June 15, 1947: When Congress accepted Mountbatten plan that divided India on religious lines

The partition of India is one of the greatest horrors inflicted on India that haunts every Indian even today. 75 years ago today the ‘nationalist’ Congress party along with MK Gandhi approved the plan of dividing the Bharat into two sovereign entities- India and Pakistan, to maintain its basic ‘secular nationalist’ character. He said, “Friends, in India, there live two prominent nations which are distinguished by the names of Hindus and Mussalmans…To be a Hindu or a Muslim is a matter of internal faith that has nothing to do with mutual relationships and external conditions…Hence, leave God’s share to God and concern yourself with the share that is yours…India is the home of both of us…By living so long in India, the blood of both has changed.” Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University Further, twelve years later, he stated that if the British community and the army were to leave India, taking with them all their cannons and their splendid weapons and all else, Hindus and Muslims could not sit on the same throne to rule this one nation. Congress approved the ‘3rd June’ plan On February 20, 1947, Clement Attlee, the then British Prime Minister, declared that the British would quit India by 30th June 1948. Nehru, Mountbatten and Jinnah at conference table On June 3, 1947, Mountbatten was able to bring leaders of both, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League around a conference table, where they collectively endorsed Mountbatten’s plan also known as the ‘3rd June’ plan.