There can be little doubt that British fanned the Islamic separatism since at least the after-days of 1857. This was in the general template of their regimentalizing the Hindu and playing up all the anti-Hindu forces against it. These can be seen very clearly right since the days of the British support to the likes of Syed Ahmed.
However, the questions that must be asked here are: Did the significant portion of energy or initiative for Islamic Separatism come from British Support, or were they a mere catalyst for it? Was the partition of India a perfect british design, or was it coming anyways?
In my opinion one should not underestimate Islam which I think needed no special energy from British to affect the separation. As the data shows, reaction of Islam to the rise of Hindu nation was already happening, even without the British tickling it. Moslems I think were already trying to re-organize themselves as can be seen not only in the political events of early British period, but also in the intellectual sphere, like the founding and popularity of the madarsa of deoband the fountainhead of the spiritual energy for separatism, identity of Urdu as the 'national language' of moslems, and ongoing riots in UP, Punjab and Bengal.
British were quick to realize it, and built further upon it, while at the same time they slowly paralyzed the Hindu faculties.
Coming to Partition, if one says it was some neat design drawn up on a black board through a strategy session inside a war room in the India office of London and then executed to perfection by their fieldmen in India, this I find hard to believe. I think it was a simple, natural and near-chemical outcome of the process that had already set in. Islamic separatism which was by now fairly self-sustaining and could live on its own enegry and design, found under Jinnah a leader who could effectively demand a separate state for Moslems, whereas Hindus by now thoroughly paralyzed were so disarrayed and confused that it was hard to imagine a Hindu fight-back (not that its consciousness was missing -- their leadership and organization was simply hijacked by the secularized lot having no clue about Islam).
In this I think the british hand can be seen at the abstract level, but not in the ground-level design for partition. I can be wrong of course.
Moslems too, as we know, were not unitedly behind the demand for partition. The other school with equally zealous moslems thought that the long ranging interest of Islam was better served through a united India rather than through a separately carved Moslem and Hindu states. In the final analysis, sadly for Hindus, it seems both the Moslem fractions won a victory -- they first got a separate Moslem state, and at the same time also got to stay behind in the Hindu portion to continue the age old process of steady dawat, and as a bonus, both of them together got to Islamize the Londonistan too!
However, the questions that must be asked here are: Did the significant portion of energy or initiative for Islamic Separatism come from British Support, or were they a mere catalyst for it? Was the partition of India a perfect british design, or was it coming anyways?
In my opinion one should not underestimate Islam which I think needed no special energy from British to affect the separation. As the data shows, reaction of Islam to the rise of Hindu nation was already happening, even without the British tickling it. Moslems I think were already trying to re-organize themselves as can be seen not only in the political events of early British period, but also in the intellectual sphere, like the founding and popularity of the madarsa of deoband the fountainhead of the spiritual energy for separatism, identity of Urdu as the 'national language' of moslems, and ongoing riots in UP, Punjab and Bengal.
British were quick to realize it, and built further upon it, while at the same time they slowly paralyzed the Hindu faculties.
Coming to Partition, if one says it was some neat design drawn up on a black board through a strategy session inside a war room in the India office of London and then executed to perfection by their fieldmen in India, this I find hard to believe. I think it was a simple, natural and near-chemical outcome of the process that had already set in. Islamic separatism which was by now fairly self-sustaining and could live on its own enegry and design, found under Jinnah a leader who could effectively demand a separate state for Moslems, whereas Hindus by now thoroughly paralyzed were so disarrayed and confused that it was hard to imagine a Hindu fight-back (not that its consciousness was missing -- their leadership and organization was simply hijacked by the secularized lot having no clue about Islam).
In this I think the british hand can be seen at the abstract level, but not in the ground-level design for partition. I can be wrong of course.
Moslems too, as we know, were not unitedly behind the demand for partition. The other school with equally zealous moslems thought that the long ranging interest of Islam was better served through a united India rather than through a separately carved Moslem and Hindu states. In the final analysis, sadly for Hindus, it seems both the Moslem fractions won a victory -- they first got a separate Moslem state, and at the same time also got to stay behind in the Hindu portion to continue the age old process of steady dawat, and as a bonus, both of them together got to Islamize the Londonistan too!