Written by: Dr. Dushka H. Saiyid
Posted on: December 24, 2020 | 
| 中文
(L to R) A. V. Alexander, Quaid-i-Azam, Sir Stafford Cripps and Archibald Wavell at a Cabinet Mission meeting in 1946
The die was cast at Lahore’s Minto Park on March 22, 1940. The Quaid had thundered before a crowd of 60,000, announcing that “the Mussalmans are not a minority. They are a nation by any definition.” He went on to say, “the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands, by dividing India into ‘autonomous national states’.” Pakistan was not mentioned in his speech or in the resolution passed the next day, just the concept of “separate homelands”.
Fazlul Haq, the chairman of the Subjects Committee of the All-India Muslim League, moved the first resolution on the second day’s session. The third paragraph of it laid the grounds for Pakistan:
…that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.
While the resolution had mentioned “Independent States”, when reporters asked the Quaid whether the resolution was for one or more Muslim nations, his answer was clear, one state. From then onwards, it came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution. When the Quaid met Linlithgow on June 27, 1940 in Simla, the viceroy assured him that no future scheme or constitution would be adopted for India by the British government, “without the previous approval of Muslim India”.
When Singapore fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942, and the British Indian army surrendered without any resistance, the British began to panic about the security of their Indian empire. LS Amery, the Secretary of State for India advised the prime minister, “Any declaration of India policy for the future must make it clear, unequivocally, that we stand by our pledge of 1940, to the Moslems and Princes, that they are not to be coerced into any system of Indian Government of which they disapprove. This is in any case vital at present, in view of possible effects upon the Moslem element in the Indian Army”. Churchill also felt that it was important not only to have the support of the Hindu majority, but also of the “great minorities amongst which the Muslims are the most important.”
(L to R) Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill
While the Second World War was at its peak, Gandhi and the Congress launched the Quit India Movement on August 8th, 1942. Gandhi and the entire Congress Committee were arrested the next day. It was a declaration of war on the government, but through Satyagraha or peaceful resistance. However, as Quaid had predicted, it did not remain non-violent. The Muslim League Working Committee met later that month and deplored the launching of the Quit India Movement. It declared that it was an attempt to impose Congress Hindu rule on the Muslims of India, and would only lead to lawlessness, and the destruction of life and property. By mid-August, thirty people were dead in Bombay alone. Gandhi started a fast from the 9th of February to the 2nd of March in 1943. The Muslim League remained aloof from the unrest that followed all over India. Much to everyone’s relief, Gandhi broke his fast on the morning of 3rd March, leading to a calmer political climate.
The war was drawing to a close and the Tories lost the elections, leading to Churchill’s resignation in July 1945. With the British economy in tatters, the government was keen to find a smooth exit from India. Wavell was given permission to hold a conference comprised of Indian leaders and form a new executive council of the main communities of “equal proportions of caste Hindus and Moslems”, and he released all the Congress leadership from incarceration. The British government in India decided to hold elections at the end of the year. In his speech of June 14, Wavell declared that “the settlement of the communal issue was the main stumbling block” to independence.
Viceroy Archibald Wavell
The gulf between the Congress and the Muslim League persisted despite myriads of meetings between the Quaid and Gandhi. On September 14, 1944, Gandhi had written to the Quaid stating his position very clearly on the issue of Pakistan: “the Resolution itself makes no reference to the two nation theory” which he described as “wholly unreal. I find no parallel in history for a body of converts and their descendants claiming to be a nation apart from the present stock. If India was one nation before the advent of Islam, it must remain one in spite of the change of faith of a very large body of her children.” The Quaid while responding to this missive wrote, “By all canons of international law we are a nation…As regards your final paragraph…it is quite clear that you represent no one else but Hindus…that the true welfare not only of Muslims but of the rest of India lies in the division of India as proposed in the Lahore Resolution.”
The League won all thirty central assembly Muslim seats in December ‘45, while the Congress retained a majority of fifty-five seats. By late February, 1946, the provincial election results were out. In Punjab, the League got 75 out of 88 Muslim seats, in Sindh they got 28 out of 34, in Assam they won 31 out of 34, while in Bengal it got 113 out of 119 Muslim seats. The only province where they lost was in the Frontier, where they got 17 out of 38 seats. But the League had secured 88% of the Muslim vote. The verdict of Muslims on Pakistan could not have been more categorical.
