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The British, in the years when they still hoped to hold India, gave the religious difference official standing by decreeing, in 1909, that Hindus and Moslems should vote separately. H. N. Brailsford, a sympathetic British student of India, has said: "We labeled them Hindus and Moslems till they forgot they were men." The British policy of "divide and rule" has been turned by Jinnah to the Pakistan demand "divide and quit."
The Poorest State. The British Raj had given India a unified defense and a unified region of internal free trade. Jinnah would destroy both. His Pakistan, in northwest and northeast India, would be an agricultural state, poor in resources and industry, unless, improbably, the Hindus agreed to turn Hindu Calcutta over to Pakistan. Between mighty Russia to the north and the main body of India to the south, Pakistan would dangle like two withered arms. Only half the population of the area claimed for Pakistan is Moslem. None could claim that to split India in twain would solve the minority problem—in Hindustan there would still be islands of Moslems, in Pakistan large Hindu minorities. Jinnah has not concealed that behind Pakistan lies the ancient Asiatic practice of taking hostages; a Hindu minority in Pakistan could, "by reprisals, be made to answer Tor persecution of Moslems in Hindu India.
To warnings that a separate Pakistan would be poor and backward, Jinnah answers: "Why are the Hindus worrying so much about us? Let us stew in our own juice if we are willing. . . . [The Hindus] would be getting rid of the poorest parts of India, so they ought to be glad. The economy would take care of itself in time."
The Plainest Answer. The Congress Party's position on Pakistan was just as firm as Jinnah's. The party's official head, goateed Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a Moslem who looks like a caricature of a Kentucky colonel, paced up & down in his Delhi quarters last week, smoking a big cigar. "Eighty percent of the Indian people live in villages where Hindus and Moslems get along well together—the only trouble is among the twenty percent living in the cities. This is basically an economic conflict, not religious." Jawaharlal Nehru made the plainest answer: "Nothing on earth, including the United Nations, is going to bring about the Pakistan of Jinnah's conception." The Congress Party might compromise on some plan for a limited Pakistan within a federated India. Jinnah might change his mind—as he has so often before. But if neither gave way, the British Cabinet Mission would probably impose a constitution on India despite the threats of civil war. When a British official in Delhi last week said, "This is the most important British diplomatic effort of the century," he had in mind the danger that a failure to settle the Indian problem would keep the whole East in turmoil and disturb international relations throughout the world by presenting Rus sia with an opportunity to increase her influence among Asia's people.
Even if settlement of the constitutional issue resulted in an independent, unified India, the future was none too bright.