The most unfortunate Partition of India in August 1947 led to killings of nearly 6 lakh people and uprooted almost 15 million Indians from both sides. Who be held responsible or culprits for this holocaust? Not only the historians but even the Indian freedom fighters defer on the analysis and blame each other for being responsible to create situation leading to Partition. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote in “India Wins Freedom”(1959): “(M. A.) Jinnah may have raised the flag of Partition but now the real flag bearer was Patel.” Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia (23 March 1910- 12 October 1967) in “The Guilty Men of India’s Partition”(1960) describes Maulana’s contempt for Sardar Patel and lies being spread on each page of his book including presenting Pandit Nehru under the influence of Lady Mountbatten. Of course, Lohia had been critical of Nehru despite being a Socialist.
“It would not perhaps be unfair to say that Vallabhbhai Patel was the founder of Indian Partition,” writes Maulana in his book giving full credit to Lord Mountbatten for the design of Partition. The Sardar, a Home Member resented Liaquat Ali Khan, a Finance Member in the Congress- Muslim League Interim Government (Executive Council) where Liaquat was able “to reject or delay every proposal put up by the Congress Members of the Executive Council.”Sardar Patel discovered that though he was Home Member, he could not create the post of a chaprasi (peon) without Liaquat Ali’s concurrence. “When Lord Mountbatten suggested that Partition might offer a solution to the present difficulty, he found ready acceptance to the idea in Sardar Patel’s mind.”
Maulana found Mountbatten turning his attention to Jawaharlal after Patel was convinced. He says: “I have often wondered how Jawaharlal was won over by Lord Mountbatten. He was a man of principle but he is also impulsive and very amenable to personal influences. I think one factor responsible for the change was the personality of Lady Mountbatten. She is not only extremely intelligent but has a most attractive and friendly temperament. She admired her husband very greatly and in many cases tried to interpret his thoughts to those who would not at first agree with him.” The former Congress President claims that he was deeply distressed since the Partition was to be harmful not only to Muslims but to the whole country. He claimed to have made efforts to make both “supporters of Partition” and since it was a futile exercise, he turned to his “only hope” Gandhiji. “It will be over my dead body” was the reply from the Mahatma but after Gandhiji’s meetings with Lord Mountbatten and Sardar Patel, he found “defection” in his views too.
Despite Maulana claiming making efforts to avoid Partition even by meeting Lord Mountbatten, both Lohia and Rajmohan Gandhi, the biographer of Sardar Patel, claimed that Azad did not oppose Partition in the Working Committee meeting on 14 June 1947 ! “Maulana Azad sat in a chair throughout the two days of (WorCom) meeting in a corner of the very small room which packed us all, puffed away at his endless cigarettes and spoke no word.” So writes Lohia, a special invitee. According to Lohia, barring four persons- himself, Jaipraksh, who was another special invitee, Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi- “none spoke a word in opposition of Partition.” Lohia laughs at the claim of Azad that he was the only person who opposed the Partition.
In his book, “The Guilty Men of India’s Partion”(1960) and Hindi version of it, “Bharat Vibhajan ke Gunahagar”(2009), Lohia gives eight reasons for the Partition of India: (1) The British Conspiracy (2) Ageing Congress leadership (3) The situation created by Hindu- Muslim riots (4) Lack of determination and competence of people (5)Ahimsa of Gandhiji (6) Betrayal of Muslim League (7) Unable to take advantage of the opportunities and (8) Hindu ego. Lohia believed that the Partition could have been avoided lest the ageing Congress leadership’s craving for power would have waited. He was of the firm opinion that pro-Hindu elements, who preferred to brand themselves with the Jan Sangh, did support the British and Muslim League in the Partition of the country. “The opponents of Indian Muslims are the friends of Pakistan.” Lohia equally condemns the Communists for their support to the Partition.
As Hamid Ansari , the former Vice President of India, puts it, Lohia was an idealist and had his icons in the early period; Mahatma Gandhi represented his “dream”, Nehru his “desire” and Subhas Chandra Bose his “deed”. Despite the adulation of earlier years, his criticism of Nehru and his policies after early 1940s was trenchant. His articulation of the principles of the Congress Socialist Party transmuted itself in the fifties into the Praja Socialist Party which, as he put it,” is as distant from the Congress party as it is from the Communist and the Communalist parties.” Elected to the Lok Sabha in 1963, he advocated : “ Parliament is the master whereas the Prime Minister is its servant. The servant has to behave modestly and politely with his master.” He utilized the parliamentary platform to express powerfully his views on what he considered were shortfalls in domestic and foreign policy issues. Dr. Lohia, as a Socialist leader, initiated an anti-Congress coalition after the Congress Party under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could win all time low i.e. 283 seats in Lok Sabha election in February 1967, by joining hands with Pandit Deedayal Upadhyaya of Jan Sangh and others. He could manage to establish Samyukt Vidhyak Dal(SVD) governments, though for a short period, in various Indian states like Utter Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Punjab, West Bengal, Orissa, Madras and Kerala. One would find some contradictions in the personality of the visionary doctoral student of Friedrich – Wilhelms – Univesitat, today’s Humboldt- Universitat, in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
He was with Congress Party and was critical of the leadership. He did not spare Pattom Thanu Pillai, his own party Chief Minister of Kerala, when he allowed the police to open fire on agitators. Towards the end of his life , he was openly critical of the Samyukt Vidhayak Dal governments in which his party was a partner. Lohia always considered the Partition as an artificial or fake and dreamt to have both India and Pakistan reunited one-day as Hindustan. According to Yogendra Yadav, Dr. Lohia is remembered as the originator of Other Backward Classes(OBC) reservations, the champion of backward castes in the politics of north India, the father of non-Congressism, the uncompromising critic of the Nehru dynasty, and the man responsible for the politics of anti-English.
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(The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail: [email protected] )
