NWFP History: Referendum and the Pakhtunistan demand

[Halaku Khan]

Conspiracy theories galore I see.

Halaku, as the reviewer repeatedly stresses, Sarilla's argument is a 'thesis' not fact. Sarilla's argument is based on a selective interpretation of events and quotes (I read excerpts on BR where the book played like a snake to a snake charmer, not surprisingly), to somehow explain away the existence of Pakistan not as the culmination of a movement of the people inhabiting the lands comprising Pakistan and the leadership chosen to represent them, but as some sort of 'grand British conspiracy to split mother India'.

All of science is a "thesis", i.e. interpretation of data. So is Sarila's work. And the data he uses is very sound.

I'm not denying that Pakistan was a culmination of a movement. The fanaticism that Jinnah was exploiting in the service of the British has been present since before British rule. The pay-back for Jinnah was political power.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

All of science is a "thesis", i.e. interpretation of data. So is Sarila's work. And the data he uses is very sound.

Data can be interpreted multiple ways - Sarilla IMO selectively picks quotes and excerpts that support his POV.

I'm not denying that Pakistan was a culmination of a movement. The fanaticism that Jinnah was exploiting in the service of the British has been present since before British rule. The pay-back for Jinnah was political power.

Any different from the 'fanaticism and exploitation' that established India and resulted in 'political power' for the Congress leadership?

 

[Halaku Khan]

Data can be interpreted multiple ways - Sarilla IMO selectively picks quotes and excerpts that support his POV.

That's where Occam's razor comes in. Ultimately it is for the individual to decide what theory best explains the undeniable facts.

Any different from the 'fanaticism and exploitation' that established India and resulted in 'political power' for the Congress leadership?

The polar opposite of the Muslim League was the Hindu Mahasabha (not the Congress or the RSS, by the way). Jinnah and Nehru were both beneficiaries, and both were complicit to varying extents.

The British tried to support the Hindu Mahasabha too. However, as compared to the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha had only a very marginal influence.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

That's where Occam's razor comes in. Ultimately it is for the individual to decide what theory best explains the undeniable facts.

Occam's razor would suggest the people of Pakistan and the leadership they chose to represent them chose to live as an independent nation.

Convoluted conspiracy theories of the British playing 'great games' and manipulating millions of people and their leadership to somehow fiddle with the map of a colonized region as they left it is the really 'far from simple' explanation.

The polar opposite of the Muslim League was the Hindu Mahasabha (not the Congress or the RSS, by the way). Jinnah and Nehru were both beneficiaries, and both were complicit to varying extents.

The British tried to support the Hindu Mahasabha too. However, as compared to the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha had only a very marginal influence.

The polar opposite of the ML was the Congress and its leadership.

If the ML demanded rights based on one particular aspect of the identity of the people it represented, then the Congress did so on the basis of another.

If the ML chose faith as an identity and cultural characteristic that required autonomy if not independence, then the Congress chose to make a similar case on the basis of race and culture as well.

If ML was communal then were Congress and Gandhi racists?

 

[Halaku Khan]

Excerpts from "The Invention of Pakistan: How the British Raj Sundered" by Karl E. Meyer, World Policy Journal, Spring 2003.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj03-1/meyer.pdf

All this lay ahead in 1946 when Caroe took up the reins as governor in Peshawar. His predecessor, Sir George Cunningham, at that point found little enthusiasm for joining Pakistan. In his diary, the outgoing governor quoted a Muslim visitor as saying that for “the average Pathan villager, a suggestion of Hindu domination was only laughable.” The Muslim League’s weakness was confirmed in March provincial elections. Though Muslim League candidates inveighed against the Hindu Raj, Dr. Khan Sahib’s Congress Party nonetheless carried thirty of fifty legislative seats. As independence loomed, the North-West Frontier was India’s only Muslim-majority province not governed by a Muslim League ministry. This put its last British governor in a delicate position. When Nehru proposed a tour of the frontier to rally his Congress allies, Caroe warned vainly against the trip on security grounds. On his arrival in September 1946, Nehru was greeted at the airport by thousands of jeering Islamic militants waving black flags and, as Caroe had predicted, the trip proved a humiliation. The stage was set for months of communal thuggery as Muslim gangs attacked Sikhs and Hindus in the province’s Settled Areas (as they were formally known).

