Their Iron Curtain, our Partition

Sat, Oct 24 06:49 AM

There has been vigorous debate whether Jinnah really wanted a separate state or merely a veto on the domination of Islamic identity by Hindu majoritarianism within the Indian union. The past is written in stone, and cannot be reversed; but enriched by experience, we can discern the unforeseen penalties of Partition.

Some significant facts are overlooked in the mountain of literature. We know on February 20 1947 Attlee announced the appointment of Mountbatten as the last Viceroy and decided on the transfer of power to "responsible Indian hands" by June 1948. But just the following day, under instructions from the Foreign Office, a British First Secretary informed the US State Department that Attlee's government would not redeem the pledge given by Churchill at Yalta that Britain would superintend over the Mediterranean, including Greece and Turkey.

These two acts, decolonisation and the beginning of Cold War bipolarity, became strangely linked. America was already

apprehensive of communism's ideological ambitions, a suspicion reinforced by Churchill's Fulton speech that Europe was already divided by an "iron curtain" from the Baltic to the Adriatic. The US administration, under Democrat Harry Truman, was determined to prevent Western Europe being overrun by the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine — "containment" — was enunciated to the US Congress on March 12. The trouble was in the previous Congressional elections, the opposition Republicans gained a majority; and they wanted the return of GIs and "isolationist normalcy" only. After three months of canvassing the Congress voted aid in peace time for Greece and Turkey.

It took roughly 100 days. That was the length of time between Attlee's announcement and Mountbatten declaring on June 3 a preponement to the 15th August; between Britain notifying withdrawal from Greece and Turkey and the famous "Harvard speech" on June 5 which announced the Marshall Plan to assist Western Europe. This accidental coincidence between decolonisation and Cold War bipolarity (Nehru made no mention of the Truman doctrine in his speech to the Asian Relations conference on 22nd March) had unforeseen consequences.

Most importantly, what if the coincidence had not happened, and the date of transfer of power had not been advanced? There might have been no massive post-partition holocaust. By December 1947, it became known to officials that Jinnah had terminal tuberculosis. In the shock following Mahatma Gandhi's assassination on January 30, 1948, had Pakistan not already come into existence, there might have been second thoughts on vivisecting India.

The Cold War always trumped the decolonisation process. In 1953 Ayub assured Washington that Pakistan was steadfastly anti-communist and joined the Baghdad Pact and SEATO. In 1959 the proposed anti-Chinese staff talks by Ayub were summarily dismissed by Nehru; the Sino-Soviet friendship lasted barely 9 years; the expectation of "Peaceful Co-existence" over the 2000 mile border the two socialist states shared was flouted. Sino-Pak normalisation was seeded in 1962 itself. India appreciated the USSR's veto in our favour on Kashmir and on Bangladesh, but Soviet Premier Kosygin was studiously neutral on territorial readjustment at Tashkent following the 1965 war. The four wars fought following Partition were fought, remember, with imported or purchased arms.

There were many stages where the Cold War fallacies can be

discerned; but it is best illustrated by Afghanistan. The USSR intervened to remove ideological militants; but all other actors, the USA, India and Pakistan, interpreted it while hypnotised by Cold War logic.

One further surprise is that experts from CIA and MI6 never foresaw that by 1st October 1949, the whole of China would be controlled by the Communist Party and this would lead to the Sino-Soviet bloc dominating the Eurasian continent. I asked Lord Mansergh (who edited Britain's official 12-volume history on the period, Transfer of Power) :if HMG could have foreseen the result in China 2 years ahead, would they have acquiesced the division of India? There was no clear answer.

The fact is India also took the Cold War too seriously and assumed it would last permanently. It took failures, some long after it ended, on 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to highlight these fallacies. The United States is now bombing Waziristan not to obliterate Communists but militant

Islamists.

Even if there was internal strife, Nehru and Patel should not have agreed to 15th August that Partition was the lesser evil. Undivided India would have dominated the Indian ocean. Pre-reformation India had the ingredients of toleration essential for modernisation. There is room for constructive functional cooperation in the sub-continent but it requires obliterating the sediments of 60 years of misjudgments. The elite of India and Pakistan may have vested interests, but the "Aam Aadmi" - the peasants and slum dwellers — who inhabit the two countries and Bangladesh are victims of under performance, and of poor anticipation.

The writer is a former foreign secretary express@expressindia.com

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