Monday, July 23, 2012

The British were not guilty of Partition; somebody else was

The easiest way before an Indian audience to get hands clapping, is to accuse the British of the Partition of India. Try it for yourself and say out loud: “Partition was engineered by the wily Britishers  in their nefarious design of ‘divide and rule’”, success assured. And the applause is sure to follow no matter whether the audience, whose sensibilities you may not know, is Gandhian, Nehruvian-secularist or Hindu nationalist. Yes, Hindu nationalist too.

“Jinnah was brainwashed into dividing India”, I read in RSS mouthpiece Organiser. Well, if it is that  easy, why doesn’t the RSS brainwash the Indian Muslims into becoming India-loving Hindus? Incidentally, how is it done, this “brainwashing”? In reality, the Hindu nationalists are taking a cheap shot at the British in order to mask their fear of pinpointing Muslim guilt.

One would have expected at least Mahatma murderer Nathuram Godse to have criticized Islam, apart from laying as much of the blame as possible at Gandhi’s feet. But Godse says very little about the guilt for Partition. He accuses the British of a “divide and rule” policy, alright, but doesn’t make this the cause of the Pakistan movement. He accuses Gandhi of not countering the Muslim League’s demand of Partition with his trademark means of action, viz. the fast unto death; but he does not go into the question of why the Muslim League made this demand in the first place. So, even among Godse’s fans you won’t find many articulate opponents of the British conspiracy thesis.

In this article, I will argue that the British had nothing to do with Partition, and that this was a purely Muslim operation necessitated by the present democratic age’s belief in numbers. In the medieval period, the Muslims constituted far less than the 24% of the Indian population which they were in the 1940s, yet they ruled. Mohammed Ali Jinnah thought that this was no longer possible in modern times, so if they wanted to be in power, they needed a smaller country where they would constitute the majority. So, the Two-Nation Theory espoused by the Muslim League necessitated two separate states, one of which would have a Muslim majority.

To be sure, the British were guilty of many things, and the fixation of Hindu nationalists on them is understandable. Principally, they caused several very serious famines, they dismantled the technology and economic structure of India, and they imposed a foreign ideology that harmed the natives’ self-respect. This did not make British rule “the biggest crime in history”, as L.K. Advani claims on his blog (15 July 2012), but it was pretty bad. However, none of that made them guilty of Partition. Nor did their policy of “divide and rule” cause the pre-colonial or post-colonial (and generally not even the colonial) hostility between Hindus and Muslims. It was a tactic used at the negotiation table, not meant for the streets (where riots would only upset economic life), much less for a final Partition of the Indian empire.

Viceroys Lord Victor Linlithgow and Lord Archibald Wavell told Jinnah to his face that they would not countenance the division of their nice and neat Indian empire, not even in the event of decolonization. Their successor, Lord Louis Mountbatten, only accepted Partition because the Muslim League threatened and started violence. Congress leaders did the same, including even Mahatma Gandhi in June 1947. All his so-called fasts unto death, his promise that “India will only be divided over my dead body”, proved hollow in the face of the real chance that these opponents would not give in, so that his fast would only be concluded with his death. .

It is only the fledgling Cold War that made the British and also the Americans see a silver lining in the Partition, viz. that one of the parties would join the Western camp and provide it an outpost to monitor the Soviet  threat. This was apparently also what made Lord Mountbatten more pliable. But it was only in 1945 that the Soviet ally became an enemy, five years after the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan resolution, and more than ten years after the idea of Pakistan was first mooted.

In reality, the ideology of Partition was rooted in Islam. According to Islam, Muslims must always be in power. Thus, Muslim men are allowed to marry non-Muslim women but non-Muslim men are not allowed to marry Muslim women because wives are deemed to be at the husbands’ command. In the Middle Ages, Muslim minorities had seemed to subdue the Hindus by military means, and Muslim leaders with a medieval mindset concluded logically that numbers were unimportant to decide who will dominate whom. Thus, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (who had given an emigration fatwa during the Khilafat movement) is mis-termed a Nationalist Muslim but aimed in fact at the Islamic domination of the whole of India. However, Jinnah had interiorized the modern value of democracy and didn’t dare to ask for more than a country in which Muslims would form the majority.

