Jaswant Singh’s book is a brilliant landmark encompassing accepted and contrarian views. According to him, Partition (he uses the emotion-laden word “vivisection”) is the central event of 20th-century Indian history. Singh is wrong. The central event of the times was the ending of the British Raj. He argues that Nehru and Patel were as responsible for Partition as Jinnah. He is right. It is his position that Partition was a great mistake that is questionable.

Let’s look at the counter-factual “where would we be if Partition had not happened?” It’s impossible to say whether we would have been better or worse. We might have become a fractious violence-ridden Lebanon. We might have splintered into dozens of warring states, something that has happened before in our history. If things went well, we might have been a prosperous, happy utopia! This question does not have many takers among Pakistanis or Bangladeshis. Most of them, with a few exceptions, think that Partition was good. We must perforce take them at face value.

We need to look at the positions of Nehru and Patel based on the facts they knew and the bargaining chips they had in 1947. They were confronted by Muslim extremism and they had to reckon with the fact that the British would try to further their own interests and sabotage that which was not to their liking. Muslim extremists had two contradictory positions. The Muslim League position was that in a Hindu-majority India they would be overwhelmed. Their solution was to have Muslim-majority regions secede. The second extremist position (inspired by Deobandis and Ahrars) was that India was once ruled by Muslims and Muslims had a right to propagate all over India, not just in one part, and ultimately prevail. Conceding the secession of Muslim-majority areas, followed by other Muslims living in India as citizens of a secular civil society, was and, in hindsight, is far better than a so-called united country where large numbers are pursuing plans to “re-conquer” India.

... contd.