india divided part 4

7/29/2019 India Divided Part 4

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India Divided

Book: Dr. Rajendra PrasadReview: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

Part 4

The Resource Constraint

India is an agricultural country and by far the largest proportion of the populationwhether in the Muslim or non-Muslim zone depends upon agriculture for its support andsustenance. It is therefore necessary to take the agricultural resources of the two zonesin consideration.

The Eastern zone is fertile but very thickly populated, the population being 787 per sq.

mile, and in spite of the richness of soil it cannot produce enough food for its largepopulation.

The Punjab and Sind are fortunate in having a very extensive system of irrigation bycanals and it may be hoped that there is much room not only for further extendingagriculture but also for being intensive cultivation of areas already cultivated.

India is not abundantly supplied with oil but she possesses large reserves of mostimportant industrial minerals Coal, Iron, several of Ferro-alloys which make goodsteel, and the subsidiary minerals in ample quantities to make her a powerful andreasonably self-sufficient industrial nation.

Coal is easily and undoubtedly the most valuable mineral. The whole of it falls outsidethe Muslim zone with the exception of a small quantity that is raised in Punjab andBaluchistan.

Indias minerals are so distributed between the parts of India in which Hindu andMuslim people preponderate that if India were divided on the basis of religiouspopulation the Hindu State would be rich and the Muslim State would be


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conspicuously poor. The significant conclusion as to the question of Pakistanand Hindustan are corollary to the fact From the point of view of mineralresources the Hindu and Muslim areas of India immediately intergrown are alsointerdependent economically.

- Dr. Behre

India satisfies the requirement of an optimum unit for economic development in termsof area, population and resources more than any other single country except the UnitedStates of America and Russia Division of India would weaken both Pakistan andHindustan but the former would suffer more than the later in respect of mineralresources. Lacking Coal, Iron and Ferro-alloys, the position of Pakistan in respect ofboth zones would be substantially weaker and she would lack the necessary mineralbase for large scale industrial development which is so essential for her future

progress.- Sir Homi Mody & Dr. Matthai

Among industries which absorb the bulk of the capital invested in India are Cotton Mills,Jute Mills and Sugar Mills. While cotton is produced largely in Punjab and Sind and Jutein Eastern Bengal, the Mills which spin and weave them are mostly outside Muslimzones in the NW and the East.

Prof. Coupland, whose sympathy for the Muslim League point of view is apparentthroughout his book, The Future of India comes to the conclusion: It appears that thegreatest difficulty of Pakistan and its gravest risk lie in Defence. Is it not clear beyonddispute that Pakistan would not be able to maintain the security it has enjoyed hithertoas part of India? Even the minimum necessities of defence would strain its resources tothe utmost and hold up the social advancement of its people. For the rest it would haveto take the risk.

The Proposal of Partition Examined

The backwardness of the Muslims cannot be attributed to anything that the Hindus wereprimarily responsible for, but to the policy of the British Government in whose hands allpower remained for more than 150 years.

It cannot be denied that a divided India will be weaker and will not be able to commandthe same hearing in international counsels that a strong united India will have. It will notbe able to secure the same terms from other countries in the matter of trade facilities, itsown industrial development, and in a hundred other ways. This will be so especially inthe case of the Muslim zones which will be admittedly smaller than the rest of India. Butthe latter, too, will suffer and suffer grievously on account of this partition.

In India the attachment to land of both Hindus and Muslims is so great that it can besafely asserted that neither would care to leave the locality where they have beensettled simply to become member of another State.


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The cost of moving such large populations, uprooting them from where they haveremained settled for generations and getting them in all together new surroundings, andthe loss of property involved in the process, even though compensation may beprovided for, will impose a burden which neither the Muslim nor the non-Muslim Stateswill be able to bear. The suffering will be immense and the scheme financially and

administratively impossible of accomplishment. In case of compulsory exchange allthose difficulties will be increased a hundred-fold, and to all those difficulties will beadded the difficulty of shifting the population under police and military guard which isunthinkable.

Minorities have in all cases to depend on the fundamentals of human nature andthose universal and moral rules which govern the conduct of all civilized persons,whatever their religion.

The creation of independent states does not solve the minority problem. It makes itmore difficult of solution. It leaves the minorities, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, in

the independent states more helpless, less capable of taking care of themselves, andworse situated in regard to the invocation of any outside authority for enforcing theirrights.

It does not require any elaborate calculation to show that in case of partitionwhile the resources of both the Muslims and non-Muslim states will beconsiderably reduced, their defence requirements will enormously increase and itmay well be that each in itself will find itself so crippled as to render effectivedefence beyond the means of any without unbearable hardship to the people atlarge inhabiting each zone.

Arguments Against Partition

The days of small independent states are numbered if not gone already. Recentexperience has shown that no small state can preserve its independence.

The national resources of the country as a whole can be much better utilized tothe benefit of all, if there is mutual accommodation and agreed joint action,which will become impossible in case of independent states. The larger the area,the greater the variety, the wider the distribution of natural resources agricultural, mineral and power producing the better the chances of a plannedeconomy.

The crying need of India today is that the state should spend more and more on

the nation-building departments. India has suffered immeasurably in the pastunder the British Government which has regarded itself more as a police statethan anything else, neglecting and starving the nation-building departments.

