Partition of India- A Cold War Strategy

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Contrary to the general perception that the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan were to meet the long-standing demand of the Congress and the Muslim League, the actual reason that lay behind these two historic developments was the emergence of the Cold War that engulfed the entire Europe soon after the World War II. The lurking fear that India might go the communist way, not only forced Great Britain (a prominent member of the Western Block) to grant independence to India but also to partition the country so as to keep a foot-hold on the sub-continent, for the protection of her own Indian-ocean interests. To prevent any contiguity of India with the USSR through Kashmir, the Western Block wanted the state of Kashmir to accede to Pakistan Having failed to get this done, through the efforts of Lord Mountbatten they persuaded Pt.Nehru, of course through Mountbatten, to refer the Kashmir issue to the UNO, when the Indian forces were about to push the Pakistani forces out of the state completely, Consequently, the part of Kashmir contiguous with the U.S.S.R remained with Pakistan. With the aim of keeping India a weak and troubled state, in the case of Hyderabad too the efforts of the Western Block were (of course, through Lord Mountbatten) to keep an independent sovereign Muslim state, friendly to Pakistan, in the heart of India.

A postgraduate in History and Political Science, Dr. TL Sharma has a Doctorate degree in History and has been the Head of the Department of History in HP University Centre for Evening Studies Shimla, for more than two decades. Having guided research at M.Phil and Ph.D levels, Dr. Sharma has been teaching History and Political Science in SDB College Shimla, and the Punjab University Evening College Shimla. He has not only taught Modem Indian History at H. P University Post Graduate Centre but has also taught Post Graduate and M.Phil students during contact programmes of International Centre of Distance Education and Learning of HP University. Besides, Dr Sharma has often been invited to deliver lectures on History and General Knowledge to candidates preparing for competitive examinations like HAS and IAS through classes run by the HP Government Institute of Public Administration. An avid historian Dr Sharma has extensively dealt with issues like untouchability and Hindu Muslim relations in India. In his book The Origin of Untouchability Dr Sharma emphasises that untouchability had no founders, mundane or divine, but was a self evolutionaryphenomenon; a spontaneous social reaction to the circumstances of the society In Hindu Muslim Relations in All India Politics (1913-1925) he analyses the relations between the two groups while they were undergoing drastic transformations in their reactions towards each other.

It is generally believed that India's partition was due to the Hindu-Muslim antagonism. As the Muslim League, under Jinnah, having refused to live with the Hindus, demanded a separate country for the Muslims, the British out of compassion for them partitioned the country and created Pakistan. But could that minor thing be a real cause for such a big decision, and that too for a foreign power that was on the verge of leaving the country? Hindus and Muslims had been living together in India for the last so many centuries, and are still living so, in independent India. Had their antagonism, which to a larger extent, was the creation of the British themselves, been the real cause, such a large number of Muslims would not be living in free India today. The real cause for India's partition, therefore must be found elsewhere.

Soon after Nehru was released from the British jail in June 1945, he was invited to help the British in Malaya to calm down the Indians living there, who were protesting against the British mal-treatment of the INA prisoners of war. Nehru accepted the invitation, did the job and was also given a rousing reception by the Mountbattens, which later developed into a lasting friendship, especially and significantly between Nehru and Lady Edwina Mountbatten.

It is also noteworthy to point out that Louise Johnson, the personal envoy of the President Roosevelt of the U.S.A., had also cabled the President that Nehru had been "magnificent in his cooperation with me. The President would like him, and on most things he agreed."

After the uprising of 1857 no serious effort was made either by the princes or the people of India, against the British. As a matter of fact, the princes, after the uprising had been completely tamed and rendered powerless, by the British, to take any offensive action against them. So far as the people, in general, were concerned, there, hardly, was any precedence to follow or incentive to unite for any precipitate action against the foreign rule. Moreover, the British policy of complete disarming of the natives, which was hardly objected to, or even, resented by latter, too, had made them, incapable of any armed action against them (the British). The only way left to them was to agitate peacefully to redress their grievances. The Indian National Congress, a political party at all India level was organised in 1885, by some well-meaning and enthusiastic people with the active help and support of a retired British 1.C.S. officer, Allan Octavian Hume. In 1883, Hume wrote an open letter to the young graduates of Calcutta University, urging them to form an association for the moral, social, political and national regeneration of the people of India. His efforts brought fruit by the close of the year 1884 and an all-India association-Indian National Union, was formed. By the end of 1885, representatives of the Indian National Union, from all over the country, met at Bombay. On the suggestion of Dadabhai Narojee, the name of the association was changed from Indian National Union to Indian National Congress. This is how the historic Indian National Congress emerged, which was destined to play a vital role in the future politics of India, and to regain the long lost freedom of the country, not by force of arms, but by the force of reason.

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