A question arose in another thread thats quite interesting. Which is did Pakistan get partitioned from India? I noticed the majority view amongst the Indian's was their country 'India' was carved up..
I absolutely reject this contention. My view is that a territory was divided into two states from British India which is not the exact same entity as today's Indian Union.
A good starting point.
And, based on what I have found, I have to present the facts - not my view - that a colony achieved Dominion status, but diminished by a defined extent, which formed another Dominion.
I stated in my previous argument that at the heart of this fallacy is that it was not 'India' as in the present Indian Union that was divided in 1947 and that this misunderstanding rests in the nomenclature. This untruth has been peddled since 1947 and today it's almost accepted as a given.
It was indeed India, the Crown Colony, that was given independence as the Dominion of India, less the territory which was carved out as the Dominion of Pakistan. This Dominion of India became the Union of India, or rather, correctly speaking, the Republic of India in 1950.
This was no untruth, but the naked unadorned fact, and is born out in the documents consulted.
My argument is subtle but the result if I can prove my contention is profound. We in Pakistan don't have to sit like some new upshot in the shadow of a mature, established state to our east. We can look at our neighbour in the eye as a equal.
A grave error. You can already look your neighbour in the eye as an equal. The age of your constituted nation is not a criterion. Pakistan has one vote in the United Nations, just as India does. There are no inequalities among independent, sovereign nations, and Iceland has as much prestige as does Pakistan, in fact, Pakistan, not having defaulted on sovereign debt - yet - probably has more.
First of all I would suggest we sort out the nomenclature issue, which is and has been the cause of this misunderstanding in South Asia and the world. I will give numbered points for ease of discussion and referance.
Why is it that Pakistan constantly paints itself into a corner and then the world must immediately rush to her rescue? If you see a problem, you are alone in doing so. Nothing need be amended, or any bridge arrangements put up.
I will give numbered points for ease of discussion and referance.
1. Today we have two nation states, Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Republic of India. To avoid the nomenclature mixup I will henceforth refer to the Republic of India as Bharat and of course Republic of Pakistan as simply Pakistan.
Why? I object. There are two grounds.
You have raised an issue. Until you have proved that there is a prima facie case for consideration, that issue cannot be used to make interim arrangements and bridging procedures. That predisposes the matter; there is a built-in presumption that there is a serious case, and it must be answered before reverting to the status quo. On the contrary, there is as yet only your argument in chief, without any discussion, without any consent on the part of those opposed to consider them to be weighty and valid.
Why should we go along with this assumption that the arrangement is faulty, simply because it does not suit the Pakistani point of view for whatever reasons? Why is it that whenever written, contracted agreements do not suit Pakistan, she has no difficulty in rejecting those agreements, and demanding that they be treated as null and void, and that the entire matter is a dispute?
I regret that this is not acceptable, amounting to an initial prejudgement of the case, and I shall continue to refer to India, the Republic of India and to Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
The present names and other arrangements must be maintained until you have demonstrated to the satisfaction of at least some that there is a matter to be considered and weighed.
2. Prior to 1947 there was no nation state ( I stress this point ) in the sub continent There existed a territory acquired by a foreign power, piece by piece through hook and crook and driven by imperial greed.
Wrong.
How do you define a nation-state? A geographical body under coherent, integral administration that has a constitution?
If so, then a nation-state existed. Its status was a colony, of another nation-state, but it was nevertheless a nation-state. What the British act of 1947 achieved was independence for this nation-state.
3. This foreign power had over time taken over almost a entire region ( a geographic defintion ) called India.
There are three separate distinct concepts, and it will be helpful if we devoted a few moments to it.
First, there is India, the geography. It extends to the entire landmass to the east of the Hindu Kush, the south of the Himalayas, the west of the forests of Thailand, and north of the Indian Ocean.
Second, there is India, the cultural sphere, the civilisation. This extends from the island of Ceylon, Sri Lanka today, to the town of Kashgar, and into Afghanistan on the west, and to the borders of China and Thailand in the east.
Third, there is India, the political concept, which was never constant through history, but waxed and waned and whose political character and definition changed. At this point of time, in August 1947, it consisted of a centrally administered nation-state, to which was attached 565 principalities over which the Crown was the sovereign.
