iFaqeer on Early Challenges (1947-48)
iFaqeer June 18th, 2007
Athar’s post about the year under Jinnah Saahab is sobering. The first thing that jumps out–or should jump out, if one is not completely in denial–is that, however much respect and regard one has for the Quaid, is that his over-arching assessment, that “he left a legacy as the first Governor General that could be described as mixed or “incomplete”, at best” is very hard to argue with.
Secondly, the detailed statistics and economic/resource breakdown of the “Partition” that he puts together–I wish this had been part of the Pak Studies curriculum, rather than–or at least in addition to–the list of woes that we got. Things that specifically caught my eye:
* Only one million out of the 6.5 million refugees/immigrants fit the profile of what we today call the “Muhajirs”–people from Delhi, and other parts of India, particularly UP.
* Pakistan had a good agricultural base, with 75% of its farmed area having irrigation facilities, and receiving 70% of British India jute capacity–the latter, if I am not wrong, being the world’s largest.
On the negative side, too, Athar provides details of the woes that befell Pakistan in more detail and clarity than I remember from previous reading. But the the point that is startling–though oh, so obvious if you think about it, is this:
“With resources and destinies so interlinked with each other (i.e. Pakistan’s dependence on India’s goodwill for its water, and India’s dependence on Pakistan’s raw material for its factories), much was dependent upon the goodwill between the two countries. Leaders on both sides made public statements that suggested that they expected nothing short of that. Some had, in the past, even suggested the possibility of a joint-defense pact between the two countries. However, in reality the relationship that emerged, as the ashes of the partition settled, was everything but cordial. This took leaders on both sides by surprise…” They had been colleagues in a heartfelt movement, if representing different threads in it, for decades up till that point.
This something that both Pakistanis and Indians (and, if you ask me, Bangladeshis) should really, really sit down and think about.
“But then what went wrong?” asked a young Hyderabadi friend recently. (Yes, he lives, as the saying goes, “in the Deccan”.) Well, as I was saying in my last post, I think the partition of the Punjab and Bengal, and especially how it was done, pretty much poisoned the well. Now whether one sees irresponsibility or malice in that can be a matter of opinion.
Which, as these discussions are wont to, brings us to Philip, Lord Mountbatten. And Athar does a very good job of laying out what the whole discussion, now going on 6 decades, is around his wanting to be, and Jinnah not letting him be, Governor General of both the new Domains, so to speak. Of course, not to sound like a broken record, but the quotation Athar provides is again something that one does not see in the mainstream discourse with such specificity and clarity. It brings home the point that this is not just a historic revisionism and Monday-morning-six-decades-later quarterbacking–it was a live discussion at the time.
It is on the Kashmir issue that I am not completely there with Athar. I haven’t researched the issue as much as Athar has. But what I have heard, even from Indian friends that have researched the issue doesn’t fit the “Maharaja dragged his feet; Muslim Kashmiris rose in revolt; Tribesmen from across the border joined in; Maharaja acceded; India sent troops” picture. For one thing, there’s a lot of discussion around the Article of Accession itself. Starting with the assertion that there was only ever one copy–which has now gone missing and there is no way of authenticating the signature on it. The rumour, and the accusatory assertions and the innuendo is all over the map on the issue. Ian Stephens, as far back as the 50s busted a few myths, saying that Nehru made a point of confiding to him that Jinnah was in Muzaffarabad “ready to ride into Srinagar in triumph in his limousine” (if I remember the quote right) but when Sir Ian researched the issue he found that Jinnah had spent the whole summer in Karachi. And on, and on, and round and round. It would be interesting to hear from someone who’s done some original digging on the subject.
Which brings us to the topic probably least discussed in the Pakistani context: the Quaid’s management of the ship of state–and it’s parts. I have to admit that I am no exception–most of that was an education for myself. The discussion of his tours of East Pakistan and the Frontier were useful, leave me wishing for more detail. For example, one hears of near-meetings, or near-misses, between Jinnah Saahab and Bacha Khan. Would history have been different if the two stalwarts for their points of view had met and, as we say in the US, bonded? That’s a question we’ve often asked ourselves on the ground.
The way the Quaid seemingly worked himself to death trying to set up the nation often seems like a cliche. But for some reason, the words “a few minutes past 10 pm on Sept. 11, 1948″, I have to admit, made my skin tingle. I have just never heard them put that way, and that precisely. But then, given “Mr. Jinnah”’s (his preferred sobriquet) personality, that would most probably have been how he’d have wanted it told.
In conclusion, even as detailed and thorough a look at that one year–and that’s all it was 13 months or so–that Athar provides leaves him asking a load of questions. The discussion, really, has just begun.
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