Manish Tewari | 75 years later, it’s time to bury Partition legacy

Tomorrow Independent India would be 75 years old. Did the sharp inflection points between the Hindus and Muslims as a consequence of over 70 invasions by Muslim invaders between AD 1000 and AD 1700 finally find expression when a more cunning but religiously different imperialist “the firangi” became India’s overlord especially after the failure of the Mutiny of 1857 or the first war of Independence? The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of India should go and settle in this territory.” Lala Lajpat Rai, the great nationalist, wrote in the Tribune on December 14, 1924, “Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: The Pathan Province or the North-West Frontier; Western Punjab Sindh and Eastern Bengal. It means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.” Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 presidential address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League Allahabad, December 29, 1930, “Personally, I would go farther than the demands embodied in it. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.” The Lahore Resolution March 23, 1940, underscored: “Resolved that it is the considered view of this session of the All-India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to Muslims unless it is designed on the following basic principle, namely, that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern Zones of India, should be grouped to constitute “Independent States” in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.