4. This label 'India' had been around in various forms since antiquity. It had derived from the Sanskrit Sindhu for the river Indus. The Greeks had used label 'India' and it's meaning would have been the land adjacent to Indus River. That is the Sindh Province, today in Pakistan.
The Greeks did no such thing. In matters such as this, the most minute accuracy is required.
First, it is incorrect to infer that the Indus existed, and that Sindhu was the Sanskrit form. For one thing, Sanskrit was a late-day formalisation of the grammar of Indo-Aryan in roughly 650 BC; the knowledge of the river, and its name existed earlier than that.
It was known essentially by the same name, pronounced differently by the Indo-Iranians inhabiting south Asia and Afghanistan and Persia respectively. It was known as Sindhu to the east, in the Indus Valley itself and to the west of the Indus Valley, and as the Hindu to the west, among the Iranian speaking people of Afghanistan and Persia.
When the Greek subjects of the Persian Empire happened along, from the time that the predecessors of Darius consolidated Persian hold over Asia Minor, and allowed their curiousity-driven Greek citizens freedom to travel, the Greek discomfort with aspirates led to the pronunciation "Indus" (not India, let it be noted). When Alexander recovered from the battle of the Hydaspes, and stood contemplating his excursion to trans-Gangetic India, it was very clearly India that he contemplated attacking. So by 330 BC, the name had come to mean the entire geography.
5. Over time this very restricted meaning or understanding of the word 'India' extended eastwards until almost the entire geographic region we call South Asia today came be known as India. Therefore the term India was synonymous with the region we call today South Asia.
It is useful and relevant to this argument as it develops to establish that the Greek term India was applied to the south Asian mass as early as Alexander, and is confirmed in writing by Megasthenes (290 BC). There is a huge difference between 290 BC and 'over time'.
6. Thus not only was the term India synonymous with todays South Asia much like other geographic regional names in use today like Iberia, Scandinavia, Balkans, Maghreb or Indochina.
The geographical connotation has been elaborately dealt with earlier.
7. Maghreb as a region has been known as such for over a millenia, as has Scandinavia but Libya or Finland are recent 'inventions'. If Finland decided to appropriate the regional geographic name Scandinavia for itself it would not then mean that this nation state now going as the Scandinavian Republic has been around since antiquity.
This creates a major opportunity for misrepresentation. In this case, the names of the geography, the cultural-civilisational complex and the political nation-states were the same.
When people refer to the history of India, which exists as an academic concept outside India, and outside the reach and manipulations of the government of India, they refer to the history of these regions as a collective.
8. Also just because it ( Finland ) had appropriated a geograhic regional name for itself it would not mean that it could claim everything within that region, that is the entire history of that region as its own. That would be tantamount to intellectual fraud. That is exactly what Bharat has been doing since 1947. It is almost bordering on identity fraud.
If you wish to sub-divide the civilisation that is India, it is perfectly possible to do so, and it is possible to do so with the greatest economy of classificiation by considering the river basins, and one coastal plain and a mountain plateau.
The basins which contain Indian civilisation are
- The Gangetic Plain
- The Brahmaputra basin
- The Mahanadi basin
- The Krishna-Godavari basin
- The Kaveri basin
- The Tungabhadra basin
- The Narmada basin
- The Indus Valley
In addition, we need to consider the coastal plain of Kerala and the mountain plateau of Kashmir.
The history of each of these was inextricably linked to the others.
Coming to the present, the Republic of India contains a bulk of the land-mass that constituted either the geographical entity or the cultural. It is not in any way an identity theft to maintain that the history of India, as is commonly understood, is seamlessly succeeded by the history of the Republic of India.
However, on the other hand, it is also the case that the history of India, as is commonly understood, is seamlessly succeeded by the history of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. To cite a few instances, the inception of the Muslim League in Dhaka in 1906 is an integral part of the history of India, and is an integral precursor to the history of the Republic of India, as to the history of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
9. Now lets go to before 1947. We had a British colony. It's borders were drawn arbitrarily and represented the maximum extent of British power, Had the British been weaker, those borders would have been less extent. Had they been even stronger those borders would have been even more extent.
