The August of 1947 witnessed political turmoil in South-east Asia and as Jinnah in his inaugural speech claimed, “…beginning of a new and a noble era”. Indeed, a new beginning for both nations and [the] races which went from sour to bitter with the later time; hard for nostalgia to embalm and heal. At the stroke of midnight hour when India fulfill its tryst with destiny by marching into the history as one more independent nation; some journeyed through darkness to keep with their tryst to destiny. To be politically correct, I find Nehru’s inaugural speech on the birth of a nation is misleading as India (err! Hindustan) never made a pledge to gain independence with having it ‘divided’. Textbooks from both countries there onwards customized events to rewrote/retold ‘the tryst with freedom’ in a fashionable form where heroes belonging to particular race played a formidable role.
Births of post-independent era to both countries continued to live under the mesmerizing spell [and] feed with versions with ‘independence’ as an extra holiday in the week to rejoice and fly kites. I am sure, my Pakistani counterparts too feel the same till [we] walk to history ourselves and re-discover.
Sixty-years later when history is retold by citizens of both the nations with true sentiments having dissolved, we study why ‘we’re partitioned’ to be independent. First, the fact. Majority of nations in South-east Asia who’re once a part of colonial rule started emerging as independent nation[s] due to colonial rulers from Thames having incurred loss after WWII. Though, the war ended in 1945 registering victory for Allied armies over Hitler and his Axis power (and divided German)… [Britons] government incurred huge financial losses that impaired them to continue with another settlement – imbued with nationalist fervor, conflicting ideas, and embroiled with Gandhi menace “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice regal palace”, as Churchill claimed.
But we’re not covering Gandhi in this cover but ‘Independence’. True, yet Gandhi is an inevitable figure to do away with for he had contributed much to the publicized series of events and debates pre-and-post Independent phases to both nations’ history (especially India) and not to forget his much controversial ‘ism’.
Back to the motif…if Britain was reluctant to continue with a settlement and focus solely to their wounds then what’s the ‘independence’ doth both the nation claim for and rejoice of? Post WWII, a new political emergency grappled the mind of nationalistic fervor. As many Indians and historian claims, a movement led by M.A. Jinnah who publicly conceded his desire for a free state peopled with similar race (err. Faith) for he surmises that, in a free country with Hindu majorities, “the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood” would have been crumbled. What we therefore envision and witnessed is “a free Muslim state” borne from Indian land and soaked in history’s largest immigration, chaos, and bloodbath.
August of 1947 thus, witnessed birth of two nations – India and Pakistan respectively, largely on the principle of faith and not of nationalist sentiments. It is to be noted that Jinnah was ruthlessly undisguised voicing his sentiment on the eve of Pakistan’s birth quoting, “A moment comes which comes but rarely in history, when we step from the old to the new, when a age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed, finds utterance”. This is unlike to Nehru who was diplomat and craftily designed his inaugural speech only to walk to the Hall of Fame. So…it is the freedom of a nation (or both nations) not from colonial imperialism but freedom of […] or to be a Jinnahite in my expression ‘freedom from nothingness’.
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