Free India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha

building for the independence of Muslims and Islam’. A League election poster in Punjab offered some meaningful pairs of contrasts: din (the faith) versus dunya (the world); zamir (conscience) versus jagir (property); haqq-koshi (righteousness) versus sufedposhi (office). In each case, the first item stood for Pakistan, the second for Hindustan.
    League propaganda also urged voters to overcome sectarian divisions of caste and clan. ‘Unite on Islam – Become One’, declared one poster. The Muslims were asked to act and vote as a single qaum , or community. A vital role was played by student volunteers, who traversed the countryside canvassing votes from house to house.
    The election results were a striking vindication of the League’s campaign. Across India, in province after province, the Congress did exceedingly well in the general category, but the Muslim seats were swept by the League, fighting on the single issue of a separate state for Muslims. In the province of Bengal, for example, the League won 114 out of 119 seats reserved for Muslims; since the strength of the assembly was 250, it required little effort to cobble together a majority. In the United Provinces the Congress won 153 seats out of a total of 228, and so formed the government. But within this larger victory there was a significant defeat, for of the 66 Muslim seats on offer in the United Provinces the League won a resounding 54. Even more striking were the results in the southern province of Madras, which even the most devoted follower of Jinnah would not claim for a prospective Pakistan. Here the Congress won 165 out of 215 seats, but the League won all 29 seats reserved for Muslims. Overall, in the general constituencies, the Congress won 80.9 per cent of the votes, whereas in the seats reserved for Muslims the League garnered74.7 per cent.
    After the results had come in, the League’s paper, Dawn , proclaimed that ‘Those who have been elected this time to the Legislatures have been charged by the voters with the duty . . . of winning Pakistan. Within and outside the Provincial and Central Assemblies and Councilsthat and that alone is now the “priority job”. The time for decision is over; the time for action has come.’
    This was written on 7 April 1946. Three days later Jinnah convened a meeting in Delhi of the 400 legislators elected on the Muslim League ticket. This convention reiterated the call for an independent Pakistan. However, in early May Jinnah attended a conference in Simla, where attempts were being made by the Cabinet Mission to find a unitary solution. Through the next two months various drafts were passed round, allowing for one nation-state but with provinces having the option to leave if they so desired. The Congress and the League could not agree on the conditions under which provinces would join or leave the projected union. Another sticking point was Jinnah’s contention that the Congress could not nominate a Muslim as one of its representatives to the talks. 9
    Jinnah bargained hard, knowing now that he had Muslim popular sentiment behind him. By the end of June 1946 it was clear that no settlement could be reached. The Cabinet Mission returned to London. The League leaders met on 29 July and affirmed that ‘the time has now come for the Muslim nation to resort to direct action in order to achieve Pakistan and assert their just rights and to vindicate their honour and to get rid of the present slavery under the British and contemplated future of Caste Hindu domination’.
    Two weeks later was Direct Action Day, and the beginning of the end of the dream of United India.

II

    Gandhi was not alone in choosing to mark the day of Independence for India, 15 August 1947, as a day of mourning rather than celebration. Across the border in Pakistan, where independence had come a day earlier, the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz wrote of

This leprous daybreak, dawn night’s fangs have mangled –
This is not that long-looked for break