiately post independence/partition, this is how Time magazine reported from Karachi – “The people of Karachi did not welcome Pakistan with the wild enthusiasm that swept the new dominion of India. After all Palistan was the creation of one clever man, Jinnah; the difference beween a slick political trick and a mass movement was apparent in the contrast between Karachi and New Delhi”

    New York times also did a very revealing series on the build up to the partition.

  15. Expose – hmmm, well I still think Jalal’s work was a real watershed, largely because I’ve had a chance to interact with grad students from all over the world (India, Canada, US, UK) who’ve reached similar conclusions based on independent research. I think some twenty years later, the major thesis of her book “The Sole Spokesperson” still holds!

  16. Badmash,

    Deal, I’ll read “The Sole Spokeperson“, and you read the list Expose is recommending and Freedom at Midnight too. I think all of them are giving different prespective and is important to understand.

    Like Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War defines modern USA, partition still defines South Asia and needs to be understood and then healed.

  17. Partition was a horror that my parents still have terrifying memories of, even though they were mere toddlers. I agree that Gandhi was a masterful pol, something that is forgotton after all this time. Sadr would be smart to read his autobiography if he wanted to exact change in Iraq…peaceful protest is far more effective than violence, especially when dealing with crooks and gangsters like Rumsfeld and Cheney.

    As for apologists and revisionists like Noonan – they supported this war in Iraq despite the ocean of lies, and as the blood and bodies pile up, these subhumans still continue to have a voice in the public forum. Let’s pray history vindicates the truth tellers, like Scott Ritter.

    There is a child in Iraq now, the same age as my parents were in the midst of the partition, who will forever be haunted by images of the current Civil War. May peace be with them, and curses to all who caused it, including Noonan.

  18. OG Hindu Kush –

    Your choice of name “Hindu Kush” says it all. Very subtle. Congratulations.

    So, have you really killed a Hindu?

  19. Gandhi was hardly an eccentric mystic.

    A lot of his ideas stemmed from the Indian textile trade and the way the Portugese used superior military force starting in the 1600s to attempt to dismantle the ‘dark and trecherous stranglehold’ that Gujarati traders held over the textile trade by taking over ports (calicut, daman, diu).

    Eventually though companies of various were granted monopolies over Indian ports and trade and were able to slectively charge huge amounts of trariffs to traders (something the smaller competing Indian kingdoms in the western part of India hadn’t been powerful enough to do).

    By Gandhi’s time the Industrial revolution meant that the world market was being flooded by cheap British textiles produced at an exteremly low cost. The Indian textile industry was decimated. Britain replaced India as the leading manufacturer of textiles in the world, and textiles became Britain’s largest export.

    Gandhi looked at all this and essentially saw it as an economic war to be won by economic means and advocated policies to that end.

  20. Expose and Kush Tandon, you might want to listen closely to what badmash is saying if you have any desire to speak somewhat authoritatively on partition. For anyone who claims even a passing interest in partition, not having read Jalal’s book is laughable. It is THE defining book on Jinnah and the era.

    Whatever one may say about her other books, Jalal’s Sole Spokesman was ground breaking and simply earth shattering. It exploded all the myths of nationalist historiography that all of us from the subcontinent absorb so uncomplainingly. Most of us indians in India have no clue about the major events that propelled partition into becoming a reality. And off course we Indians love hacks like Stanley Wolpert who so easily lionizes Nehru and demonizes Jinnah. To come to any kind of definitive conclusion on partition Jalal says that you have to resolve teh following issues:

    • Cripps mission: when Stafford Cripps waddled to india to resolve the hindu muslim problem under the aegis of the crown, he offered Jinnah the immediate possibility of taking the muslim states that we know now to be pakistan, out of the union. Jinnah declined. Why so, if he was so intent on partitioning India?

    • When Congress and the Muslim League were in negotiation about power sharing, Jinnah proposed a tri-cameral legislature – Parliament with 3 layers instead of the two we have today in india. Famously known as the cabinet mission plan (1946). Azad, then president of Congress and Jinnah both approved the plan, and therefore the ability of Muslim states to remain within the union. The issue was resolved and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. A few weeks after the plan was approved, Azad retired as president of the Congress and Nehru took over. Nehru immediately rescinded the agreement and disallowed the 3 tier legislative solution to keeping the country together. The only other option for jinnah now, was opting for something he didn’t want – Pakistan.

