Reasons for partition

India and Pakistan won independence in August 1947, following a nationalist struggle lasting nearly three decades. It set a vital precedent for the negotiated winding up of European empires elsewhere. Unfortunately, it was accompanied by the largest mass migration in human history of some 10 million. As many as one million civilians died in the accompanying riots and local-level fighting, particularly in the western region of Punjab which was cut in two by the border.
The agreement to divide colonial India into two separate states - one with a Muslim majority (Pakistan) and the other with a Hindu majority (India) is commonly seen as the outcome of conflict between the nations' elites. This explanation, however, renders the mass violence that accompanied partition difficult to explain.

One explanation for the chaos in which the two nations came into being, is Britain's hurried withdrawal with the realisation it could ill afford its over-extended empire.

If Pakistan were indeed created as a homeland for Muslims, it is hard to understand why far more were left behind in India than were incorporated into the new state of Pakistan - a state created in two halves, one in the east (formerly East Bengal, now Bangladesh) and the other 1,700 kilometres away on the western side of the subcontinent [see map].
It is possible that Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, simply wished to use the demand for a separate state as a bargaining chip to win greater power for Muslims within a loosely federated India. Certainly, the idea of 'Pakistan' was not thought of until the late 1930s.
One explanation for the chaotic manner in which the two independent nations came into being is the hurried nature of the British withdrawal. This was announced soon after the victory of the Labour Party in the British general election of July 1945, amid the realisation that the British state, devastated by war, could not afford to hold on to its over-extended empire.

An act of parliament proposed a date for the transfer of power into Indian hands in June 1948, summarily advanced to August 1947 at the whim of the last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten. This left a great many issues and interests unresolved at the end of colonial rule.
In charge of negotiations, the viceroy exacerbated difficulties by focusing largely on Jinnah's Muslim League and the Indian National Congress (led by Jawaharlal Nehru).
The two parties' representative status was established by Constituent Assembly elections in July 1946, but fell well short of a universal franchise.
Tellingly, although Pakistan celebrated its independence on 14 August and India on 15 August 1947, the border between the two new states was not announced until 17 August.
It was hurriedly drawn up by a British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, who had little knowledge of Indian conditions and with the use of out-of-date maps and census materials.
Communities, families and farms were cut in two, but by delaying the announcement the British managed to avoid responsibility for the worst fighting and the mass migration that had followed.



Many have wondered why the British and Indian leaders did not delay until a better deal over borders could have been agreed. One explanation is that in the months and years immediately following World War Two, leaders on all sides were losing control and were keen to strike a deal before the country descended into chaos.
Immediately before World War Two, India was ravaged by the impact of the Great Depression, bringing mass unemployment. This created tremendous tensions exacerbated during the war by inflation and food grain shortages. Rationing was introduced in Indian cities and in Bengal a major famine developed in 1942.
The resulting discontent was expressed in widespread violence accompanying the Congress party's 'Quit India' campaign of 1942 - a violence only contained by the deployment of 55 army battalions.

The last months of British rule were marked by a naval mutiny, wage strikes and successful demonstrations in every major city.

With the cessation of hostilities, the battalions at the disposal of the government in India were rapidly diminished. At the same time, the infrastructure of the Congress Party, whose entire leadership was imprisoned due to their opposition to the war, had been dismantled.
The Muslim League, which co-operated with the British, had rapidly increased its membership, yet still had very limited grassroots level organisation.
This was dramatically revealed on the 16 August 1946, when Jinnah called for a 'Direct Action Day' by followers of the League in support of the demand for Pakistan. The day had dissolved into random violence and civil disruption across north India, with thousands of lives lost.
This was interpreted by the British as evidence of the irreconcilable differences between Hindus and Muslims. In reality, the riots were evidence as much of a simple lack of military and political control as they were of social discord.

