By the Right — Wrong Foot Forward

Abstract

Few new States are born into an international environment more hostile to the infant than was Pakistan. British policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had of course encouraged and patronised the Muslim League as a counter to the pressures being mounted by Gandhi’s style of political agitation. But even the British were surprised by the intensity of Muslim religious fervour that Jinnah mobilised into an irresistible separatist movement. In the last few years British policy under the influence of men like Stafford Cripps had turned against the Muslim demand for Pakistan. A ‘united’ India had long been regarded as one of the greatest achievements of British imperial policy. While Downing Street and the India Office in London and the Viceroy in Delhi manoeuvred to keep India united, a number of senior British officers serving in India were converted to the Pakistan idea.