As the world welcomed 1947, the
clouds of partition hung around the Indian sky. Jinnah’s intransigence coupled
with Congress obduracy to bow to Jinnah’s demands resulted a standstill. To borrow
from game theory or chess, it would have been uneasy existence, a cold war but
Muslim League had different ideas. Violence was low cost option for breaking
the standstill, and therefore riots intensified after the Direct Action Day. Authority
collapsed in many places leading to a free for all in some areas. India was on
throes of a civil war that might perhaps last more than Byzantine Ottoman War
in the Middle Ages. Despite pretensions of neutrality, the British were more than
sympathetic to the idea of Pakistan. The roots of British-Jinnah nexus could be
traced to the events in the declaration of Second World War and the subsequent Congress
reactions to the same. A this stage it is suffice to state heading to 1947,
Indian constitutional formation was in a limbo, no agreement on the anvil over
the future set up of India and at the ground level, every sign of prolonged
Hindu-Muslim bloody conflict. Thus a
curiosity to decode the underlying economic logic of Congress accepting
partition.
In 1946, the Constituent Assembly
commenced its functioning in the midst of incongruities on the prospective
future directions of the Indian statehood. Incontestably, Congress pushed for
unified India whereas Muslim League remained unyielding in its demand for
partition. To Jinnah, Hindus and Muslims could not co-exist and hence, Muslim
majority states would need separate country. Complications arose with states
like Punjab. Bengal and Assam which had mixed majorities. Further there were
nearly 550 princely states tied to British by symbiotic cord yet independent in
almost all aspects. There was Hyderabad with a Nizam and significant Muslim
population yet the majority was Hindu. There was Jammu and Kashmir having a
Dogra ruler but significant concentrations of Muslim majorities existed.
Baluchistan was centrally administered whereas Kalat was an independent Muslim
state. Post-Independence, evidently
princely states could not remain independent and would have to join India or if
partition happened either of the two countries. In the meantime, attempts to
find a middle ground led to many formulations.
The Union of India at the central
level would deal with subjects like foreign affairs, defence and communications
in addition to perhaps few others like currency, customs etc. Provinces would
be clustered into three groups, first Hindu majority provinces, second the
Muslim majority provinces in the West and third, the Muslim or mixed grouping Eastern
provinces Groups would decide on the
subjects to be administered in common and the rest of the subjects to be
administered at the provincial level. The residuary powers in such cases would
reside with the provinces. There were of course fundamental differences between
Congress and Jinnah over the composition and administration of the same. To
Jinnah, Assam was to form part of Muslim group of provinces which Congress
opposed whereas NWFP sort of rejected joining Muslim provinces which Congress
used as tool of to deride Jinnah’s demands. Subsequently, the third group was
created comprising Bengal and Assam. The members of the Constituent Assembly
would meet group wise separately in New Delhi to decide on the future
directions. The provinces were given an
option of opting out of the group in case the legislature elected after the
coming into the force of the new Constitution decided so. This was the crux of
the Cabinet Mission Award announced on May 16. 1946.
The Congress opposed what it
termed the arbitrary slotting of provinces into the groups. Its objection arose
from Assam being grouped with Bengal. Any impending resolution on partition
would have preordained Assam or at least large portions of Assam being part of
Pakistan. Therefore, its proposal was to leave it to the province’s wisdom to decide
on which group they wish to join. Given political configuration in provinces,
they anticipated NWFP to reject Group II and join Group I. The other objections
were related to power sharing and thus bargain chips for positions in the
government. To the Akalis, bringing Punjab into group II was problematic as it
would predominantly be Muslim grouping. Punjab was essentially a mixed ethnic
state with Western part Muslim dominated but significant pockets of Hindus and
Sikhs whereas the Eastern part predominantly Hindu-Sikh dominated with few
Muslim pockets. Similar was the case with Bengal with the Eastern part
predominated by Muslims, yet the Western portion, Hindu dominated also
comprised of Calcutta, the fulcrum of the province. Assam too had Muslim
pockets while the state was Hindu majority on the whole. While Muslim League
had conditionally accepted Cabinet Mission proposals, there was deadlock of
over parity or lack of it in the Executive Cabinet.
Deadlock over government
formation led to riots instigated by the Muslim League and India seemed
descending rapidly into chaos. The Congress meanwhile went ahead and formed the
interim government which Muslim League joined later on. While there is lot of
debate that can happen on the road and roadblock to government formation and it’s
functioning, what is material to the piece is the debate on the formation of
groups of provinces and the fight over the same.
To join the constituent assembly
and the interim government perhaps Jinnah needed a face saver. The face saver
would have to be categorical acceptance by the Congress on the structuring of
the group of provinces as suggested by the Cabinet Mission. The Congress had
objections to the same and in the meetings before, it was decided, the
interpretations on provinces joining or opting out of the groups would have to
be referred to the Federal Court for final verdict. The Congress took the Viceroy’s
proposal of seeking a categorical acceptance of Cabinet Mission grouping of
provinces was an appeasement of Jinnah and thus the entire matter was back to
square one. While there some steps to
arrive at a truce between Congress and Muslim League, it was essentially very
short lived. There was the issue of power sharing but more importantly, it was
the grouping of provinces. The Congress was steadfast in its demand for the
right of individual provinces to decide in joining the group, the Muslim League
and the British government were insistent on the Cabinet Mission award of May
16, 1946. In group B, the Sikhs demanded
safeguards in Punjab, Hindus in Bengal demanded separate province, uncertainty
arose in Assam over its future all leading to deadlock and recipe for civil
war. Congress conditional acceptance was grouping was hinged on it being better
than partition of the country on religious grounds.