Further evidence of the collapse of government authority was to be seen in the Princely State of Hyderabad, where a major uprising occurred in the Telengana region, and with the Tebhaga ('two-thirds') agitation among share-cropping cultivators in north Bengal. A leading role was played in both by the Communist Party of India.
Elsewhere, the last months of British rule were marked by a naval mutiny, wage strikes and successful demonstrations in every major city. In all of these conflicts the British colonial government remained aloof, as it concentrated on the business of negotiating a speedy transfer of power.

Strong support for the idea of an independent Pakistan came from large Muslim landowning families in the Punjab and Sindh, who saw it as an opportunity to prosper within a captive market free from competition.
Support also came from the poor peasantry of East Bengal, who saw it as an opportunity to escape from the clutches of moneylenders - often Hindu. Both were to be disappointed. Independent Pakistan inherited India's longest and strategically most problematic borders.

The heartland of support for the Muslim League lay in Uttar Pradesh, which was not included within Pakistan.

At the same time, 90% of the subcontinent's industry, and taxable income base remained in India, including the largest cities of Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta. The economy of Pakistan was chiefly agricultural, and controlled by feudal elites.
Furthermore, at the division of India, Pakistan won a poor share of the colonial government's financial reserves - with 23% of the undivided land mass, it inherited only 17.5% of the former government's financial assets. Once the army had been paid, nothing was left over for the purposes of economic development.
The great advantage enjoyed by the Indian National Congress was that it had worked hard for 40 years to reconcile differences and achieve some cohesion among its leaders. The heartland of support for the Muslim League, however, lay in central north India (Uttar Pradesh) which was not included within Pakistan.
Muslims from this region had to flee westwards and compete with resident populations for access to land and employment, leading to ethnic conflict, especially in Sindh.

The Sena and its twisted logic

It is difficult to say whether the Shiv Sena takes offence or feels proud when its founder Bal Thackeray is spoken of as a terrorist with a religious cause. After the weekly Tehelka carried a cover story with pictures of Thackeray, Dawood Ibrahim, Yakub Memon and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale above the legend, ‘Who is the biggest terrorist?’, the Sena responded in a rather strange manner. While condemning the depiction of Thackeray alongside those who engaged in violence in the name of religion, the Sena organ Saamna, in an editorial, asked Hindus to act as “human bombs” and invade Pakistan. Thackeray, the editorial wrote approvingly, had instilled the “fear of Hindus” in Indians of other faiths. Far from defending the Sena founder against the charge of being a Hindu terrorist, the editorial appeared to be defending his support of violence in the name of Hinduism. What differentiated Thackeray from the others? According to the editorial’s reasoning, the Sena founder was a dharmabhimaani, a person who took pride in his faith, and not dharmaandh, someone who was motivated by blind faith. This line of defence, whether true to the facts or not, would have been fine but for the editorial’s exhortation to Hindus to turn themselves into human bombs and attack Pakistan. In one stroke, the disputes between India and Pakistan were turned into a Hindu-Muslim issue. By arguing that Hindus would have to be highly religious if they wanted to respond to Pakistani extremists, the editorial, in effect, identified nationalism with Hinduism.

The veiled threats aimed at Tehelka and the exhortations to violence are typical of the politics of the Sena, which is mostly a combination of Marathi chauvinism and Hindutva. Normally, the Sena when in power is less virulent than when it is out of power. But of late the party has been under pressure in Maharashtra, having ceded political space to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Having been for long the senior partner in the alliance of the two Hindutva parties, the Sena ended up as a poor second to the BJP in the Assembly election last year. Although its breakaway group, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena led by Raj Thackeray, is no longer serious competition, the Sena doubtless feels obliged to push the limits of its extremist politics. As the senior partner in government, the BJP, which usually bristles whenever there is talk of ‘Hindu terror’, saying the phrase is an oxymoron, will have to ask the Sena to give up its aggressive brand of politics laced with threats of violence and talk of communal hatred. The Sena must be made to necessarily tone down its rhetoric, and behave more like a responsible party in government. 

