Partition of India: A Political Gamble Gone
The New York Times carried the news item that India and Pakistan had finally declared ceasefire after over 14 years of incessant cross border skirmishes and loss of many lives over the burning issue of Kashmir. The armistice has come about as a culmination of recent peace overtures being made by both countries. The welcome news however had two significant undertones. First given the volatile nature of India-Pakistan relations, the durability of the truce is anybody’s guess. The aura of apprehension and pessimism surrounding this current stoppage of hostilities emanates from the fact that even earlier ceasefires have failed to be sustainable. Secondly a not too subtle point and something more fundamental made by the newspaper was the fact that Kashmir was the only Muslim majority state in India begging the almost existential question as to whether Hindus and Muslims can co-habit together: a question which had been posed almost one century ago and answered through what had seemed the as the only political solution: the partition of India and creation of Pakistan. Subsequent history has however continued to give “dusty answers”.
In fact the communal violence in the sub continent in the twentieth century, which had presented such a question, persists even today. In fact the communalization of society was reinforced by the partition of India. It witnessed ghoulish communal riots. It intensified the communal divide in India and Pakistan and accelerated the communalization of society at a rabid pace in both countries. The debacle of the partition continues to haunt the polity and society of India and Pakistan. Many thought that the partition would solve the issue of communalism but instead of solving, it has heightened communal tensions.
There have been quite a few Hindu-Muslim riots in India since Independence. There were attacks on Muslims in some parts of India after the Partition. Since then till 1996 there have been 21,000 incidents of rioting in different parts of India. 16,000 people have lost their lives while over one hundred thousand people have been injured. The Muslims have borne the brunt in most riots in India. Such riots have resulted in persecution and mass killings of Hindus in Pakistan. Some of the most brutal Hindu-Muslim riots in India have taken place in Meerut, Bhagalpur, Calcutta, Mumbai and recently in Gujarat. Any Hindu-Muslim conflict in one nation has reverberations on the other nation. The Hindu minority in Pakistan and the Muslim minority in India have invariably been at the receiving end of retaliatory action by the majority community. The question as to whether the two communities can live together continues to haunt us.

In this context it is important to recall how the British colonial politics of divide and rule and the communal politics of the Muslim League combined with the harsh rhetoric of Hindu communal organizations continued to drive a wedge between communities in pre-independence India. It is necessary to remember that even after independence, the riots have been invariably the handiwork of communal forces within the country manifest in organizations like the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal, BJP and Shiv Sena. In some cases the Pakistani-sponsored terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and others have incited almost all of the communal riots. Even in democratic India, unfortunately, since the 1990s, communal governments have replaced the secular governments at the center and the states in India.
In fact in a study conducted by Prof. Ashutosh Varshney only eight cities in India have been identified as the scene of a majority of riots proving the point that it is politics, which is at the root of this cancer. Another interesting aspect of the same study notes that riots are concentrated almost exclusively in cities. Villages are not affected by riots to that extent. Therefore although the post independence violence and communalism of the recent times across both sides of the border have revived the same existential debate about Hindus and Muslims living together it is politics and not any intrinsic difference between human beings that brought about and is continuing to deepen the fracture between the two communities. The communal divide is basically a urban phenomenon brought about by divisive politics, first practiced by the British and then perpetuated by the political class which emerged in the nineties sidelining the secular elements which had spearheaded the freedom movement. Millions and millions of Hindus and Muslims still live in amity in countless villages across the length and breadth of India. The issues they face are real ones: issues of hunger and malnutrition, unemployment, squalor, safe drinking water, health. What is necessary today is a transformation of the politics of the day so that it focuses on problems and concerns of the millions and not on divisive power play that communalism symbolizes.
It would be advisable to ban and outlaw all the Hindu communal organizations from participating in politics. All the schools and cultural institutions run by them must be metamorphosed into secular institutions through help provided by secular parties and non-governmental and civil society organizations. Local civic associations like trade unions, clubs and municipal associations must be nurtured in way that they can cut across religious lines, improve communication and defeat the machinations of vested political interests.
It must be remembered that in India, Muslims have been members of parliament, leaders of the armed forces and even the head of state. Many Muslims have distinguished themselves in the fields of art, literature, films as well as sports. This has been possible entirely because of the secular and democratic fabric of India. On the contrary, Pakistan is a theocratic military regime where Hindus neither participate in politics nor dare to vie for leadership positions. Clearly communalism in India is an aberration born of politics, not symptomatic of any irreconcilable difference amongst people and partition was not the answer.