J-walking in history

Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence
Jaswant Singh
Rupa
669 pages
Rs695

Since popular history is as much preoccupied with “if” as with “how” and “what”, it is worth contemplating the political future of Jaswant Singh if his latest book had simply been entitled “Partition of India”. It is my belief that the book would have received only a fraction of the media attention it has got and that the author would still be occupying the front benches of the BJP in the Lok Sabha.

When an erudite politician, who is not a professional historian, undertakes a political biography, he does so as an exercise in interpretation. Jaswant’s controversial offering is an assessment of the chain of events that led to the Partition of India. Beginning from the contemporary premise that the division of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947 was a monumental tragedy which, far from resolving the majority-minority problem, created additional fissures, Jaswant proceeds to look at the political circumstances of Partition. Although he doesn’t ask the question formally, he appears to be guided by the anguish: was Partition inevitable?

This is a legitimate question which has been asked by historians and others alike. Unlike Pakistani nationalists who celebrate August 14 as the fruition of a process that began with the Arab conquest of Sind in the 8th century, questioning the inevitability of Partition presupposes that the extreme step followed either design or mishandling.

Jaswant has written a book primarily about Partition. As one of the foremost actors in the drama, particularly the dramatic turn of events after the provincial elections of 1937, Mohammed Ali Jinnah resonates throughout the book. However, since the book is preoccupied with the problem of Partition, Jinnah is just one of the many actors. A classic political biography would have made Jinnah the centre-piece, tried to get under his skin and seen events from his perspective. It is such an approach that distinguishes a biography from a history.

Jaswant’s book is a history that is excessively preoccupied with Jinnah; it is not a political biography. The author, for example, while narrating Jinnah’s pre-1937 politics, doesn’t really try to analyse his complex personality. Nor for the matter does he attempt to locate Jinnah in the larger milieu of Westernised Oriental Gentlemen whose flirtations with Hindu or Muslim politics were at odds with their lifestyles and temperament. The evolution of Jinnah is vividly documented but never really explained.

The problem with the book is that it is primarily a narrative, culled from secondary sources. That in itself is not a handicap. But a narrative style of history must be accompanied by dollops of commentary by the author — otherwise why should anyone be interested with what a politician has to say about Partition? There are pages of narrative on the constitutional disputes over federalism, a process that began with the Motilal Nehru report of 1928 and ended with the failure of the Cabinet Mission in 1946. Jinnah was a key player in this debate, as were Jawaharlal Nehru, the Liberals, the Princes of India and the imperial power. Reduced to bare bones, the dispute was over two ways of forging the nation-state and defining nationhood. Jinnah believed — as did most of his Muslim colleagues — that Muslims needed an autonomous space which couldn’t be accommodated by either an overriding Centre or participation in the Congress. Mahatma Gandhi and all his followers insisted Indians were one people and Nehru supplemented this conviction with his faith in a centralised state. It was the inability to reconcile these two perceptions that led to Partition.

A political assessment of Jinnah by a contemporary Indian should have thoroughly dissected both approaches. Unfortunately, apart from a tangential endorsement of a “multinational” state in his conclusion, Jaswant skips the question. If Jinnah wasn’t the villain of Partition, as is often made out to be, it follows that his belief in fragmented sovereignty (as is being articulated by some Kashmiri nationalists today) was valid and appropriate. Jaswant ducks the issue. He gives the impression of a writer too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of documentation to take a call about the big picture. Consequently, the book strays into byways which are not germane to an assessment of Jinnah.

The other shortcoming of this book is its narrow focus on constitutional negotiations. While these negotiations were quite crucial, the hardening of positions followed vicious sectarian strife on the ground. The growing cultural estrangement between Hindus and Sikhs on the one hand and Muslims on the other has been documented by many historians. These tensions formed the backdrop of Congress-Muslim League tensions, particularly after 1937. It also explains why a Hindu politician such as Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, otherwise a believer in united India, waged a successful campaign to ensure that the whole of Bengal wasn’t given over to Pakistan.

After the killings of 1946, united India seemed a futile quest. A semblance of togetherness may still have been possible if all the parties agreed to delay Independence for at least a decade. But the British were no longer willing to continue shouldering imperial obligations.
The other approach was for the Congress to accept the Cabinet Mission and a nominal Centre. My own feeling is that the resulting India would have perhaps resembled the Balkans and Lebanon. There were no third alternatives — at least not to the “tired men” who wanted some rewards after a lifetime of struggle. In 1947, the nationalist leadership had two choices: building a new India or waging a civil war. It chose the former as the less undesirable option.

Jaswant has rightly observed in one of his many interviews that Jinnah shouldn’t be demonised. His book doesn’t demonise Jinnah; it documents him. Those wishing to understand Jinnah the man have to still turn to Hector Bolitho’s extremely readable biography published in 1954; as for Jinnah the politician, Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman tops the list. Jaswant’s is an honest attempt but the notoriety he has earned is not commensurate with anything the book has to offer.

Swapan Dasgupta is a Delhi-based political commentator