Jinnah, Gandhi And Nehru: The Cabinet Mission Plan And The Blame For Partition Of British India

Jinnah, Gandhi And Nehru: The Cabinet Mission Plan And The Blame For Partition Of British India.

Key points

• Excerpt from the Note by Major Wyatt of Conversation with Mr Jinnah, Friday, May 24th 1946 from The Transfer of Power 1942-7 Vol VII The Cabinet Mission.
• Backdrop Of Pakistan's Becoming A Nuclear Power: Nehru's Unfulfilled Dream Of Greater India.
• Nehru's Lahore, From Childhood Memories To The Call for Purna Swaraj.
• Why India Is Furious Over Pakistan's Indus Valley Civilization Claim.
• Climate-Smart Agriculture As Pakistan's New Social Contract With Nature.

Jinnah's Pakistan within an Indian union would have eroded both Gandhi's majoritarian vision for India and Nehru's centralising ambitions. A sovereign constituent Pakistan within a United States of India would have been a permanent check on the caste Hindu.

When it is argued that Mr Jinnah was ready to accept a limited union in form of the Cabinet Mission Plan, it was never a question of abandoning the Pakistan demand for Mr Jinnah but purely a question of constitutional law: what relationship Pakistan I.e. Autonomous and sovereign Muslim majority areas would have with the rest of India. Would it be in a federation or a confederation or something else?

There are a few basic points that need to be created here. The existence of one united British India from Afghanistan to Burma was not the gospel truth. Sam Dalrymple's Shattered Lands demonstrates that the British Indian empire at its zenith contained within numerous other lands as well, including Aden, Burma etc. So it was never one country.

Pick up the map of the subcontinent before the advent of the British and you see that the subcontinent was not a single entity, except for a brief period – literally 2 or 3 years- under Aurangzeb. Even under Aurangzeb, the unity was achieved through brow beating of other powers like the Marathas etc. Into becoming vassal states of the Mughal Empire.

So when the overlordship of the British was ending, the question was of the future of a deeply fractured subcontinent. Could united India have existed? Yes but it required a consociation-like solution and that is precisely what the Cabinet Mission Plan delivered.

But before we analyse the merits of that plan, let us look at Mr Jinnah and the Muslim League. Mr Jinnah had formally joined the Congress party in 1906 and that was the same year that Muslim League was formed. Ironically Mr Jinnah was amongst the earliest critics of the idea that Muslims should have a party of their own as well as the Simla Deputation. Jinnah's politics from then to the 1930s at least was defined by his commitment to the somewhat ahistorical, anachronistic and emotional idea that British India was indeed one country. In practice, the separation of Burma in 1935 as well as the writings of visionaries like Chaudhry Rehmat Ali created Mr Jinnah radically reconsider his own erroneous Indian nationalist view. This change of approach in Jinnah is observed by none other than Jawaharlal Nehru in his book Discovery of India.

Notably, the Motilal Nehru Report And Jinnah's 14 Points.

Yet, this did not mean that Jinnah had abandoned his dream of a united India. His idea of a united India was one of plenty of mansions – a unity above Hindustan and Pakistan which would be the substantial constituent units of a grand federation. His acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan therefore was consistent with the Pakistan demand as he understood it and as it was expressed in the main foundational document of the country I.e. Lahore Resolution.

Maulana Azad was honest enough to admit it in his book India wins Freedom. H M Seervai, the great Indian jurist, concluded similarly in his Partition of India Legend and Reality. Azad and Seervai had no reason to absolve Jinnah of the blame of partition.

Much is created of how he sold the Cabinet Mission Plan to his working committee of the Muslim League. Here it is instructive to read Major Woodrow Wyatt's account. Major Woodrow Wyatt was a liberal MP who had accompanied the Cabinet Mission in 1946. His second session with Jinnah on May 24, 1946 is significant. In it Mr Jinnah seems to be plain that he wants to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan but is in a tough situation with the League and needs a face saving to do so. I quote the account of that session.

I asked him, in view of the foregoing, whether he thought that the Muslim League Working Committee might possibly pass a resolution on the after lines.

For context, the British had exceeded their brief in pronouncing on the merits of Pakistan. They had no business to turn down what millions of individuals wanted. Their analysis of Pakistan was outrageous. But the Muslims had never projected the British to provide them Pakistan. They had never projected anyone to provide them Pakistan. They knew they had to obtain it by their own robust right arm.

Notably, the scheme outlined in the Cabinet Mission's Statement was impracticable and could not work. Although they knew that the machinery could not function, they would accept the Statement and would not go out of their way to sabotage the procedure-but they would accept the Statement as the first step on the road to Pakistan, but nevertheless so as to show that they would offer it a trial.