Islam is against multiculturalism unless it is treated with utmost respect and has at least the perspective of becoming dominant. By contrast, the Hindu nationalists including Nathuram Godse were prepared to give the Muslims far-reaching concessions in order to keep India united. They were not guilty, Congress was not guilty when it proved insufficiently accommodating to the League, and the British rulers were not guilty. If a section of the Muslims had not desired Partition, then Partition would never have happened.

Hindus who blame the British for Partition, show that they are afraid of the truth, and afraid of Islam. It is far easier to accuse the British, who have safely departed, than to lay the blame at the door of Islam. Blaming Islam opens a can of worms, it is difficult to deal with this religion. It is a challenge to one’s courage, but it is mainly a challenge to one’s intelligence. If you are deficient in these departments, then go ahead and blame the British.

On the other hand, if you have courage and intelligence, it should be easy to face the fact of Muslim causation of the Partition of India. Today, it takes a moderate dosis of courage to criticize Islam: you risk the ire of the institutions (and your job if you are a scholar in the Humanities), the violence of some indignant Muslim, and if you are a Hindu, also the displeasure of your fellow Hindus. But these risks are manageable, and as I will explain on some future occasion, I do not buy the myth of Hindu lack of bravery. Criticizing Islam also requires a large amount on intelligence, viz. the power to discriminate between causes (the doctrine of Islam) and symptoms (the behavior of Muslims, only partly caused by this doctrine), and the balancing act between uncompromising criticism of the doctrine and sympathy at the human level. Even you could have been born and brought up as a Muslim and developed an attachment for Islam’s irrational beliefs. If you believe in reincarnation, you should realize that you even could have been a Muslim, perhaps several times over. So, responsibly criticizing Islam and its role in the Partition of India requires intelligence.

It is here that I have more reason to worry. Though Hindus have shown great intelligence in the literature of the past and ICT initiatives of the present, they have mostly failed to apply their intelligence to the Islam problem, though this is staring them in the face every day. But I am confident that now you will do something about it.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, responsibly criticizing Islam and its role in the Partition of India requires intelligence.

In the context of the above sentence, you have used the word responsibility in the sense of an "understanding" on the part of the critic; that the critic should be able to understand where the Muslim comes from.

That attitude is wrong, for you are implicitly assuming that others will respond positively to well-grounded criticism. And that you continue to believe so in spite of the fact that only Hindutva-folks pay serious attention to what you write, that left-liberals continue to snub you by ignoring or mischaracterizing you; amazes me. You overestimate the power of civilized dialogue, and thus like Hindutva folks, end up not influencing anyone beyond the Hindutva circles.

What you, and more generally Hindu-sympathizers, should worry rather is partly about how to criticize Islam in such a way that it will acquire societal traction.
The rest of the focus should be on wresting narrative power from the media and the academia. Whether this is possible or not, I don't know.

Shankar Sharan said...

Hats off, KE! In almost every paragraph there is a sentence or two which is poetic in formulation as well as communication.

And, yes, I also share your optimism about the Hindus doing something intelligently too regarding Islam problem. On Internet such intelligent voices, e.g. Sandeepweb and many followers there, are indication of growing perception and accumulating observation of the problem.

It is another matter that the media and academia is still in the rut of Nehruvian-Gandhian ideee fixe. The rut in which the Hindutva folks are also rolling, so far as Islam is concerned. This might break soon with help of various factors, one hopes.

Shankar Sharan said...

@kupamanduka

Have you noticed that you did not counter any of the facts and arguments presented by Elst in this article? Instead you went personal, criticizing the author's 'attitude' and how he is taken by friends and foes. Isn't it quite off the mark?

