Thread by @SaibBilaval

#IndiaAt75 Today 🧵

Two days ago was Independence Day in India - a day of celebrating our national sovereignty and saluting the anti-colonial freedom struggle. The triumph of Indian independence, however, is inseparable from the trauma of the Partition experience.

Hence, in mainstream culture in India, August 15 becomes a day of bashing Jinnah left, right and centre.

Makes one suspect that the ideals of populist nat-lism & inclusive democracy have been long forgotten under a sea of symbolism, antipathy & myth making– of what a successful nation we could've had, had theren't been an evil separatist at work whose legacy sabotages us even today.

This begs the question – have we or our government ever tried hard enough to achieve our so-called original goals nevertheless? The fight was against the status quo and yet it remains entrenched today, hardly due to the deeds of a hostile neighbor.

To retreat into the history of the Partition and Indian politics would provide us useful insights. The question of powerful actors in the deal-making that happened at the dusk of Imperial rule, on the desk of colonial masters immediately questions the common narrative.

The concept of sole spokesmanship, whether wielded by the  Congress or Muslim League - wad to sideline the various popular movements that arose in the 1930s onwards.

The main victims of this exercise of monopoly and backdoor favoritism were the Left (which controlled large sections of the peasant and trade union movement), Ambedkar and other Dalit movements, incl non-Brahman movements in Madras & Maharashtra,
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autonomous peasant struggles against politically well-connected zamindars, and any regional struggle that challenged upper caste North Indian hegemony.

The Cabinet Mission plan in 1946 provided for precisely that. It was accepted by Jinnah and vetoed by the Congress. The Muslim League was the first party to accept the Plan and the last party to join the Interim Government.

The Congress was the last party to accept the Plan (which it in any case did not do fully) and the first to join the Interim Government. The relative weights of the actors comes out clearly here.

Pakistan was then shortly led by an immigrant set of leaders (the old Muslim League guard) till the local landlord-Punjabi-Army elite took over soon after the assassination of Liaqat Ali Khan. Jinnah’s vision died then and there – have no doubt about it.

To say that Congress leaders from Bengal and Punjab didn't benefit from the partitioning of their provinces would indeed be revisionist beyond redemption.

After all which Congressi would have wanted the chance of a Muslim League ministry in the two undivided provinces (where Muslims were a slightly higher percentage), when they could guarantee themselves a state-level victory with Partition?

The freedom of Bangladesh enabled West Punjab to dominate Pakistan electorally and demographically – any party that gets an overwhelming majority in Punjab becomes close to a majority in the National Assembly in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, to some, Independence means azaadi even today. To others, it brings up the contrast between what is and what should have been. The leaders of their nation and their ideas had died out of power by the 1950s itself – that dream was over.

In India, however, the articulators of freedom and the political inheritors of freedom remained the same. Today, those in power are the lobby that did not sacrifice one drop of sweat to the cause of Indian freedom.

That the populist elements of the national vision still remain a distant vision even now, while fiscal, administrative and communal matters overrode welfare and social justice – shows us how much remains of the pre-Independence status quo.

That the socio-economic status-quo is a colonial heritage is bulldozed by bucketfuls of cultural nationalism, and what some would say – hegemony itself.

The idea that freedom was to most people the promise of a higher standard of living and an end to exploitation first and foremost, has been long subsumed by communal outcries that should have no place in our society that serve to cover up what has not been achieved even today.