Corbyn is an atheist – but his ideas are true to the Bible

Giles Fraser in The Guardian

Readings in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic church are set in advance on a three-year cycle. That’s partly to stop priests from constantly picking their favourite bits and partly to make sure all parts of the Bible are covered, even the tricky passages. Which means that, last Sunday, up and down the country, the same readings were read out to congregations. First we heard a stinging condemnation of wealth from the book of Amos: “Alas for those who lie on beds of Ivory, and lounge on their couches.” Then a psalm about God sustaining the widow and the orphan. Then a long passage about money – “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” – from Paul’s first letter to Timothy. Then, to top it all off, the story from Luke of a rich man (“who was dressed in fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day”) burning in hell and a poor man, who lived homeless at his gate, being carried off to heaven by the angels.

Absolutely nothing that has been said by Jeremy Corbyn over the past few months is anything like as hostile to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few as the Bible. Indeed, compared to the book of Amos and the gospel of Luke, the campaign group Momentum are a bunch of bland soft-pedalling apologists for the status quo. So how, then, can middle England sit through these readings without storming out, but apparently find Corbyn unelectable? Have they not been listening?

It’s five years next month since the Occupy protest arrived at St Paul’s cathedral. Though originally aimed at the London stock exchange, its impact on the cathedral and the wider church was, if anything, much greater. For what the protest dramatised was the deaf ear that the church and its members often turn when it comes to any reference to their wallets.

This week saw the 90th anniversary of the BBC broadcasting choral evensong. During every one of these the choir will have been encouraging revolution – bringing down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly, again from Luke’s gospel. On Thursday, they were singing this from Westminster Abbey, the heart of the establishment. Sedition hiding in plain view. And no one batted an eyelid. Which I suspect is evidence that people were listening to the wonderful music and ignoring what they were singing about.

But despite all the aesthetic chaff that the church throws out to misdirect the ear, it remains gobsmacking that, of all people, it’s the Tories that are still most likely to profess their commitment to the church. For heaven’s sake, Theresa May is a vicar’s daughter. There is the brilliant little bit in Godfather part III when Cardinal Lamberto is talking to Michael Corleone by a fountain in a cloister of the Vatican. “Look at this stone. It has been lying in the water for a very long time but the water has not penetrated,” the cardinal explains, “The same thing has happened to men in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity, but Christ has not penetrated.”

Even so, can it really be so inconceivable that Jeremy Corbyn’s political philosophy is inimical to the British people when he – atheism notwithstanding – is the only one who even approximates to Christian teaching about wealth. After all, Christianity is, like it or not, still the official religion of this country. And the Queen is its head. So you’d think that the Queen would be cheering on Corbyn, encouraging his bold redistributive instincts, and dismissing the Blairites for their fondness for Mammon. For, unlike Peter Mandelson, the Bible is not intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.

And if the Bible is to be taken literally, Donald Trump is headed for the fiery furnace. He shouldn’t boast how rich he is. He should be ashamed about it. After all, Trump says it’s his favourite book. Funny, isn’t it? When the Bible speaks about something like homosexuality, it has to be taken literally. When it speaks about money, it’s all a metaphor.

The Art Of Fear-Mongering

Uri Avnery in Outlook India


"WE HAVE nothing to fear but fear itself," said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was wrong.

Fear is a necessary condition for human survival. Most animals in nature possess it. It helps them to respond to dangers and evade or fight them. Human beings survive because they are fearful.

Fear is both individual and collective. Since its earliest days, the human race has lived in collectives. This is both a necessary and a desired condition. Early humans lived in tribes. The tribe defended their territory against all “strangers" — neighboring tribes — in order to safeguard their food supply and security. Fear was one of the uniting factors.

Belonging to one's tribe (which after many evolutions became a modern nation) is also a profound psychological need. It, too, is connected with fear — fear of other tribes, fear of other nations.

But fear can grow and become a monster.

RECENTLY I received a very interesting article by a young scientist, Yoav Litvin [*], dealing with this phenomenon.

It described, in scientific terms, how easily fear can be manipulated. The science involved was the research of the human brain, based on experiments with laboratory animals like mice and rats.

Nothing is easier than to create fear. For example, mice were given an electric shock while exposed to rock music. After some time, the mice showed reactions of extreme fear when the rock music was played, even without being given a shock. The music alone produced fear.

This could be reversed. For a long time, the music was played for them without the pain. Slowly, very slowly, the fear abated. But not completely: when, after a long time, a shock was again delivered with the music, the full symptoms of fear re-appeared immediately. Once was enough.

APPLY THIS to human nations, and the results are the same.

The Jews are a perfect laboratory specimen. Centuries of persecution in Europe taught them the value of fear. Smelling danger from afar, they learned to save themselves in time — generally by flight.

In Europe, the Jews were an exception, inviting victimizing. In the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire, Jews were normal. All over the empire, territorial peoples turned into ethnic-religious communities. A Jew in Alexandria could marry a Jewess in Antioch, but not the girl next door, if she happened to be an Orthodox Christian.

This "millet" system endured all through the Islamic Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and still lives happily in today's State of Israel. An Israeli Jew cannot legally marry an Israeli Christian or Muslim in Israel.

This was the reason for the absence of anti-Semitism in the Arab world, apart from the detail that the Arabs are Semites themselves. Jews and Christians, the "peoples of the book", have a special status in an Islamic state (like Iran today), in some ways second-class, in some ways privileged (they do not have to serve in the army). Until the advent of Zionism, Arab Jews were no more fearful than most other human beings.

The situation in Europe was quite different. Christianity, which split off from Judaism, harbored a deep resentment towards the Jews from the start. The New Testament contains profoundly anti-Jewish descriptions of Jesus' death, which every Christian child learns at an impressionable age. And the fact that the Jews in Europe were the only people (apart from the gypsies) who had no homeland made them all the more suspicious and fear-inspiring.

The continued suffering of the Jews in Europe implanted a continuous and deep-seated fear in every European Jew. Every Jew was on continuous alert, consciously, unconsciously or subconsciously, even in times and countries which seemed far from any danger — like the Germany of my parents' youth.

My father was a prime example of this syndrome. He grew up in a family that had lived in Germany for generations. (My father, who had studied Latin, always insisted that our family had come to Germany with Julius Caesar.) But when the Nazis came to power, it took my father just a few days to decide to flee, and a few months later my family arrived happily in Palestine.

ON A personal note: my own experience with fear was also interesting. For me, at least.

When the Hebrew-Arab war of 1948 broke out, I naturally enlisted for combat duty. Before my first battle I was — literally — convulsed by fear. During the engagement, which happily was a light one, the fear left me, never to return. Just so. Disappeared.

In the following 50 or so engagements, including half a dozen major battles, I felt no fear.

I was very proud of this, but it was a stupid thing. Near the end of the war, when I was already a squad leader, I was ordered to take over a position which was exposed to enemy fire. I went to inspect it, walking almost upright in broad daylight, and was at once hit by an Egyptian armor-piercing bullet. Four of my soldiers, volunteers from Morocco, bravely got me out under fire. I arrived at the field hospital just in time to save my life.

