by Yasmin Khan
24. See for instance J.P. Narayan's far-sighted note on the communal question, AICC, G–23 (1946–8). On the CPI's relationship with Nehru, see Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 123–5.
25. Extract from an Urdu poem c. 1946 trans. Kedarnath Komal and Rukmani Nair in Mushirul Hasan, ed., India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom (Delhi: Lotus Collection, 1995), vol. 1, p. 43.
26. An extract from the election bill of the Palamu district Kisan Sabha, translated from the Hindi in Kuwajima, Muslims, Nationalism and the Partition, p. 242.
27. Statement of A.K. Azad, 4 April 1946 quoted ibid. p. 144.
28. Speech of Jinnah quoted ibid., p. 134. On the expedient use of Islamic motifs during this election, see also Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 386–471.
29. Times of India, 8 Jan. 1946.
30. SWGBP vol. 10, p. 378; Speech at a public meeting in Varanasi district, 27 Oct. 1945; Times of India, 27 Feb. 1946.
31. Andrew Whitehead, Oral Archive: India, a People Partitioned (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997, 2000), Zawwar Zaidi interviewed in Islamabad, 7 April 1997.
32. SWGBP, vol. 11, p. 414. Speech in Kakori, 22 Feb. 1946.
33. Ian Talbot, Khizr Tiwana: The Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India (Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 195.
34. William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
35. Cited in Khalid Bin Sayeed, Pakistan: The Formative Phase (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 203–4.
36. Quoted in Usha Sanyal, Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and his Movement, 1870–1920 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 310.
37. Cited in Khalid Bin Sayeed, Pakistan, p. 199. On ‘Nationalist Muslims’ and the subtle divisions among Muslim thinkers in the lead up to 1947 see Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Aziz Ahmad, Muslim self-statement in India and Pakistan 1857–1968 (Wiesbaden, 1970).
38. For a convincing critique of the term ‘Nationalist Muslim’ see Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 154–5; Pandey, ‘The Prose of Otherness’, in David Arnold and David Hardiman, eds, Subaltern Studies VIII (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 118–221; and A. Jalal, ‘Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity in South Asia’, in S. Bose and A. Jalal, eds, Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
39. AICC, P–17 (1947–8).
40. M. Hasan, ed., India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom (Delhi: Lotus Collection, 1995), vol. 2, p. 45.
41. AICC, G–23 (1946–8), J. P. Narayan's note on the communal question, 1946.
42. Kuwajima, Muslims, Nationalism and the Partition, p. 160.
43. AICC, G–22 (1945–6) Delhi Congress Committee to Secretary AICC, 16 Feb. 1946.
44. Times of India, 12 March 1946.
45. The Muslim League won all 30 reserved seats in the Central Legislative Assembly and 86.6 per cent of votes cast. It also won 442 of 509 reserved seats in the provinces. The Congress won 57 of the 102 seats in the Central Legislative Assembly and 91.3 per cent of the non-Muslim votes cast.
46. On the provincial strategies of the different parties see Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 126–73; Jalal, Self and Sovereignty; Ian Talbot, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement: The Growth of the Muslim League in North-West and North-East India 1937–47 (Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Kuwajima, Muslims, Nationalism and the Partition.
47. TOP, vol. 6, p. 771.
Chapter 3: The Unravelling Raj
1. On Aligarh in the 1940s, see works by Paul Brass, especially Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Also, E.A. Mann, Boundaries and Identities: Muslims Work and Status in Aligarh (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992) and M. Hasan ‘Negotiating with Its Past and Its Present: The Changing Profile of the Aligarh Muslim University’ in M. Hasan, ed., Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India (New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). SWJN, 2nd ser., vol. 1, pp. 49–50. Letter to Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, 28 Sept. 1946.
2. Dawn, 28 Jan. 1946.
3. Times of India, 11 April 1946. See also S.S. Pirzada, ed. Foundations of Pakistan: All-Indian Muslim League Documents: vol. 2 1924–1947 (First published, Karachi, 1970); edition cited, New Delhi: Metropolitan Book Co., 1982), pp. 521–2.