    Obviously Jinnah could be faulted as being deluded in playing such a dangerous game of ‘chicken’ – raising the spectre of partition in order to get what he really wanted, which was power within the federation of states in a united India. His gamble failed. And perhaps the 3-tier assembly system was one that was destined to collapse at some point in the future because it promised to be exceptionally cumbersome. But seldom do we indians actually take into account the obsession that nehru had with ensuring that India would be Congress dominated and led by him, or of rabid Patel’s hard core anti muslim agenda (he is famously quoted as saying “we shall cut off Pakistan like a diseased limb”) for the tragedy of 1947.

    anyone interested in Jalal’s thesis should look at a very well written paper by Asim Roy, head of South Asia dept at Univ of Tasmania. Titled “High Politics of partition-The revisionist perspective” in Modern Asian Studies, May 1990. You can pull it off Jstor.org as well – and if ur having trouble getting it, I would be happy to email you a copy.

    read it and weep!

  21. NubaMountain,

    I am most willing to read Ayesha Jalal’s “The Sole Spokesperson”. Last year, India Today had dozen articles on Jinnah and some of the them were quite objective and were quite fair to him. However, once he embarked on “Direct Action Day” and the chain reaction of violence it lead to, he had taken a very divisive course.

    Congress’s and other organizations complicity in Hindu-Muslim divide and Jinnah’s earlier moderate stance is quite well known and documented and discussed amongst serious historians. Maybe, it was ground breaking for NRIs.

    However, I was researching about Ayesha Jalal last night and her thesis that Muslim League and Jinnah were true securalist (were forced to move to other’s side) is not objective at all. I still think her viewpoint should be heard and thought about.

    Since in a month or so, I intend to apply for visa to Pakistan and therefore, I do not want to leave a trail of comments on a public board that will haunt me. Once I have read the book, I will be most willing to discuss in private. I have read Freedom at Midnight and dozens of essays on modern South Asia.

    Hope you understand me on this issue.

  22. Stanley Wolpert may be a hack but so is Ayesha Jalal. After wading patiently through the Sole Spokesman, Ms. Jalal’s all-important distinction between “nation” and “state” remains murky. This I suspect was Jinnah’s confusion as well and unsurprisingly, he got a STATE! It’s sad that leaders who fought for a nation home to both Hindus and Muslims have their legacy attacked by the likes of Jalal – ‘poor Jinnah never wanted partition after all. All he wanted was a loose federation of nations within a…um…nation and those sneaky caste Hindus gave him a moth-eaten Pakistan instead…’ Well, why the @#% didn’t Jinnah refuse it then? Why state, as he famously did, the following if Pakistan wasn’t his end-goal?

    Γ‚β€œThe Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs, and literature. They neither inter-marry, nor dine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions…To yoke together two such nations under a single state…must lead to growing discontent and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.”

    Or that

    Γ‚β€œPakistan was born when the first Muslim landed in India in 712 A. D.”

    The only way one can see Jinnah in rosy light is if his words and actions from 1940-47 are expunged from historical memory. Most importantly, if his call for Direct Action on August 16, 1946 is ignored: “This day we bid good-bye to constitutional methods. We have forged a pistol and we are prepared to use it.” On cue, crazed Muslim League mobs attacked Hindu neighbourhoods in Calcutta, Hindu communal groups responded with a similar horrow show and 10,000 lives were lost in five days (5 days!) in Calcutta alone. Religious hatred spread like fire from Bengal to Punjab. And they continued to rage, all so Jinnah could get his precious “Muslim homeland.”

    P.S. Savarkar (the father of Hindu nationalism) agreed with Jinnah that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations; any “understanding” for Jinnah should come with equal understanding for the VHP or Bajrang Dal. Though I’m willing to bet my life that self-proclaimed progressives who fall over themselves to understand Jinnah, don’t quite get the irony in doing so…

  23. Nuba – That is one massive and flawed assumption – What made you think that I have not read Jalal’s book ? OTH, will reply in detail in a couple of hours to your cripps comments.

  24. I have been reading literature on partition / indian independence etc.. over the last few months.. To get a proper understanding, my method is to figure out who the author is and take their biases into account.. For example, “Freedom at Midnight” is by western authors and it mostly treats Mountbatten as some kind of a good messiah, and britishers as the “civilized” people trying to prevent “barbarians” from killing each other once they left.. I read another book “the great divide” by another English author who was some govt. official at that time.. Again it’s the same stuff. Then to get a Pakistani perspective, I am reading “Emergence of Pakistan” by Muhammad Ali (later Prime Minister of Pak).. It is hilarious.. It was written in 1960s before the breakup of Bangladesh.. Looks like Ayesha Jalal’s “sole spokesperson” would belong to that variety.. I will reserve my comments.. But I’d doubt someone if she calls Jinnah or “Muslim league” had secular ideals. :-))

    Next on my reading list is books by Indian authors.. I hope V.K.Menon’s “integration of Indian states”(??) and Abul kalam Azad’s “India wins freedom”..

