Partition, Patel and People: Reflections on a Book

The history of the Partition of India must be approached dispassionately and through a humanistic lens. Such an endeavour requires disentangling it from the ideological baggage of the nation-states that emerged from the dissolution of the colonial order in the Indian subcontinent. It also demands liberation from the secular–nationalist and religious–nationalist narratives articulated by state elites at various historical junctures.

Indian scholar Urvashi Butalia, in her influential work The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, characterizes Partition as the “dark side of independence.” Some political thinkers extend this argument by framing it as the “dark side of nation-formation.” Undeniably, the consequences of Partition have posed enduring challenges to the project of state-building and national consolidation across South Asia. In this context, the recently released book Sardar Patel and Kashmir by former union minister Saif-u-Din Soz represents a modest yet important attempt to revisit Partition-era developments and the roles played by key political actors.

Sardar Patel and Kashmir

The contemporary relevance of this book is accentuated by ongoing political debates in India. During the National Unity Day event on October 31, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sharply criticized Jawaharlal Nehru, alleging that he prevented Sardar Patel from fully integrating Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian Union. Similar claims have been echoed by a number of academics and defence analysts. Professor Soz, like many writers, has long engaged with this contested question. His book seeks to assemble diverse perspectives, enabling readers to arrive at their own informed judgments. He argues, “Nehru and Sardar Patel differed on several issues, but it is incorrect to believe that, had he been entrusted with full responsibility for Kashmir, Sardar Patel would have handled it differently.” (p. 59). That Sardar Patel was pragmatic in dealing with matters of state and policy is fairly well known in political and policy circles. The ministries of home and internal security even otherwise exhibit conservatism in state matters in all countries particularly those in search for consolidation.

In the preface to Soz Sahib’s book former Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha observes: “There is a great deal of propaganda today that Sardar Patel could have managed Kashmir far better. This is largely an attempt to tarnish the image of Jawaharlal Nehru”. He finds no differences in approach of two leaders in dealing with Kashmir. Written in Urdu and comprising twenty-five chapters, the book raises a central historiographical question: To what extent do individuals, as opposed to collective leadership, shape the making of history?

Great Man Theory

The Great Man Theory, often associated with 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, posits that history is primarily shaped by the actions of extraordinary individuals. Such figures, endowed with exceptional leadership qualities, are believed to exert disproportionate influence on historical events. Molly Andrews, Professor of Political Psychology, counters this tradition by noting that history is frequently shaped by structural forces, social movements, and deeper societal currents. Yet she acknowledges that individual agency cannot be dismissed entirely. The serious and scholarly literature distinguishes between: determinists, who emphasize impersonal causes, structural constraints, and historical inevitabilities; and proponents of free will, who ascribe significant weight to individual decisions and moral agency.

Empirically, historical processes often emerge from the interplay of these two dimensions: the agency of remarkable individuals and the collective energies of social and political forces. Understanding the Partition of India requires attention to both. As Butalia reminds us, Partition was not only a territorial division but a division of hearts and minds. Its scars continue to shape identities, memories, and political narratives, ensuring that the leading personalities of that era remain central to contemporary historical debates.

Partition of India

The Partition was not a natural or organic development but rather a political construction—symbolized most vividly by the Radcliffe Line. Cyril Radcliffe, summoned from England and unfamiliar with the region, was given merely five weeks to demarcate the borders. The Boundary Commission Award was released on August 17, two days after Partition.

Butalia records Radcliffe’s recollection: “On my arrival I told all political leaders that the time at my disposal was very short. But all leaders—Jinnah, Nehru, and Patel—told me that they wanted a line to be drawn before or on 15 August. So, I drew a line.” Many welcomed the decision with weary resignation: “We were so tired and fed up with all the to-ing and fro-ing that we were grateful some decision had been taken at last.”

While imperial fatigue shaped hurried decisions, it should not distract from examining intra-leadership differences within the Indian nationalist movement. Significant disagreements existed not only between Nehru and Patel but also between Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Azad later wrote that Nehru’s handling of the final negotiations was a “blunder,” and that his own support for Nehru’s presidency in 1946 was his “greatest mistake.” He believed Patel might have been able to avert Partition.