Even this did not restore to me my lost fear. I still don't feel it, though I am aware that this is exceedingly stupid.

BACK TO my people.

The new Hebrew community in Palestine, founded by refugees from the pogroms of Moldavia, Poland, Ukraine and Russia, and later reinforced by the remnants of the Holocaust, lived in fear of their Arab neighbors, who revolted from time to time against the immigration.

The new community, called the Yishuv, took great pride in the heroism of its youth, which was quite able to defend itself, its towns and its villages. A whole cult grew up around the new Sabra ("cactus plant"), the fearless, heroic young Hebrew born in the country. When in the war of 1948, after prolonged and bitter fighting (we lost 6500 young men out of a community of 650,000 people) we eventually won, collective rational fear was replaced by irrational pride.

Here we were, a new nation on new soil, strong and self-reliant. We could afford to be fearless. But we were not.

Fearless people can make peace, reach a compromise with yesterday's enemy, reach out for co-existence and even friendship. This happened — more or less — in Europe after many centuries of continuous wars.

Not here. Fear of the "Arab World" was a permanent fixture in our national life, the picture of "little Israel surrounded by enemies" both an inner conviction and a propaganda ploy. War followed war, and each one produced new waves of anxiety.

This mixture of overweening pride and profound fears, a conqueror's mentality and permanent Angst, is a hallmark of today's Israel. Foreigners often suspect that this is make-believe, but it is quite real.

FEAR IS also the instrument of rulers. Create Fear and Rule. This has been a maxim of kings and dictators for ages.

In Israel, this is the easiest thing in the world. One has just to mention the Holocaust (or Shoah in Hebrew) and fear oozes from every pore of the national body.

Stoking Holocaust memories is a national industry. Children are sent to visit Auschwitz, their first trip abroad. The last Minister of Education decreed the introduction of Holocaust studies in kindergarten (seriously). There is a Holocaust Day — in addition to many other Jewish holidays, most of which commemorate some past conspiracy to kill the Jews.

The historical picture created in the mind of every Jewish child, in Israel as well as abroad, is, in the words of the Passover prayer read aloud every year in every Jewish family: "In every generation they arise against us to annihilate us, but God saves us from their hands!"

PEOPLE WONDER what is the special quality that enables Binyamin Netanyahu to be elected again and again, and rule practically alone, surrounded by a flock of noisy nobodies.

The person who knew him best, his own father, once declared that "Bibi" could be a good Foreign Minister, but on no account a Prime Minister. True, Netanyahu has a good voice and a real talent for television, but that is all. He is shallow, he has no world vision and no real vision for Israel, his historical knowledge is negligible.

But he has one real talent: fear-mongering. In this he has no equal.

There is hardly any major speech by Netanyahu, in Israel or abroad, without at least one mention of the Holocaust. After that, there comes the latest up-to-date fear-provoking image.

Once it was "international terrorism". The young Netanyahu wrote a book about it and established himself as an expert. In reality, this is nonsense. There is no such thing as international terrorism. It has been invented by charlatans, who build a career on it. Professors and such.

What is terrorism? Killing civilians? If so, the most hideous acts of terrorism in recent history were Dresden and Hiroshima. Killing civilians by non-state fighters? Take your pick. As I have said many times: "freedom fighters" are on my side, "terrorists" are on the other side.

Palestinians, and Arabs in general, are, of course, terrorists. They hate us for taking part of their land away. Obviously, you cannot make peace with perverse people like that. You can only fear and fight them.

When the field of terrorist-fighters became too crowded, Netanyahu switched to the Iranian bomb. There it was — the actual threat to our very existence. The Second Holocaust.

To my mind, this has always been ridiculous. The Iranians will not have a bomb, and if they did — they would not use it, because their own national annihilation would be guaranteed.

But take the Iranian bomb from Netanyahu, and what remains? No wonder he fought tooth and nail to keep it. But now it has been finally pushed away. What to do?

Don't worry. Bibi will find another threat, more blood-curdling than any before.

Just wait and tremble.

Gita, Gandhi and Godse

by Varghese K George in The Hindu

Both Nathuram Godse and Mahatma Gandhi read the Bhagavad Gita but one became a martyr and the other a murderer

January 30 reminds us of the fact that even the holiest of texts can have subjective and differential meanings.

The sacred Indian verses of Shrimad Bhagavad Gita has been in the news for various reasons in recent months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to United States President Barack Obama when he visited the White House last year and one to Emperor Akihito of Japan. He has declared that the Gita would be the gift that he would carry for all world leaders. More controversially, Union Minister Sushma Swaraj advocated that the Gita may be declared the national book of India. Most recently, the BJP government in Haryana declared its intention to teach the Gita as part of the school curriculum.

To say that religion and politics should not be mixed has not only become a cliché, but may be missing the point altogether. Many tall leaders found the reason for their political action in their religious faith. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr are examples. President Obama mentioned in his town hall speech in Delhi last week that his faith strengthened him in his life. It is also true that many kings and emperors of the past used religious faith to justify killings and destruction.

Martyr and murderer

Many individuals and organisations advocate and indulge in violence today, and justify it on the basis of religious texts. January 30, the day Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi, is the starkest reminder in the history of humankind of how the same text can be read differently. Both read the Bhagavad Gita. One became Gandhi. The other became Godse. One became a martyr. The other became a murderer. Jawaharlal Nehru, for whom the Gita was “a poem of crisis, of political and social crisis and, even more so, of crisis in the spirit of man,” wrote in the Discovery of India: “... the leaders of thought and action of the present day — Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Gandhi — have written on it, each giving his own interpretation. Gandhiji bases his firm belief in non-violence on it; others justify violence and warfare for a righteous cause ...”

What is curious is the fact that the two opposite interpretations of the Gita that Nehru refers to were responses to the same shared reality that their respective proponents encountered —  colonialism and Christianity. Two strikingly different responses emerge to the same situation. The divergence is evident from the debate between Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In 1920, Tilak wrote to Gandhi: “Politics is the game of worldly people and not of Sadhus, and instead of the maxim, ‘overcome anger by loving kindness, evil by good,’ as preached by Buddha, I prefer to rely on the maxim of Shri Krishna, ‘In whatsoever way any come to me, in that same way I grant them favour.’ That explains the whole difference.” Gandhi replied: “For me there is no conflict between the two texts quoted by the Lokamanya. The Buddhist text lays down an eternal principle. The text from the Bhagavad Gita shows to me how the eternal principle of conquering hate by love, untruth by truth can and must be applied.”

