Indian Independence Act 1947 – A Commentary

The words ‘India’ and ‘Independent’ are misnomers.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920), one of the pioneers of freedom struggle, asked the people not to rely to any such illusion as “by a free grant of concession by the rulers to the ruled. History does not record any such event.”

All colonial powers have ruled with the policy of ‘divide and rule’. The British have been more adept. They had practiced this policy more successfully and systematically than other empires in the past.

Winston Churchill, British statesman, historian and later Prime Minister had stated on 11 February 1935, the British had ‘’as good a right to be in India as any one there except, perhaps, the Depressed Classes, who are the original stock.’’ He warned if the British hold over India was withdrawn “India will descend, not quite the perils of Europe but the squalor and anarchy of India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Parliamentary debate House of Commons vol. 297 (1935) Col 650-55

Winston Churchill became wartime Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 10 May 1940. On its first page in the House of Commons on 13th May he said:

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many many long months of struggle and suffering. You ask what is our policy? I can say it is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark remarkable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy; you ask what is our aim. I can answer in one word: it is victory… for without victory there is no survival. Let that be realised. No survival for the British Empire…”

Churchill views in 1935 stated earlier in the beginning are not different from what he said in his speech as Prime Minister and later during the war. He said:

3rd September 1941: The Atlantic charter which enunciated the aims of the Atlantic powers and affirmed the rights of all the people to choose the form of Government under which they would live did not apply to India again on 10 November 1941, he said: I have not become the King’s first minister to Preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

The world war (1935-45) was won by the Allied Powers.

After the war there were only two super powers. One was the United States of America; the other was the Union OF Soviet Socialist republic.

The British had lost all the power and glory

Winston Churchill’s government fell in august 1945. Clement ­­­­­ took office as the Prime Minister of a Labour government. The British government declared in February 1947 “to effect the transference of power into responsible Indian hands by a date not later than June 1948”______ Parliamentary debate, House of Commons vol. 433 (1947). A month later in March 1947, the British said it was no longer in possible for them to continue with the recruitment of European for the Secretary of states services, thus weakening of the machinery of British control through the secretary of states services_____Parliamentary Debate, House of commons vol. 434 (1946-47) col. 497-508.

The Indian Independence Act was enacted on 18 July 1947

The Indian empire consisted of two types of territories ___ ‘British India’ and ‘Princely States’, reproduced below are for ready references, relative sections of the Indian Independence Act.

Section1. The Dominions: As from 15 August 1947, two independent dominions shall be set up in India to be known, respectively and India and Pakistan

Section2, Territories of new dominions: Section 2(i) Pakistan, which is carved out of British India a Muslim state on the basis that Muslim in British Indians are a separate nation. The all powerful parliament of the United Kingdom, thus gives birth to a new country and a nation called Pakistan

Section 7. Consequences of the setting up of the new dominions:

Sub section 7(i)(a) his majesty’s government in the United Kingdom has no responsibility as respects to government of any of the territories ….in British India

Section 7(1)(b) The suzerainty of her majesty over Indian states lapses….

To summarise the Indian Independence act created:

British India: Two independent countries; India and Pakistan

Indian States (562): The same number of big and small independent countries (nations).

India has the oldest civilization in the world. It has always been a meeting place of races and culture, before British came to India, the west Asiatic culture of Islam and the eastern culture which had spread to the Far East were in the process of assimilation and synthesis.

No two people in the world are so similar as the people of sub continent, particularly the people of two Punjabs and two Bengals. These people have lived together since dawn of civilization, with their sweet mother tongues, Punjabi and Bengali respectively.

What actually happened in 1947 is best described by the Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, one of Pakistan’s eminent politicians and country’s Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2007. He writes in his book “Neither a Hawk nor a Dove”

“The new boundaries were formerly announced on 14 August 1947, the day of Pakistan’s independence and the day before India became independent, some fifteen million people from each side fleeing each way across the border when they discovered the new boundaries left them in the ‘wrong’ country. It is estimated that 1.5 million died in the violence and that accomplished Independence and million more were injured.”

The esteemed Foreign Minister becomes sentimental when he sincerely writes “The earliest slogan that I remember from when I was a child ‘Hindu Muslim Sikh Essai apas mein bhai bhai’”

The above is a true and authentic story of the tragedy of India’s independence. The present generations of the sub continent are told in history books that India “won” freedom from the British by non-violence means of the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi and Quide-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah is the founder of Pakistan.

The British fooled the people of Sub Continent during their rule. Again, after they had lost their power and glory in the World War and they had to quit, they laid a trap in the form of “ Indian Independence Act ”. The people of the Sub Continent were fooled enough to fall in the trap. Rest is history.

“You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool all and some of the people all the time, but you cannot all the people all the time”—Abraham Lincoln

According to the article “’DAESH’ , chaos and Gandhi saga” published on 28th November 2015 in the Arab Times, written by Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor in Chief Arab Times. In the midst of secretarian, doctrinal and racial conflicts which have spread like wild fire in the entire region accompanies by world condemnations of crimes committed by DAESH, we remember Mahatma Gandhi.

The late Indian Father of Nation then said “Every time the Indians united against the British occupiers, they killed a cow and threw it in the middle of the road. This was their way of provoking chaos (for hindus the cow was something ‘sacred’) between Hindus and Muslims to engage them in bitter fights the sole purpose of which was to weaken the resistance and prolong the lifespan of the British rule in India.

What we see in the region is a similar scenario. The ‘cow’ has been slaughtered and thrown in the midst of Arab religious and racial components but the question is:

Who is the butcher who has spread this menace all over the Arab world? What the British occupation forces practiced in India did not end with the return of its soldiers to Great Britain. The carcass of the cow which was thrown in the middle of the road was the reason for the partition of India on religious basis after the declaration of its independence.

It did not end there; Pakistan was later divided into two on racial basis which gave birth to ‘Bangladesh’. Thus, if Britain went out of the door of independence, it erected an elephant of divisions through the religious and racial window. The same is applicable to our Arab world when this great power entered the region to help get rid of the Ottoman Empire and when it left it planted among the Arabs religious mines — sectarianism and racism through the Sykes-Picot Agreement which is ready to explode any moment. To add insult to injury, the pariah Jews from Europe were planted in Palestine.

History is a big teacher. Wake up the great people of the sub continent.

– Blessings and greetings from a 92-year-old ‘child’ born on 1st September 1923 (Gujarat, Pakistan).