Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan

As Indians and Pakistanis celebrate the anniversary of their independence this week my thoughts revert to 1947.



I lived in Bhopal state, central India, which had a Muslim ruler and a Hindu majority. We dwelt in peace. We did not hate the British. They ruled us but our struggle for freedom was peaceful. While Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and some other leaders were occasionally jailed, they were generally treated with civility.



Just before independence and partition, this tranquility was shattered. Rioting engulfed the subcontinent, killing an estimated one million people because of their Faith. Some eight million Indian Muslims flocked to Pakistan, about seven million Hindus and Sikhs fled to India from what became Pakistan.



The trains passing  through Bhopal included passengers who had been hacked to death. Muslims from nearby areas sought to reach the safety of Bhopal. Refugee camps emerged. We had a big house and sheltered a family from Delhi. The frenzy took years to subside.



Though communal riots still occur occasionally, India has largely become normal. Some of my relatives still live in Bhopal. Indian Muslims lag behind in education and jobs, but they are managing. Some have risen to the pinnacle in political life, the movie industry and business.



But the subcontinent has not recovered. British India was partitioned. Pakistan and India have fought several wars and remain adversaries. Pakistan itself was partitioned when East Pakistan became Bangladesh after a violent conflict in 1971.



Independence in 1947 should have led India and Pakistan to nation-building and good neighborly relations. But hate, division and destruction accompanied freedom. To some extent, the British policy of divide-and-rule was responsible. But the subcontinent's leaders also deepened animosity instead of building friendships through wisdom and patience. The result was tragic sufferings by generation after generation of helpless, innocent people who had lived together in relative peace, harmony and friendship for centuries.



Ancient India also had conflicts, but they were mostly about territory not religion. When the British East India Company and the French arrived as traders in India the Moghul empire was tottering, independent states were emerging and they were fighting each other for supremacy. Some sought British help, others approached the French. The British ultimately became masters of the subcontinent. They built roads, railways, schools and hospitals to be able to govern. But they had not conquered India to unite its people or to lead it to progress.



As time passed, some Muslim visionaries like Chaudhry Rahmat Ali and the philosopher-poet Muhammad Iqbal visualized a separate Muslim state in parts of India where they had a majority. They had nothing against India but felt that if the Muslims had their own country they would follow the examples of some earlier caliphates and Muslims would again become world leaders in education, arts, justice, innovation and the sciences. However, not all Muslim caliphates in the past were just and progressive.



Mohammed Ali Jinnah, fearing that Muslims in India would face discrimination, pushed hard for India's partition. He achieved it, but that left as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan. They were savaged by angry Hindus and Sikhs who resented the partition of their country, and other Hindus and Sikhs who had to flee what was India and had become Pakistan.



This mayhem was not a one-time eruption of madness. It degenerated into a conflict that has dragged on for decades. This happened mostly because the British, after ruling India leisurely for more than a hundred years, departed abruptly, leaving behind chaos and conflict. They left the rulers of the more than 500 Indian states to decide which country they should join.



This inevitably created conflicts because both countries wanted the states to join them. This might have worked if the rulers of the states, and the leaders of India and Pakistan, had acted with foresight, wisdom, patience and fairness. They didn't. The result was conflict, particularly in Kashmir.



The state is picturesque but its people are poor and its tyrannical Hindu maharajah wanted to join India though most Kashmiris are Muslim. Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Governor-General Lord Louis Mountbatten pressured him to do so. They pledged to the UN that the state's future will ultimately be decided by the people of Kashmir. But Nehru thwarted the plebiscite on one pretext or another, such as Pakistan receiving US military aid or the impact of the plebiscite on Indian Muslims.



Pakistan sought to acquire Kashmir through a tribal invasion, a war, reliance on the US and American weaponry and promoted insurgency in Kashmir or instability in India. None of this worked.



The paucity of wise and principled leadership means that the two countries, which used to be one and which should enjoy excellent relations, have fought wars and keep acting like enemies. Their people have suffered grievously and continue to suffer while precious resources are wasted on war machines. This is criminal. Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif hopes to normalize relations with India. This is the only way for Pakistan to become a normal state instead of a hotbed for terrorism.



— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian newspaperman, civil servant and refugee judge.