For Tilak, the Gita was a call for action, political and religious. He declared that the Gita sanctioned violence for unselfish and benevolent reasons. While Tilak’s interpretation of the Gita that he wrote while in prison inspired a generation of warriors against British colonialism, it also informed Hindutva politics. Godse used similar arguments to justify the killing of the Mahatma, and quoted from the book during his trial. For Gandhi, the Gita and all religious texts were not excuses for exclusion and bigotry, but inspiration for compassion and confluence. In The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi — incidentally, the book that Mr. Modi gifted Mr. Obama — the Father of the Nation wrote: “But there is nothing exclusive about the Gita which should make it a gospel only for the Brahmana or the Hindu. Having all the light and colour of the Indian atmosphere, it naturally must have the greatest fascination for the Hindu, but the central teaching should not have any the less appeal for a non-Hindu as the central teaching of the Bible or the Koran should not have any less appeal for a non-Christian or a non-Muslim.”

Challenged by Christian missionaries, Gandhi learned more about his own religion, but more importantly, he imbibed Christian values rather than rejecting them. “Gandhi integrated several aspects of Christianity in this brand of increasingly redefined Hinduism, particularly the idea of suffering love as exemplified in the image of crucifixion. The image haunted him all his life and became the source of some of his deepest passions. He wept before it when he visited Vatican in Rome in 1931; the bare walls of his Sevagram ashram made an exception in favour of it; Isaac Watts’s ‘When I behold the wondrous Cross,’ which offers a moving portrayal of Christ’s sorrow and sacrifice and ends with ‘love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all,’ was one of his favourite hymns...” Bhikhu Parekh writes. Gandhi was accused of being a ‘closet Christian’ and ridiculed as ‘Mohammad Gandhi’ by Hindu radicals.

Support for Godse’s reading

Godse’s reading of the Gita appears to gather more supporters in contemporary India. BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj knew what he was talking about when he praised Godse. Several individuals and organisations have become active in propagating the ideas of Godse. There is also a move to build a temple for him.

After gifting the Gita to the Japanese emperor, Mr. Modi wondered whether his act would irk secularists. The greatest of Indian secularists, Nehru, had this to say: “During the 2,500 years since it was written, Indian humanity has gone repeatedly through the processes of change and development and decay; but it has always found something living in the Gita...The message of the Gita is not sectarian or addressed to any particular school of thought. It is universal in its approach for everyone… ‘All paths lead to Me,’ it says.”

But then, it is all about reading it like Gandhi.

Conversion: With targets & incentives, new breed of evangelical groups are like start-ups

T V Mohandas Pai in The Economic Times

The Rajya Sabha has been paralysed by the Opposition on the “Ghar Vapasi” programe of a few organisations from the right. However, if you follow the debate, it is clear that this is a political battle by the left and the left of centre parties to embarrass and discredit the right of centre party in power. Maybe even with the intent to show up the government as incapable of bringing in reforms and development. The so-called conversion debate was an excuse to paralyse the Rajya Sabha, and a great opportunity was missed to debate the issue of large-scale surreptitious conversions across India (which is the real problem).

There is no doubt that large scale conversions have been taking place across India, accelerating over the last 5 years led by evangelical groups from the West. The North East has been converted with Arunachal and Tripura being now targeted. Tribal belts across Odisha, Jharkhand, Gujarat and MP have seen large-scale conversions for several years now.

The new phenomenon over the last 5 years has been the huge increase in evangelical conversions in Chennai and Tamil Nadu, clearly visible via the vehement advertising on particular channels on TV. Andhra Pradesh, particularly the interiors, Hyderabad and the coastal regions, has been specifically targeted due to the red carpet laid by a now deceased Chief Minister whose son-in-law is a Pastor with his own outfit. The visible impact across this region to any observer shows clearly that a huge amount of money has come in and that there is targeted conversion going on. Some evangelical groups have claimed that 9-12% of undivided AP has been converted, and have sought special benefits from the State (which has been reported in the media).

There is a very sophisticated operation in place by the evangelical groups, with a clear target for souls, marketing campaigns, mass prayer and fraudulent healing meetings. Evidence is available in plenty on videos on YouTube, social media, press reports, and on the ground. Pastors have been openly tweeting about souls converted, and saving people from idol worshippers. Some pastors have tweeted with glee about converts reaching 60 million, declaring a target of 100 million, and have also requested for financial support for this openly. Violence in some areas due to this has vitiated the atmosphere. The traditional institutions of both denominations are losing out to the new age evangelicals with their sophisticated marketing, money and legion of supporters from the West. One can almost classify these groups as hyper-growth startups – with a cost per acquisition, a roadmap for acquiring followers, a fund-raising machine, and a gamified approach (with rewards and incentives) to “conquering” new markets.

Our Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion, which includes the right of the individual to choose her religion. This is not in question, and is a very important concept for a nation like ours. But this right is terribly constrained by religions, which severely punish apostasy. Our laws prohibit conversion due to inducement, allurement, undue influence, coercion, or use of supernatural threats. Every debate on TV misses this point -people argue on grounds of constitutional rights and abuse right wings groups who protest such conversion forgetting that these new age evangelicals are clearly breaking the law! They go to the desperate, and prey on their insecurities by offering education for their children, medical services for the sick, and abuse existing religious practices and traditions.

People also point to the approximate 2.3% share of this minority in the last 3 censuses to deny such conversions. Of course, the 2011 census figures on religion has strangely not been released and we need this data. However, the reason why inthe conversion numbers do not show up in the census is that conversions are happening in communities entitled to reservation benefits. It appears that they are clearly told not to reveal their conversion in the census or officially to prevent loss of benefits. Most conversions happen amongst the tribals and rural and urban poor, who are soft targets to inducements.

I have a personal experience of evangelical groups trying to convert members of my family. Two house maids who converted said that the school where their children went raised fees and due to their inability to pay, they were told they would waive it if they converted (which they were forced to do). Of course, the school was rabid in their evangelism with these children. I use a taxi company for travel over the last ten years. I have noticed over 30% of drivers have converted over the last 5 years.

When asked, inevitably they spoke about evangelicals groups that gave them free education for children and paid their medical bills, provided they converted.

It is obvious that large-scale conversion by illegal means is happening in many places and the impact is clearly visible to anybody who would choose to see openly. Some apologists ask – where are the complaints about inducement or coercion? The law needs enforcement by the police independent of complaints, as is happening when rightist groups proudly announce conversions. These rightist groups lack sophistication, but they have squarely focused attention on this large-scale conversion activity. Law enforcers need to act before this becomes a bigger flashpoint.

Christmas is a face-off between people who are spiritual and people who are consumerist

How do you formulate an anti-consumerist worldview that doesn’t involve becoming a killjoy?