Besides, you are wrong in saying that anti-Hindu intellectual class ignore Elst. Several left-liberal media publications and leftist scholars have written about Elst. This is going on for at least ten years. Show any one RSS-BJP writer who have been taken up for academic criticism. As a matter of fact, branding Eslt as 'RSS writer' by leftists only shows their helplessness in refuting Elst's arguments on merit. Hence the cheap, age-old Leninist tactic of branding, knowing well that he is an independent thinker and scholar.

Unfortunately, the RSS directors have consistently failed to realise the value of such independent scholars who defend Hindu thought and society on their own wisdom. Their very independent intelligence is the asset, something which anti-Hindu ideological forces abhor. They are happy with RSS kind to lump them all as 'communal' and thus separate the common Hindus. The later they kept captured so far, by means fair and foul, for their own left-secular dogmas. In order to break this stranglehold on the non-RSS Hindu populace, Hindutva folks should have (even in their own sectarian interest) encouraged Elst kind scholars! But, unfortunately, they do the same thing which leftist cabal want: ask Elst to become admirer-propagator of the sterile Sangh ideology. This is what you have written in so many words!

Trailer of Dharma said...

Koenraad Elst ji,
Pranaam!

I would just like to say, that with this article you are making yourself somewhat more vulnerable to criticism, including personal criticism, especially from Indians.

You may be right with the issue of Muslims but you are sort of exonerating the British in having an activist agenda in the Partition of India, and it is not really borne out by all that the Indians have experienced.

Nehru was either a babe-in-the-woods or complicit with the Brits/Muslims. That is the opinion of many nationalist Indians in the meantime. So how the Brits dealt with him is not really the determinant of British attitude towards India.

The British penchant to give independence to the various Indian monarchies after they leave, shows that the British were willing to see a fragmented India. Giving Chittagong to the Pakistanis, should remind us that the British were adamant on curtailing Indian sovereignty. The British complicity in the Kashmir imbroglio, both at military level and at UN, should give us an idea of their agenda in boxing us in. But more clearly how Britain used Pakistan later on strategically should clear any doubts about their agenda at Partition.

I can understand that you feel Hindus are not taking on the challenge of Muslims seriously, especially at the rhetorical or academic level, but that can never be done at the expense of giving the Brits are clean chit for their role in Partition.

If you doubt this, please observe just how much support all kind of Islamist groups receive logistically from Britain.

SP said...

When partition was announced, I was six year old, and we used to hear Muslim boys of the locality sloganing "hanske Ilya hai Pakistan, lad ke lenge Hindustan", surely, they were not brainwashed by RSS, but someone else.

Let Mr. K remain in the well.

Trailer of Dharma said...

Koenraad ji,

Another thing that perhaps we should be cognizant of is that Hindu revivalism is still very young.

Whereas with other religions, often the support of its adherents is taken for granted, as it is based on blind faith, in Hinduism, IMHO, people are swayed by ideas. At a very fundamental level, Hindus' loyalty has been to the Sanskriti, the culture of India, instead of to a doctrine or some personality cult.

What the British Raj did was to shake the foundations of Indians in their faith in their own Sanskriti. That is being repaired now bit by bit. It is only when the Sanskriti of Indians has been fully charged, despite the challenge of Globalism and Yuppiness, that we Indians would be willing to take the next steps.

Islam did not really challenge Hinduism intellectually, just militarily. The British (and the Germans with their AIT) have however played a most damaging role for the self-confidence of the Hindus. Much of the Hindu intellectual elite was bought over.

As secular or pseudo-secular Indians we have basically lost a cogent reason why we should counteract Islam. If Indians can be turned into Macaulayists, into Christians, into Marxists, into Global Yuppies, then why not into Islamic Muslims?

