India: Idea of Partition of Subcontinent

Idea of Partition of Sub-Continent * The idea of partition of Sub-Continent was now something originated by the Muslims alone. * Muslims, British and Hindus all contributed to the division of India. * John Bright in 1858 speaking on a bill in the British Parliament questioned the possibility of the so extensive a county like India. Instead of an Empire he suggested different presidencies and States. * Jamaluddin Afghani: A Muslim Republic embracing Central Asian Republic, Afghanistan and Muslim majority areas of Subcontinent. * Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1883): speak on India was a continent rather than a country. In 1867 speaking of Muslim and Hindus as two nations. * Abdul Halim Sharar expressed in his magazine Muhazzib, of August 23, 1890. Partition of India into Hindu and Muslim Provinces and exchange of population. * Theodore Morrison (1899) suggested the concentration of Muslim population from Agra to Peshawar. * Abdul Jabbar Kheiri and his younger brother Professor Abdus Sattar Kheiri at the Stockholm Conference of the Socialist International. * Muhammad Abdul Qadir Bilgrami (April 1920): in an open letter to Gandhi suggested division and even named the districts. Not very different from the East and West Pakistan in 1947. * Maulana Hasrat Mohani (1921): referred to the fear of Hindu majority and three years later he forward a scheme to recognize the bi-communal basis of the future independent State and to convert the Muslim Majority Provinces into Muslim States and Hindu Majority Provinces into Hindu States. * Bhai Parmanand (leader of the Arya Samaj and Hindu Sangathan): Hindu-Muslim unity unthinkable. Solution of the Muslim-Hindu problem is either the assimilation of the Hindu by the ‘alien intruders’ or the assimilation of the Muslim by the Hindus. He then rejected both as impracticable. “It struck me a long time ago that the only satisfactory avenue to unity is to effect complete severance between the two