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • theguardian.com, Tuesday 23 December 2014 11.22 GMT

'It isn’t my kids' spiritual wellbeing I’m worried about. It’s the volume of plastic tat I have to throw out every year, to make way for the next tranche of plastic tat.' Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

Christmas is a face-off between people who are spiritual and people who are consumerist. The consumerists never call themselves that, they’re just really keen to let you know that they don’t believe in God. The spiritual ones never call themselves spiritual, they are just very anti-consumerist. It’s the dialectic method of identity building: I hate crackers and piped music, ergo I am deep; I hate superstition and unprovable things, ergo I am fun. It’s like a zero-sum game in which the shops helpfully give the spiritualists something to kick against, and the churches, especially with their midnight shenanigans, give the consumerists something to laugh at.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t leave you much room for manoeuvre if you are both anti-consumerist and an atheist. Pretty much everything you say will deliver you into the hands of the wrong ally. Up until now, I have always just succumbed to one side, in order to avoid getting crushed by the competing plates. Between about 1983 and 2013, assuming myself – on the final throw of the dice – to be more of an atheist than an anti-consumerist, I swallowed the shop-fest whole. I remember standing in Marks & Spencer buying a slipper bag for my uncle, crying with laughter at the scope of the needlessness. Who needs a bag to put their slippers in? It’s like having a special wallet for handkerchieves. Probably, if he’d lived a bit longer, I’d have bought him one of those too. None of this ever struck me as at all obscene; it was all at one remove from obscenity, like a cartoon of someone accidentally chopping off their arm.

But having kids has tipped me over the edge. It isn’t their spiritual wellbeing I’m worried about – they have grandparents for that. It’s the volume of plastic tat I have to throw out every year, to make way for the next tranche of plastic tat. It’s like an anxiety dream, this act: shovelling gigantic, brightly coloured items that have detained nobody for one second longer than the time it takes to render them incomplete or no longer working. They are almost new, and completely pointless. I don’t want to blight another household with them, but I can’t face putting them in the bin, so the whole lot from last year spent six months in a sort of staging post, some inconvenient place while I waited for some other person to throw them out for me. If they’re battery powered it’s 10 times worse, because the added complexity is like an accusation. They are all battery powered.

This is when you’re faced with the question that you should have squared up to 20 years ago: how do you formulate an anti-consumerist worldview that doesn’t involve becoming a killjoy? How do you eschew consumption while still maintaining your spiritual hollowness? The people buying the plastic have annexed the space “fun”, while the people with the baby in the manger have appropriated “thought”. I have no ideological home in this season. But I do love the drinking.

Splitting India II

Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed continues his exclusive series for The Friday Times on the partition and its aftermath 

In my article dated 20 September 2012, I had inadvertently given February 1940 as the date for the fall of Singapore. It was February 1942. That mistake, however, does not detract from the fact that the British were determined from the very start of WW II, and especially after the Congress ministries resigned in September 1939, to crush any challenge to their hold over the Indian empire which was a matter of great pride for them and a major supplier of troops for the war. These resignations were a major Congress miscalculation whose damage to their political influence was second only to the even more disastrous Quit India movement they launched in August 1942. These two decisions greatly undermined their ability to influence the course of the freedom struggle as all their cadres were incarcerated from August 1942 to June 1945.

During that absence from the political arena the Muslim League swept the key north-western provinces of Punjab and Sindh and made inroads into NWFP with their message that the creation of Pakistan would bring to an end the tyranny of the caste system and the economic exploitation of the moneylender. Thus the creation of Pakistan appeared to be a rational choice to the Muslims and they expressed it in the 1946 provincial elections when they voted overwhelmingly in favour of Pakistan. The Congress got the general votes including those of Hindus, Christians, Jains and others for a united India and the Sikhs of Punjab voted for the Panthic parties that wanted the Punjab partitioned, if India was partitioned. Such polarization meant that negotiations on the future of India were headed for a deadlock and the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 1946 confirmed that. Nehru's ill-considered July press conference in Bombay saying that the Congress would 'enter the Constituent Assembly unfettered by agreements and free to meet all situations as they arise' provoked an angry reaction from Jinnah who gave the call for direct action. The violence that broke out in Calcutta in August 1946 followed by more violence in Bihar, Garhmukhteshwar in UP and then Hazara district of KP finally engulfed the Punjab in March 1947.

Under the circumstances, Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten's 3 June 1947 Partition Plan to which Nehru, Jinnah, Baldev Singh and others tamely acquiesced was premised on an entirely false assumption: that the transfer of power would be peaceful. The warnings of Punjab's Governor Sir Evan Jenkins did not warrant such complacency at all.

The whole thing was based on a woefully flawed concept: while civil and military officialdom would have the choice to opt either for India or Pakistan the ordinary people would stay put! Mahatma Gandhi alone among all the leaders could sense that rivers of blood would flow and warned about it. On the other hand, Sardar Patel was prepared to let the Sikh leaders have a free hand in driving the Muslims of East Punjab out, though he probably did not realize that they were planning to use it to create, for the first time in history, a compact Sikh majority in some parts of East Punjab. Later, the Khalistan movement, which emerged in the 1980s, came to haunt the Indian state. Equally, since March 1947, local and Punjab-level Muslim League leaders were complicit in the attacks on the Hindus and Sikhs in the western districts. Neither Jinnah nor Liaquat Ali Khan took any steps to warn the Muslims of East Punjab that on 23 June 1947 the Punjab Assembly had voted to partition the province and a grave possibility existed of rioting. It is impossible to believe that they were not in the know of what was happening in the Punjab. On the other hand, the Congress leaders kept telling Lahore's Hindus and Sikhs to stay put as that city would be given to India, even when the Muslims were in a majority of 60 per cent there. All these details, along with extensive interviews with survivors are fully covered in my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012).

In this regard, let me address a major criticism some readers have made of my argument that the partition of India was not necessarily the best option for Muslims. They have pointed out that the Indian Muslims have remained one of the poorest groups in secular India. Therefore the creation of Pakistan was necessary to save the Muslims from permanent Hindu domination. In principle this is a compelling argument in favour of creating Pakistan, but it needs to be put into perspective.

Mr Jinnah had prepared his brief on a separate Pakistan on the basis of categorical rejection that a Hindu-majority government could ever be fair to the Muslims. When he was asked what would happen to the most vulnerable, deprived and poor sections of Muslims from Muslim-minority provinces if they were left behind in India, he had asserted that one-third of Muslims should not prevent two-thirds of them escaping Hindu domination. It was a typical utilitarian argument deriving from the notion of the greatest good of the greatest number rather than the greatest good of all. However, in August 1947 when some reporters asked him before he left Delhi for Karachi as to what message he wanted to give to the Muslims who would remain behind he said that they should become loyal Indian citizens and he expected the Indian government to treat them fairly. His line of argument had thus changed fundamentally - it acknowledged that a Congress government (upper-caste Hindu dominated) could treat them fairly.

As I said in my previous article, only three per cent of the Muslims from the Muslim-minority provinces of northern India, mainly the intelligentsia migrated to Pakistan. The RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and many Hindu and Sikh refugees who had lost family and property in what became Pakistan wanted each and every Muslim driven out of India. Mahatma Gandhi's last fast-unto-death was not only to press the Indian government to pay Pakistan Rs 550 million as its rightful share of the colonial treasury, but also to insist that the campaign to expel Muslims should cease. It culminated with his assassination at the hands of Nathu Ram Godse, but it compelled the Indian government to adopt strict measures to prevent attacks on Muslims. I must give full credit to Jawaharlal Nehru that while he was prime minister he tried his best to protect the Muslims.