Precisely as was the case through the millennia before. India varied in extent according to the political power of the central authority at that time. In the time of the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Khiljis, the Tughlaqs and the Mauryas, before the British, India was at its largest. It was always India.
10. That British colony existed within a region, we would call that South Asia today but then it was known as India ( like Scandinavia etc ) thus this colony was titled 'British India'.
Ironically, it is now necessary to coin the geographical expression south Asia in order to plead the case that political India and geographical India and cultural India did not coincide.
As has already been pointed out, the Crown Colony of British India (so constituted from 1858) was within the geographical region India, and it represented most of the political entity India, leaving only 565 fragments politically otherwise defined, but owing loyalty to the same sovereign and suzerain (sovereign in one case, suzerain in the other).
Today's Pakistan or Bharat share the exactly the same relationship to British India.
This contradicts the meaning and intent of the Independence Act. It also contradicts the evidence offered by the British delegate to the United Nations.
Against your unilateral declaration, we place the British statute and the proceedings of the office of the Secretary General, United Nations.
The only advantage Bharat has gained is because it also chose the style 'India' which happened to to share the same nomenclature with the British Colonial entity and before that the geograhic region.
As has been explained, India - India that is Bharat, the Republic of India in later years - was the successor state of the Crown Colony of India.
This is a legal reality, not a matter of imagination or of self-publicity by the government of India.
11. In a strange twist of history a name 'India' that had meant just the land adjacent to River Indus, came over time to mean the entire region we call South Asia and now in a total leap of disconnect it has come to refer to a nation state called Bharat. The disconnect being that it originally just meant a area in today's Pakistan and now has come to mean a area that is a total disconnect from the original land ( which is in todays Pakistan ) , to what is today Bharat ( which is well to east of the original meaning ). This can 'identity theft' today can throw up all sort of strange situations as I shall point out later.
There is no strange twist. Strange twists have had to be invented by Pakistani apologists, such as RoadRunner in that long-dead archive that has been referred to you by Rig Vedic, in order to overturn the perfectly normal proceedings at the time of independence.
India meant the larger geographical extent of India from as long ago as the invasion of Alexander in 330 BC.
12. Indian independ
ance Act 1947:-
This is not an exact reproduction, hence is taken on trust.
(1)As from the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, two independent Dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan.
(2)The said Dominions are hereafter in this Act referred to as the new Dominions, and the said fifteenth day of August is hereafter in this Act referred to as the appointed day.
2.(1) Subject to the provisions of subsection (3) (4) of this section,
the territories of India shall be the territories under the sovereignty of His Majesty which, immediately before the appointed day, were included in British India except the territories which, under subsection (2) of this section, are to be the territories of Pakistan.
The provision is very clear and not uncertain in its meaning and application. Only deliberate attempts to twist its meaning can subtract that clarity.
13. We can adduce certain facts from the above Act.
(i) That there existed a British Colony known variously as 'British India' or just plain 'India' ran by a London appointed official called a Viceroy which was part and parcel of the British Empire.
(ii) That this adminstrative structure would cease to exist in 1947 and in it's place two nation states shall come into existance viz Republic of Pakistan and Bharat Republic.
That is not what the Act states. Read it again. The territory of India was constituted to be the territory of British India, except what was to become Pakistan.
(iii) That the territory adminstered by the said structure would be apportioned out betwen both nation states.
Again, not the wording of the Act. The wording shows clearly that India is constituted as the original British India, except the portion to be described as Pakistan.
(iv) That as a function of decribing the precise apportionment it states that Bharat shall be British India minus Pakistan.
(v) That when you cut something you slice the smaller piece from the bigger, not slice the bigger piece from smaller. The language of the act just follows that function.
Fanciful and tendentious. Your own section (iv) bears the correct meaning.
(vi) We cannot use the fact that the term India is being used because that only proves my contention, that is it goes back to the heart of what I have been saying, namely the nomenclature. That is why I am using the term Bharat to prove my point. Both Republics, Pakistan and Bharat if I may draw the analogy just plain wines.
You have now successfully tied yourself into a tight knot. Why cannot we use the fact that the term India is being used, when it was the intention of the statute makers to do so deliberately?