One thing is certain: partition is not likely to be attained with the goodwill ofthose most concerned, and this ill-will is bound to persist on both sides, even ifthe proposal succeeds, even after the separation is affected. Distrust which is thebasis of the proposal is bound to grow and any hope that after separation things


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will settle down and the independent states will soon become friendly will havebeen built on sand.

India is not only a very well-defined geographical unit with natural frontiersformed by the mountains and the sea, it has been from time immemorial a cultural

and spiritual unit. That unity has been forged through countless ages by theculture, traditions and usages of successive generations of men who havemigrated and conquered, settled down and been absorbed through thepredominant qualities of tolerance and adaptability which are the characteristicsof Indian Civilization.

- Sir Ardeshir Dalal

Sir Dalal proposed a Charter of Fundamental Rights to guarantee the personal, civil andreligious liberties of every individual on following lines:

All citizens of the Federation of India shall be equal before the law.

Freedom of speech, of the press and of association shall be guaranteed.

No person shall suffer any disability on account of his religious faith or belongingto any particular race, caste, class or creed.

Liberty of religion and conscience shall be guaranteed including liberty of belief,worship, observance, propaganda, association and education.

Sir Ardeshir Dalal is a Parsi and has thus the advantage of being neither a Hindu nor aMuslim between whom the conflict for power largely arises. His scheme must be treatedas one proceeding from an impartial and unprejudiced person who may not be evenunconsciously biased in favour of one or the other of the two principal communities.

The communal problem is a universal problem, as it has been a physical

impossibility that political and national frontiers should also coincide with racial,religious, and social frontiers. Every State has to accommodate differentelements and communities in its composition, and there is no state which hasbeen able to eliminate a minority. It therefore becomes necessary to devisemethods for dealing with them.

- Dr. Radha Kumud Mukherjee [New Approach to the Communal Problem]

The provisions of the Turkish Constitution may be taken as a basis which laiddown that: All inhabitants shall be entitled to the free exercise, whether in publicor private, of any creed, religion or belief, the observance of which shall not beincompatible with public order and good morals. Differences of religion, creed, or

confession shall not prejudice any Turkish national in matters relating to theenjoyment of civil or political rights. All the inhabitants of Turkey, withoutdistinction of religion, shall be equal before the law.

But there is a limit to minority protection, and that limit is the integrity of the State whichall its communities must be equally concerned to defend at all costs and which nocommunity can be allowed to weaken in pursuit of its exaggerated and extravagantideas tending towards disintegration of the State itself.


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Despite what Islam may have taught, there is no doubt that Islamic culture inIndia as a whole is not uniform. It has indeed varied in its content andmanifestation in different parts and Musalmans present as variegated akaleidoscope as any other community in this respect.

Epilogue

So far as the author is aware, there is no communal group or organization other thanthe Muslim League which has put forward a proposal for partition of India into Muslimand non-Muslim independent states.

Any scheme must fulfill two fundamental conditions. It must be fair and just to allcommunities. It must be more. It must also rise above the din and dust of thepresent-day controversy and visualize for this country and for its millionssomething of which all may be proud and for which they can live, work and die. Aman is member of a community; but he is also a man more than member of a

community. No scheme, however elaborate, which satisfies all communal claimsmost meticulously but leaves man as man uncared and unprovided for, will beworth the paper it will be written on. That scheme alone will be worthy of thepeople of this great country which enables its humblest citizen to live a happierand nobler life than it has been its lot to live in the past.

It is really a question offering two alternatives before the people of India to make theirchoice. The choice has to be made between two alternative schemes one involving adivision of the country and its people into separate zones and nationalities; the othermaintaining the unity of the country and providing for the fullest development moral,intellectual and material of all groups, including the smallest which inhabit it andremoving all barriers social, political or economic tending to bar or fetter thatdevelopment. The choice has to be made by them with their eyes open, their mindsinformed and alert, after studying and considering all the pros and cons.

There can be no doubt that partition is a solution of despair. It cannot solve theproblem of minorities, even if it does not aggravate it. The authors apprehensionis that it will aggravate it. It is bound to leave a bitter legacy.

The author does not wish to end this book with a note of despair. He is notwithout hopes in the justice, fairness and common sense of the people Hindus,Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and others and feels that they will be able toevolve something else that will be worthy and worthwhile, something that oursuccessors will be proud of, something that will place before a distracted worldan ideal worthy of emulation. That can be achieved only if we march with truthas our light and non-violence as our support.

[However, in spite of this bold and timely caution and hopefulness forunderstanding expressed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, as further history tells usgoodwill did not prevail, we were not guided by Truth and supported by Non-


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violence and in accordance with the British designsto Divide and Rule partitiondid happen. The after effects of the violence and suffering that followedreverberate even now in the relations between India and Pakistan, which are farfrom satisfactory and load enormous burden of defence expenditure on bothsides, which would have been much better utilized for the development of the

people, which is the ultimate objective of the State.

History cannot be reversed, but we can certainly be wiser with the painexperienced in the years and we can look for corrective action in the future. Letus pose ourselves with this question: When East Germany and West Germany(so ideologically apart as Communists and Capitalists, after being separated atthe end of the Second World War) can recombine to form one Germany, why cantIndia, Pakistan and Bangladesh recombine to form India (Undivided)?

Probably we do not have an answer to this question right now, but may be thefuture generations will hopefully come together in a spirit of goodwill and

cooperation to effect the solution which will benefit the inhabitants of the wholeIndian sub-continent.]

Review: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

india divided part 4

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