It is not possible to explain in detail in a media column why Congress governments after Nehru deviated from their protective policy towards Muslims. Suffice it to say that after Mrs Indira Gandhi came to power Nehruvian secularism became less of a matter of principle and more of expediency and electoral calculation. Later Congress governments were led by men of straw and the Babri Mosque attack by BJP goons in December 1992 could take place because the Congress government of Mr Narasimha Rao remained passive. It is only after Mr Manmohan Singh came to power that the sad plight of the Muslim minority was given some attention. The Sachar Committee appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 submitted a 403-page report which stated that the status of Indian Muslims was somewhere between Hindu OBCs (other backward castes) and the scheduled castes and tribes. No doubt this has happened because discrimination takes place against the Muslims in a systematic manner even though formal (constitutional) secularism does not discriminate between citizens on the basis of their creed or ethnicity.

However, here too we need to consider some complications. The Muslims of northern India have always consisted of two distinct groups: the high-born ashraaf who claim descent from forbears of foreign origin and the vast majority who are converts from the lower rungs of Hindu society. I have seen reports which name Muslim zamindars and taalukdars of northern India who were active in the struggle for Pakistan, but when partition took place they stayed on to retain ownership of their properties. Some of them later sold off their land and other assets and then migrated to Pakistan or to the West. Some devised novel ways of having the best of both words. Nothing compares to the genius of Raja Sahib Mahmudabad, famous as the financier of the Muslim League and one of the closest associates of Mr Jinnah. He left his son and wife in Mahmudabad while he shifted to Pakistan with his daughters. The Indian government had impounded his vast property worth currently Rs 30,0000 million on grounds that it was 'enemy property' since he had migrated to Pakistan. His son contested the case saying that he was the rightful heir as his father had transferred his property to him before he shifted to Pakistan. In 2005 the Indian Supreme Court restored the properties to him. So, the rich and powerful were not hit by the calamity of the partition. Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan did lose his estate in eastern Punjab as did Nawab Mamdot but that happened because the Sikhs and Congress joined hands to force the partition of Punjab on the same lines on which the Muslim League had demanded that India should be partitioned - on the basis of contiguous religious majorities in some parts of the subcontinent and its provinces. The same happened to Muslim-majority Bengal.

It is therefore the Muslims from artisanal and landless working backgrounds - Muslim Dalits - who potentially would suffer most from a partitioned India. Historically they were always despised by the ashraaf. I have read both Barelvi and Deobandi texts where the superiority of the ashraaf has been justified on grounds that they alone represent true Islam. Of course there are exceptions especially in Deobandi writings. In this regard I might as well add that traditional Shia social and political theory is even more hierarchical than that of the Sunnis. In Pakistan we practice caste prejudices but pretend that since Islam has no caste there is no caste oppression among us. Moreover, caste-like discrimination and persecution in Pakistan has also taken a sectarian form and our wrath is directed against all those we classify as non-Muslims.

At any rate, when the Muslim intelligentsia left for Pakistan the ulema, whose standard refrain has always been that Muslims should not integrate into mainstream society because that would dilute their Islamic identity, took over the leadership of the poorer sections of Muslim society. Instead of encouraging them to get a modern education they fostered a siege mentality and tried to insulate the Muslims from modernizing social trends. Consequently the level of education among these poor Muslims is very low, even lower than the Dalits, who because of the reservation system, have been helped to get education and jobs. A movement has now started gaining pace among Muslims of artisanal and Dalit backgrounds demanding that they too should be included in the reservation system. It remains to be seen if the Indian government would extend them that 'privilege'. The Sachar Report stopped just short of recommending it; it instead recommended special educational inputs from the government to help the Muslims. I need not overemphasize that the RSS and other Sang Parivar groups are always opposed to Muslims being included in the reservation policy. The attacks on Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 were also masterminded by these groups.

Here, I pose a moral question: are we in Pakistan prepared to help such vulnerable Muslims? All I know is that we have not even accepted the Biharis who sided with Pakistan during the 1971 civil war in the former East Pakistan. Unlike Israel which welcomes all Jews from anywhere in the world to settle in Israel, because it is a state created for the Jewish people, we have no open-door policy for oppressed Indian Muslims. So our moral concern for them is hypocritical. There is a way to bring to an end their agony: let us open our arms and welcome them. Let us declare that the 180 million Indian Muslims are entitled to enter Pakistan and become its citizens because Pakistan was created to protect them from Hindu domination and discrimination. The fact is many won't because I know the secular-minded Muslims find Pakistan a difficult proposition as they are used to a less conformist lifestyle than what exists in contemporary Pakistan. Still millions might want to migrate to Pakistan because they may believe that as an Islamic state it would be fair to them.The Sindhis would assail my solution, saying that they have had bitter experience with an open embrace to the Mohajirs - it resulted in them (Sindhis) effectively being sidelined and marginalized in the towns and cities of Sindh, including Karachi and Hyderabad. On the other hand, the Mohajirs now realize that given their smaller numbers they would in the long run be swept away by the much bigger nationalities of Pakistan. They feel beleaguered and threatened. Consequently, if there is no scope for Indian Muslims to find refuge in Pakistan then we can only hope that enlightened Indian rulers would protect the Indian Muslims just as Mahatma Gandhi wanted and Nehru tried. I see no other option to this sad legacy of a partitioned India.  

Splitting India 1

Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed in The Friday Times

There are two philosophical standpoints from which one can support or oppose societal events and situations, one absolutist, the other utilitarian. The former stands for a categorical rejection of the principle of partition as a solution to national disputes while the latter has to do with pragmatism with regards to the pros and cons of partitioning territory to solve national disputes.

Let me admit that although partitioning territory to solve disputes between adversarial nationalist movements and parties is not something I am intellectually comfortable with because it validates tribalism rather than human empathy and solidarity for building community, at times it is the only solution which is morally and practically correct. Partitioning former Sudan to let the Black Africans escape genocide at the hands of the putative Arabs of northern Sudan was an appropriate solution; East Timor getting out of the clutches of the Indonesian state has also been the best option. I hope one day the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are liberated from brutal Israeli rule.