Calculated devaluation

When China sneezes, the world catches a cold. In a surprise action that set off shock waves across the globe and led to the currencies of many a nation taking a tumble, the People’s Bank of China cut its daily yuan reference rate by 1.9 per cent on Tuesday. Even before the rest of the world could come to terms with the unexpected devaluation, Beijing made a further 1.6 per cent cut the very next day. The moves especially had a sharp negative impact on many Asian currencies. Though the rupee too fell to a two-year low on Wednesday in the wake of the double-dose devaluation, the Indian currency has been relatively less affected compared toits Asian peers. After the consecutive cuts, the People’s Bank of China clarified that “there is no basis for a sustained depreciation trend for the yuan”. It justified the second-round cut by citing a fall in the spot market. Is the devaluation an indication of China moving towards a more market-determined currency rate? Its subsequent intervention in the spot market to quell a further fall in spot rates, however, has led to a guessing game. Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund is optimistic that the Chinese move will let market forces have a greater role in determining the exchange rate. The timing of the action – read in the context of a decelerating economy and in the light of China's heavy dependence on exports – suggests that it is a calculated move meant to regain economic momentum. It is a win-win move for China, in a manner of speaking. After all, Beijing is also making a strong pitch to make the yuan a global reserve currency at the IMF. For that to happen, it has to move closer to a mechanism of market-determined exchange rates. 

The immediate tumble in global currencies aside, the wider implications of a largely devalued yuan on individual economies of the world will play out intensely in the minds of policy-formulators within governments across the world in the coming days. In the era of the inter-connected world, it is incorrect for central banks, especially of bigger nations such as China and the U.S., to assume that they could operate in separate silos. Given its overbearing status as an exporter, China’s step may trigger rearguard action on the currency and trade policy fronts. For New Delhi, in particular, this throws up a fresh challenge as it battles to stem a slide in exports. It has to make counter-moves to stop quickly and effectively the flooding of Chinese goods in the wake of the yuan devaluation, which could have a cascading effect on a host of sectors.

A ban and some questions

There has been little logic or clarity to the government’s actions around banning a popular brand of noodles, and now its unbanning by the Bombay High Court is unlikely to clear the air either. In June, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) said the snack, Maggi, was found to be “hazardous and unsafe for human consumption”. This followed from samples testing positive in some States for high levels of lead and monosodium glutamate (MSG), according to the FSSAI. Simultaneously, samples tested in other States came back with a certification of safety; Nestle, the manufacturer, said that 2,700 samples had been tested in India and abroad during the last few months and that all of them were found to have levels of lead far below the danger mark. The company maintains that it does not add MSG to its noodles. However, panic set in swiftly; the product went off the shelves across the country, partly in response to bans by individual States, and partly as a result of consumer fears. The High Court has now found that no opportunity was given to the company to prove its side before the ban was imposed, and that the tests were not conducted in accredited laboratories. While lifting the ban, it ordered further tests that follow proper norms. A class action suit against Nestle filed by the government before the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission remains in process. 

These contradictory signals leave the consumer confused and unsure where to turn for authentic information. When taking on a powerful multinational, the FSSAI should have been equipped with the full facts before putting what now appears to be half-baked information into the public space. If the food regulator is unable to follow proper norms, the consumer is left with little confidence that it is properly regulating the manufacture and sale of thousands of other potentially harmful food products in the Indian market, ones that are particularly prone to adulteration. There is little standardisation in food testing procedures, and laboratories — there are already too few of them — may throw up wildly differing results. In such a situation, Indian consumers, particularly parents of little children, are often forced to look up whether a particular ingredient in permitted by food regulators in the United States or the United Kingdom, given the utter lack of proactive, reliable information from their own food regulator. Companies will meanwhile have grounds for grievance against the FSSAI for the loss of revenue and reputation they might unfairly suffer. If India intends to ensure stringent food norms, it will need to be armed with the facts. Unsubstantiated warnings that have to be rolled back in no time inspire confidence about them in neither the consumer nor the industry.