Lord Wavell, the Viceroy, with
good reasons, believed India had reached a point of no return and hence suggested
phase wise withdrawal without getting into emergent conflicts. The withdrawal
would begin from provinces like Bombay, Madras etc. with Punjab and Bengal
being the last. The princely states would have to decide themselves their
future and Paramountcy ended. However in early 1947, Lord Wavell was replaced
by Lord Mountbatten. To Mountbatten, it was distraction to his naval career. He
wanted to get rid of the India business as fast as possible. This was clear from the moment he landed in
Indian in March 1947. Talk about partition
began during this time and there were signs from the Congress about the
inevitability of the same. However, there was one significant manoeuvre from
Mountbatten and response by Cabinet in London decisively turned the tide
towards partition. It would be instructive to turn to economics to do post ante
analysis of the same.
Conventional economics assumes
transitivity to hold good. Yet choice reversal happens given the contextual
effects of the framing of choices, thus negating transitivity. To Mountbatten, a man in hurry, given the
deteriorating state of affairs, apprehensions arose on presence of authority in
many regions at the time of transfer of power. To him, a solution was
unilateral withdrawal from India on an appointed date along with the
termination of Paramountcy of Princely States. To add, the amendments to same
being proposed by British Cabinet in London, it virtually amounted to the
Balkanisation of India. The provinces would be left to their wisdom in terms of
exercising their preference either on joining the federation pursuing their
path towards independence. Baluchistan’s future would be decided by
representatives elected from council of elders, NWFP would perhaps rethink its
desire to continue or not to continue in the Constituent Assembly, a portion of
Assam might go to East Bengal and so on. India might end up divided into 12
independent provinces not to speak about centrally administered territories and
nearly 550 princely states of varying sizes and population. It was a perfect
recipe for civil war. Nehru was categorical in rejection of the plan sinking
Mountbatten’s hope of early transfer of power. It was in the context VP Menon
presented his plan of transfer of power. His plan discussed with Sardar Patel
in late 1946 had been rejected earlier by the Viceroy and his other advisors. The
plan was now given a fresh lease of life. The plan was to create a separate nation
for Muslim majority provinces with the Princely states having an option of
joining either nation. In case of Punjab and Bengal, if the legislators desire
so would be partitioned on religious lines with the respective successor states
joining their nations.
In conventional logic, the idea
of acceptance, conditional or otherwise of the Cabinet Mission award by the
Congress was preservation of India as single entity. This choice was preferred to
partition. The choice of unilateral withdrawal leading to Balkanization should
have been third in the list of preferences. Yet preference two now was accepted
over three leaving the best choice in the circumstances side-lined. In the
original scheme, the sacrifice of powers and functions at the centre towards the
provinces and the groups of provinces might have resulted in multitude of
problems and unintended consequences. Yet the hope of united India was the
benefit which necessitated those trade-offs. The cost benefit analysis was
skewed towards the former. Bargains of course existed in what primarily was a
game of nerves translating into game of chicken.
Yet, choices were not independent
and depended on third party, the British. Their actions could prospectively
alter the dynamics of cost-benefits of the earlier two choices. The new proposal, a game of bluff virtually
abandoned the Award of Cabinet Mission, eliminating the choice from the table. The
new choice architecture skewed the cost benefit semantics, and the framing
meant continuance to fight till cows come home but with the rider of no
arbitrating central authority. It was a bottom up game of chicken with no holds
barred but potentially ending in Prisoner’s Dilemma. The marginal costs would
be high given the high probability of civil war and loss of lives and property
and fractured polity and country. A divided nation with central authority was
preferable to the one with chaos. Therefore the new frame meant partition was
the preferred choice, given the context effects.
Congress decision making was
perhaps in hindsight an illustration of Prospect theory, two and half decades
before it was proposed. A game of chicken with Jinnah could have been pursued assuming
the desire for power on his part would force him to compromise. The uncertainties
of gains were high. Cost of returns would be the loss of lives etc. in the interim.
The cost benefit analysis is never deterministic. It is the conditional
probability at play. Viewed through the prism of choices on offer, rational entity
would opt for loss minimising behaviour or exercise of choice with the lowest
opportunity cost. The expected utility was the highest for union of united
India yet the new choices and timeframe for the choices meant that there was
reduced probability for the anticipated expected utility. The choice of
partition mean compromising for lower levels of utility was the higher certainty
of the same. So as any rational entity, the Congress leadership accepted the
plan of partition.
In hindsight, engaged in post
mortem of partition, it is interesting to see how economics both behavioural and
orthodox helps with the tools and techniques and perhaps consistent with other
economic theories
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