There can be no doubt that the idea of separate states for Muslims was born in the viceroy's office

However, I don't think the partition of India and of Bengal and Punjab belong to the category of intractable disputes that could not have been managed through appropriate democratic arrangements. The so-called Hindu-Muslim problem that dominated politics in British India from the twentieth century onwards till it culminated in the biggest forced migration of people in history and one of the most horrific cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing- 14-18 million forced to flee and between 1-2 million killed - left large minorities in both states. The only difference being that in India the Muslim minority could stay put after some three per cent of the Muslims from Muslim-minority areas migrated to Pakistan but Hindus and Sikhs had to leave almost to the last man in Punjab and the settled areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Very few could stay behind in the tribal areas and in Balochistan. It was only in interior Sindh that a community of some significance could remain behind. Not surprisingly, such upheaval bequeathed a bloody and bitter legacy of fear and hatred to India and Pakistan. The three wars and the Rann of Kutch and Kargil miniwars and constant tension along the Line of Control drawn in the former Jammu and Kashmir State has meant not only huge, wasteful expenditure on military and defence but also a profoundly vitiating impact on democracy, development and pluralism.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad warned that a partitioned India would mean a partitioned Muslim community, engender Hindu nationalism and create a Pakistan of sectarian conflicts that would become easy bait for the West

The Muslim League's demand for the partition of India was initiated by Viceroy Linlithgow in March 1940 when he instructed Sir Muhammad Zafrulla to convey to the League leadership that the government wanted them to demand separate states. The colonial government was hoping to checkmate the Indian National Congress's ambition to force a British withdrawal from India while WW II was raging and the British had suffered their first defeat in more than 200 years at the hands of an Asian power -the Japanese, who forced a humiliating surrender in Singapore in February 1940. It is not important who is the real author of the two-nation theory but there can be no doubt that the idea of separate states for Muslims was born in the viceroy's office. Let me say that the British were not at all thinking of partitioning India at that time nor was the Muslim League confident that such an idea could be realized without major upheavals taking place.

In these series of articles I am not going to present my version of how India and the two Muslim-majority provinces were partitioned or why. I am going to present some arguments to suggest that it was not necessarily the best solution for anyone, especially the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. In this regard I must invoke Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's forebodings that a partitioned India would mean a partitioned Muslim community and it would help Hindu nationalism in India while creating a Pakistan that would get embroiled in sectarian conflicts and become easy bait to the West. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind had a similar standpoint. Consequently, important sections of the Muslim population of India had reservations against the partition, though by 1945 a large majority had begun to support the idea of Pakistan.

Let me list my objections and reservations on the three partitions:

	Viceroy Linlithgow first came up with the idea of a separate Muslim state

The so-called Hindu-Muslim problem was not really solved by the partition: it simply converted it into an India-Pakistan confrontation with wars that resulted in disastrous consequences for democracy, development and pluralism. In India, it created a discourse of Muslim betrayal during the freedom struggle, which was then held against the Muslims who remained in India (nearly as many as were in West Pakistan, now Pakistan). In Pakistan, it generated the intractable controversy about who is a Muslim. As we know each attempt to define a Muslim has meant more people being excluded from that category on the basis of them holding beliefs contrary to the beliefs of a particular sect or sub-sect. In both cases it gave impetus to majoritarian nationalism, which has since then preyed on the minorities as unwanted, fifth columnists. Indian Muslims are routinely demonized in RSS, Shiv Sena and other members of the Sangh Pariwar of Hindu extremists while in Pakistan we have effectively been making life difficult for the miniscule Hindu minority. There is, however, a fundamental difference. The Indian constitution and legal system do not discriminate between religious groups when it comes to their political rights. In Pakistan they do.

The creation of Pakistan began to be presented as a way of ending Hindu domination

The demographic structure of pre-partition India was such that no group had absolute majority. The rough percentage was 7: 4 Muslims (200 million Hindus 90 million Muslims). Now, the Hindu group was stratified into at least three caste compartments: the three upper castes of Brahmins, Kshytrias and Vaishyas (15-20 percent), and the other backward classes or castes (some 50 per cent at least), comprising various farming and other communities, quite powerful locally in different parts of India, and the so called scheduled castes and tribes (22.5 per cent).

Among the three Hindu caste compartments there were some shared religious and cultural features but also demarcations, so all Hindus somehow as one body oppressing all Muslims was very unlikely. On the contrary, it meant that Hindus needed to continue reforming and modernizing towards greater equality. The Muslims were at least 25 per cent of the population, dispersed everywhere and concentrated in two very significant geo-strategic zones of north-eastern and north-western India. The Muslims were not a compact group either. Differences of sect and ethnicity existed even among them. Then there were millions of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and so on. Additionally, there were regional leaders and parties. All this prepared India for a grand experiment in pluralist democracy where it would have been in the best interest of the groups and sub-groups to work together in power sharing and sharing of resources.

Contrary to a widely held view that Muslims everywhere lagged behind Hindus and Sikhs in employment, the fact is that the Muslims (especially Punjabis and Pathans) constituted some 36-40 per cent of the British Indian Army. In the Muslim minority province of UP more than 50 per cent of the police were Muslims as compared to the 17 per cent of their population strength. In both Bengal and Punjab, which had Muslim majorities the police were Muslim in far greater numbers than their proportion of the population. Thus for example in the Punjab 73 per cent of police was Muslim as against only 57.1 per cent of their population strength. The British always employed minorities in the police and military, for obvious reasons. In other branches of the administration the Muslim percentage was increasing though Hindus and Sikhs were ahead of them. Sir Fazl-e-Hussain had introduced quotas for Muslims in some important educational institutions and that had helped the steady increase in percentage of educated Muslims .



Muslims who went to school and sought employment had a fair opportunity to find one. The problem was that the negative Muslim state of mind induced in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising which brought to an end even symbolic Muslim suzerainty over India, and the propaganda of the ulema that Western education would mean Muslims converting to Christianity prevented the Muslims from taking to education whole-heartedly. The British brought with them a new economic order based on banking, investments, stock exchange - all considered inappropriate in dogmatic Islamic terms. The Hindus and Sikhs made use of the new opportunities and moved ahead. I know many Muslim families of Lahore whose elders educated themselves and were as successful as Hindus and Sikhs in acquiring property and were part of the elite.

No doubt commercialization of agriculture resulted in the Muslim peasantry getting trapped in debts to moneylenders. The alternative was the landlord who extracted more out of the peasants through unpaid services on his lands and in his household and the Muslim peasants preferred to go to the Hindu karar or moneylender who was a local person who offered loans on quite reasonable terms. Some moneylenders were extortionists but not all. In any case, the debt burden was a problem in the Punjab and Sir Chhotu Ram, the leader of the Punjab Unionist Party introduced legislation in 1937 which cancelled past debts. However, that did not mean the needs of the peasants for capital also came to an end. Money-lending continued through Muslim front men but as an institution it was certainly greatly weakened and modern banks began to be established in the Punjab.

When the focus of the Muslim separatist movement shifted from northern India, (where the Muslim landed elite was its main protagonist) to the Muslim-majority provinces of north-western India in 1940, the creation of Pakistan began to be presented as a way of ending Hindu domination, at least in areas where Muslims were in a majority - i.e. the north-western and north-eastern zones of the subcontinent. The partition riots resulted in Hindus and Sikhs being expelled from the Muslim majority provinces of north-western India and thus a lot of businesses and property came into the hands of Muslims. It also meant that Muslims found space to make upward mobility which was obstructed while these non-Muslims were based there.