To the Khan brothers, the import was plain—that Sir Olaf was promoting the tumult to discredit them. On May 6, 1947, Ghaffar Khan accused Caroe of joining “an open conspiracy with the Muslim League to bathe the province in blood” by condoning “the murder of innocent men, women and children.”

The charge was delivered in anger. Doubtless Dr. Khan Sahib’s rattled provincial government made its own overzealous mistakes, and I find it hard to believe that Caroe connived in murder. Yet he did have a record of surreptitiously promoting his strongly held views and leaving few fingerprints. Some thumb marks, however, survived. Tucked deep in State Department files in the National Archives in Washington is this report by a visiting U.S. official of his interview with Caroe in May 1947: “Sir Olaf indicated that the Foreign Office tended too much to look upon India as a peninsular unit like Italy.... He felt it did not sufficiently realize the great political importance of the Northwest Frontier Province and Afghanistan, which he described as ‘the uncertain vestibule’ in future relations between Soviet Russia and India.” Caroe expressed regret that his own government played down Soviet penetration of frontier areas like Gilgit, Chitral, and Swat, adding “he would not be unfavorable to the establishment of a separate Pakhistan [sic].”

Nehru and the Khan brothers thus had valid grounds for doubting Caroe’s impartiality when the viceroy took the unusual step of approving a plebiscite on the future of the frontier province—elsewhere the choice between India and Pakistan was made by provincial ministries or princely rulers. As a gesture to Congress, Mountbatten also determined that Caroe was “suffering badly from nerves” and asked him to request a leave as provincial governor until the transfer of power. Caroe complied. A deputy presided as the referendum took place on July 17, its one-sided judgment in favor of joining Pakistan marred by charges of fraud and intimidation and by a boycott that kept half the 5 million eligible Pashtun voters from the polls. On August 17, as Pakistan came into existence, Dr. Khan Sahib refused to resign as chief minister. He and his cabinet were peremptorily dismissed, and a Muslim League ministry installed. Dr. Khan Sahib was subsequently jailed and later made his peace with Islamabad, serving briefly as a Pakistani minister before he was slain by an unforgiving Pashtun in 1957 in Lahore.

Of the leaders, the greatest loser was Ghaffar Khan. In newborn India he was all but abandoned by his former Congress Party allies, while in newborn Pakistan he was charged with sedition and promoting separatism. It made no difference that he took an oath of allegiance to the new state, or that he repeatedly insisted he sought autonomy for Pashtuns within Pakistan. He was repeatedly jailed or kept under house arrest until his death in Peshawar in 1988 at the age of ninety-eight. At his request, he was buried in the Afghan city of Jalalabad. His memory was honored by a cease-fire in the ongoing Afghan war as 20,000 mourners formed a cortege extending through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Otherwise, the khan of khans was simply scrubbed from history ...

 

[Halaku Khan]

Convoluted conspiracy theories of the British playing 'great games' and manipulating millions of people and their leadership to somehow fiddle with the map of a colonized region as they left it is the really 'far from simple' explanation.

Tch, tch, it really is the simplest explanation. It becomes a "convoluted conspiracy theory" only for those wanting to studiously ignore lots of very well-established data.

If the ML chose faith as an identity and cultural characteristic that required autonomy if not independence, then the Congress chose to make a similar case on the basis of race and culture as well.

If ML was communal then were Congress and Gandhi racists?

The general consensus within the Congress was a big-tent approach; what they did not want to do was to recognize communal identities or sole spokesmen.

 

[Halaku Khan]

Occam's razor would suggest the people of Pakistan and the leadership they chose to represent them chose to live as an independent nation.

The demand for Pakistan was strongest in the Muslim-minority area of UP. The people of Muslim majority areas that presently comprise Pakistan never had any fear of Hindu domination in a united India. Therefore such fears had to be artificially created through propaganda, rioting and Direct Action.

You can't fool all the people all the time, but the British and Jinnah did manage to fool a sufficient number of people for a sufficient length of time to create Pakistan.