The Hindutva-vadis themselves have shown themselves as intellectually weak on the one hand in order to speed up the above-spoken process, but also conscious of the power of the pseudo-secular media in destroying their image and thus making them unfit to govern, but they are also aware of Indian interests which lie in communal peace. They know the wider Hindu society is both confused as well as fragmented, and they dare not polarize it considering the media advantage of the pseudo-seculars, for then they will be accused of anti-national agenda.

So the empowerment of the Hindus would come from elsewhere! The value of Hindu Sanskriti would have to be imbibed by the Hindu Society through both traditional as well as modern narratives! When the Hindus know who they were and who they are, would they desire to dictate who they want to remain!

विजय said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
विजय said...

I am amazed how much non-responsibility RSS has instilled in its cadres and supporters. On every issue, they choose the easiest path to blame others, preach others and do nothing by way of taking a task to accomplish. All their activity are social service + criticizing Congress & Communists + eulogizing past RSS leaders + asking courts, governments, media, etc to do this or that.

That is why whenever any non-RSS but pro-Hindu writer or thinker speaks anything different they kind of attack him to follow suit. So that they could live comfortably with their escapist, easy-going mindset.

Nirjhar007 said...

I will say...
1. Islam and its rigid nature in majority .+
2. Muslim League under the control of Genius Jinnah.
These were the two main reason.
India was going to get freedom from Brits by June 1948 but the increasing violence made Lord Lui re-think for a quicker date! With division!! and the idea to remove the British troops (For safety of course;-)) made the end of the Raj an utter one.
Hindus-Muslims are still living together here with Muslims probably more in numbers than now in Pakistan, How many religious war do we see now??? The seed that to destroy is Politics, We need people to do Jananeeti not Rajneeti.
Good times.

Unknown said...

hi,

nehru was micro-managed by mountbatten's wife edwina who belonged to the rothschild's family.

rothschilds owned the british east india company, and were the world's first opium organised drug runners.

the whole idea was to put a islamic buffer on either side of the himalayas, to prevent russian and chinese access to the blue water ocean.

when sufficient muslims did NOT want to leave india for east and west pakistan,hindu muslim riots were engineered.

listen to what altaf hussian of pakistan says.

also punch into google search WINSTON CHURCHILL , HERO OR HENCHMAN- VADAKAYIL.

capt ajit avdakayil
..

Nirjhar007 said...

I have seen your blog, very interesting with vast data.
Keep it on.
Good times.

George Washington said...

I have great respect to the summa cum laude Koenraad Elst. He is a good scholar but mere being good scholar sometimes mislead us also, especially if we become too conscious of our being too good.

I have read quite a few of writings by KE Esq but I remain highly sceptical of his writings. I am told that he is a Hindu sympathiser and I am more inclined to believe so but my inner voice calls its shots.

I first came across his paper when the Indian Freedom Express showed up the controversial Macaulay quote. I have, since done my home work also on that quote. But what amazed me in KE's expression was an open criticism of Hindu mind, whereas he failed to realise that the same quote has had appeared not just in Indian press, perhaps he has misconstrued it as Hindu; but also in Pakistani, Sri Lanka and Bangladeshi sensibilities too. Those who have not read KE are requested to do so. Like in this blog, his very first paragraph in that post is highly indignant of Hindus with grotesque sympathy for Macaulay. He has gone at length to malign everyone whom he could lay his hand on in defence of Macaulay apart from proving them all wrong.

I request the esteemed readers here that my theme is not Macaulay here but it got its relevance to substantiate my point. Most of the time, his Hindu sympathy is such mismanipulated that is difficult to consume for an average Indian whose it is a second language. More so with the falling standard of teaching in government schools, it makes it even worst. Those who are convent educated, one can expect an obvious Macaulayism from them that does not help the Hindu intelligence either.

If one read it carefully, his first two paras in this post are quite sarcastic which he deliberately uses it to demoralise the Indians aka Hindu brain. I felt it very demeaning to in the first place.