I sometimes wonder if those who consider this as a legitimate solution to Muslim poverty ever think of how it would affect Muslims and other immigrants in the West if anti-immigration parties succeed in expelling immigrants on grounds of property and jobs that ought to be made available to the indigenous white population to solve the problem of unemployment. I am sure no Muslim in Europe who has worked hard and made progress would consider it a fair and legitimate way of bringing relief to unemployed Europeans. Some people argue that the Pakistan movement was a class struggle between Hindu and Sikh haves and Muslim have-nots. This is at best vulgar Marxism. The landlord class was the mainstay of the Muslim League and to believe they were allies in a liberation struggle to establish a fairer society is sheer lunacy.

One thing more, let's suppose that the partitions of Punjab and Bengal had not taken place even if India had been partitioned. That would have meant the Hindus and Sikhs retaining their properties in Pakistan. How would that have solved the problem of Muslim economic backwardness in one go except by confiscating the properties of non-Muslims. The other way would be to help Muslims get interested in education despite their reservations. That was already happening in undivided India in the Muslim-majority provinces and would have continued had India remained united. India was never ever conceived as a unitary state. It was going to be a federation. Thus the partition of these two provinces only helped a quicker change of property ownership from Hindu-Sikh to Muslim hands by driving the Hindus and Sikhs out.

The fact is that the Hindus and Sikhs took to western education and adjusted to the modern capitalism economy with ease and thus progressed economically. They worked hard and acquired wealth. They did not steal it from Muslims who were negatively inclined towards modern education as well as modern business and commerce. The moneylender developed in the context of the new economy of commercial crops and since Muslims were not willing to move into it, the Hindus and Sikhs did. Sir Chhotu Ram's reforms of 1937 to a large extent weakened the moneylenders and with modern banking their relevance decreased even more. So, efforts were underway to rectify such lopsided economic relations. On the other hand, research shows that the landlords (mostly Muslims) used to lend capital informally to the peasants and exploit them even more completely by making them work for them on their lands and making their womenfolk serve in the household. The landlord, the true parasite never got identified as an exploiter the same way as the moneylender. 

Splitting India VIII

Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed in The Friday Times concludes his series on the partition of India, Punjab and Bengal 

My point of departure in this series has been that the partition of India was not necessarily the best option for solving the so-called Hindu-Muslim problem. A secular-democratic state based on universal adult franchise and regional autonomy would have served well to integrate the different peoples and communities constituting the Indian ethno-cultural mosaic into a grand nation. The Muslims would have had as much a stake in it as any other religious community. Permanent Hindu domination through the Congress Party or “Islam being in danger” was not possible if one keeps in mind the demographic composition of the population of the subcontinent and the fact that the Muslims were concentrated in two strategic regions – the north-west and north-east of India. Even when the Muslim presence in India has gone down by two-third the 180 million who remain in India are too important a group for an electoral democracy to ignore. Only once did the BJP come to power with a massive mandate on patently anti-Muslim propaganda. That was in 1998 but Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee quickly realized that such a campaign cannot be repeated without India being plunged into anarchy and chaos with terrorism and civil war emanating as a result.

Number plates of many cars in Pakistan now bear the name “Al Bakistan”

The Muslims were, however, economically not at par with Hindus and Sikhs during the colonial period and that was the strongest reason for creating a separate Pakistan. I have explained in my earlier articles how and why it happened that the Muslims lagged behind others and there is no point repeating the explanation here again. Suffice it to say that many contemporary Muslims have a serious problem adjusting and working within the modern economy and democracy that exists universally. Even now when colonialism (at least not in the literal sense) and all other excuses are no longer applicable no Muslim nation has excelled as an economic power or as a democracy. Islamic banks and Islamic economy are not very different from what banking generally is all about, and Turkey which Ataturk saved from medievalism is slowly being encroached upon by the Islamists – at the moment only in small ways but we know how small, apparently harmless things suddenly become a major force, converting from a nuisance to a menace and then finally a scourge.

Sealing the deal

There is no doubt in my mind that Mr Jinnah never wanted to create an Islamic state based on either the Iranian or Saudi model. However, I believe once the decision to use Islam to rouse mass passion was taken and the ulema given a free hand to propagate their vision of an Islamic state in which Sharia laws would reign supreme, and through this the foundations of a confessional Muslim state laid. I have given ample proof of it in a long chapter, ‘Punjab Elections and Coalition Government, 1945-46’ in my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012: 73-106). The ulema and pirs told the Muslims that if they did not vote for the Muslim League their nikah (marriage) would become null and void and they would be refused an Islamic burial. They also told the Hindus and Sikhs that in such a state they would have to come to the mosque with their disputes and Islamic law would apply. It proved to be a spectacularly successful mobilizing ideology and campaign, but once Pakistan had been achieved a utopian vision laced with Islamic symbolism, values and aspirations were part of the collective consciousness of Pakistani Muslims. Once you create a particular mindset it assumes a life of its own. It may hibernate and remain dormant but comes back to life whenever conditions are ripe. Its latest manifestation is that number plates of many cars in Pakistan now bear the name “Al Bakistan”, which upon enquiry I found to my complete shock is because in Arabic there is no ‘p’ sound and the closest to it is the ‘b’ sound: hence we are now in transit from Pakistan to Al-Bakistan. These decorative changes are actually symptomatic of a deep identity crisis. Much worse are the target killings which go on and life in Peshawar and Karachi has been made expendable as Christians, Shias, Ahmadis and from time to time Barelvis are brutally killed.

The late General Zia was an avid watcher of Indian films

Nations have to make a complete about turn if they want to rid themselves of such characteristics. Nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism went away only after overwhelming defeat was inflicted upon them. On the other hand, South Africa could make the transition because the leadership of the white minority realized that it had no future in a world where racism was no longer acceptable. Israel remains the last bastion of white colonial domination in the occupied territories, but many Israelis know that occupation and domination of a defeated people in the long run is not sustainable. Shall we in Pakistan begin thinking how to turn the corner and become a normal state?

Returning to the partition and the deep wounds and scars it inflicted, when the Muslims of East Punjab and the Hindus and Sikhs of West Punjab crossed the international border in 1947 and religious cleansing had been completed on both sides there was no doubt left that Pakistan was a state of the Muslims. From Khyber-Pakthunkhwa too all Hindus and Sikh had to flee. Of the 29 per cent Hindu population of Sindh only a fraction remained behind. In Balochistan too, a handful could remain. Mr Jinnah’s speech of 11 August 1947 could not have reversed the underlying rationale of the Two-Nation Theory. He did have a vast following in Pakistan, but amongst them not more than a handful believed that Pakistan had to be created to establish two secular states in the subcontinent instead of one.

For Pakistan to switch from religious nationalism to civic nationalism was never going to be easy. With Jinnah dying soon after he founded Pakistan it will always be a matter of speculation as to what would have happened if he had lived longer. He ridiculed the suggestion that his 11 August 1947 speech was about a secular state. His basic argument was that Islam was democratic and democracy was in the blood of Muslims. From the point of view of most ulema and let me say honestly, most Muslims, the ideal state is one where the legendary first four caliphs of Islam ruled. But it was not a secular state by any stretch of the imagination, even when good government and chaste and honest leadership were provided by the pious caliphs.