At the time of independence, there was no Bharat. This was the usage adopted to soothe those hostile to the British, who did not wish to see the international word used by the British to be the sole name of the country. For this reason, Ambedkar and the constitution drafters used the formula India that is Bharat. Prior to this, it is historically mistaken to refer to the Dominion of Bharat, for instance. It was the Dominion of India, it was the subsequent Republic of India, India that might also be named or called Bharat.
(vii) Whereas the impression given is Pakistan is some new immature wine lacking any pedigree whereas Bharat is some vintage Champagne thats been cultivated for centuries.
This is simply due to the fevered imagination of Pakistanis who imagine slights where there are none, faults in pedigree implied when there is no such implication, except at the level of fanboy quarrels on the Internet. Pakistan was an integral part of the ancient India, and was carved out of the territories of the political India that was a Crown Colony. Where is the immature wine, where is the lack of pedigree, other than in the slighted imagination of the hyper-patriotic Pakistani?
14. The truth is both Republics are modern creations dating from 1947. Both are as vintage or lack of as much as each other. The nomenclature is just a dupe, a gloss that obfuscates the reality. Just because Bharat decides to appropriate the name 'India' unto itself does not mean that it suddenly becomes a vintage wine as much as a cheap wine does not become a true Chamapagne just because it labels itself as such.
Inaccurate. The two Republics date from 1950 for India and 1956 for Pakistan. Prior to this, they were Dominions, ruled by the King, then the Queen (for Pakistan alone) through a Governor General.
It was the testimony of the British delegation, regarding the successor status of the Dominion of India, which is on record in the United Nations, which makes it clear that our reading of the bare Act does, indeed bear out our interpretation based on grammar and syntax.
There was no dupe, no gloss, no nefarious intent by the Indians, but the clear and unclouded intention of the British statute makers.
15. A point was made that Bharat is indeed the sole successor to British India. That is absurd notion. It indeed was a successor state to British India but so was Pakistan.
Not in international law. Please consult the proceedings of the United Nations, which has been cited by other posters.
16. How else would the assets that belonged to British India get divided to both Bharat and and Pakistan? Why and how did the territory held by British India be apportioned to both with some going to Pakistan and some to Bharat if the former was also not also a succerssor state?
Please, once again, note the clear wording reflecting the clear intent: it was India that equated with British India, except for the territories assigned to Pakistan, a portion that was subtracted from India. The wording is in front of you.
17. Contention was made that Bharat the is the sole successor state by stating that United Nations seat held by British India was given to Bharat contrary to Pakistan's efforts.
India was indeed the successor state to British India, and was accepted as such by the United Nations on the testimony of the British delegation.
18. Well the person who made this point (16) should know that not all things can be apportioned. If a father left a horse as inheritance to two sons, they could not divide it into two. By the same logic you cannot apportion a seat. Only one party can have it.
19. If my father left a club membership to me and my brother we very well could not both demand it, when there would only be one. Clearly we would have to resolve the matter by some other means, perhaps the older one getting it. In the instance of the UN seat Bharat gets it because clearly it was the largest piece out of the defunct British India.
This was not the contention of the British. They stated clearly, without ambiguity, that they recognised the Dominion of India as successors to British India in all respects, and that Pakistan did not have the privilege of succeeding automatically to gain UN membership.
Contrary to the homely analogy suggested, it was within the right of the UN to assign the seat to either contender, or, as Zafarullah Khan argued, to both. They chose to do what they did, based on testimony offered on public record. All our subsequent analogies and parallels cannot shake that, nor the wording and evident intent of the statute.
So gentleman ( ladies ) I put it to you that this is all about nomenclature. I have avoided the term India to prove my point. We all know that Bharat has used that label and continues to use it, although as a nation state, it is as young as Pakistan. But by using the name India it as gained a historical link goin back to 5,000 years.
This is a fallacious conclusion.
Both India and Pakistan are young as independent constitutions, but both are heirs to the history of the Crown Colony, and to the history of the culture and civilisation known to the world other than Pakistanis as India.
Both are heirs to 5,000 years of history.
Could people please do me enormous favour, please only contribute to this thread if you can add something for or against based on the points made, preferably reasioned out. Lets keep this focussed.
