1. Integrated Degree (Year 0) Empires, Nations and Lines on map
Week 11: Conceptualising ‘nation’: Partition of India [1947]

2. Lecture Structure Historiography of partition and independence
Devolution and Muslim politics
The provincial elections and the growth of the Pakistan movement
Muslim League and the Second World War
Simla Conference 1945
Prelude to partition
Direct Action Day
Partition violence in Punjab and Bengal
Partition and Independence

4. Historiography
British officials and imperialist historians present the end of British rule in India as a well-organised, peaceful transition of power from the benevolent British to a now mature Indian leadership
Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten (center), Jawaharlal Nehru (extreme left) and Mohammad Ali Jinnah (right) prepare for the transfer of power from the British Crown, 1947

5. Nehru and Jinnah address their new nations, 14th/15th August 1947
Historiography
Indian politicians and nationalist historians see independence in terms of a nation claiming its true freedom from the British – see Indian nationalism as the most important factor in ending British rule in India
Nehru and Jinnah address their new nations, 14th/15th August 1947

6. Historiography – partition
Nationalist historians, in both India and Pakistan, continue to debate about the nature of the partition, which came alongside independence.
They also try to seek for answers as to why and how partition became a reality.
Pakistani nationalist historians continue to explain the growth of Pakistan movement, and the emergence of Pakistan on the ‘Two nation theory’, propagated from 1939 onwards.
While Indian nationalists (historians and others) continue to conveniently blame British policies of ‘divide and rule’.
Interestingly however, none of this explains the sudden popular growth for the demand of Pakistan and the actual violence which accompanied the partition.

7. Revisionist Approaches
Jalal’s seminal work examined how Jinnah proposed to resolve the contradiction between a demand for a separate Muslim state and the need for a strategy which could safeguard the interests of all Indian Muslims.
The book attempts to identify Jinnah’s real political aims, the reasons why he was reluctant to bring them into open, and his success or failure in achieving them.
Ayesha Jalal, ‘The sole spokesman’ (Cambridge, 1985)

9. Popular experiences of partition

11. Devolution and Muslim politics
1919 Government of India Act
DYARCHY - a division of the state’s responsibilities
Central government retains control over some aspects of government but more day-to-day affairs are transferred to the provinces where Indians are to play a more significant role in government
Just over 3% of population can vote.
Separate Muslim electorate retained.

12. Indian Muslims

13. 1935 Government of India Act
Provincial autonomy
AND
Proposes an all-India federation including the more conservative Princely states

14. Federation under 1935 Act
United Provinces

15. 1937 election results AIML wins only 4.4% of the Muslim vote NWFP
United Provinces
Assam
Sindh
Bihar
Central Provinces
Orissa
Bombay
Madras

16. 1937 election results NWFP PUNJAB United Provinces Assam Sindh Bihar
Central Provinces
BENGAL
Orissa
Bombay
Madras

17. Members of the Muslim League in 1938
Nation vs. minority
Critical for arguments about Hindu-Muslim parity
Language of nation moves away from the idea of a Muslim ‘minority’ to ‘majority’.
Members of the Muslim League in 1938

18. The Muslim League in World War II
Britain look to support of Muslim League to challenge INC’s claim to speak for all India
From 1940, British officials promise not to transfer power to any constitutional system whose authority is denied or rejected by “large and powerful elements in India’s national life”

19. Lahore Resolution (1940)
The All India Muslim League in March 1940 passed the Lahore resolution, which says any constitutional plan must have:
“geographically contiguous units…demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the north-western and eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute ‘Independent States’, in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign”.

21. Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman seconding the Lahore resolution with Jinnah and Liaquat Ali chairing the session

22. War time changes 1942 Quit India movement
Dec 1942 – death of Punjabi leader Sikander Hayat Khan
Bengal famine (2.1 million people died)

23. Popular support for ‘Pakistan’
March 1940, Lahore, March in support of League meeting and Pakistan resolution

24. The Gandhi-Jinnah talks
19th-27th September Jinnah and Gandhi hold a series of talks in Bombay

25. Gandhi’s proposals

26. Transfer of power and partition
Britain keen to protect the unity of India
Want to transfer power NOT to provinces but to an all-India level power

27. Simla Conference 1945
The Simla Conference was a 1945 meeting between Viceroy and the major political leaders of India at Simla, India.
Convened to agree on and approve the Wavell Plan for Indian self- government, it reached a potential agreement for the self-rule of India that provided separate representation to Muslims and reduced majority powers for both communities in their majority regions.
Talks stalled, however, on the issue of selection of Muslim representatives. Seeking to assert itself and its claim to be the sole representative of Indian Muslims, the All-India Muslim League refused to back any plan in which the Indian National Congress, the dominant party in the talks, appointed Muslim representatives.

29. Nehru and Jinnah taking stroll during the Simla Conference, 1945

30. Simla Conference, 1945
At the Conference: Rajendra Prasad, Jinnah, C. Rajagopalachari and Maulana Azad

31. 1945/6 Elections
Congress wins 91.3% of non-Muslim vote across the country
BUT only 4.6% of Muslim seats
Muslim League win 86% of Muslim votes for central government and 74.7% of all Muslim seats in provincial assemblies

32. Cabinet Mission
May a Cabinet Mission arrive in India to discuss constitutional options aimed to discuss and plan for the transfer of power from the British Government to Indian leadership.
Mr. Jinnah negotiating with members of the Cabinet Mission. (Anti-clockwise Stafford Cripps.

33. Indian delegates at the Cabinet Mission meeting

34. Direct Action Day
16th August Jinnah calls on Muslims across India to protest against the Congress’s position regarding the Cabinet Mission Plan.
The result is the Direct Action Day, also known as the Great Calcutta Killings, was a day of widespread riot and manslaughter between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Calcutta.
More than 4,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 residents were left homeless in Calcutta within 72 hours.
This violence sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali Bihar, United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North Western Frontier Province.
These events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India.

35. Gandhi was successful in bringing partial peace during ‘Noakhali carnage’.
Between October–November 1946, 5,000 Hindus were killed, hundreds of Hindu women were raped and thousands of Hindu men and women were forcibly converted to Islam.

36. British withdrawal
20th February 1947 Clement Attlee declares that the British will withdraw from India by June 1948
March 1947 –Louis Mountbatten appointed to replace Wavell as the Viceroy.
Mountbatten quickly announces that the date for British departure will be pushed forward to August 1947

37. Lord Mountbatten preparing for the transfer of power.

38. The historic conference in New Delhi in June 1947 at which Lord Mountbatten disclosed Britain's "Partition" plan for India.

39. Congress vote for partition
3rd June 1947: members of the AICC vote to accept the proposal.

40. Partition violence

41. Mass migration
UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history.

42. Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan in Bela, Bihar, after attacks on Muslims, 28 March 1947.

43. Why was Pakistan created?
Summing up
Why was Pakistan created?
What about the role of the British?
How did imperial concerns help to drive the creation of Pakistan?
Two nation theory?
How united were Indian Muslims?
Did Jinnah push for partition while Congress opposed it?
Dividing up a library at the time of 1947 partition [Photo: Life Magazine, August 1947]