Now that Pakistan has been created, it is the Punjabi feudal elites, the Military brass, and the Mullahs who are the prime beneficiaries. They therefore have the greatest stake in its continued existence.

 

[EjazR]

The only thing is that the NWFP DID overwhelmingly vote for Pakistan - 98% or something of the electorate that showed up.

You may argue that it as only 50%, but as YLH pointed out, the turnout was identical to the previous elections that were won by KAGK. So you have two votes in a row with an almost identical turnout - that is pretty consistent.

Elections do not always result in a turnout of 100%, there are various factors that play a part in peoples decision to put in the effort to go to a polling booth. Given the consistent turnout in the two votes, I believe one can safely extrapolate that the opinion was reflective of the vast majority of the population of the NWFP.

That is an important qualifier, 98% of electorate that vote is not the same as all NWFP. The 1937 and 46 elections had a much higher turnout than the referendum. I will see if I can find actual documents on the Internet that mentions the voter turnout, but they were definitely one of the highest among all of India's provinces with Orissa-Bihar region being the lowest.

So it would be accurate to say a slight majority was in favor. Similarly in Punjab, you had Allama Mashiriqi's Khaskar Tehreek that was against partition as well that claimed a secular membership of upto 4 million members. As well as the loyalists Unionist party that also opposed the partition.

Only Bengal had a clear majority support for the Pakistan scheme, and Sindh as well by the majority of one vote in the assembly.

===============

I think we are going a bit off topic here but I would just mention that prior to the Congress evicting Hindu Mahasabha members in 1937 and ML members in 1936, a congress member could be a member of both parties. The Hindu Mahasabha members did have a vocal influence although I would't say dominant. For example, based on Nehru Committe, most of what later became "Jinnah's 14 points" were accepted including the highly crucial "Joint electorate" system as well as creation of Sindh and NWFP provinces.

But the Hindu Maha sabha dominated Congress session in Lucknow in 1928 rejected the finidings. Moreover, attendance was poor and many dual ML-Congress members also were unable to attend that session and the resolution was passed without their presence. In 1930, session the implementation of Nehru report was taken up again but Congress-Hindu Mahasaha dual members opposed it.

However, eventually the Congress leadership did implement the reforms but the join electorate could not be implmented because of vested interests among both Hindu and Muslim elites and landlords.

It was only after the partitio and the assasination of Gandhiji and the severe crackdown by Sardar Patel on extremists and their convictions in courts, that they were curtailed in post independant India. Maybe one of the reasons why there were no widspread riots until the 80s when Congress left the ideals of the founding members and started its policies of pseudo-appeasement.

 

[Greywolf]

Now we've veered off completely from the topic as the two gentlemen here - Ejaz R and Halaku are only interested in repeating myths- from an Indian nationalist perspective. There isn't even a ghost of a substantial evidence or proof to second Sarilla's thesis. His is a fascinating story and a concocted history... unless and untill he can back it up with something substantial from the transfer of power papers, it will remain so. The Transfer of Power Papers tell a very different story.

It is ironic that Indians insist on two standards... for their own representative status, 1946 electorate was fine... but for making of Pakistan, it was not. This is what I call ridiculous logic... this is exactly the kind of spurious logic that made partition inevitable.

Now Ejaz mian has dropped another bombshell... bombshell because it is ridiculously untrue... he writes:

"So it would be accurate to say a slight majority was in favor. Similarly in Punjab, you had Allama Mashiriqi's Khaskar Tehreek that was against partition as well that claimed a secular membership of upto 4 million members. As well as the loyalists Unionist party that also opposed the partition. "


Allama Mashriqi's "secular" organization (the central plank of which was Ba-jamaat Namaz mind you - so much for secularism) which was modelled after Nazi SS Troopers (Mashriqi had met Hitler in 1926 and modelled his party after the Nazis) has less than 30000 members... and all of them were Muslim btw.

I am surprised you didn't mention Majlis-e-Ahrar... which was also a similarly "secular" organization which opposed partition. It is also the same organization which after partition led the agitation for the declaration of Ahmadis as kafirs.

The fact is that all these bodies were trounced in the elections... and as the electorate expanded from 1937 to 1946, the Muslim League's gains increased by 10 folds...

