Peace Among Mankind-Reflections on the History of World in 20th century

There is widespread talk in public and media that India is weaker than China, which is modernizing its military and massing big number of troops on Indo-Tibetan border. The background of fear is the 1962 war. The fact is people are ignorant of India's modern history. They are not even interested in knowing it. Indians have never been fond of history. Our history textbooks quote foreign visitors (mostly Chinese) to tell us about our country. Even senior bureaucrats do not know true history of India's partition, independence and British perfidy.

In 1947, British divided India in their own self-interest so that they could control "life and progress" of India and keep up the prestige of Britain's worldwide Empire. They did this by creating and promoting communal riots between Muslims and Hindus to prove that they could not live peacefully together. They did this so cleverly that most of the world and Indians thought that British were very good, specially Labor Party and Labor leaders like Atlee and Cripps. The fact was there was not much difference between two parties, as far as the British Empire was concerned, as wrote Jawahar Lal Nehru. Their plan was as follows.

At that time, Britain had become very weak militarily and economically due to World War. At that time the British troops number in India was 70,000 against 2.4 million Indians and the Indian Army was no more loyal to them. Due to necessity of fighting Japan, Indian Army was expanded to 2.5 million and Indians were trained in the use of modern arms. Hence, they could not rule India militarily but could create trouble for India due to superior naval strength of two sides. Lifeline of British Empire was broken. As Indians could not manufacture modern arms, the British could manipulate the military strength of both India and Pakistan, by supplying them arms.

The raj ended in India (with post partition boundaries in August 1947), leaving it starving, partitioned with the threat of Balkanization due to lapse of paramountcy, defenseless, and facing the problem of one of the biggest migrations in history. No wonder the British did not expect India to survive. But SURVIDE IT DID, overcoming daunting odds. India lost wheat-producing areas in West Pakistan. They were developed by hardy Sikh and Hindu farmers. India also lost rice and jute in East Pakistan, aggravating food/raw material problem. India had become very poor with little industry and capability to make modern arms. It had become food deficient. Problems were, partition, mass killing and migration, shortage of food with little foreign trade. It meant no foreign exchange to import food, machinery and arms. India survived and made steady but slow progress. The credit goes to one of the greatest man, Jawahar Lal Nehru, some of his great colleagues like Sardar Patel and resiliency of Indian people.