At this proposition he was delighted and remarked "That's it, you've got it", and I am completely convinced that that is what the Muslim League will do.

He will demand parity in the Interim Administration if he decides to come into it.

Even though Congress had initially accepted the plan, it is often argued by Congress circles, starting with Nehru and Gandhi themselves, that the plan provided for a too watered down a federation to viably exist. The only thing that the plan did was provide sovereignty to constituent units. There was no bar on these constituent units finally choosing out of their free will to establish a closer union. The United States of America began off as a confederation. Article II of the Articles of Confederation stated.

"Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right. It is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled".

It is precisely what the Muslim majority provinces were asking for starting with Mr Jinnah's 14 points. It is a lazy argument to say that the question in the USA was not of a religious division. The demand by the Muslim League was couched in provincial rights and not strictly communal terms, in so much as the League asked for sovereign and autonomous units and not sovereign and autonomous communities. It was regarding Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, NWFP and Bengal forming a federation of their own or coming into an all-India Federation on the principle that residuary powers lie with the provinces. Even Gandhi pointed this out to Jinnah when they debated the two nation theory I.e., the demand as embodied in the Lahore Resolution did not refer to the two nation theory. Was the demand that provinces be sovereign and autonomous with residuary provinces organised in groups so unreasonable and unworkable? To this I can only present the 10th Amendment to the current US Constitution.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

This is precisely the residuary powers principle that the Muslim majority provinces had been asking for since the 1920s. The underlying sentiment was the Muslim majority provinces escaping the tyranny of a Hindu dominated centre but it was additionally couched in constitutional language of provincial rights, right from Mr Jinnah's 14 points. If it could be granted in an otherwise homogenous protestant Christian USA of 1789, it should have been granted in a multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic and dare I say a multi-national India. Strangely, even today the Union of India vests residuary powers entirely in the centre and not the states, unlike Pakistan where residuary powers are vested in the provinces.

It is clear that India's majoritarian Hindu rulers, be they of Congress or BJP persuasion, haven't learnt anything from history. It is this Nehruvian hubris that caused the partition of India, not the Pakistan demand. The Pakistan demand I.e., sovereign and autonomous Muslim majority provinces was completely compatible with the idea of a United States of India and Sir Aga Khan III had called it precisely that. It was entirely feasible that had Nehru did not sabotage the Cabinet Mission Plan with his mala fide interpretation of Clause 15 of the Cabinet Mission Plan, that a Union of India based on the Cabinet Mission Plan would have reconstituted itself as a closer union I.e., United States of India, with Pakistan, Hindustan, Bengal/Assam and Dravidistan as its constituent units. There was no explicit right to secede in the CMP. What was there was a provision for reconsideration of terms. It could have gone either way and if there had been a division afterwards, at the highly least it would have been peaceable and not the kind of violent tearing asunder that caused the deaths of 200, 000 to 800, 000 individuals in 1947.

For context, the conflict over the provisions of the plan was an entirely manufactured one. Congress argued that the grouping clause of the plan was optional. League argued that it was the basic premise. The Cabinet Mission in its statement on the matter produced it clear that the League's position was the correct legal and constitutional position and the only way to resolve the deadlock.

It was utter lack of statesmanship and foresight on part of Congress leaders, especially Nehru but additionally Gandhi that caused partition. Jinnah had bent over backwards and taken immense political risk to ensure that India would stay united. There is no escaping the conclusion that the division of India and partition of Punjab and Bengal was the doing of the Congress leadership. Even Lord Wavell who admitted to having disliked Jinnah was forced to conclude that Nehru and Gandhi were not honest men interested in India's future and that Jinnah had been right all along in his suspicions.

Notably, the responsibility therefore lies squarely with the Congress high command and not Jinnah or the Pakistan demand. Pakistan demand if taken in the context of the Lahore Resolution provided the precise consociational basis of an India above Pakistan and Hindustan. Unfortunately Gandhi and Nehru were too driven by their own political ideologies to keep India's unity front and centre to their politics.

When Glaciers Melt, Blame Is No Shield.

Yasser Latif Hamdani is a barrister at law and the author of the book Jinnah; A Life. Muslims Against The Muslim League – And Why Opposing Jinnah Failed. The Motilal Nehru Report And Jinnah's 14 Points. Nehru's Lahore, From Childhood Memories To The Call for Purna Swaraj. Did Jinnah Abandon The Demand For Pakistan? From Disappointment To A Plan: Reviving Pakistan Hockey. China's New Health Plan And A Practical Roadmap For Pakistan. KASHMIR: The History India & Pakistan Tell Differently Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed. How Khojas, Bohras & Memons Built India's Economy Danish Khan.

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In short, jinnah, Gandhi And Nehru: The Cabinet Mission Plan And The Blame For is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.