A pracharak's take on Partition

Ram Madhav's book offers some healing, reconciliation and closure on the events leading up to Independence

Partitioned Freedom 

Author: Ram Madhav 

Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan 

Pages: 246 

Price: Rs 300

A few years ago on Independence Day, I asked a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak (full-timer) why the Sangh Parivar seemed to be perennially engaged in the battle of binaries: The Orient-Occident, Dharmic-Abrahamic, National-Anti-national, Vanvasi-Adivasi. His cryptic answer was: “Sirf binaries ka bhajan karte to Nagpur ke gali se Delhi nahi pohoch pate (If it were only about singing hymns laced with binaries we wouldn’t have reached Delhi from a lane in Nagpur).”
 

Elaborating, he told me the RSS and RSS-inspired organisations draw sympathy and wider acceptance among the masses courtesy of thousands of projects that swayamsevaks (volunteers) lead in education, healthcare, rural development, labour issues, and agriculture across the country. “Not your bogus binaries,” he sniped.
 

All the same, Ram Madhav, member of the National Executive of the RSS, touched upon one such binary —  Akhand Bharat-Khandit Bharat, in his book Partitioned Freedom.
 

The theme of Partition is not new for Parivar commentators. Coming from Mr Madhav, however, the book drops hints for readers on what has changed or remains unchanged and the way upper echelons of the Sangh Parivar perceive this human tragedy. “Partition has lessons for posterity,” he writes.
 

At the start, Mr Madhav traces the genesis of what he feels led to the separation of “hearts” and “minds” from the high point of “Hindu-Muslim” unity in 1857 to the “separatism” of the Two Nation Theory, leading to Partition.
 

He devotes some pages to the influence of “Wahhabism”, “revisionist” and “exclusivist” movements on Indian Islam and a section of Muslim leaders post-1857. Thereafter, he puts under the lens events such as the Partition of Bengal and British policies such as the Minto-Morley Reforms that he contends “legalised communalism” and provided “the right launch pad for the growth” of the Muslim League.
 

Subsequent chapters focus on the Khilafat Movement culminating in the birth of “a new pan-Islamist movement on Indian soil”. Mr Madhav comes down heavily on the way “misplaced convictions of Congress leadership” handled Khilafat, calling it a “misadventure”.
 

As can be expected, a good part of the book sketches the evolution of Jinnah from being a “champion of Hindu-Muslim unity” in 1905 to becoming the “Father of Pakistan” in 1947.

Not surprisingly, Mr Madhav then trains his guns on the Congress’s “bending over backwards” to “appease” or “win over” the Muslim League and Jinnah till things reached “the point of no return”.
 

In some chapters, Mr Madhav’s RSS bias comes through in the tone and tenor of criticism of the Congress leadership and Gandhi. To be fair, nowhere does this appear to stem from ideological malice or prejudice. The arguments have been framed based on the merits of decisions and responses to the exigencies during those tragic and testing times.
 

But when it comes to the role of the Communist Party of India in the Quit India Movement, Mr Madhav hits below the belt calling its leaders B T Randive and P C Joshi “open saboteurs”.
 

Yet the book doesn’t say much about the much-debated role of the RSS — or the lack of it —  in the freedom struggle. Readers would expect Mr Madhav, who facilitated an unlikely alliance of the ideologically opposed Bharatiya Janata Party and the People’s Democratic Party in the border state of Jammu & Kashmir, to bring more to the table than a typical RSS swayamsevak.  
 

In the introduction, Mr Madhav says candidly: “Facts being facts, [the] only liberty that an author can take...is to provide a perspective from his or her own vantage point”.
 

“The mainstream movement was led by Congress under the leadership of stalwarts like Gandhi, Nehru, Patel…Their contribution was substantial,” he writes. He adds that the Congress was fighting with the League on the one hand and groups like the Hindu Mahasabha on

the other.

Under the guise of “pragmatic politics”, Mr Madhav notes, the Hindu Mahasabha joined hands with the Muslim League where it was in power, such as in Bengal and Sindh. In fact, he adds, when the League-led Sindh Assembly passed a resolution demanding Pakistan in 1943, the Mahasabha members either walked out or did not vote, but continued as ministers in the government.
 

Mr Madhav may have unwittingly ruffled feathers of a section within the Sangh Parivar that still holds the Congress leadership squarely responsible for the vivisection of “Akhand Bharat”.

More than anything else, the book seems to be the first genuine articulation of the shift in the way, at least some, within the RSS now look

at Gandhi.

“While analysing the developments leading to Partition we often make the mistake of blaming Gandhi for all the sins and finding virtues in Jinnah that don’t exist. In his lifetime, Gandhi endured so much hate...Seven decades after his death, in the eyes of a section of Hindus, Gandhi continues to remain the anti-Hindu appeaser of the Muslims responsible for the Partition of India,” he writes.
 

“Gandhi may not be fully absolved of the sequence of events that had ended in the tragic Partition of the country, but it would be unfair to put the entire blame on one man who represented many lofty ideals and inspired generations...Perhaps India did not deserve a Gandhi at that time. He was perhaps ahead of his times...”
 

Mr Madhav concludes. Perhaps, he is suggesting, it’s time for some healing, reconciliation and closure?