On the Pakistani side, too, official narratives long reflected the needs of the postcolonial state. Only with the expansion of archival research did more nuanced interpretations emerge. Ayesha Jalal, in her seminal book The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, 1985 argues that Jinnah strategically deployed the Pakistan demand as a bargaining tool to secure equitable political safeguards for Indian Muslims. She contends that Jinnah was open to a loose federation, as envisaged by the Cabinet Mission Plan.

Ajay Bisaria, former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan (2017–2020), reinforces this perspective in his book “Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship Between India and Pakistan”. He notes that undivided Bengal and Punjab—both Muslim-majority provinces—would have been politically decisive in a united India, commanding substantial representation in the Lok Sabha. In any communalized voting scenario, these provinces could have constrained Congress’s political dominance. Consequently, Partition emerged as the preferred outcome not only for Jinnah but also, albeit for different reasons, for the Congress leadership.

The political leaders are not the only people who play role in making of nations. Academics and historians can play a crucial part in that act but unfortunately have done so by marginalising partition. English historian Ian Talbott thus notes: partition suffered a major historical neglect. It was regarded as little more than a footnote in the triumphant progress to independence in much of Indian nationalist historiography. In Pakistan it was deployed merely as a device to build up the heroic and sacrificial struggles which had accompanied the birth of a nation”. Theorist and thinker Rajiv Bhargave does the same in the case of Indian nationalist historiography and shows how both communal and secular historians were driven by the same force. He refers to play of lies and distortions in the birth and growth of nations”.

Political theorist Bhupinder Barar claims that the minorities and other margins on all sides were caught unaware in the high politics of nation-making”. The Nationalist historiography does not write the history of margins, migrants, minorities and those who got partitioned. It follows top-down approach to history. The partition gave birth to the nation-state model of European variety giving rise to majority and minority first time in the history of sub-continent thereby plunging old societies in new turmoil. After construction of nation-state in France the advocacy of federalism and power sharing became capital offence. The nation-state always privileges the numerical majority. German theorist Friedrich List wrote that “between individual and humanity stands the nation”. Pratap Bhanu Mehta finds him optimistic and claims that two centuries later, it seems that both individual and humanity stand under the nation”.

 Alternative Paths

The Partition of 1947 thus inaugurated a nation-state system misaligned with the cultural and civilizational pluralism of the subcontinent. Its legacies continue to shape political identities, inter-state relations, and historical interpretations across South Asia. One person who prophetically hated nationalism in sub-continent was Rabindranath Tagore who won Nobel prize when Europe was seeped in nationalism and fighting wars that killed millions of its people. M K Gandhi also distrusted the nation-state model. He claimed that truth lies outside the nation-state and more outside history. He argued that happy families have no history and forcefully said that we lost love, compassion etc., once we entered into the realm of ‘political’. Jawaharlal Nehru writes: they often joked that after ‘Swaraj’ Gandhi’s fads must not be encouraged”. Nehru always talked about “compulsion of events and logic of power”.

A notable book “Crafting state-Nations: India and other Multinational Democracies” by Alfred Stepan, Juan Linz and Yogendra Yadav provides remarkable insight to overcome the political dilemma. The authors propose a new framework of ‘State-Nation’ to capture the relationship between state and nationhood. This model is relevant for South Asia where countries have strong territorially based diversity. The state-nation framework operates at two levels: creation of a sense of belonging with respect to larger political community while simultaneously institutionally safeguarding politically salient diversities such as language, religion and culturally sacred norms. Federalism and power sharing is necessary condition for protection of territorially specific diversities. Having two or more political identities is not subversive to the nation.

The truth is that people might occasionally think outside the nation-state but it is hard for them to live outside one, it orders their everyday existence. Enlightened and liberative models of nation-building have potential for peace, prosperity and sustainable humane development. The danger on the other side is that memories of partition will continue to be repackaged through state narratives.

Professor Gull Wani is Kashmir based Political Scientist