The Seedbed of Pakistan: Cultural Conflicts, Elite Muslim Anxieties and the Congress (1885-1906)

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Saumya Dey is a professor of history at the Rashtram School of Public Leadership, Rishihood University, Sonipat, Haryana. He has done a PhD at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His primary research interests are intellectual and cultural history and the politics of colonial India. His earlier books are Becoming Hindus and Muslims: Reading the Cultural Encounter in Bengal 1342-1905 (2015), The Cultural Landscape of Hindutva and Other Essays: Historical Legitimacy of an Idea (2019) and Narrativizing Bharatvarşa and Other Essays (2021)History at the Rashtram School of Public Leadership, Rishihood University, Sonipat, Haryana. He has done a PhD at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His primary research interests are intellectual and cultural history and the politics of colonial India. His earlier books are Becoming Hindus and Muslims: Reading the Cultural Encounter in Bengal 1342-1905 (2015), The Cultural Landscape of Hindutva and Other Essays: Historical Legitimacy of an Idea (2019) and Narrativizing Bharatvarşa and Other Essays (2021).

BRITISH-RULED INDIA was partitioned into the two Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947. This cataclysm displaced enormous numbers of human beings. Millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims found themselves on the wrong side of a hurriedly etched international border and trudged to safety in India or Pakistan. Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands died in the sanguinary riots that back dropped partition-old neighbours fell upon and slaughtered each other in savage, bestial fury in many cities and countless towns and villages. Although three generations have passed since this monstrous human tragedy unfolded, its traumatic memories are yet to fade. We still, as a result, look for the roots of this tragedy. We continue to search for what might have led to partition and the emergence of Pakistan in the political bedlam that characterised India in the 1930s and 40s. More specifically, we look to pin the blame for the enormous cataclysm that was partition on some cogent reason or identifiable agency.

Now, most important scholarship agrees that the Congress stood for Indian unity throughout' (though one might personally want to nurture a different point of view). Scholarly speculations, thus, generally revolve around Muhammad Ali Jinnah's role and intentions in the political drama surrounding partition. Ayesha Jalal seems to think that he did not quite want Pakistan and meant it only as a 'bargaining counter’. Anita Inder Singh, on the other hand, appears to indicate that Jinnah did after all want partition and the establishment of Pakistan. It is indeed tempting to engage with and contribute to these speculations and points of view, as it gives one the chance to contemplate and dilate on the sensational course of developments leading to the blood-drenched sundering of British India. This book shall, however, not do so, as is clearly indicated by the period it considers.