AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        Many interpretations of historical events are often taken as sacred and sacrosanct truths. History thus becomes coloured and tailored to fit that interpretations, which in turn becomes an authentic chronicle of historical developments for future generations.

        This tendency is often more pronounced especially when the events are of the recent past and leading political actors have taken part in them. A diabolically distorted and manufactured version of history can serve neither as a point of inspiration nor as a warning to the nation in its future march. Very unfortunately most of the books on partition present a very distorted and garbled version of events without enabling any one of us to have an informed understanding of the course of events which led to the grim tragedy of partition of India in 1947. Viewed in this light, the book on partition titled 'UNDERSTANDING PARTITION' (India Sundered : Muslims Fragmented) authored by Yuvaraj Krishan, a distinguished civil servant, historian and scholar in indology assumes a great significance. This book was published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan as a part of its Bhavan's Book University Series in 2002. I am not surprised that this book has been ignored by the pseudo-secular mafia of mass media in India who consider Pakistan as a victim of Indian Hindu terrorism !

The partition was undoubtedly the most crucial and tragic event in the entire chequered course of our nation's history over the millennia. Yuvaraj Krishan has clearly brought out the fact that Pakistan grew out of the two nation theory of the Muslim League, which from 1927 was synonymous with its permanent President Mohamed Ali Jinnah called by the Muslims Qaid - Azam or the Supreme Leader. The career of Qaid - Azam Jinnah indicates a curious and ironic transformation from being 'apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity' as he was called by many admiring Congress men before 1940, to being the chief exponent, advocate and creator of Pakistan - a State based upon the thesis that the Muslims of India are a separate nation, and as such need a homeland and State for themselves, separate from Hindu-land. It was no idle boast of Jinnah when he claimed that he had won Pakistan with the help of his Private Secretary and his typewriter. S R Khairi said : 'Jinnah created history, and one is tempted to say, altered geography'. Penderal Moon of the ICS paid this tribute to Jinnah : 'To have transformed in little more than seven years the chimerical idea of Pakistan into a living political reality was an astonishing achievement' . Carl Posey in a brilliant article in TIME in 1996 wrote : ' By shear force of will, Jinnah sundered the grand ruby that had been British India and raised Pakistan from shards'. Y Krishan rightly observes that Jinnah made three unique contributions : he significantly altered the course of history, modified the map of the world and created a nation-State. According to the author what is most amazing is that Jinnah on behalf of the Muslim League was just one man ranged against a galaxy of Congress leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Dr Rajendra Prasad, besides the third party, the British Government represented by the Governor General.

Yuvaraj Krishan

        Yuvaraj Krishan succinctly states in his introduction to his book: 'It deals with the triumph and tragedy of partition : it was a triumph of the two-nation theory. It was also a triumph for Jinnah — the creation of a State, almost single-handedly, was a unique achievement in world history. But it was a tragedy for the Indian Muslims for whom the homeland, Pakistan, was established at enormous cost in terms of loss of human life, destruction of property, unprecedented uprooting and mass migration'.

        Y Krishan clearly brings out the brutal fact that Jinnah and the Muslim League never wanted to understand that a mere division of the country by itself could never make it possible for the Muslims of the provinces in which they were in minority to escape the political domination of the Hindus in a democratic setup. They also failed to understand that the Muslims of the majority provinces did not need partition and Pakistan to save them from Hindu Raj. Thus the establishment of Pakistan failed to solve the problem it was intended to resolve. Thus Y Krishan poignantly and aptly concludes : 'Jinnah did not lead the Muslims of India to the home land he had established for them. Ironically, they were left behind the provinces of their birth. Jinnah failed to make Pakistan a homeland for the Muslims of India'.

        This book seeks to correct judgements or findings of any historians like Maulana Azad, Ayesha Jalal, Asgar Ali Engineer and Rafiq Zakaria to name a few, about the unwise role of the Congress leadership, Nehru and Patel, as being responsible for the growth of separatism among the Muslims in 1937 and for rejecting the Cabinet Mission Plank in 1946 which could have maintained the essential unity of India. In the light of solid and irrefutable documentary evidence, Y Krishan rightly declares : 'A careful scrutiny of facts shows that this is absolutely wrong to say that Nehru's refusal to show accommodation to Muslim League's desire for sharing power with the Congress in the provinces after 1937 elections was responsible for pushing the Muslim League to the goal of Pakistan. If Nehru had compromised with the Muslim League at that time. He would have been accused of strengthening a communal organisation which, at that time, was politically weak and insignificant'. Y Krishan is very right because the Muslim League won only 105 seats out of a total of 499 Muslim seats all over India in 1937.

Courtesy: Cartoon ‘The Hindustan Times,’ 1st August 1947

Y Krishan argues that it is wrong to accuse the Congress leadership - Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, of throwing away the last chance of maintaining a united India by rejecting the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. He clearly proves this thesis that acceptance of this Cabinet Mission Plan would have balkanised the country, eventually leading to the creation of a Bigger Pakistan in the then near future. The author also deals with the mischievous role of Lord Mountbatten in creating conditions of breakdown of administration by hurried transfer of power in a very short period, and communalisation of services, especially of security forces, by advancing the date of transfer from June 1948 to August 1947, as a quid pro quo for India, after becoming independent, agreeing to remain in the British Commonwealth as a DOMINION. In this context, the author reports what Field Marshall Templar is reported to have told Lord Mountbatten : 'You are so crooked, Dickie, if you swallowed a nail you'd shit a Corkscrew'. Finally the book examines why the Partition has failed to solve the problems of Hindu - Muslim conflict in India even today.         In my view, this is a landmark book by virtue of its original contribution to the historiography of Partition. The writer of history, I believe, has a number of duties vis-a- vis the reader, if he wants to keep him reading. The first is to distil. He must do the preliminary work for the reader, assemble the information, make sense of it, select the essential, discard the irrelevant - above all, discard the irrelevant — and out the rest together so that it forms a developing narrative. Narrative, it has been said, is the lifeblood of history. To offer a mass of undigested facts, of names not identified and places not located, is of no use to the reader and is simple laziness on the part of the author, are pedantry to show how much he has read. To discard the unnecessary requires courage and also extra work, as exemplified by Pascal's effort explain in idea to his friend in a letter which rambled on for pages and ended, 'I am sorry to have wearied view with so long a letter but I did not have time to write a short one'. The historian is continually being beguiled down by fascinating byways and sidetracks. But the art of writing — the test of the artist — is to resist the beguilement and cleave to the subject. This is what exactly Yuvaraj Krishan has achieved with remarkable precision in his path-breaking book.

        Y Krishan's book brings out the truth contained in Edward Gibbon's observation that history is nothing but a record of the crimes, follies and tragedies of mankind. In my view, history today is not, as it was once regarded, merely a liberal pursuit in which some men find wholesome food for their imagination and sympathies. It is a department of a serious scientific investigation — we study it in the hope of gaining new precision, definiteness and solidity in regard to the principles of political science. The beautiful words of Lord Macaulay are also equally relevant in this context : 'He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable'.