Our Correspondent / New Delhi
Rejecting common assumptions about partition of India, former Vice President Hamid Ansari on Friday contended that Indians were equally responsible for the Partition of the country in 1947.
“While people like to hold Pakistan or the British responsible for India’s partition, no one wants to admit that India was equally responsible for it,” said Ansari while releasing Urdu, Hindi and Malayalam version of veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi’s book “Being The Other — The Muslim In India” on Friday.
To bring home the point, he quoted Congress leaders Sardar Patel and Ajit Prasad Jain – both were members of the Constituent Assembly that was preparing the Constitution of the country.
What Ansari said
Indians are yet to accept that we too had a role in Partition
Quoted Sardar Patel to strengthen his argument
Patel had said that to keep India united, it must be divided
“11th August 1947, just four days before independence, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel delivered a speech in Delhi, said Ansari and quoted Patel: ‘We took these extreme steps after great deliberation in spite of my previous strong opposition of partition I agreed to it because I was convinced that to keep India united it must be divided.’”
“But as the politics turned its way someone had to be made responsible, so consequently Muslims were held responsible. Everybody accepted this too,” he added.
“On 28th August 1947, the Constituent Assembly had put a report on minority rights where it was decided that Scheduled Caste (SC) would be the part of Hindu community. On 22nd November 1949, the principles of Constitution were being discussed. Senior leader from Congress, Ajit Prasad Jain said: ‘The birth of Pakistan has smoothened our work of constitution making as the question of minorities which had been a headache and tortured all our efforts for the solution of national problems is resolved’”.