As we celebrate the fact that the Republic of India is an independent sovereign State today, we’d like to, as predicted, take a trip down history’s memory lane, and revisit the conference that declared August 15, 1947 as India’s day of Independence. Just a few months before this date, June 3, an iconic conference gave us this day to celebrate. It also gave us a dotted line running through the map of the former state of India, creating a whole new country called Pakistan in the process. And spilling a whole lot of blood in its wake.

On the day PM Modi declared August 14 to be observed as ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’ to acknowledge the pain undergone by Indians due to the partition of India in 1947, an unseen picture of Congress delegates voting in favour of partition has gone viral on the internet.

The picture of Congress members, which also included India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, attending a meeting of delegates that had convened to vote for partition of the country was shared by popular Twitter user @IndiaHistorypic, known for posting historical photographs.

In the picture, one can see Pandit Nehru, along with several other Congress members, with their hands raised, presumably to express their consent to India’s partition and vote in favour of creating two new countries: India and Pakistan.

The picture is from the Delhi Congress session on 14th June 1947, during which the resolution for India’s partition was passed. As per this resolution, which accepted the Mountbatten Plan, the decision to partition India, along with the division of Bengal and Punjab, was implemented. The Mountbatten Plan was announced on June 3, which means the plan to partition India was accepted by the Congress party in just 10 days.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Dr Rajendra Prasad, and Govind Ballabh Pant are seen in the background in the picture shared in the above tweet. The picture was captured by Homai Vyarawala, who had captured many historical photographs around that period.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s interview where he accepts that he finally decided to have a partition than having a constant trouble from Minorities

The first Prime Minister of independent India Jawaharlal Nehru believed that all Indian Muslims are descendants of Hindus. In his last television interview in May 1964, Nehru spoke about religious minority and religion-based partition of India in 1947.

In a video uploaded by Indian broadcaster Prasar Bharati on its YouTube channel, Nehru can be heard saying how some minority were afraid of India becoming free and they ‘remaining a minority’. At around 14 minutes into the video, Nehru says, “They didn’t like the idea at all.”

When American TV host Arnold Michaelis asks Nehru about involvement of Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and himself in the freedom movement, Nehru says categorically that Jinnah was not involved in the freedom struggle. “In fact, he opposed it. The Muslim League was started by 1911 and it was started really by the British, encouraged by them so as to create factions. And ultimately that came to partition.”

Nehru further states that Mahatma Gandhi was not in favour of the partition and neither was he. “But ultimately I decided like others did. It is better to have partition than this constant trouble. You see, the leaders of the Muslim League were big landlords who did not like land reform. We were very anxious to have land reforms, which we did have afterwards. That is the reason we agreed for partition,” Nehru said. He added that the Muslim League would have continued to create troubles and opposed other reforms the new government would’ve have taken and hence decided to go ahead with the partition.

PM Modi institutionalises conversation around partition horrors on Pakistan Independence Day

The image of Congress leaders voting to ratify India’s partition went viral on the day PM Modi announced observing Partition Horrors Remembrance Day on the 14th of August, Pakistan’s Independence Day. It is the day when Pakistan, the Islamic State, was carved out of India after a blood-soaked partition, based on the two-nation theory that asserted that Muslims and Hindus cannot co-exist in the same country because Muslims are a country unto themselves. Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended that silence by institutionalising the conversation around the partition by announcing 14th August to be observed as #PartitionHorrorsRemembranceDay.

Taking to Twitter, PM Narendra Modi announced that 14th August would henceforth be celebrated as Vibhishika Memorial Day or #PartitionHorrorsRemembranceDay.

The Prime Minister said, “The pain of partition of the country can never be forgotten. Because of hatred and violence, lakhs of our sisters and brothers were displaced and even lost their lives. In memory of the struggle and sacrifice of those people, it has been decided to celebrate 14th August as ‘Vibhishika Memorial Day’”

He further tweeted, “#PartitionHorrorsRemembranceDay This day will not only inspire us to eliminate the poison of discrimination, animosity and ill-will, but it will also strengthen unity, social harmony and human sensibilities”

References:

homegrown.co.in - By Rhea Almeida
opindia.com - OpIndia Staff