The Great Tragedy of Partition—II Second World War & India’s constitutional destiny

Wars are fought on battlefields, but they often determine the fate of constitutions

The tragedy of Partition did not begin in August 1947. Nor did it begin with the Lahore Resolution of March 1940. By the time Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived in New Delhi as the last Viceroy, many of the constitutional assumptions upon which British rule in India had rested for nearly two centuries had already begun to unravel. The decisive turning point came much earlier—with the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. 

On September 3, 1939, Viceroy Lord Linlithgow announced that India was at war with Germany. The declaration was made without consulting the elected representatives of the Indian people. In constitutional terms, the announcement was far more than a wartime proclamation. It exposed the central contradiction of British rule in India.

Provincial autonomy had been introduced under the Government of India Act, 1935, ministries had been elected, and political parties had assumed responsibility for governance. However, sovereignty remained firmly in imperial hands.

Congress interpreted the decision as proof that constitutional reforms had not altered the essential character of colonial rule. If India could be committed to a global war without consulting its own elected representatives, then responsible government remained little more than a constitutional illusion. The Congress ministries consequently resigned from office in protest.

The Muslim League reached a different conclusion. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did not regard the war simply as an imperial conflict. He recognised that Britain’s dependence upon Indian political cooperation had fundamentally altered the constitutional balance. If Congress could use the war to press its demand for complete independence, the Muslim League could equally use the same circumstances to insist that no constitutional settlement would be legitimate unless it recognised Muslims as a distinct political nation.

The divergent responses of Congress and the League did not merely widen political differences. They transformed the constitutional debate itself. Until then, British policy had largely revolved around accommodating competing political demands within a single constitutional framework. The war made that increasingly difficult. Britain now required Indian cooperation for military and strategic reasons while simultaneously attempting to preserve imperial authority. Every constitutional concession became intertwined with wartime calculations.

Lord Linlithgow occupies a pivotal place in this transformation. His correspondence, together with the declassified Transfer of Power papers, reveals an administration struggling to reconcile imperial necessity with rapidly changing political realities.

Gowher Rizvi’s important study, Linlithgow and India, demonstrates that wartime pressures profoundly influenced British constitutional policy between 1939 and 1943. Imperial strategy and constitutional negotiation became inseparable. This, however, is only part of the story.

Congress interpreted wartime cooperation without an immediate transfer of power as legitimising colonial domination. The Muslim League viewed constitutional cooperation as an opportunity to secure recognition of Muslim political claims before British withdrawal. Neither approach was irrational. Each reflected a different understanding of India’s constitutional future.

The consequences extended well beyond official negotiations. The constitutional uncertainty of the war years encouraged deeper intellectual reflection throughout India. Politicians negotiated with the Raj. Scholars, journalists and religious thinkers debated the principles that should govern the future state.

It was during these years that the pages of Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an and Tolu-e-Islam assumed unusual importance. While constitutional negotiations proceeded in Delhi, Simla and London, Muslim intellectuals engaged in a parallel discussion concerning nationhood, sovereignty, Islam and political authority. The constitutional future of India was being debated not only in government memoranda and political resolutions but also in Urdu journals read by thousands of educated Muslims across the subcontinent.

The suspension of Tolu-e-Islam (July 1942 to December 1947) reflected the extraordinary political conditions created by the war. When publication resumed in January 1948, its arguments in favour of a separate Muslim homeland had acquired greater urgency because the constitutional landscape itself had changed. Pakistan was no longer merely a theoretical proposition discussed among intellectuals. It had become a reality with practical political possibilities [The Individual or State? by G A Parwez].

These debates remind us that the constitutional crisis of the 1940s cannot be reconstructed solely through official archives. The Transfer of Power documents reveal how British officials thought. Congress papers explain the strategy of the principal nationalist organisation. Muslim League records illuminate its constitutional demands.

The intellectual atmosphere within which these political decisions were received is preserved elsewhere—in journals such as Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an and Tolu-e-Islam, contemporary newspapers, party publications and the writings of scholars whose voices seldom appear in official correspondence.

One example illustrates this complexity. The Communist Party of India (CPI), despite its uncompromising opposition to British imperialism and communal politics, eventually recognised the principle of Muslim self-determination. This remains one of the least understood episodes of the freedom movement.

A party committed to internationalism concluded that the constitutional problem could not be resolved merely by denying Muslim political nationhood. Whether that judgment was ultimately correct is a separate question. Its historical significance lies in demonstrating that support for Pakistan cannot be explained solely through British policy or religious mobilisation.

The war years witnessed far more than military conflict. They transformed constitutional expectations, altered political alliances, reshaped imperial calculations and deepened intellectual divisions concerning India’s future. By the early 1940s, the search for independence had become inseparable from the search for an agreed constitutional order. Tragically, agreement became progressively more elusive.

When historians look back upon the Second World War, they naturally remember military campaigns stretching from North Africa to Burma. For the peoples of British India, however, the war also became a constitutional watershed. It changed the relationship between Britain and India, between Congress and the Muslim League, and between competing ideas of nationhood itself.

The story of Partition cannot be understood without first understanding those years. The next article examines one of the most intriguing constitutional developments of the war period: why the Communist Party of India, committed to anti-imperialism and opposed to communal politics, came to recognise the principle of Pakistan. That forgotten debate compels us to reconsider many assumptions about the final decade of British rule.

[To be continued]

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Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds an LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.