Why were the British unable to secure a united India at independence in 1947?
Why were the British unable to secure a united India at independence in 1947?
To most political commentators and historians, Indian independence had become inevitable by 1947. But up on to this point in time no one had believed that India would be dissected and two countries would be formed in its place. This was not the British intention. The realities of the situation on the ground in 1947 left both the British and Congress leadership impotent and unable to secure a united India. I believe it was the intention of the British government to leave a united India if possible, but a variety of reasons meant that they were not able to realise this goal. The intense nationalist struggle led by Congress and Britain’s anxiety to avoid being caught in the middle of a civil war between Hindu’s and Muslim’s was a primary reason Britain left India as hastily as they did as well as the fact that India’s economic value to Britain had been diminishing since the end of the WW1, infact by the end of WW2 India was a financial burden on the treasury. Britain had changed domestic priorities at the end of WW2, devastated economically by the war and heavily in debt to the USA. But of primary importance to why Britain was unable to secure a united India has to do with the role of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and of the Muslim League which was able to demonstrate, by the electoral success they enjoyed in 1946 Provincial elections when they secured 75% of the Muslim vote across the whole of India, that they had a mandate from India’s Muslims to press for an independent Muslim homeland in India, Pakistan. This has to do with deep and historic hostility between Muslims and Hindus and with the electioneering of Jinnah and the Muslim League.
Muslim League theorists first advanced the ‘two nation’ theory as a major political theme in the 1930’s. At that time Muslim League theorists merely argued that the Hindu and Muslim communities in British India constituted two different ‘nations’, in the sense that they were divided by cultural and social values that made it impossible for them to live together peacefully in a common political system. On March 1940 Jinnah addressed a Muslim League rally in Lahore. The Lahore address spelled out the two-nation theory justification for the demand for a separate Muslim state. In his speech he portrayed the Muslims and Hindu’s as irreconcilably opposed monolithic religious communities. At this rally a resolution was passed which called for the grouping of contiguous Muslim majority areas in the North West and North East of India into ‘Independent States in which the constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign’. But Pakistan should not be considered inevitable from the time of the Lahore Resolution however. The Muslim League first had to demonstrate its support in the major centres of Muslim population where it traditionally lacked influence, namely across the North West and North East of the country. In the 1937 provincial elections, it had won one seat in the Punjab and none in Sind or the Frontier, it was only in Bengal were the Muslim League had some success, winning 37 of the 119 seats reserved for Muslims. In these areas there was a whole multitude of local Muslim parties competing against each other for votes and were advocating very different points from one another. This weakened the Muslim League greatly as they couldn’t claim to represent the Muslims of India if they had very little support from the ballot boxes. The British would not have to take the Muslim League very seriously unless they could prove widespread support from India’s Muslims, only then could they claim to speak on behalf of them. In order to do this they needed much more support around the country and Jinnah decided to re-structure the party and change electioneering tactics and policies. This opens up the debate on the actual role of Islam in the creation of Pakistan. Islamic ideology was chosen and manipulated by political elites in order to legitimise their bid for power which arose from other, predominantly economic and social compulsions. Muslim historians such as Hafeez Malik and Riazul Islam who maintain that Islam did not just legitimise political action, but impelled support for the Muslim League. However, the tactics of the Muslim League were very controversial. In literature and speeches they linked the powerful themes of ‘Islam in danger’ and the need for an Islamic community. Many critics argue that this was scare mongering and creating heightened levels of communal tensions. It could be said that this was the aim of Jinnah and the Muslim League as it was a sure fire way of quickly increasing support was to appeal to Muslims in the easiest way by playing on there fears of being dominated over by Hindus intent on gaining revenge on Muslims because of preceding Muslim rule over India before the British raj tookover. In the 1920’s riots erupted in small towns and cities across India from the frontier of India with Afghanistan to the eastern boundary of Bengal with Burma between Hindus and Muslims. This was to do with the slaughter of cows, a revered animal in the Hindu religion, but one often sacrificed by Muslims on religious occasions. Muslim competition for job’s whether relatively prestigious in government or lowly bureaucratic jobs, intensified the hostility of lower middle-class Hindus. Behind much of this lay a generalised crisis in certain lines of employment, such as the declining market for the handloom products of Muslim wavers who were displaced by the output of textiles from mills owned by Hindus. Kanpur in the United Provinces was the site of large scale rioting between Muslims and Hindus in 1931 on this account. Older causes for suspicion and conflict continued in places where landlords and tenants were of different religions. In Bengal and in Punjab, the Muslim League adopted radical social and economic policies so as to be able to replace the smaller regional Islamic parties that gained much of the vote, who campaign on local issues and who struggled to help Muslims against Hindu zamindar’s(landlords) and moneylenders. In 1915, a group of Hindu fanatics formed the Hindu Mahasabha. The primary goal of this new organisation was the ‘reconversion’ of Muslims, claiming India’s Muslims were forced to convert from Hinduism to Islam by Islamic invaders against there will. The fact that Congress leaders and Gandhi himself did not explicitly repudiate such inflammatory religious campaigns, and often maintained close personal relations with their leaders, was not lost on Muslims or the Muslim League. On a local level, the Muslim League would have highlighted this to the Muslim population claiming these are the sort of people who would be running India when the British left.
