Unveiling the Distortions: A Critique of NCERT’s ‘Partition Horrors’ Modules
In the words of Karl Marx, “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” This adage aptly captures the essence of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)’s recently released modules on the “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day,” introduced in August 2025 to commemorate the 1947 division of India. These modules, designed as supplementary resources for Classes 6-8 and 9-12, frame the Partition as a preventable catastrophe stemming from “wrong ideas,” pinpointing three primary culprits: Muhammad Ali Jinnah for demanding it, the Indian National Congress for accepting it, and Lord Mountbatten for implementing it. While acknowledging the humanitarian toll—millions displaced and hundreds of thousands killed—the modules conspicuously absolve key actors like V.D. Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha, whose ideological contributions and political maneuvers were instrumental in fostering communal divisions.
This selective narrative not only distorts historical causality but also risks perpetuating a farcical rewriting of India’s past for contemporary political ends. Drawing on established scholarship, this critique rebuts the modules’ claims by highlighting the multi-actor dynamics of Partition, incorporating verified historical facts, and emphasizing the need for a balanced, evidence-based pedagogy.
The Selective Blame Game: Oversimplifying a Complex Catastrophe
The NCERT modules reduce the Partition—a humanitarian disaster that displaced 10 to 20 million people and claimed between 200,000 and 2 million lives—to a triad of villains, while ignoring the broader ecosystem of communal politics.
They assert that Partition was not inevitable but resulted from shortsighted governance and concessions to violence-prone groups, with lasting repercussions like the Kashmir conflict emerging as a foreign policy challenge. However, this framing amputates the pre-1940 genealogy of separatism and understates the interplay of Hindu and Muslim communalisms. Historians like Bipan Chandra and Sumit Sarkar argue that Partition was the convergence of long-term ideological mobilizations, colonial policies, and wartime disruptions, not merely the actions of three individuals.
By omitting Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha, the modules engage in a pedagogical sleight of hand, tacitly endorsing a sanitized version of history that aligns with certain ideological agendas. The Indian History Congress has condemned this as feeding “distorted history” to young minds, echoing concerns over “saffronization.”
Origins of the Two-Nation Theory:
Savarkar’s Ideological Precedence
Central to the modules’ narrative is the Muslim League’s 1940 Lahore Resolution, where Jinnah formalized the demand for Pakistan based on the two-nation theory. Yet, this overlooks earlier articulations by Hindu nationalists.
As early as 1923, in his seminal work Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, V.D. Savarkar posited that Hindus and Muslims constituted distinct nations, bound by different cultural and historical ties. This view crystallized in 1937 at the Hindu Mahasabha’s 19th session in Ahmedabad, where Savarkar, as president, declared: “There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India.”
Historian Irfan Habib affirms that Savarkar was the first to explicitly propound this theory, predating Jinnah by three years and providing ideological fodder for mutual separatism.
The modules’ silence on this chronology is glaring, as it absolves Savarkar of authoring a concept that mirrored and legitimized the League’s demands. The fallacy of religion-based nationhood was later exposed in 1971 with Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan, driven by linguistic and cultural factors, underscoring the subcontinent’s historical syncretism—from Sufi traditions to shared festivals like Diwali and Eid.
Opportunistic Alliances: Hindu Mahasabha’s Collaboration with the Muslim League
Far from opposing separatism, the Hindu Mahasabha actively collaborated with the Muslim League during the critical 1940s, a fact the modules ignore. In 1942, amid World War II, the Mahasabha formed coalition governments with the League in Bengal, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
In Bengal, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, a prominent Mahasabha leader and later founder of the Jana Sangh (BJP precursor), served as Finance Minister in A.K. Fazlul Huq’s League-led ministry.
In Sindh, the coalition persisted even after G.M. Syed introduced a resolution supporting Pakistan in the assembly. These alliances reveal pragmatic power-sharing between communal forces, undermining any claim that the Mahasabha stood against Partition. Moreover, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ideologically aligned with the Mahasabha, abstained from the anti-colonial struggle. Under M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS boycotted the 1942 Quit India Movement, with Golwalkar instructing members to avoid anti-British activities and comply with government directives.
This non-participation contrasts sharply with the mass mobilization led by Congress, further eroding the moral authority of these groups to retrospectively blame others.
The British Role: Haste, Cynicism, and Divide-and-Rule
While the modules acknowledge Mountbatten’s implementation, they underplay the broader colonial orchestration. Britain’s “divide-and-rule” tactics, institutionalized through separate electorates in the 1909 Morley-Minto Reforms and the 1932 Communal Award, rewarded communal separatism and isolated secular nationalists. Mountbatten accelerated the transfer of power from June 1948 to August 1947, leaving Cyril Radcliffe—a lawyer unfamiliar with India—to draw the Punjab and Bengal borders in just five weeks.
The Radcliffe Award was withheld until after independence on August 17, exacerbating chaos and violence. As detailed in Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s Freedom at Midnight, this compressed timeline crippled administrative safeguards, turning political separation into a humanitarian nightmare. Mushirul Hasan’s Legacy of a Divided Nation emphasizes how British cynicism amplified mutual mistrust, a structural factor the modules reduce to mere implementation.
Congress’s Dilemma: Striving for Unity Amid Deadlock
The modules fault Congress for “accepting” Partition, portraying it as a concession to Jinnah’s demands.
This oversimplifies the context. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, in India Wins Freedom, admits Congress missteps but stresses the collapse of the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan—a federal framework for a united India—as the turning point. Azad critiques both League intransigence and Congress inflexibility, lamenting that “Partition could perhaps have been avoided” with more patience. Gandhi opposed division until the end, even proposing Jinnah as prime minister to preserve unity. B.R. Ambedkar, in Pakistan or the Partition of India, viewed Partition as inevitable under prevailing communal deadlock but advocated constitutional safeguards, not ideological endorsement. Rammanohar Lohia, in Guilty Men of India’s Partition, indicts elites across the board for failing to build inter-communal democracy, including Hindu communalists like the Mahasabha. These perspectives reveal Congress’s acceptance as a pragmatic response to escalating violence, not authorship of division.
Scholarly Perspectives: Embracing Multi-Causality
Established historiography rejects the modules’ prosecutorial simplicity. Gyanendra Pandey’s Remembering Partition shifts focus from blame to how violence constituted national memory, warning against binaries that obscure gendered and local experiences. Sumit Sarkar and Mridula Mukherjee highlight the “communal triangle” of Hindu and Muslim extremism feeding off British policies, pairing Savarkar and Jinnah as exemplars.
This multi-causal lens—encompassing ideological rivalries, provincial politics, and administrative haste—contrasts with the modules’ narrow triad, which erases the feedback loop between competing nationalisms.
The Irony of Commemoration: Learning to Build Bridges
The modules’ commemorative intent ironically hails from ideologies ambivalent toward independence. As George Santayana warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” True remembrance should foster unity, not division, by confronting all actors’ roles. Initiatives like the Partition Museum in Amritsar promote shared narratives across borders, reminding us of pre-Partition harmony in culture, cuisine, and resistance.
In conclusion, NCERT’s modules instrumentalize memory, absolving Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha while scapegoating Jinnah, Congress, and Mountbatten.
A scholarly approach demands teaching complexity: genealogies of communalism from the 1920s, failed negotiations like the Cabinet Mission, and the human cost beyond blame. By embracing diverse sources—from Azad’s regrets to Ambedkar’s realism—educators can equip students to resist farcical repetitions of tragedy, ensuring history serves reconciliation, not polarization.
Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
