Sardar Patel supported Partition

Subject – History

Context – Sardar Patel supported Partition

Concept –

World War II ended in the summer of 1945, which was also when India’s leaders, imprisoned from 1942 for their Quit India call, were released.
Less than two years thereafter, on February 21, 1947, Premier Attlee announced in London that power would be transferred from British to Indian hands. He added that Mountbatten would replace Wavell as viceroy in India and work out the details of Britain’s departure.
On June 2, 1947, Congress leaders Nehru, Sardar Patel and president Kripalani, Muslim League leaders Jinnah (president), Liaqat and Nishtar, and Akali representative Baldev Singh gave their assent to Mountbatten’s plan for independence and partition.
On June 3, this plan was publicly announced.
On June 14, the AICC ratified what had been signed by Kripalani and agreed to by Nehru and Patel.
On July 18, King George VI signed the Indian Independence Act, which embodied the plan’s far-reaching features.
Following this Act, power descended to two Constituent Assemblies already activated by this time, one for an area comprising today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh, the other for post-Partition India.
Princely states were given the option to join either area.

Partition Theory –

The claim that the two-nation theory was accepted in 1947 is entirely incorrect.
It is true that the Hindu Mahasabha from 1937, and the Muslim League from 1940, had held that Hindus and Muslims were two different nations, but the rest of India didn’t go along with that theory, and the 1947 agreement scrupulously refrained from endorsing it.
The division agreed upon in 1947 was of areas, not of communities. The Independence Act did not say that two nations, one Hindu and the other Muslim, were being created. Neither the June 3 Plan nor the Independence Act even mentioned “Hindus” or “Muslims”.
The separating Pakistan area no doubt had an overwhelming Muslim majority, the area that remained India had an overwhelming Hindu majority, and from 1940 to 1947 the Muslim League had indeed campaigned for Pakistan as “a Muslim homeland”.

Sardar Patel supported Partition

The story of Patel’s shift from opposing Partition to enthusiastic acceptance has been told in more than one account.
On March 8, 1947, following violence against Sikhs and Hindus in western Punjab, the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution (with Kripalani in the chair) urging the division of Punjab into two halves, a West Punjab where Muslims predominated, and an East Punjab where Hindus and Sikhs outnumbered Muslims.
- This was the first public signal that the Congress was willing to accept Pakistan if Muslim-minority areas demanded for Pakistan by the Muslim League, namely East Punjab, West Bengal and Assam, remained in India.
- This signal was offered before the Mountbattens arrived in India.
To preserve a united India, Gandhi then responded by proposing a Jinnah premiership backed by the Congress majority in the central legislature. Except for Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, no Congress leader supported the idea, and Gandhi didn’t pursue it.