4. Pirzada, ed. Foundations of Pakistan, p. 524.
5. Khalid Bin Sayeed, Pakistan: The Formative Phase (London: Oxford University Press, 1968) pp. 181–2.
6. JP 2nd ser., vol. 12, p. 643. M.A. Ishaque to Jinnah, 8 March 1946.
7. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Ayesha Jalal's revisionist interpretation of Jinnah's motives caused shock waves when it was published, yet it was also successful, and persuasive, because Jinnah's actions had hitherto been interpreted in a one-dimensional way. The ambiguity surrounding the Lahore Resolution and the uncertain attitudes to the meanings of Pakistan had been noted by contemporary observers, but Jalal gave these new credibility and scholarly authority, so much so that her interpretation of Jinnah has become the new orthodoxy. The Jinnah who hovers malevolently like a bad spirit in Attenborough's epic Oscar-winning film, Gandhi, has been replaced by an astute lawyer, who managed to sit upon the powderkeg of diverse Muslim interests, and subtly bartered with the British in order to win the best possible deal for Muslims. In the event, his preferred dream of a federated India with parity for Muslims was shattered and he accepted the option of a Pakistani state with greatly curtailed borders and inherent limitations, resolving to make the best of a bad situation.
8. Ata-ur-Rehman, ed., A Pictorial History of the Pakistan Movement (Lahore: Dost Associates), p. 103.
9. Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, From Purdah to Parliament (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 135.
10. AICC, G–42 (1945–6).
11. Rajeshwar Dayal, A Life of Our Times (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1998), p. 78.
12. Ibid., Rajeshwar Dayal was appointed Home Secretary to the United Provinces government in 1946.
13. C.H. Philips and M. Wainwright, eds., The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935–1947 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970)p. 410–1.
14. Times of India, 3 April 1946.
15. Malcolm Darling, At Freedom's Door (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 11.
16. Ibid., pp. 13–14.
17. Ibid., pp. 14, 24.
18. Inverview with Sarfaraz Nazine in Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier (Oxford and Delhi: James Currey, 2000), p. 170.
19. P. Moon, ed., Wavell: The Viceroy's Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 494.
20. IOR L/PJ/5/168, S.V. Ramamurty to Mountbatten, 30 May 1947.
21. D. Potter, India's Political Administrators: 1919–1983 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 135.
22. A.K. Azad, India Wins Freedom (first published 1959; edition cited) (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1989), pp. 134–5.
23. AIHM, C–190 (1946–7), Undated note on Ram Sena. UP Hindu Mahasabha Papers, P–108 (part 2) (1946–7).
24. IOR L/PJ/5/275, FNR, first half Jan. 1946.
25. TOP, vol. 8, p. 519.
26. Andrew Whitehead, Oral Archive: India, a People Partitioned (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997, 2000), Kewal Malkani interviewed in Delhi, 16 Jan. 1997. T
he RSS, founded in 1925 by K.B. Hedgewar, has a persistent presence in India and still trains up the young foot-soldiers of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism today. Hindutva conflates a thoroughly modern idea of ‘race’ with ‘Indianness’. It means relegating all those who fall outside the Hindu civilisational pale – including Christians, dalits and Muslims – to the status of minorities or second-class citizens.
27. Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘Shadows of the Swastika: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Hindu Communalism’, Modern Asian Studies, 34.2 (May 2000), pp. 259–79.
28. Trans. from Urdu by Hira Lal Seth, The Khaksar Movement (Lahore: Hero Publications, 1946), p. 61.
29. Markus Daechsel, The Politics of Self-Expression: The Urdu Middle-Class Milieu in Mid-twentieth century India and Pakistan (London: Routledge, 2006); M.S. Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined (Nagpur, 1939).
30. Bhisham Sahni, Tamas (Delhi: Penguin, 2001), pp. 57–8.
31. JP, 2nd ser., vol. 12, p. 624. Durrani to Jinnah, 1 March 1946.
32. S.C. Sharma, Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla: Life and Times (Delhi: Bharatiya Bhasha Peeth, 1991), p. 207. Speech of Shukla at a press conference, 27 April 1946.
33. SWJN, 1st ser., vol. 15, 5 Aug. 1946; 2nd ser., vol. 1. 25 Sept. 1946. Speech at a meeting of Congress volunteer organisations, Delhi 25 Sept. 1946.
34. Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed, p. 186.
