By Bharat KarnadThis is one of the great “what ifs” of history. But what if Partition had been avoided because the 1946 cabinet mission plan was jointly accepted by the Congress Party and the Muslim League or Mahatma Gandhi’s last minute offer of prime ministership to Mohammad Ali Jinnah had prevailed over Jawaharlal Nehru’s personal ambition? With Jinnah dead of tuberculosis by September 1948, Nehru would have soon headed the government. But would he have enjoyed the same success in rooting liberal values and democratic norms in areas now constituting Pakistan?
Recall that the British during the previous 100-odd years had a terrible time pacifying the tribal militants and, in the wake of the somewhat farcical Afghan invasion of 1919, were engaged in almost continuous fighting with the armed tribesmen in Waziristan and on the North-West Frontier right up to IndiaÂ’s independence.