    My perspective.. I think “partition” was the right step and resulted in benefits (especially to India). Comparing with Nigeria where there was no partition (between Muslims and Christians) after the colonisers left, we’d find ourselves in a better position..

  25. EXPOSE – you’re right, my apologies. Didn’t mean to suggest that you hadn’t read Jalal. But your referencing the New Yok Tiimes et al about gaining a historical understanding of the region is like reffering to a National Geographic story on Egypt to understand the complex socio political and cultural forces in the country today. This is exactly what can often be wrong with journalism. Mahmood Mamdani, african anthropoligist, often refers to the nature of journalistic reporting on Rwanda when the genocide happened to highlight this problem. Most articles then were squarely focused on the ‘animalistic savagery’ taking place – which he called the ‘pornography of violence’ rather than attempting to understand the complex results of colonial intervention that created arbitrary Hutu-Tutsi political identities. It was only years later AFTER some academic light on how this horrific event had come to be did this analysis begin to appear in the press. Ditto for reportage on the exotic east in 1947 by the new York Times.

    KUSH TANDON, what was groundbreaking about Jalal’s thesis was not the revelation that the Congress and others marginalised the Muslim League. What WAS ground breaking was her demonstration that Jinnah had many opportunities to take the Muslim states out of an Indian union, but he didn’t. Her thesis is that Jinnah was gambling by asking for something that he didn’t want (a post partition Pakistan) in order to get something that he did desire (a federated union of states within a union). He used all manner of rhetoric in order to play out this gamble. And then ultimately failed because of nehru vetoing the already approved and agreed upon Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946.

    Was Jinnah deluded into thinking that he could get more of a representation for Muslims in the 2nd legislative tier as per the CM Plan), on par with the Hindu vote despite their vastly reduced numbers. Perhaps. Was he crazy for playing with fire by ‘gambling’ on hoping that the Congress wouldn’t call his bluff and would reluctantly accept the tri cameral legislature option instead of partition? Probably. But prior to 1985, when Sole Spokesman came out, no one had systematically analysed the man and his motives. This was what was groundbreaking.

    And by the way, this was the first serious work on partition to be done outside of India and pakistan, so your NRI comment is seriously misguided. Sure, india has produced solid researchers who have done important historical work within India – Thapar, Ashis Nandy, Irfan Habib, Guha and a few others come to mind. BUT most of the ground breaking stuff that has informed Indian historiography in the last few decades has come from the American schools ala Nick Dirks, Chatterjee and others, especially on issues of caste, community and the nation. But I see your point about Jalal perhaps going overboard with the whole ‘secularism’ issue – a little strained and too convenient in places. If you are going to Pakistan soon, email me, we could perhaps chat. I’ve been there a few times.

    SMR – Obviously your attempt to try and even digest and understand Jalal’s thesis of Jinnah’s ‘gamble’ has met with tragic failure. If you did, then your question of “why state the following” would be answered. Even a shrewd Amedkar recognised that Jinnah, post the Lahore Resolution, was being purposefully ambiguous in his words and was therefore asking for more so he could get less. And by the way, Direct action was right after Nehru waded in and arbitrarily cancelled all that Azad and Jinnah had worked towards.

    Does this absolve Jinnah of partial responsibility for the carnage that ensued? Of course not. And are we thankful that we had Nehru who in my opinion was the saving grace for India post partition (well…for a decade or so at least), yes absolutely. But your examination of pre partition events is more an excited and opinionated rant which would not really pass any muster in even a basic undergrad course on South Asian history. also, if you are really trying to equate Savarkar with Jinnah – which very neatly reveals your prejudices as well as your grasp of Indian history – you should read “Khaki Shorts, Saffron Flags” by Tapan Basu, to understand the very probable dementia behind luminaries like savarkar and his fellow madmen. By comparing Jinnah to Savarkar or the VHP or the Bajrang Dal, you have missed the whole import of that very complicated and fascinating period in indian history — a period that defies any easy explanations for events between 1940 and ’47.

  26. was it really that complicated? flawed means bring about flawed ends. this is great man history you’re all on about. jinnah this, nehru that. the people doing the killing and dying are the ones that matter. the difference between the elite and everyone else is that they all get together later for drinks and dancing. they are the only ones insulated from the negotiations they make.

    whether jinnah meant this or that, whether he was bluffing or not, he was playing with fire, stoking communal feelings. the regular people are as powerful as anyone else, but since they are regular, they have to react to circumstances beyond their control, and sometimes when a mess is made for them, it’s they who have to live with it. I doubt highly jinnah or nehru was any more intelligent than my grandfather. My grandfather and the people he lived with had to sit back and watch madness become stoked and boiled on the stove and then they had to see what they could do in the flames. that’s the horror of Partition to me. Not that Jinnah or Nehru was misunderstood, or anyone else for that matter.

