2 The paradigmatic partition? The Pakistan demand revisited
-
Ayesha Jalal
Abstract
More than seventy years after its cataclysmic enactment, the partition of India continues to loom large on the subcontinent’s political horizon, scarring relations between, as well as within, the nation-states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. More than just an event, partition is an ongoing process with neither end nor beginning that continues to structure the postcolonial South Asian experience. An institutionalised form of dividing and disconnecting, partition has been the founding myth of postcolonial nation-states and ferrets out people, communities and linguistic cultures that were once historically indivisible. If there are multiple slippages, elisions and contestations in narratives about the great divide that occurred seventy years ago, there are strange silences about its constant re-enactments in the postcolonial nation-states of South Asia. This chapter revisits the demand for Pakistan as envisaged by the All-India Muslim League and its leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and points to the multiple elisions and distortions in interpretations that have crept into the contending state narratives of India and Pakistan. More than three decades ago I had shown that Jinnah’s aims had been different from the final outcome of 1947. A more balanced understanding of the historical dynamics in the final decades of the British Raj not only points to alternative conceptions of sharing power, but also dramatically different ways of dealing with its effects on politics and everyday life in the South Asian subcontinent.
Abstract
More than seventy years after its cataclysmic enactment, the partition of India continues to loom large on the subcontinent’s political horizon, scarring relations between, as well as within, the nation-states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. More than just an event, partition is an ongoing process with neither end nor beginning that continues to structure the postcolonial South Asian experience. An institutionalised form of dividing and disconnecting, partition has been the founding myth of postcolonial nation-states and ferrets out people, communities and linguistic cultures that were once historically indivisible. If there are multiple slippages, elisions and contestations in narratives about the great divide that occurred seventy years ago, there are strange silences about its constant re-enactments in the postcolonial nation-states of South Asia. This chapter revisits the demand for Pakistan as envisaged by the All-India Muslim League and its leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and points to the multiple elisions and distortions in interpretations that have crept into the contending state narratives of India and Pakistan. More than three decades ago I had shown that Jinnah’s aims had been different from the final outcome of 1947. A more balanced understanding of the historical dynamics in the final decades of the British Raj not only points to alternative conceptions of sharing power, but also dramatically different ways of dealing with its effects on politics and everyday life in the South Asian subcontinent.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of contributors ix
- Foreword by Lucy Chester xiii
- Acknowledgements xvi
- Introduction - Connecting the partitions of India and Palestine 1
-
Part I: The partition of British India
- 1 The Mountbatten Viceroyalty reconsidered 35
- 2 The paradigmatic partition? The Pakistan demand revisited 57
-
Part II: The partition of Palestine
- 3 Partition and the question of international governance 75
- 4 Fighting for Palestine as a holy duty? The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the partition of Palestine in 1947 91
-
Part III: The partitions of India and Palestine compared
- 5 The communal question and partition in British India and mandate Palestine 113
- 6 India’s dilemmas of pragmatism v. principles 138
-
Part IV: The consequences of partition for South Asia, the Middle East and beyond
- 7 The partitions of India and Palestine and the dawn of majority rule in Africa and Asia 159
- 8 ‘Unfinished’ partition 193
- 9 Civil war, total war or a war of partition? Reassessing the 1948 War in Palestine from a global perspective 222
- 10 Partitioned identities? Regional, caste and national identity in Pakistan 259
- Afterword 278
- Index 289
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of contributors ix
- Foreword by Lucy Chester xiii
- Acknowledgements xvi
- Introduction - Connecting the partitions of India and Palestine 1
-
Part I: The partition of British India
- 1 The Mountbatten Viceroyalty reconsidered 35
- 2 The paradigmatic partition? The Pakistan demand revisited 57
-
Part II: The partition of Palestine
- 3 Partition and the question of international governance 75
- 4 Fighting for Palestine as a holy duty? The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the partition of Palestine in 1947 91
-
Part III: The partitions of India and Palestine compared
- 5 The communal question and partition in British India and mandate Palestine 113
- 6 India’s dilemmas of pragmatism v. principles 138
-
Part IV: The consequences of partition for South Asia, the Middle East and beyond
- 7 The partitions of India and Palestine and the dawn of majority rule in Africa and Asia 159
- 8 ‘Unfinished’ partition 193
- 9 Civil war, total war or a war of partition? Reassessing the 1948 War in Palestine from a global perspective 222
- 10 Partitioned identities? Regional, caste and national identity in Pakistan 259
- Afterword 278
- Index 289