"“Jinnah was brainwashed into dividing India”, I read in RSS mouthpiece Organiser. Well, if it is that easy, why doesn’t the RSS brainwash the Indian Muslims into becoming India-loving Hindus?"

I have pasted his first sentence from second para here to deliberate on. Why does he use the word "heread it in RS mouthpiece Organiser. A man of KE's stature should know it very well that Jinnah was brainwashed by the British after 1935 or so. Jinnah was very loyal to Congress and India alongwith Hindus.

Sometime between 1930-1940, British
needed someone to counter Congres to recruit Indian soldiers for WW II army and they could do so by inciting Jinnah against Congress which was against such British military recruitment of Indians and rightly so. It was nothing to do with Indian independence.

Secondly, the British were bankrupt and had a lot of loan from India. To divert the attention of Indian nationalists, not necessarily RSS/Hinduvadis, they needed a strong anti force and as the facts are coming out, including from some British press of that time, it is amply clear.

I am not sure, either the heading may be wrong or the way KE expresses may be beyond our English transliteration. Something KE should note that his presentation is amiss on some nouns or verbs. It is incompatible with his projected audience.

Dr. O. P. Sudrania

Nirjhar007 said...

Give a sentence according to you of course which describes the Indian freedom of August the 15th 1947.

Anonymous said...

Viceroys Lord Victor Linlithgow and Lord Archibald Wavell told Jinnah to his face that they would not countenance the division of their nice and neat Indian empire, not even in the event of decolonization. Their successor, Lord Louis Mountbatten, only accepted Partition because the Muslim League threatened and started violence.
I presume it is below Catholic Christian intelligence to provide proof and citation of this.
brainwash the Indian Muslims into becoming India-loving Hindus
I presume again that is is below Catholic Christian intelligence to provide data or source which shows that Indian Muslims do not love India - as much as Hindus?
British had nothing to do with Partition, and that this was a purely Muslim operation necessitated by the present democratic age’s belief in numbers.
Is it below Catholic Christian intelligence to accept evidence from Jinnah's statement when he said how "suddenly there was a change in the attitude towards me. I was treated on the same basis as Mr Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why all of a sudden I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr Gandhi.”

(all text in italics is quot of Shri Elst.

Anonymous said...

I will argue that the British had nothing to do with Partition
You will make your Catholic Christian arguments without citations, evidence, links, quotes, sources, because the Hindu is polite to stop you?
It is only the fledgling Cold War that made the British and also the Americans see a silver lining in the Partition, viz. that one of the parties would join the Western camp and provide it an outpost to monitor the Soviet threat
Is it beyond your Catholic-Christian intelligence to do some background study about the Great Game that was played out between the Soviets and the British from 1840-1940? How Russia was seen as the biggest threat to the Indian Empire by the British Raj?
To be sure, the British were guilty of many things, and the fixation of Hindu nationalists on them is understandable. Principally, they caused several very serious famines, they dismantled the technology and economic structure of India, and they imposed a foreign ideology that harmed the natives’ self-respect. This did not make British rule “the biggest crime in history”, as L.K. Advani claims on his blog (15 July 2012), but it was pretty bad.
After killing more than 25 million Indians - which is about 50 times more than what the Islamic invaders and rulers killed and enslaved, your Catholic-Christian intelligence believes that the British were not the worst killers in the history of humanity - way beyond Hitler.

I would agree with you on one thing here.

The Hindu is too polite - and should actually go after Christian *#@* with all that he has ...

Anonymous said...