    Great men are great because they organize the emotions, passions, desires, and rational plans of others. They can do this for good or ill, with good or ill means. Blatantly playing to communalism in the atmosphere of the time was to organize the worst impluses of the time, not the best. To say that Hindus and Muslims were so distinct as to never inter-marry….that seems a statement a British ivory tower commentator would say. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs mingled all the time……there is no closer mingling than getting it on, and all three do that to this day if given a chance. So that statement right there implies to me someone who is just playing with people’s fear and prejudices to organize one segment of society to a given purpose. Its the whole vote bank idea. Look at what Udham Singh called himself…Ram Mohamed Singh Azad. He went to the UK and was in massive solidarity with the regular british people. Compare this to Jinnah or Nehru. In that light I think Gandhi was a better leader. Say what you will about mystics and all that, but at least Gandhi’s primary actions were usually centered around organizing people for harmony and not hatred

  27. Unionist Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan had told Sir Penderel Moon around 1940 that proclamation of Pakistan would be a general signal for a massacre of Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab.

  28. This is a quote from Wolpert’s book on Jinnah (“Jinnah of Pakistan”):

    “I resigned myself fatalisitically to the coming disaster,” Penderal Moon wrote that July [1947]. “It was easy to predict disaster but what was the exact form that it would take? … The Senior Superintendent of Police, Delhi…asked for his opinion as to what would happen…replied crudely but tersely: ‘Once a line of division is drawn in the Punjab all Sikhs to the west of it and all Muslims to the east of it will have their —- chopped off”.
  29. Another quote from Wolpert’s book, the time is March 1947

    Tens of thousands of refugees began pouring into Rawalpindi from ravaged villages in the country side. “Attacks on non-Muslims have been organized with extreme savagery,” Jenkins {British governor of Punjab} wired {the Viceroy} on March 17. “Deputy Commissioner Rawalpindi believes that in his district alone there may be 5,000 casualties.” As information flowed in from outlying regions of the Punjab a pattern of “organisation and conspiracy” seemed to emerge, wrote the governor, “in parts of Rawalpindi outbreaks..have occurred almost simultaneously…carefully planned and carried out. All Muslims in the affected districts seems to be involved in or sympathetic to the movement. The Commander 7th Division told me when I saw him yesterday that attacks on non-Muslims had been led in some cases by retired Army officers – some of them pensioners…The Muslim section of the local notables, to whom I spoke…were extremely sulky…non-Muslims are vehemently bitter against the civil services and particularly against the Police.”

    Don’t give me historical revisionist cr** that the British government and intelligence apparatus did not know what was happening and what would happen.

  30. This thread is about whether or not the massacres of Partition were anticipated or not. But two sentences are both necessary and sufficient to put Jinnah in the proper context.

    Ismay expressed his own belief that “the dominating feature in Mr. Jinnah’s mental structure was his loathing and contempt of the Hindus. He apparently thought that all Hindus were sub-human creatures with whom it was impossible for Muslims to live.

    Nothing more need be said.

  31. I agree with Sahej. These assholes (Jinnah, et. al) played games and as a result millions of people got uprooted from their ancient homelands where their ancestors had lived for countless generations, never to be able to return again. If you are a Punjabi Hindu or Sikh with roots in Lahore or Rawalpindi, isn’t it a horrible injustice that your home has been stolen from you? One of the most ironic memories I have is when I was in college in a small-group session, somehow the topic of Pakistan came up, and this Urdu-speaking Pakistani guy, with roots originally in Bihar, started proudly talking about Karachi…meanwhile a Hindu Sindhi guy, whose grandparents had to flee from Karachi in 1947, could only sit there and listen as someone else described his ancestral city which he no longer had any claim on. That’s the legacy of Jinnah.

  32. Ah .. the favorite game of increasingly ancient uncles — debating partition yet again.

    I’ll just add that Ayasha Jalal’ ideas in Sole Spokespan were pretty much accord with my family’s stories of politics before and after partition (my grandparents fled North India for Karachi). They pin the blame on Nehru for refusing compromises to a centralized state that would have allowed a United India. When I started reading Indian versions of history that painted Jinnah as a bad guy, I was pretty shocked — doesn’t everyone know that Jinnah was a secular Muslim leader and the Nehru caused partition?

    I’ve read a bit more now, enough to refrain from commenting on the causes of partition here. I will add that I used to think partition was a mistake and a disaster, but reading SepiaMutiny (among other things) and encountering more Hindu Indians has made me think that partition may, on net, be OK. No offense intended.

  33. Partition is the best thing to happen (atleast for India) Think about going through every line in the constitution to see if it is Sharia compliant.. :-))