Divide and role policy in the partition context of 1947

T he rule of the East India Company ended followed by the Sepoy-Janata Independence revolt of 1857. The misbehave and negligence received from the ruling class and the zamindars during the British rule, brought about the establishment of a separate Muslim state for an end of the economic misery of the Muslims in India. Although in the involvement there was open agreement between the Muslim League leaders of East Bengal and Pakistan for a separate state for Muslims. Ideological differences were deep-rooted from the beginning. As a young leader at that time, Sheikh Mujib’s political thought was nourished by progressive ideas. He truly continued the lifelong struggle to establish a non-communal state. Sheikh Mujib and many young pro-Bangladesh politicians of that time joined forces with the last Prime Minister of Bengal, Hossain Shaheed Suhrawardy, and General Secretary of the Bengali Provincial Muslim League, Abul Hashim, to form a strong movement against the partition of Bengal. Mainly under pressure from Mujib and his peers, the overt attempt to divide ‘Bangladesh’ was somewhat thwarted. The Congress leaders were forced to negotiate with the East Bengal Muslim League on the issue of undivided Bengal. On the Congress side, Sarat Bose and Kiran Shankar Roy participated in the dialogue. The British administrators conspired to divide Bengal and hand it over to Pakistan and India. As a young politician at that time, Sheikh Mujib strongly supported the Pakistan Movement in the struggle for the establishment of a separate state for the economic emancipation of the large number of poor people of East Bengal. Sheikh Mujib and his like-minded politicians envisioned and aspired to include the entire province of Bengal and Assam in the map of Pakistan. But the Central Congress and Muslim League leaders of India and Pakistan manipulated and deceived the pro-Bangladesh leaders of East Bengal.
During the Partition of Bengal in 1905, Bengal was divided into two parts. The invigoration of Assam and relief of Bengal was behind this decision. It was arranged to combine Chittagong, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Rajshahi and some other small areas with Assam province from Bengal. Because these were ‘the hot bed of the purely Bengali movement’ at that time. The new province was named ‘East Bengal and Assam’. Two types of situations were created with 18 million Muslims and 12 million Hindus. This sudden shift in the balance of power and the new figure of communal division created a new direction within the Muslim community, especially in their society. On the other hand, the Hindus were naturally in a state of fear. As a result, after the announcement of the partition of Bengal, mainly the Hindu leadership in the Congress, the movement against the ‘plot’ of partition of Bengal forced the British government to withdraw the plan of partition of Bengal in 1911.
The Muslim League took its stand in favour of safeguards for minority rights until 1940 when Mohammad Ali Jinnah claimed that the Muslims of India constituted a nation. As he put it, the term nationalist had become a ‘conjurer’s trick’ in politics. With some prodding from the British Viceroy Linlithgow, the Muslim League resolved at its Lahore session in March 1940 that the Muslim-majority provinces in the north-west and east of British India should be grouped to constitute independent states. In addition to speaking about these Muslim states in the plural, the resolution moved by Fazlul Huq also spoke of a constitution in the singular that would govern minority rights throughout the subcontinent. It mentioned neither the word ‘partition’ nor the name ‘Pakistan’.
During World War II Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was able to forge a remarkable unity among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians in his Azad Hind movement. A political disciple of the fair-minded Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, who had forged the Bengal Pact between Hindus and Muslims in 1923-1924, he was committed to unity based on equality. That spirit of solidarity was widespread within India during the Red Fort Trial of the three Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh officers of the Indian National Army during the winter of 1945-1946. The British finally recognised that they would have to quit India. The Cabinet Mission arrived in the spring of 1946 to hold talks. It seemed possible that the unity of India could be preserved within a federal arrangement of three groups of provinces proposed by it. Once the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru declared that grouping might not last, the Muslim League under Jinnah called for direct action to achieve Pakistan.
Bangladesh is unique in that it has undergone the experience of partition three times; and each time it has been different from the other two. The first partition, which took place in 1905, and was repealed six years later, has mainly touched Calcutta-based writers. In 1947, Bengali Muslims wanted an undivided province to go to Pakistan, while Hindus favored partition. The Muslim peasantry identified a dual antagonist comprising the Hindu zamindars and British colonisers. The opposition was further complicated by a class dichotomy among Bengali Muslims, with Muslim zamindars and their other upper-class coreligionists labelling themselves superior as opposed to the inferior Muslim common people. Consequently, two kinds of Muslim political formations emerged, Fazlul Huq’s Krishak Praja Party claiming to represent the peasantry; while the Muslim League was dominated by ashraf politicians, mainly from the zamindar class. The internal dialectic of Muslim politics became a tussle between the two groups for the support of the Muslim masses, with the upper-class leaders happily falling back on the universal message of Islam to paper over class differences. Similarly, there was a caste divide within the Hindu community, with some low-caste politicians demanding – unsuccessfully, as it turned out – a separate electorate.
The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 has become indissolubly linked to horrific, haunting images of armed gangs or mobs attacking helpless groups of men, women and children trying to cross a border that had just been scratched on the map. Literature registers the shock in works that make harrowing reading. Partition literature becomes a tragic sub-genre in the subcontinent. However, this image of Partition literature does not apply uniformly throughout the region. The massacre was centred on the Punjab. South India, mercifully, was spared the horrors. In the east the pattern of violence was quite different, and had a different sort of demographic and literary fallout. The holocaust in the Punjab left no Hindus or Sikhs west of the border and no Muslims to its east. In Bengal, instead of such wholesale demographic changes, there has been migration in spurts and trickles prompted by episodes of communal conflict.
Unsurprisingly, as soon as Pakistan was put together it began to show strain at the seams, first over the question of what would be the state language, then over economic disparity between the two wings. The demand for democracy and autonomy led to the six-point movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, whose popularity earned him the affectionate sobriquet of Bangabandhu, and eventually led to the independence of Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s Partition literature deserves to be considered alongside similar works from other parts of the subcontinent. But more important than literary criticism is the task of transcending the conflicts that have given rise to the literature. Perhaps the most deleterious outcome of Partition has been the partitioning of the sub-continental mind. We have not only become an extended family of squabbling nations; we have grown to deny our civilisational unity. It is imperative that we make efforts to rediscover our commonality. This is true in every realm of experience, the cultural as well as the socio-economic and political. We cannot go back to the status quo ante, we cannot undo a tragedy, but we can try to go beyond towards a better order of things.
Finally, we can say that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the greatest Bengali of a thousand years and the architect of Bangladesh was a young non-communal leader of that time. Communal riots, political violence in India caused great damage to the Bengali nation by using the Bengali leaders as trump cards. Bengali nation has been brainwashed by divide and rule policy. India has become independent – but the British rulers have tarnished the Bengali nation with their obnoxious game. This vicious circle is hunting us till today. Sometimes the Lahore proposal, sometimes the Delhi proposal, the division of Bengal, etc., were played by the British rulers in various tempting games. Pakistan, built on the basis of bi-nationalism, has further ruled, exploited and subjugated us. It has destroyed Bengali rights and identity. In order to protect our nationalism, there is no alternative but taking comprehensive programme of social movement for reformation and changes.
 
(The writer is former Deputy Director General, Bangladesh Ansar & VDP)