Lord Louis Mountbatten, only accepted Partition because the Muslim League threatened and started violence.
Is it beyond your Catholic-Christian intelligence to see how British could put Gandhiji behind bars for threatening non-violent protest - but could not do anything when Jinnah threatened violence?
Hindus who blame the British for Partition, show that they are afraid of the truth, and afraid of Islam. It is far easier to accuse the British, who have safely departed, than to lay the blame at the door of Islam. Blaming Islam opens a can of worms, it is difficult to deal with this religion. It is a challenge to one’s courage, but it is mainly a challenge to one’s intelligence. If you are deficient in these departments, then go ahead and blame the British.
Is there a deficiency in your Catholic-Christian departments that you should deal with facts, documents, sources, evidence, quotations - and not in hate, name calling?

Can the Catholic Christian rise above his vile, genocidal ways of the last 2000 years?
It is here that I have more reason to worry. Though Hindus have shown great intelligence in the literature of the past and ICT initiatives of the present, they have mostly failed to apply their intelligence to the Islam problem, though this is staring them in the face every day. But I am confident that now you will do something about it.
Your Catholic-Christian mind has a good reason to be worried. Indians are seeing through the Christian-Progressive-Liberal Game - and you may be out of business faster than you imagine.

Gururaj B N said...

No doubt, Jinnah felt that in a democratic set up, where the Muslims are not in majority, they would be perpetually subjected to Hindu majority rule. To this extent, he was the cause of two nation theory. But, in 1909 or 1910, the Viceroy (perhaps Lord Minto) met a delegation of Muslim leaders in the Simla summer palace and assured them that their representations would be sympathetically considered by the Crown, as and when made by them. This was the starting point of muslim separatism in pre-indepndence India. The British have to bear the guilt for this.

ManjunathEMEN said...

hello friends,
revising historicity of the events of the world however regressive it looks but for India its not something to be castled as out dated or
unimportant especially when it comes to the point of shabby independence after the eons pittance called foreign rule. when it comes to religious 'faith play' at the time of india coming to the hands of dogmatic players we were the equ. to a Gnostic religion(not just ref to jainism, buddhism) by passing many no of sleep cycles of conscience and losing the bliss of selflessness which were cohere. as we stand today with the challenge with these relapse of faith conscience in its digitalo- macro-est form its time to realize the lost nirgun weapon called 'Veda'. though it needs a big sacrifices starting with 'free thinking' in philistine form.

Koenraad Elst said...

Some Hindus are extremely attached to their "British guilt for Partition" delusion; that much is clear from some posts above. Because this is only a blog, I dispense with references; sometimes I give them, sometimes I don't, that depends on the time available. But while one man gets harangued for sources for saying the obvious, viz. that the Partition was a Muslim-originated demand, you hundreds of millions of believers in the British guilt for Partition have still not provided a single source proving your belief that the British were planning the Partition of India since before 1947, in fact since the thirties or earlier. Of course the burden of proof in your allegation is on you; I only have to prove that the Muslim League wanted the Partition, which was obvious enough since their Pakistan resolution of 1940. Lord Minto proves my point and refutes yours: of course he wanted to "divide and rule" at the negotiation table, but he never wanted the Partition of India. Unless you can prove that he did.

Karthikrajan said...

Sir,
You are right by saying that the Brits were not responsible for creating Pakistan, i.e it was not their original idea. But when the muslim league put forth this demand they have used it to break india as a parting-shot at Indians (hindus) for bringing down their empire. Since the brits liberally went by the paradigm: enemy’s enemy is my friend, to gain control all over india the guilt of partition also fell squarely on their heads, much to the glee of dogmatic muslims who could continue with their domineering ways with plenty of help from pseudo-secularists, pseudo-rationalists and leftists. Unfortunately present day hindus of all hue have fallen into this trap. Part of this can be explained from the fact that british atrocities have been well documented in audio-visual format and readily available for review, whereas Islamic atrocities exist only in text form, which are being easily dismissed as either bogus or exaggerated scripts. Hence it is easy for hindus to conclude that partition is also one of british atrocities !! Nobody bothers to read the quran to find a direct link between Islamic atrocities and quran’s exhortation to that effect. Really amazing to see how islam has managed to take so many people for a ride. High time that the back bone of this religion is broken.
--Karthikrajan

Arun said...