35. Civil and Military Gazette, 9 May 1947.
36. AICC, G–53 (1946). Nehru to K. Chatterji, 30 Aug. 1946.
37. Times of India, 15 Jan. 1946; 5 Feb. 1946.
38. Ruchi Ram Sahni, To the British Cabinet Mission (Lahore: Dewan Ram, 1946), pp. 13, 91.
39. Times of India, 19 March 1946; TOP, vol. 7, p. 23. Note by Major Wyatt, 28 March 1946.
40. Times of India, 15 April 1946.
41. J.P. Chander, Cabinet Mission in India (Lahore: Indian Printing Works, 1946), p. 107.
42. Ibid., p. 108.
43. TOP, vol. 7, pp. 592–4.
44. TOP, vol. 7, p. 766. Meeting of Cabinet Delegation, Wavell, Wylie and Twynam, 1 June 1946.
45. Times of India, 17 May 1946.
46. On G.D. Birla's role during Partition see Medha M. Kudaisya, The Life and Times of G.D. Birla (Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
47. Moon, ed., Wavell: The Viceroy's Journal, p. 239.
48. TOP, vol. 7, p. 858; Times of India, 18 May 1946.
49. Nasim Ansari, Choosing to Stay: Memoirs of an Indian Muslim (first published in 1987; edition cited trans. from Urdu by Ralph Russell, Karachi: City Press, 1999), pp. 17–18.
50. TOP, vol. 8, p. 161. Wylie to Wavell, 31 July 1946.
51. TOP, vol. 7, p. 655. Wavell to Henderson, 21 May 1946.
52. CWMG, vol. 85, p. 54.
Chapter 4: The Collapse of Trust
1. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal 1905–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 171.
2. See Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932–1947: Contour of Freedom (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 98.
3. Dawn, 16 Aug. 1946; Eastern Times, 16 Aug. 1946.
4. Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, p. 168.
5. From a League pamphlet entitled Let Pakistan Speak for Herself (1946) cited in Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, p. 99.
6. Andrew Whitehead, Oral Archive: India: A People Partitioned (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997, 2000); Jugal Chandra Ghosh, interviewed in Calcutta, 24 May 1997.
7. Ibid.; Syed Nazimuddin Hashim interviewed in Dhaka, 22 April 1997. On ethnoreligious conflict in Bengal see John H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal (Berkeley, 1968); Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Das, Communal Riots in Bengal; Taj I. Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia: The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal, 1920–1947 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1992).
8. Andrew Whitehead, ‘The Butchers of Calcutta’, Indian Express, 1 July 1997.
9. Whitehead, India: A People Partitioned; Syed Nazimuddin Hashim interviewed in Dhaka, 22 April 1997.
10. M. Daechsel, The Politics of Self-Expression: The Urdu Middle-Class Milieu in Mid-twentieth-century India and Pakistan (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 75.
11. Times of India, 25 May 1946.
12. Saumya Gupta, ‘The “Daily” Reality of Partition: Politics in Newsprint, in 1940s Kanpur’, in S. Sengupta and G. Lovink, eds, The Public Domain: Sarai Reader 01 (New Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 2001), p. 83.
13. Ibid.
14. AICC G–10 (1947) Bengal Provincial Congress Committee Papers, 15 Oct. 1946.
15. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, p. 193.
16. Ashoka Gupta, ‘Those Days in Noakhali’, Indian Seminar, 510 (2002).
17. Whitehead, India: A People Partitioned; Sailen Chatterjee interviewed in Delhi, 25 Jan. 1997; CWMG, vol. 86, p. 138, 20 Nov. 1946. See also India Today, 18 Aug. 1997.
18. SWJN, 2nd ser., vol. 1, pp. 47–112. Speeches at Bakhtiarpur and Fatwa, 4 Nov. 1946; letter to Vallabhbhai Patel, 5 Nov. 1946.
19. Cited in Vinita Damodaran, Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar, 1935–1946 (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 356. Damodaran describes post-war Bihar and the growth of agricultural and ethnic conflict in detail, pp. 284–369.
