Short-changed: The Fallacy of Partition
By: Rohan Rajesh
“You have thrown us to the wolves!” cried an anguished Abdul Ghaffar “Bacha” Khan when the Indian National Congress (INC) acceded to the All-India Muslim League’s demand for an independent homeland for Indian Muslims called Pakistan. Khan, popularly known as the Frontier Gandhi, was the leader of the Khudai Khidmatgar, an organization of Pashtuns (from what is now Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) who nonviolently supported Indian independence and stridently opposed the Pakistan Movement. Khan was not unique in his opposition to the creation of Pakistan – many Indian Muslims then and now have criticized the Pakistan Movement and with good reason: Partition arguably hurt the subcontinent’s Muslims more than any other group.
Pakistan, separated from its hearth in the subcontinent, has strayed decisively away from the vision of its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Jinnah desired a secular state that happened to have a Muslim majority. Instead, Pakistan became the world’s first Islamic Republic, and non-Muslims form a mere 3% of Pakistan’s population today from 23% in 1947. It perpetrated one of the world’s worst genocides since the Holocaust in what is now Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). The persecution of minority Muslim sects and non-Muslims in Pakistan has continued unabated. Pakistan’s perpetual obsession with India’s larger population and more advanced military has ruined the country. Pakistan’s fear that India wants to conquer it has led to a bloated military budget when Pakistan should be focusing on economic development. Even with this over-allocation, the military has never gained Indian-administered Kashmir despite instigating three wars over the region; it lost East Pakistan even after committing a horrific genocide there; it continues to back terrorist groups in Afghanistan (most notably the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network) and in Indian-administered Kashmir in the hopeless goals of gaining “strategic depth” and “bleeding India with a thousand cuts.” If India really wanted to annex Pakistan, it would have done so a long time ago. In 1971, India wrested control of East Pakistan and could have probably annexed Pakistan-proper as well but chose not to and probably never will because India is far more focused on developing its economy and ensuring prosperity for its citizens than waging war with a nuclear-weapons state.
Meanwhile, Indian Muslims have been quite successful in a variety of fields and have made India proud. One of India’s most popular presidents, APJ Abdul Kalam, also pioneered missile technology. Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro and a czar of Indian IT, is one of India’s most respected businessmen and philanthropists. AR Rahman is one of India’s most celebrated musicians, having won several awards in India and the West. Indian Muslim actors, singers, music composers, and lyricists continue to draw die-hard fans irrespective of religion. Muslims in India take pride in their country just as much as Indians are proud of their achievements and contributions. Muslims in India, despite being a minority, have much better economic and societal prospects than their counterparts in Pakistan.
That said, I understand that many people, including Indian Muslims, are concerned about the direction in which India is headed under the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP government. However, the BJP’s electoral success at the national level is less about a supposed rise in support for Hindu nationalism in India since 2014 than it is about the failures of India’s “secularists.” The previous government led by the INC was marred by corruption scandals and accusations of nepotism, which the INC has not gotten over. For all the talk about the “saffronization” of India, the BJP’s mass-appeal mostly lies in Prime Minister Modi’s charisma and an agenda of increased economic development and national security. No society is perfect, and, just as in Western societies, tensions will always remain in Indian society. Perhaps the greatest testament to the success of India’s pluralism despite its growing pains is that 200 million Muslims have consistently chosen to stay in India even as many Muslims and non-Muslims have left Pakistan.
The Partition of India was meant to improve the political situation of India’s Muslims. Instead, the subcontinent’s Muslims find themselves divided among three countries with their loyalties often questioned. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, authoritarianism regimes have disenfranchised their citizens, including Muslims. In India, despite having better protections and enfranchisement, Muslims are an even smaller minority than before Partition and have less of a say in Parliament than they would have had in an unpartitioned India. Had India not been partitioned, nearly 600 million Muslims (including Bangladesh) would have coexisted with 900 million Hindus and other religious groups. Muslims would have held significant political sway, and puritanical Islamism and Hindu nationalism would have been weakened by each group counterbalancing each other. In the end, Muslims were short-changed by the Muslim League.