A retired top cop was recently removed from the Whatsapp group of Madhya Pradesh State IPS officers for saying that Muslims, who voted in favour of the Muslim League, stayed back in India.
As per reports, the ex-police officer was identified as Maithili Sharan Gupta. While responding to a remark by Javed Akthar that the forefathers of Indian Muslims chose India as their home, Gupta had shared the link of a Youtube video in the WhatsApp group of IPS MP.
The former Special DGP (Police Reform) had challenged the conventional belief that the forefathers of the Indian Muslims voluntarily chose to go to Pakistan. He wrote, “Those who voted for Muslim League, instead of going to Pakistan, they stayed back in India. Post-Independence, our black Britishers let them sit on the heads of Hindus.”
The message further added, “They were given more rights under the law and this is the root cause of all problems. They were made education ministers, subsequently, they changed your history.” Gupta was asked to delete the supposedly ‘communal’ WhatsApp message by incumbent State DGP Vivek Johri.
“Such political/communal post should have no place in this group. Pl delete,” Johri had said. When he refused to comply with the diktat, Maithili Sharan Gupta was removed from the group by the admin.
While speaking about the matter to The Indian Express, the retired cop said, “A very junior officer called me and asked me to delete the post. But I told him that I found nothing objectionable in it and refused to delete it.”
On learning about his removal from the WhatsApp group of IPS MP, Gupta said that it was a small issue as compared to the suffering of the Hindu community. He added how it was important to make people aware of the plight of Hindus.
Muslims oversaw creation of Pakistan, many stayed back despite voting for Muslim League
During the provincial elections in 1946, it is an undisputed fact that Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Muslim League which had stirred up religious passions with its demand for a separate Islamic State at the time. The Muslim League asserted that Hindus and Muslims cannot co-exist in the same country and thus, Muslims should have a country of their own carved out of India itself, post-independence.
In total, 87% of seats were won by the Muslim League in India in 1946. A closer look at the numbers shows how the demand for a separate Islamic State bolstered the political demand for a separate state. The table below shows a comparison between the seats won by the Muslim League in 1937 and 1946. As one can see, the number of states that were won by the Muslim League of Jinnah went up manyfold in 1946. In every state, the rise in the popularity of the Muslim League was substantial. In states like Bihar, for example, from zero seats in 1937, the Muslim League won a whopping 34 seats out of 40 seats.
In Madras, the increase was from 9 to all 29 seats. The pattern holds across all states, or provinces, as they were called during that period. It is to be remembered that though the two-nation theory itself existed for much longer, a formal political demand was made for a separate state for Muslims in 1940. It was in 1940 that Jinnah formally announced the demand in Lahore that the Muslim League formally recommitted itself to creating an independent Muslim state, including Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province and Bengal, that would be “wholly autonomous and sovereign”.
The resolution guaranteed protection for non-Muslim religions. The Lahore Resolution moved by the sitting Chief Minister of Bengal A. K. Fazlul Huq was adopted on 23 March 1940, and its principles formed the foundation for Pakistan’s first constitution. The formalisation of the demand in 1940 led to a huge surge in the Muslim population supporting the Muslim League and by extension, supporting the demand for a separate Islamic State called Pakistan, which would be carved out of India.
It is thus intriguing when several apologists claim that most Muslims stayed back in India out of choice and that most Muslims at the time did not want a separate Islamic state. There can be no denying that there was opposition even from the Muslims at the time to the idea of a separate state, however, political statements and what counts during voting are two rather separate concepts.
If Muslims wanted a separate Islamic State and voted overwhelmingly in its favour, why did so many Muslims stay back? The obvious argument that is presented, sans facts, to counter the overwhelming support for the creation of Pakistan is that if most Muslims at the time supported the two-nation theory, then why did so many Muslims stay back. And if they indeed did stay back, it only means that they rejected the two-nation theory.
After partition, several leaders were in support of the full exchange of population, including leaders like BR Ambedkar. In his book on Partition, Ambedkar clearly outlines how and why he was in favour of a full population exchange between India and Pakistan, which would essentially mean that all Hindus and other religious factions other than Muslims would come back to India and all Muslims from India would go to Pakistan. In fact, he had even written a basic framework on how the issues arising out of full population exchange could be dealt with.
Sardar Patel had, even after the partition spoken extensively about how Muslims had helped create Pakistan. His famous quote from his speech in Kolkata, 1948, bears testament to the fact. He had said, “Most of the Muslims who have stayed back in Hindustan, helped in creating Pakistan. Now, I don’t understand what has changed in one night that they are asking us not to doubt their loyalty”.
Further, one has to remember that the demand for full population exchange was supported by several stalwarts at the time. A report in Sunday Guardian says, “Dr Mookerjee, accompanied by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, went to plead with Gandhi for agreeing to Jinnah’s proposal for an exchange of population, the old man’s flat reply was that partition was on a territorial basis and not on religious grounds. Hence, no question of exchanging Hindus from Pakistan with Muslims from India. This was when the division was exclusively on the criterion of religion, Hindu and Muslim”.
