The Key Reasons for Partition

Some learnings from the book ” The Tragic Story of Partition” by Sri H.V.Seshadri. Get your copy here.

Key Reasons for Partition ?

1. Lack of ideological faith in Congress. Their concept of nationhood was emotionless, devoid of life spirit and being limited to territorial, political factors.
2. Lack of National Conviction : Why swaraj ? had been shelved to the background. The sublime national ideals and aspirations forming the life breath of Independence had evaporated.
3. Treating it as a division of brothers. But do you cut your mother too ?
4. Path of national assimilation ignored and a policy of appeasement followed. The slogan became No swaraj without Hindu Muslim unity instead of If you come with me, with you, if you do not, without you ; if you oppose, inspite of you;
5. Toynbee writes ‘ What is Pakistan ? it was the first successful step in this 20th century to realize their ( Muslims) 1200 year old dream of complete subjugation of this country.
6. Hindu backbone broken.. Sarath Chandra Chaterjee writes. When Americans fought for their freedom, more than ½ the people were with the British. In the Irish freedom, how many actually engaged in it ? Right or wrong is not decided by counting heads, it is decided by the intensity of tapasya to the cause. No swaraj without Hindu Muslim unity is an insult to the Hindus.
7. Leadership exhausted and tempted: Dr.Ram Manohar Lohia says,” No shadow of doubt need obscure the simple proposition that a decaying leadership operating in a riotious situation produced partition. A more youthful people may have avoided the division of Hindustan. Not one leader was in jail when the country was getting partitioned. I regret that I did nothing to get into jail at India’s partition.
8. In 1960, speaking to Leonard Mosley, Nehru says” the truth is that we were tired men and we were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going to prison again and if we would have stood out for a united India, as we wished it, prison obviously awaited us. ( In Leonard Mosley’s The British Raj)

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