Historian Sam Dalrymple revisits the roots of partition

Did you know that the India of the 1920s was very very different, compared to the country that we see today, being two and a half times larger than the Republic of India. This colonial entity, known as the Raj or the Indian Empire, stretched all the way from Aden in modern Yemen in the west, governed from Bombay, to Rangoon (now Yangon) in what is now Myanmar in the east.

In the latest episode of The Success Code, historian, writer, and filmmaker, Sam Dalrymple, spoke to Rushank Shah, Promoter of Hubtown about his new book, Shattered Lands – Five Partitions and the Making of Modern India. Dalrymple offered a look back at the origins of the partition that reshaped the Indian subcontinent, arguing that the creation of today’s nation-states was not an inevitable outcome. The discussion revealed how arbitrary deadlines, forgotten violence, and personal rivalries shaped the region’s destiny.

The unfamiliar India of the 1920s

Dalrymple began by detailing the world of the 1920s, which he described as “deeply unfamiliar” to us. Around the time, the Congress made its famous declaration of Purna Swaraj (complete independence), India looked vastly different, being two and a half times larger than the Republic of India today.

This colonial entity encompassed a quarter of the world’s population and held the largest populations of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians. Over the next five decades, five major partitions would divide this world into 12 nation-states, including Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar.

“But what’s insane is that in the 1920s when that declaration of Purna Swaraj happens, not a single one of these partitions is necessarily inevitable yet,” said Dalrymple. Shah questioned him about the entity’s origin, asking if the British created the geographical concept. Dalrymple replied: “The Raj is basically the nationalised versions of everywhere that the East India Company conquered.”

A legal statute, the Interpretation Act, defined everywhere under the purview of the Viceroy as legally India, meaning “in the 1920s the term Indian legally extends to anyone living in Dubai.” Mahatma Gandhi was one of the strongest proponents for a nation matching the geographical contours of Bharat Varsh, an ancient idea rooted in the Mahabharata, believing that “ultimately Burmese and Arab civilizations were somehow separate from that of the subcontinent.”

Conversely, a Burmese Buddhist monk named Mahatma Utma campaigned for Burma to be an integral part of Bharat Varsh, later even becoming the head of the Hindu Mahasabha before Savarkar.

The first domino: The fall of Burma

The first partition, the separation of Burma, occurred on April Fool’s Day in 1937. Dalrymple argued that this split was driven less by identity and more by economics, specifically the Great Depression. “The key thing that changes is that the great depression happened,” Dalrymple said.

Burma was the British Raj’s richest and largest province, and Rangoon had become one of the world’s great economic centres, with an immigration official noting that “until recently New York City was the number one immigration port in the world and today it is Rangoon”. The Chettiars, big bankers from Chettinad in Tamil Nadu, were central to the Burmese economy.

When the global economy collapsed, they began taking Burmese agricultural land as collateral, quickly saddling themselves with about a quarter of it. This economic displacement created a massive anti-immigration backlash, overpowering the “ephemeral” questions of shared identity.

The anti-immigrant sentiment was already visible, with Rabindranath Tagore reportedly horrified that Rangoon was a majority Tamil and Bengali-speaking city, leading him to feel he was witnessing “double colonialism” – the Indians below the British, and the Burmese at the bottom.

Dalrymple said: “It is the origin of the Rahinga genocide which we saw just a few years ago.” The division of Burma “opens Pandora’s box”, lending credence to the idea of partitioning the Raj. Simultaneously, the Gulf States were also being separated off, as oil had not yet been discovered, and Indian nationalists, ever more focused on the idea of Bharat Mata, saw ruling them as a potential drain on the Indian exchequer.

The story of the Cabinet Mission Plan

The partition of 1947 was almost avoided in 1946 through the Cabinet Mission Plan, a last-ditch effort by the British to keep the subcontinent united. The plan proposed a federated system of five states – West Pakistan, East Pakistan, North India, South India and Deccan – where each of the states would remain part of a unified country, sharing a military and passports.

Jinnah accepted this plan. Dalrymple said: “every scholar I know who has worked on this period their heart breaks when reading about the cabinet mission plan because so much of the violence that follows I think could have been avoided.” The deal ultimately collapsed after the Congress tentatively agreed but then pulled out over ‘minor amendments’, such as a footnote related to whether the Northwest Frontier should form part of the North India or West Pakistan federation. Feeling betrayed by these amendments, Jinnah, “flipped out” and announced Direct Action Day, calling for the Muslim League to show their support and force across the country by carrying weapons. “Direct action day is where the first partition violence begins,” Dalrymple said.

Shah asked: “Just listening to this and how close we came to avoiding the kind of bloodshed, in that moment when he calls for action day, do you think he knows the violence that is about to ensue?

Dalrymple provided a deeper perspective on Jinnah, noting that in the 1920s, he was regarded as the “greatest ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity”, with leaders like Sarojini Naidu writing about him as such. “Jinnah only leaves the Congress in the 1920s because he has a falling out with Gandhi and Gandhi is talking about Bharat Varsh and separating off Burma and Jinnah considers Gandhi to be bringing religion into politics,” said Dalrymple.

The Jinnah of the 1920s was a fashionable, non-communal lawyer. “He has a Parsi wife, and he is not personally that religious. He eats ham sandwiches. He probably drinks,” Dalrymple added.

A personal tragedy – the likely suicide of his wife – and political betrayal by the new Congress leadership led by Nehru and Gandhi gradually changed him. A series of pogroms against Muslims in UP in the late 1930s, where local Congress leadership failed to act, was a real turning point, leading Jinnah to finally suggest the need for an independent Muslim state by 1940.

The forgotten violence

The drawing of the final borders was heavily influenced by the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten announced he would not pursue a united India and would rush the entire process in 77 days, aiming to complete the transfer of power by August 15, 1947, to commemorate the second anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. “It’s horrendous,” Dalrymple remarked.

While Cyril Radcliffe drew the line dividing British India, the larger challenge was the 565 princely states. Sardar Patel, with the help of VP Menon, played a crucial role in bringing the states around to joining India. Interestingly, states like Jodhpur and Jaisalmer negotiated with Jinnah for semi-independent protectorate status under Pakistan, hoping for an economic lifeline like a railway to Karachi.

The integration of Hyderabad was the toughest and bloodiest. The Nizam wanted independence, but the situation exploded with the Telangana Armed Uprising (a communist revolution). The Nizam relied on the Razakars to suppress the communists, but they committed widespread atrocities, leading to civil war.

In September 1948, the Indian Army was sent in for what the government termed a “police action”. stated that “Actually what it means is that the Air Force is sent in, tanks roll in,” said Dalrymple, noting that this was one of the first times the army was sent into a foreign country. The operation was followed by communal violence. The violence and displacement were immense: a report (suppressed for years by Patel) detailed massacres, forced conversions, and displacement around Hyderabad that was “three times more displacement... than the Palestinian Nakba the same year”, speaking of a forgotten scale of violence.

At the end of the discussion, Dalrymple offered a sneak peek into his next work, which involves the close links between French India and the Vietnam War, hinting that the first shots of the war were actually fired by the Indian army.

Watch the full interview now:

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