Division Exercises

The British were also increasingly convinced that a Congress government in a united India would not serve British interests. It would be a government that would most likely be hostile to any continued British military presence in India; and it would certainly be more sympathetic to the Russians. Sarila charts with admirable detail the way in which the British came to conclude that a Congress government would not serve its strategic interests. Hence the need for a client state in the subcontinent that would be beholden to the British for their defence, would act as a possible buffer against the Russians and could potentially be a gateway to the Middle East. The British support for the idea of Pakistan was born of such calculations and it succeeded. The Baghdad Pact and later CENTO, of which Pakistan was a part, formed a barrier to Soviet ambitions in the Middle East.

It is this larger context, Sarila argues, that explains the manner in which the British orchestrated domestic politics in India. In some ways, this is a classic divide and rule story with a twist. The British helped build up Jinnah as a counter to the Congress. Jinnah served various purposes: the magnification of divisions within India served to prolong British rule against American pressure. Jinnah was also, on this view, a more amenable pawn in British hands, especially because of his insistence that a Muslim state would have to depend on the British army.

But Sarila is too politically perceptive to believe that simple conspiracy theories can explain an outcome as monumental as partition. He faults Congress tactics during the thirties that allowed Jinnah a political opening. During the forties, the resignation of Congress ministries had the double effect of convincing the British that the Congress was going to be hostile to them and leaving the field open for Jinnah. Sarila sometimes underestimates the internal momentum that was building up in Hindu- Muslim relations. Not all readers will be convinced that India’s partition could have been avoided had it not been for the Great Game, but this narrative compels us to overcome simple minded views of what produced partition.

The book has four unequivocal villains: Jinnah for his singleminded, if artful, exploitation of British fears and his willingness to use any means to achieve his objective. Churchill, who in one context said to Roosevelt that in “war truth must have an escort of lies,” is again relentless in his determination to divide India and uses Jinnah for this purpose. The third villain is more unusual, though Sarila’s account of his motives is less convincing. Sarila argues that Wavell took an intense dislike to Congress and had already mapped out India’s partition very much along the lines that Radcliffe was to draw later. But the evidence is more equivocal than Sarila suggests. For one, a lot of Wavell’s dispatches, including the maps showing India’s partition were more in the nature of spinning out possible scenarios than firm declaration of intent. Wavell had also famously insisted that a United Indian Army was absolutely central to ward off Russia’s strategic ambitions. And the fourth minor villain is Krishna Menon whose vehement anti-Americanism drove him to play along with the British. Menon seems to have served as a virtual stooge for Mountbatten’s designs.

Congress leaders by and large come across as uncertain and vacillating. They are neither as united or singleminded or relentless as the Jinnah-Churchill combination turned out be. Often their moralism got in the way of their better political judgement, and they were too swayed by personal affections to be much of a match for the Machiavellian juggernaut that was sweeping them off their feet. Indeed, if Sarila’s evidence is anything to go by, few of them were capable of thinking strategically rather than ideologically.

One of the more fascinating under currents of this book is the way in which India refused to so much as acknowledge and take advantage of American support for India’s cause. But the monumental irony is that it is difficult to imagine what compelled the British to assume that India would be hostile to their interests.