20. IOR L/PJ/5/275, Wylie to Wavell, 21 Nov. 1946. My description is drawn from accounts of the violence in AICC, G–10 (1947), Congress Reports on Garhmukhteshwar; IOR L/PJ/8/575, Reports on the disturbances in Bihar and UP, and IOR L/PJ/8/650, UP Ministerial and Political Affairs, 1946–7. For an analysis of the different interpretations placed on the violence by the Congress, League and British, see Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 92–120.
21. A.P. Jain, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai: A Memoir of his Life and Times (London: Asia Publishing House, 1965), p. 75.
22. AICC, G–10 (1946). Report of B.B. Jetley, Superintendent of Police, Meerut, 19 Dec. 1946.
23. For example the Government of Bombay immediately after Independence described ‘the three great vices of modern times’ as ‘prostitution, gambling and drinking’, enforced prohibition in six districts of Bombay and made it illegal to advertise liquor in newspapers, while the film censor banned drinking scenes from films.
24. S.S. Ikramullah, From Purdah to Parliament (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 143.
25. Sarfaraz Mirza,Muslim Women's Role in the Pakistan Movement (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, University of the Punjab, 1969), p. 83.
26. C.H. Philips and M. Wainwright, eds, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935–1947 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), p. 377.
27. TOP, vol. 8, p. 849. Jenkins to Wavell, 31 Oct. 1946.
28. IOR L/PJ/5/167.
29. Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 240–59.
30. Ibid., pp. 242, 244.
31. Daechsel, The Politics of Self-Expression, pp. 141–6.
32. Ibid., pp. 18–59.
33. IOR Mss Eur. D724/13, Hume Papers, 10 Nov. 1946.
34. AICC, CL–10 (1946–7); AICC, G–10 (1947).
35. AICC G–10 (1947). Note on Noakhali.
36. IOR L/PJ/5/167, Clow to Wavell, 4 Nov. 1946.
37. IOR L/PJ/5/139, FNR, second half Oct. 1946.
38. Gupta, ‘The “Daily” Reality of Partition’, p. 86.
39. Medha Kudaisya,$The Life and Times of G.D. Birla (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 234; Letter to Rajagopalachari, 21 Nov. 1946.
40. Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit: An eyewitness account of the Partition of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 74.
41. IOR L/PJ/5/275, FNR, first half Jan. 1946.
42. IOR Mss Eur. D724/13, Hume Papers, Jan.–Dec. 1946.
43. TOP, vol. 8,
p. 750. Patel to Stafford Cripps, 19 Oct. 1946; IOR L/PJ/5/276 Wylie to Wavell, 22 Jan. 1947; JP, 1st ser., vol. 3, p. 224. Mountbatten to Jinnah, 9 July 1947.
44. CWMG, vol. 85 p. 282. 15 Sept. 1946; Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, p. 292.
Chapter 5: From Breakdown to Breakdown
1. Pran Nevile, Lahore: A Sentimental Journey (Delhi: Penguin, 2006), p. xx.
2. IOR L/PJ/5/276, FNR, second half April 1947; IOR, Mss Eur.$C290, Unpublished memoirs of C. Pearce (UP Police), c. 1977.
3. Ian Copland, State, Community and Neighbourhood in Princely North India, c.1900–1950 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 115.
4. Wm Roger Louis, ‘The Partitions of India and Palestine’, in Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization (New York, 2006), p. 407.
5. Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit: An eyewitness account of the Partition of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 62–3.
6. Andrew Whitehead, Oral Archive: India: A People Partitioned (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997, 2000); Amjad Husain, interviewed in Lahore, 11 Oct. 1995.
7. Raghuvendra Tanwar, Reporting the Partition of Punjab, 1947: Press, Public and Other Opinions (Delhi: Manohar, 2006), pp. 143, 152.
8. IOR FNR L/PJ/5/168 and USSA 845.00/7–3047, Box 6070.
9. IOR L/PJ/5/168, Fortnightly report 3 March 1947. Civil and Military Gazette, 13 May 1947.
10. Bhisham Sahni, Tamas (Delhi: Penguin edn, 2001), p. 162.
11. Ibid., p. 103.
12. This has resonance with Paul Brass's description of an ‘institutionalised riot system’ in contemporary India. See Paul Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); and Paul Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
13. Asim Roy, ‘The High Politics of India's Partition’, Modern Asian Studies, 24.2 (May 1990), pp. 385–408, p. 404.