Perhaps, even more importantly, the social or class basis for a secular state in Pakistan was too weak. The Muslim landlords were the main support base of the Muslim League in the UP and after 1944 in the Punjab. If we now add the powerful ulema of the Barelvi persuasion and the pirs to the Muslim League support base, then both democracy and secularism hold little or no attraction for them. One only has to remember that when in the early 1950s Mian Iftikharuddin and Mian Mumtaz Daultana tried to carry out land reform they were rejected by their colleagues in the Muslim League. In Sindh, the dissenting note penned by Masud Khaddarposh on the Sindh Hari Report (which spoke of the Waderas (landlords) as the protectors of the Haaris (tenant- cultivators and landless peasants)), resulted in him being accused of being a communist and an atheist. Ironically, but not at all surprisingly, both Maulana Maududi and the head of the Ahmadiyya Jamaat, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad came out in favour of landlordism.

The late General Zia was an avid watcher of Indian films

It was Field Marshall Ayub Khan who could muster enough authority to carry out a land reform, which aimed at creating a strong class of commercial farmers instead of absentee landlords. Mr Bhutto’s land reforms did not achieve any great success because he secured a ruling that in Islam ownership of property was individual. Through such a subterfuge the landlords retained most of their land given by the British to their ancestors. In Sindh where the biggest landholdings existed, the reforms were even less effective. Because of the Islamic law of inheritance those holdings are shrinking but the landlord class remains powerful locally and this can be easily established by looking at the membership of the Pakistani legislatures. Even in India the land reforms were not all that radical but they were much better than what we could achieve in Pakistan. Far more people from humbler backgrounds are elected to the Indian legislatures. To cut a long story short, history, ideology, culture, class – all were poised against Pakistan becoming a secular-democratic state. In my book, The Concept of an Islamic State in Pakistan: An Analysis of Ideological Controversies (Lahore: Vanguard, no date given but 1991 or 1992), I had written:

Pakistan meant different things to different people. To the landlords it meant continued leadership; to the doctrinal-minded Muslims, a unique opportunity to create an Islamic state in the light of their ideas; to the Muslim intelligentsia and the poorer classes, a state where social and economic justice would prevail and their dignity established according to Iqbalite teachings; to the peasants, freedom from the yoke of the Hindu money-lender; to the regional leaders, greater autonomy than was expected in a united India dominated by the Congress; to the Muslim bourgeoisie, the necessary environment where they could develop their potential, which seemed choked in a united India due to the many times greater strength of Hindu and Parsee capital based in Bombay and Calcutta; to the bureaucrats and the military an excellent opportunity to secure quick promotions; and to the military establishment it brought a central role in a country where the civilian political process was dependent from the beginning upon its support and active participation (page 80-81).

Mountbatten. In the background a countdown calendar to the transfer of power

These lines were written in 1984 for my doctoral dissertation. At that time I had no clue that Great Britain or rather the British military was another stakeholder in the Pakistan state project, and it is with its cooperation that the Muslim League succeeded in bringing about the partition of India. I have now provided proof of it by quoting verbatim from the horse’s mouth. No doubt the Congress Party and the Sikhs retaliated by demanding the partitions of Bengal and Punjab. Did any of the main leaders understand really that havoc would be wreaked upon millions of millions of innocent people whether Hindu, Muslim or Sikh? I don’t think fully but they could not have been completely unaware of the consequences a disputed division of India, Bengal and Punjab would entail. However, if the British military had stuck to its assessment of 11 May 1946 that a united India served their purpose better, notwithstanding Nehru’s anti-imperialism, history would have taken a very different direction. Therefore there was nothing inevitable about the partition, but it happened. And now we need to show maturity and accept the facts.

I toured India recently and spoke to many audiences. I got the distinct feeling that nobody wants Pakistan to merge into India. In fact rightwing Hindus are quite pleased India was partitioned. Equally, in Pakistan there is no will or desire to amalgamate into India. However, culturally, historically, and geographically the truth is: “There is an Indian in every Pakistani and a Pakistani in every Indian”. Ex-president Asif Ali Zardari made this fantastic remark and it is true. Culture unites but politics divides. Here I am using culture as a much larger concept than religion. Music, poetry, food, so many habits and hang-ups, prejudices and aspirations are the same. The Lahore film industry and film industries elsewhere in pre-partition India attracted talent from all religions and regions and the beauty they created was shared by all and sundry. The late General Zia was an avid watcher of Indian films and could sing as well. His most famous protégé Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is also a film buff yet both were keen to pander to the most reactionary Islamic constituencies and our only successful Islamic socialist, ZA Bhutto initiated Islamic measures that paved the way for General Zia’s comprehensive Islamization measures.

Split into two

In 1947, we missed a great opportunity to build together a progressive, secular and democratic united India. I am afraid that in 2013 we may miss a great opportunity to claim our right and share in economic development by not whole-heartedly taking part in converting South Asia into a zone of peace and prosperity through trade and commerce. We should not be a nation which specializes in missing opportunities. I do not for a moment doubt that in India too there are powerful forces, which do not want the people of these two nations to live in peace, trust and solidarity. Defeating them is the responsibility of Indian humanists, Gandhians, pacifists, internationalists, Marxists, South Asianists and just good people from all religions and indeed poets and writers and others. Pakistani peace lovers of similar varieties have to do the same. India and Pakistan can through SAARC build a bright future for their people.

The partition of India, Bengal and Punjab is not the only partition which has bequeathed a bitter legacy of territorial disputes and forced migrations and so on. After WW I the map of the Middle East was redrawn and when the mandates ended it looked very different from what existed when the Ottoman Empire was the ruling power in that region. The creation of Israel is a case in point. However, I am always willing to accept that reality, provided the Israelis agree to accept an independent and sovereign Palestinian state next to it. In Africa particularly colonization and decolonization took a very heavy toll of life as tribes and clans were divided and new states came into being. So, two or three states emerging instead of one on the Indian subcontinent is not all that strange.

Yet I am convinced British colonialism laid the foundations of modern society in the colonies. The railways, telegraph system, roads, bridges, and modern ideas of the rule of law and overall peace and stability were its outstanding contributions. Indian had stagnated since many centuries and oriental despotism prevailed all around. The British came with a more advanced civilization but they had to go because modern consciousness rejected foreign rule. Once upon a time that was not a problem. The truth is that the Congress Party’s claim to represent all Indians was an overstatement. Till the end large numbers of Indians, of all religions and of many regions, remained loyal to the British. There is a school of thought which believes that we would have been better off as a British Dominion than as two independent states.

The truth is that the British were not planning to grant independence to either a united India or a divided one, but WW II broke the back of the Raj and US pressure to grant independence to this region became irresistible. The salaries of the British military were being paid by the Americans and in the new world order there was no scope for colonies. The Cold War however polarized the world and instead of colonies a system of dependent or neo-colonial/post-colonial states came into being in which instead of direct rule by an imperial power the system of control was through economic and military pacts. India successfully kept out of it but we could not. I have explained fully why this happened in my latest book, Pakistan: The Garrison State – Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013).