The British/US Imperialist has always been happy to use Islamic fanaticism as a tool of empire, when necessary, and to suppress it brutally, when necessary.

The latest cycle of this was when over the warnings of Afghan intellectuals, Carter & Reagan (bipartisan unity!) armed the mujahideen; and now the US is drawing down on a decade-long occupation of Afghanistan fighting the forces it enabled in the first place.

Winston Churchill was happy enough to support Jinnah, and as he told Wavell, he'd be happy enough if India was divided into Princestan, Hindustan, Pakistan.

Unknown said...

Thank you, sir.
Those who are criticizing you are all the byproduct of Modern Indian education system --- basically robots, without any commonsense.
Please, ignore them and continue.
God bless you. Thank you.

vamanan sight said...

It's hard to believe that the British had no contribution to make to the apocalypse that attended their departure and the birth of India.

xxx said...

Inspite of being an Indian , I fully agree with Dr. Elst's article.

Indians are so deeply ingrained with the 'British partition theory' that any remittance has become fully antithetical to their established contention. It is high time we called spade a spade and quit blaming the British for our inability to deal with Islamic sectarianism.

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Unknown said...

Sir. You are right British ware not guilty of partition.This point is proved by Maharashtrian scholar in his book on partition. But we overlook another point that partition of India is good for Hindus or not. What would have happened of India was not partied.muslims population would be roughly 45%. Narendra Modi would not have become PM.Ramjnmabhoomi temple would be impossible. Balwant vyavahare

Truth Seeker said...

Happy to know that there is at least one sane voice giving the right picture of the partition.Also gladening is Koenraad Elst's attempt to disabuse the Indians of​ the bogey man outlook on the British and also on the West in general.But as is his wont Koenraad Elst goes back on his precept when he holds Jawaharlal Nehru as a pucca Englishman.Let us forget Nehru's penchant for speaking the English language,his following of the western culture etc, which many Indians do.Weren't the Englishmen paranoid about protecting India's frontiers though India was only their colony? Isn't it sheer nonsense to attribute the Nehruvian evil to colonial Britishness?

Truth Seeker said...

Mr.Koenraad,
Appreciating your excellent write up on the exact reason for the break up of the Indian subcontinent and the birth of Pakistan, I am extremely surprised by your omission of an important aspect of the creation of Pakistan, viz. the plight of non-Muslims in the newly created state of Pakistan.Without the discussion of the plight of the minorities in the nascent state of Pakistan the treatment of the subject of the partition of the subcontinent would be highly incomplete.The tragedy was not partition or it was not just partition alone but the near complete displacement of the prosperous minority communities of the newly created state of Pakistan for the simple reason of not being Muslim.

Mr.Koenraad, your overlooking of the plight of non-Muslims in the newly born Pakistan is even more baffling in the light of hundreds of millions of Hindus holding on to their pet idea of the British hand in the partition, which is obvious in some of the criticisms voiced here.The non-Muslim story in Pakistan is a simple and straightforward needle that would burst the myth of the British creation of Pakistan.Even accepting the hogwash of British having brainwashed Jinnah to demand Pakistan,it still cannot explain the savage and systematic displacement of the non-Muslim population from the territory which suddenly became Pakistan.Surely brainwashing by the British is not at all sufficient to enact this colossal tragedy.The urge to enact this tragedy should come from within and not from without.This plain and obvious crystal clear proof for the truth which you are espousing, has been obscured by a veneer of falsification- which is the two way displacement and movement of the populations, which is very largely untrue.But people of understanding like yourself need only to dust off this veneer of falsehood to demonstrate the truth.It is a wonder why you have failed to do that.Plus the cleansing of the Kashmir Valley of it's small Hindu minority, which is just a part and parcel of the partition problem, would greatly multiply the strength of the argument against the making of the British as the scapegoat for the partition of the subcontinent.