2. The Cabinet Mission and the Muslim League Direct Action

During the later months of the year 1945 and early 1946 the temper of the Muslim masses was kept up by the propaganda of hate emanating from the official pronouncements of the Muslim League, the speeches of its leaders and the unrestrained articles of the pro-League press.  Muslims had everywhere in the Punjab and Bengal begin to look upon the minorities as their subjects in prospect.  Provocative acts against non-Muslims by the Muslims were beginning to be frequent.  By this time the police and the officials were so thoroughly saturated with the poisonous propaganda of the Muslim League against the Hindus and Sikhs, that it was not easy for a Hindu or Sikh to find a Muslim policeman or civilian impartial in his attitude where the conflict lay between a Muslim and a non-Muslim.  This attitude on the part of the police was a great hardship, especially as more than 70% of the police force in the Punjab, for example, was made up of Muslims.  In the people�s daily lives the police could do much to make them happy or miserable.  That the police and the officialdom had gone thoroughly Muslim League was demonstrated by three successive events: The Provincial Assembly elections in the Punjab early in 1946; the Muslim League agitation against the Khizar Ministry in January-February, 1947 and the Punjab Riots which began early in March, 1947 and continued in Pakistan as late as January of 1948, till which month incidents of glaring brutality on a colossal magnitude against the Hindu and Sikh remnants of the population continued to be reported.

The 1946 elections in the Punjab provided to the Muslim League the first opportunity for a trial of its strength in the Punjab.  The Punjab, called corner-stone of Pakistan-was the one province in which the Muslim League had not been able to form a ministry.  Not that the Muslims did not have in this province what was called �Pakistan in action.� But that was not enough.  The Punjab must go Muslim League, in name as well as in action, in order to make Mr. Jinnah�s edifice of Pakistan complete.  For this purpose it was necessary that an overwhelmingly large number of Muslim seats must be won by the League in the Punjab.  A mere majority of Muslims seats would not do-for in the Punjab, out of its 175 seats, as many as about 87 worked out to be non-Muslim, as some of the special constituencies like the University, Labour, Commerce and Landlords went to non-Muslims.  The League, therefore, must win all or almost all Muslim seats, for which purpose it must defeat the Unionist Party of which Sir Khizar Hyat Khan, Premier of the Punjab in succession to Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan, was the leader.  As the Unionist leader. detesting the methods of Muslim League and regarding the path of the partition of the country harmful for the Muslims themselves, was bent upon giving a fight to the League, the contest was expected to be very bitter, as it actually turned out to be.  The Muslim League fought on the programme of Pakistan, which it placed before the Muslim masses.  The Unionist Muslims realizing the overwhelming force of the Pakistan appeal to Muslim masses, did not oppose Pakistan but they argued, more wisely perhaps than the Leaguers from the Muslim point of view, that to press for a separate state of Pakistan would inevitably entail cutting off of Hindu and Sikh areas from the Punjab and would be detrimental to the economic interest of the Muslims themselves.  But so deeply had the Pakistan poison seeped into the Muslim mind that the Unionist fought everywhere a narrowly defensive battle.  The Muslims appeared to have gone thoroughly Muslim League by this time.  The officials and the police everywhere helped the Muslim League candidates by the usual methods of threats and cajolery employed on the electorate.  The most violent and vituperative abuse was employed against the Unionists.  As the Muslim League plank was Pakistan, so naturally the Congress and the Sikhs came in for extensive and violent abuse.  Tenseness, hate and a communally charged atmosphere were created in the Punjab.

The League won as many as 76 seats (they claimed to have 78) in the Punjab Assembly.  They were undoubtedly the largest single party in the Legislature.  They hoped to form a ministry with the help of a few defections from among the Muslim Unionists, some Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans. 88 in a House of 175 would give either party a working majority.  But the Hindus and Sikhs, having already experienced the �Pakistan in action� of the Muslim-dominated Unionist Ministry, many of whose erstwhile supporters were now on the Muslim League side, were determined not to be ruled over by a party which stood frankly and nakedly for Muslim rule and for the partition of India and the subjugation of the Hindus and Sikhs for the greater glory of Islam, as had been preached by Rahmat Ali, by Dr. Mohammad Iqbal and by the Muslim League propagandists and press in general.  In the negotiations for ministry-making which went on at Lahore immediately after the elections were over, not a single Hindu or Sikh member of the Provincial Legislature was willing to walk into the Muslim League camp.  The Indian Christians preferred to stand with the Congress with its ideal of a tolerant, secular state in India, rather than with the fanatical Muslim League.  So, by a majority of nearly 100 members in the Provincial Legislature, with Sir Khizar Hyat Khan as Premier, the Congress, the Panthic Party and the Unionist Party in coalition formed the Coalition Ministry in March, 1946.  The Leaguers felt furious and chagrined.  Their campaign of hate became, if anything, more intensified than ever.  The communal atmosphere continued to be charged more and more with tension.