Terror trumps the agenda

The Gurdaspur provocation will spur the Modi government to focus on terror in talks with Islamabad and end flip-flops that defined its Pakistan policy over the past yearThe excitement from Ufa had barely settled in Delhi when a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur provoked a familiar rush of angst and adrenalin. After nearly a decade the international boundary in Punjab had been breached, raking up dreaded memories of the insurgency of the Eighties. With the Line of Control up north in Jammu & Kashmir also tense, intelligence officials wondered if India was in for another round of prolonged insecurity on its western borders.

The big question was if the thaw in Ufa would survive the most recent onslaught of terror. A mere cup of tea barely a year ago between Pakistani high commissioner Abdul Basit and Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah had been enough to put a scowl on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's face. Just like that, India had cancelled impending talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan.

The terse message to the Pakistanis: Either you are with us or against us. In the new Narendra Modi dispensation, India would not tolerate any fuzzy feelings of warmth between old friends. The Hurriyat leaders may be Indian citizens but they were breaking biscuits with the Pakistanis. A mere tea-party had become a symbol of insurrection.

Police fight militants during the encounter in Dinanagar, Gurdaspur, on July 27.

So imagine the surprise when government officials declared, in the wake of the Gurdaspur blasts, that the show would go on. India would continue its newly opened dialogue with the Pakistanis. The two national security advisors, Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz, would meet some time in August, soon after Modi hoists the tricolour for the second time from the historic ramparts of the Red Fort.The mind boggles at the alacrity with which the Prime Minister has decided to throw out all his old templates. Pakistan was no longer the enemy for a variety of reasons-and among the most important is the fact that Modi will soon be embarking on his second visit to the US, to appear before the UN General Assembly in New York and perhaps even make a side trip to Washington D.C. to meet President Barack Obama.
Certainly Modi wants to show the world, at the UN and elsewhere that India, with its size, economy and willingness to break with old shibboleths, is the true leader of South Asia. But since leadership requires the ability to bite both lip and the proverbial bullet, another template was in order to deal with Pakistan.
And so disregarding pressure from an RSS increasingly concerned that he was making peace with the Islamic Republic, the Prime Minister has decided to change the game. Talks with Pakistan will continue, but only on a one-point agenda: terrorism.
The joint statement at Ufa, government sources say, is already heavily loaded in favour of a discussion on the subject and all its manifestations. At Ufa, Pakistan even promised to do what it could to deliver voice samples of the Mumbai attack accused, such as Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, to India.
"The talks between the two NSAs will be about terrorism, terrorism and more terrorism," government sources said, adding, "the composite dialogue as we know it, when both sides talked on all issues, is dead."
The sources said that the Gurdaspur attack was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Pakistani security establishment to roil the waters and so anger the Indian government that it had no option but to cancel the dialogue.
"But we will do no such thing. We will do exactly the opposite. It is clear that someone in Pakistan, by sending three terrorists into Gurdaspur, don't want the talks to continue. They are hoping India will cancel the talks so they can tell the world, See, we told you so," the sources said.
In fact, across the corridors of power in North Block and South Block and elsewhere, politicians and bureaucrats are girding up their loins to deal with worse-case scenarios. The uneasy feeling that more Gurdaspurlike attacks, in the wake of the Yakub Memon hanging as well as in the run up to the Aziz-Doval meet could take place, hangs around the place.
But Modi is determined to deal with the oncoming slings and arrows of misfortune with renewed energy. Travelling the world over the last year and hearing the world speak to you in very different ways from the time you were chief minister has certainly helped to focus the Prime Minister's mind.
Government sources point out that the three men who were inserted into Indian territory carrying GPS preset to the Dinanagar police station in Gurdaspur district, had to have been mentored, guided and perhaps even trained by the all-powerful Pakistani security establishment. These men were also reportedly carrying night vision devices with US military markings, only used in counterterrorism operations, and which may have been given to the Pakistani military for its own use.