Then Halaku mian writes:

"The demand for Pakistan was strongest in the Muslim-minority area of UP. The people of Muslim majority areas that presently comprise Pakistan never had any fear of Hindu domination in a united India. Therefore such fears had to be artificially created through propaganda, rioting and Direct Action. "

This is just bad reading of history. The enthusiasm for the Muslim League was no doubt in the Muslim minority areas... but the enthusiasm for Pakistan came from the Punjab. This is why the League adopted the Pakistan slogan much later than it was in existence because on an all-India level it needed to bring Muslim provinces in line.

The Muslim League resorted to Direct Action Day only after (Nehru claimed in April 1946 that Muslim League was not progressive enough to resort to direct action- this is important to note that till August 1946, Muslim League was known as a constitutional party that did not engage in any mass agitation, rioting or civil disobedience) after the cabinet mission plan was rejected in spirit by Nehru- August 1946. How was it then that the Muslim League won an overwhelming majority in Punjab, Sindh, and Bengal... in early 1946?


H M Seervai has already demolished this ridiculously one-sided view of history that Halaku and EjazR are peddaling here. It is sad to see that just as in Pakistan, India too suffers from nationalist mythology as the main oppressive historical discourse.

"Caroe's partiality"

Olaf Caroe doesn't seem partial to the League from his famous work "The Pathans".

However... the point I made earlier stands... Olaf Caroe had been removed on Congress' demand... and therefore the point made vis a vis the referendum is just not valid.

Instead of posting cut'n'pastes... try and answer the actual points raised.

 

[Greywolf]

Isn't it ironic that all Islamic fanatics ... like Majlis-e-Ahrar, Khaksars and the Deobandis (forerunners of the Taliban) ... supported the Congress party...

If there was fanaticism, it was exploited by Gandhi in form of the Khilafat Movement....and the same Islamic fanatics were used against Jinnah and the Muslim League who were condemned as "liberals", "kemalists" and "Qadiyanis".

Ironically after partition... the same Mullahs- Ahraris, Khaksaris, erstwhile JUH mullahs wanted to convert Pakistan into an Islamic state...

Jinnah on the other hand was clear through out. He started his career as a secular Indian Nationalist in the Congress fold... - the only politician in South Asia's history to be called the best ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity- ... it was Gandhi's methods that made him re-consider his Congress membership... but he didnot give up his vision of a United India... 1929, 1937 and 1946 mark those watershed moments where Jinnah bent over backwards to keep India united...

In 1929 it was the Mahasabha that shot down his plans.... in 1937 Nehru went back on the electoral alliance ... and in 1946, the groupings clause.

And it is probably the most ridiculous thing to say... that Congress had a problem accepting Jinnah as the sole spokesman... Gandhi signed a formula with Jinnah saying that Congress accepted the Muslim League's status as sole representative of Muslims after their overwhelming electoral victory... in which they had secured upto 87% of all Muslim seats in provinces and 100% in the center.

GENERAL ELECTION 1946 :

Total Electorate : 604, 563

Total Votes for Congress + Jamiyat al Ulama : 160, 229 (26.53% of the total electorate) – Muslim votes in this total were 145, 119 which formed 27.6 % of the Muslim electorate.

Total Votes for Muslim League were : 146, 235 = 24.18% of the total electorate = 27.8% of the Muslim electorate.

REFERENDUM 1947

Total Electorate, 578, 798

Total votes for Hindustan 2874= .501% of the electorate.

Total votes for Pakistan 289, 244 = 50.49% of the electorate

Thus the whole argument on which the process was criticized falls flat on its face. Muslim League had emerged as the party with largest popular vote even in 1945-1946 elections. Congress, Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind and other Ulema parties together had barely crossed the League in election itself and in 1947 the Hindustan idea had no takers, even amongst those who supported the Congress and brought it to power in 1946.

 

[Samlee]

That is an important qualifier, 98% of electorate that vote is not the same as all NWFP. The 1937 and 46 elections had a much higher turnout than the referendum. I will see if I can find actual documents on the Internet that mentions the voter turnout, but they were definitely one of the highest among all of India's provinces with Orissa-Bihar region being the lowest.

3 Years And Still No Documents LOL LOL

You Indians and Your History