In the meanwhile in other Provinces, the League had been carrying on its propaganda of hate in a most virulent form.  In Bengal there was a League majority in the Legislative Assembly, and the League formed its ministry with H. S. Suhrawardy as Premier.  In Sind the balance of power between the League and non-League elements was maintained for some time in the form of a trial of strength.  At last an obliging Governor prorogued the Legislature; ordered fresh elections, and this time the League formed a majority through its propaganda of hate against non-Muslims.  The League won a fairly large number of seats in the North-Western Frontier Province.  In the Central Legislative Assembly it won all the Muslim seats. 1946 was the peak year of the success of the Muslim League, and this success no doubt made Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League leaders drunk with the intoxication of achievement.  Near and certain visions of a Pakistan in which the Muslims would have it all their own way and in which non-Muslims would live at the sufferance of the Muslims, began to stir the Muslim imagination.  This was exactly the situation in which the Muslims could be aroused to terrific action to strike what appeared then to be the final blow for the achievement of Pakistan.  And the Muslims not long after did strike this blow.  But of that a little later, after the story of the intervening months has been narrated.

It was in this scene that the Cabinet Mission, consisting of the Secretary of State, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. A. V. Alexander, arrived in India, to negotiate for a final settlement with India for the transfer of power.  In the protracted negotiations that ensued the formula was evolved of having three groups in the country-one to consist of the Hindu majority provinces of Bihar, Orissa, the U. P., C. P., Bombay and Madras; the second of Assam and Bengal, and the third of the Punjab, the N.-W. Frontier Province and Sind.  These three groups were each to frame its own constitution in their respective Assemblies to be elected on the basis of one member for one million of population.  There was to be a weak and loose centre, which was to control a limited number of subjects.  The three groups were to federate for sake of the administration of these subjects.  Otherwise the groups were to be antonomous.  In the Bengal-Assam and the Punjab-Sind- N.-W. F. P. groups the Muslims were to be in a majority, and naturally the Hindus and Sikhs in these would have to submit to Muslim dictation.  There was no ground whatever for the Muslims of the Hindu-.majority Provinces to protest against this scheme which placed them under Hindu domination, for the Muslims through the Muslim League had asked for some sort of partition of the country, and so must accept what arose from such partition.  But Hindus and Sikhs had vehemently opposed the idea of the partition of the country, and to have placed them in the Assam-Bengal and the Punjab Sind-N.-W. F. P. groups under Muslim domination against their wishes went hard with them.  The Sikhs vehemently protested against this injustice.  On June 9 and 10, 1946, a very full and representation gathering of the Sikh Panth at Amritsar unanimously rejected the Cabinet Mission Scheme which made a gift of the Sikhs and Hindus of the Punjab and its neighbouring Muslim-majority Provinces to Muslim rule against their wishes. The community left no manner of doubt on the point that it would have to struggle against being ruled by what was described as �this charter of slavery� and would boycott the constituent Assembly which the Cabinet Mission Scheme envisaged.  The Hindus of the two groups-the Eastern and the Western-made similar and vehement protests.  But the Congress accepted the Cabinet Mission Scheme, which anyhow did not envisage the partition of India into two independent States, though it meant the perpetuation within the proposed federation of more or less inharmonious autonomous zones.  The Cabinet Mission plan paid little heed to the claims and rights of the Sikh people.  It militated against the real well-being of the country.  It was a big sop to the Muslim League, and while rejecting self-determination for the Sikhs, who had such a big stake in the economic and political life of the Punjab, it did grant full self-determination to the Muslims of the Muslim majority Provinces. The substance of Pakistan had been conceded in these Muslim majority areas.  As for the constitution of the whole of India, that was to be framed by the Constituent Assembly, to be constituted on the principle of one member for every million of the population.  Although in such a House the Muslims would have, on the population basis, only ninety-odd members, yet this Constituent Assembly to be so constituted was not sovereign.  It was limited by certain terms of reference, and could not go beyond framing a constitution for a limited centre, which would leave the three groups-two of them Muslim-majority-practically independent.  The Congress reluctantly accepted these and other limitations in the interest of reaching anyhow a peaceful settlement, and maintaining the unity of the country.

Pakistan as demanded by the Muslim League, was rejected as impracticable by the Cabinet Mission.  The statement issued by the Mission on the 23rd of May, 1946 set forth the reasons why the Pakistan solution could not be accepted.  The substantial by portion of the statement ran as under:-

�We therefore examined in the first instance the question of a separate and fully independent sovereign State of Pakistan as claimed by the Muslim League.  Such a Pakistan would comprise two areas; one in the north-west consisting of the province of the Punjab, Sind, North-West Frontier and British Baluchistan, the other in the north-east consisting of the provinces of Bengal and Assam.  The League were prepared to consider adjustment of boundaries at a later stage, but insisted that the principle of Pakistan should first be acknowledged.  The argument for a separate State of Pakistan was based, first, upon the right of the Muslim majority to decide their method of Government according to their wishes, and secondly, upon the necessity to include substantial areas in which Muslims are in a minority, in order to make a Pakistan administratively and economically workable.

�The size of the non-Muslim minorities in a Pakistan comprising the whole of the six Provinces enumerated above would be very considerable as the following figures show:-