The violation of the Punjab border is significant because unlike the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir, this is an agreed-upon border. Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the Rajya Sabha on July 30 that preliminary evidence suggests the attackers might have infiltrated taking advantage of heavy rains and swollen streams along the India-Pakistan border.
The sources were unwilling to say whether these men are Lashkar-e-Taiba cadres or elements within the jihadi groups gone rogue. But they believe the Pakistani security establishment was using them, perhaps "to test the waters in India's Punjab" to possibly reignite a "Khalistani movement of sorts".
It is believed that several Sikh jathas or groups that regularly travel to Sikh shrines inside Pakistan have been addressed by "Khalistani leaders", while the capitals of Western Europe as well as the US and Canada in which large Sikh populations reside are being "sounded out" to perhaps join a potential movement in case the need arises.
On both sides of the border it is widely believed that the main reason for the growing ferment in Punjab is political discontent, and that the state is ripe for change. The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and its ally, the BJP, don't agree on a number of issues, although they still remain a part of the Union government. However, the Congress party in the Opposition remains unable to step into the political vacuum because it is itself divided and the Aam Aadmi Party, a growing third force, isn't ready yet to jump into the fray.
Enter the Pakistan based terrorist who is finding it increasingly difficult to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir, not only because the Line of Control is fenced or that the large numbers of security forces have successfully kept infiltration down, but also because the people of the Kashmir valley have made it clear that accession to Pakistan is a low priority.
That is why, says Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain, a former commander of the 15 Corps based in Srinagar, these cross-border terrorists are being forced to move south. With the 15 Corps "tightening" security in the Valley and the 16 Corps, deployed south of the Pir Panjal, also following suit, it has become "very difficult" to infiltrate both men and material into Kashmir, Lt Gen Hasnain said.
Turns out that the first big district south of the Pir Panjal is Gurdaspur. Once the summer home of the Lion of Punjab, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Dinanagar became the choice target of attack of the three Pakistan-based terrorists. Within kissing distance is the Ravi river, and on the other side is the Shakargarh tehsil, part of Gurdaspur before 1947 and now integrated with Pakistan's Sialkot district.
Sources also point out the pattern in the up-and-down peace dialogue with Pakistan over the years, how peace moves are often preceded or succeeded by terror attacks, so as to derail them. The classic example is, of course, the Lahore bus ride in February 1999 followed by the Kargil conflict that summer. The failed Agra summit of July 2001 was succeeded by an attack against the legislative assembly in Srinagar in October and the parliament in Delhi in December 2001. As a result India cancelled flights and stopped giving visas, but Pakistani terrorists were back in Kaluchak, Jammu, in May 2002, killing civilians and army personnel and nearly sending both nations to war.
More recently, within three weeks of Nawaz Sharif attending Modi's swearing-in on May 26 last year, the Pakistani army violated the ceasefire 19 times. And two weeks after Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar visited Pakistan on March 3 to break the ice, terrorists from Pakistan mounted strikes in Samba and Kathua. Analysts say that China played a key role in getting its "all-weather partner" Pakistan to come to the Ufa talks. Over the last year Pakistan's international influence has grown by leaps and bounds, both with the US and China, because it has been able to get the various Taliban factions to talk to the Afghan government in Murree, a hill station not far from Islamabad. The second round of these Afghan talks is slated for July 31.
Neither side is said to have expected much from the handshake in Ufa. But surprisingly, sources from both sides say, the hour-long Modi-Sharif conversation went well. Both sides had expected acrimony-in fact, they had prepared for worst-case scenarios-but instead, they got agreement on all key issues.
In the wake of the Gurdaspur incident, producing a joint statement certainly seems the easy part of the high-stakes India-Pakistan engagement. Implementing any fancy communiqué on the ground is the torturous part.