The British cabinet decided in February of the same year to send a Cabinet Mission to India, with the hope that it would cut the Gordian knot of communal settlement in India. The delegation consisted of the Secretary of State for India, Pethick-Lawrence, the first Lord of the Admiralty, A.V. Alexander and Sir Stafford Cripps, who was by now the President of the Board of Trade and regarded as an experienced hand on India. Having met the Quaid and the Congress leadership, in particular Gandhi, and seeing the deadlock, Cripps came up with two plans for the two parties to consider. Plan A had a Union of India, with a Hindu majority province, Muslim majority provinces and princely states under a minimal union government that controlled defence, foreign affairs and communications. Plan B was that there should be two Indias, Hindustan and Pakistan, to either of which the princely states could federate. Pakistan’s boundaries would be determined by the religious identity of the population in the districts of north-west and north-east regions. Cripps suggested putting the two schemes before all the major parties, and if neither of the schemes found general acceptance, then the one with the most support was to be implemented.
The Quaid rejected Plan B, but was willing to take Plan A with its three-tiered federal union before the Muslim League’s Working Committee, only if the Congress was willing to consider it. When the negotiations started, the sticking point was the legislature. The Quaid wanted separate constituent making bodies for the Pakistan and the Hindustan groups, and a parity of representation in a union executive or legislature. No “controversial” decision was to be taken except by a three-fourth’s majority in the Union.
The Quaid and the Working Committee of the Muslim League’s only reservation was, what if the League accepts the Plan while Congress rejects it. But the Viceroy assured them that in that case, the League would be asked to form the interim government. The League Council met on June 5, 1946, and the next day they accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan by a large majority.
(L to R) A. V. Alexander, Quaid-i-Azam, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and Sir Stafford Cripps
Many controversies arose, mainly because while the Muslim League was advocating a two-nation theory, the Congress wanted a unitary government. Nehru was insistent that the issue of groupings would be addressed after the constitution had been made, but first of all must decide the character of the Union. The Quaid wanted separate constitution making bodies for the Pakistan and India groups, and parity of representation in the Union. When Azad submitted the Congress plan, it asked for a single constituent assembly, which would have elected representatives from all provinces and princely states.
The Cabinet Mission realizing that they had reached the end of the road, broadcast their plan from New Delhi on May 16, 1946. While rejecting the option of fully independent and sovereign Pakistan because it “would not solve communal minority problems” especially for Sikhs, it recommended a three tier scheme with minimal powers for the center. The central Union would only have the subjects of defence, foreign affairs and communications, while the provinces would be free to form Groups with executives and legislatures, and each Group would determine which subjects they would take in common. Every ten years, any Province could “call for a reconsideration of the terms of the constitution”.
Gandhi opened the question anew when he met with Pethick-Lawrence and Cripps the next morning after the Mission’s Statement. His focus was the Constituent Assembly, and whether the Congress representatives at the opening session could decide on the Union’s constitution first or not. He indicated that his support of the Statement would depend on this decision. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Congress wanted to get power before the making of a constitution.
The Congress did accept the Cabinet Mission Plan but with “grave reservations” about the limitations placed on the “central authority” and on the “grouping of Provinces”, both fundamentals of the Plan. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in his book, with its redacted portions restored 30 years after his death, has apportioned the major portion of the blame for sabotaging the Cabinet Mission Plan on Jawaharlal Nehru’s press conference of the 10th July, in which Nehru declared that the Congress would enter the Constituent Assembly “completely unfettered by any agreements”.
(L to R) Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad
On the 29th of July, 1946, the Working Committee of the Muslim League presented two resolutions after hearing its council’s opinion. While the first withdrew the Muslim League’s acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the second called for a Direct Action Day to achieve Pakistan. The Quaid declared: “We have taken a most historic decision. Never before in the life history of the Muslim League did we do anything except by constitutional methods and constitutional talks. We are today forced into this position by a move in which both the Congress and Britain have participated. We have been attacked on two fronts… To-day we have said goodbye to constitutions and constitutional methods.”
The Direct Action Day followed on Friday, August 16, which the Muslim League government of Bengal had declared as a public holiday, consequently no police was on duty. A mammoth meeting was to be addressed by Muslim League leaders in Calcutta, including the Premier of Bengal, H.S. Suhrawardy. The communal trouble started early in the morning, and by 6 pm curfew had been declared. The unofficial count of the Great Calcutta Killings numbered 10,000 between the nights of 16-20 August. The Quaid declared after these killings that, “…there is no alternative except the outright establishment of Pakistan…We guarantee to look after non-Muslims and Hindu caste minorities in Pakistan, which will be almost 25 million.”
H.S. Suhrawardy
The Quaid-i-Azam had shown flexibility in accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan, but the last attempt by the British to keep India united had shattered on the rocks of an intransigent Congress leadership. The road was now clear for the creation of a sovereign and independent Pakistan, where Muslims would be free from the fear of domination in a Hindu majoritarian state. However, more than thirty-five million Muslims were still left behind, and the Quaid’s worst nightmare has become a reality under Modi’s government.
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