With
Brexit a reality, a look back at six Indian referendums (and one that never
happened)
India, unlike
Europe, doesn’t take chances. Referendums were called only when the result was
known.
Jun 24, 2016 · 06:35 pm Updated
Jun 24, 2016 · 07:11 pm
Image credit: Alice Kandell
Brexit – or the
British exit from the European Union – has become a reality. In a referendum
conducted on Thursday, 52% of voters opted to leave the EU. One of the the most
significant referendum in Europe's history, it’s also one in a long line of
such exercises. Since 1973, the continent has seen 54 instances where citizens
have decided policy – mostly related to the European Union – via a vote.
The rest of the world, however, isn’t too keen on them. Most Indians,
for example, wouldn’t even know what to make of it without maybe a quick peek
at Wikipedia. But it isn't like they haven’t happened. The Indian subcontinent
has actually seen six of them, with one pending referendum in Kashmir being the
cause of great friction between India and Pakistan.
Three of the six – Sylhet, Junagadh and North Western Frontier Province
– were held in 1947 as British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan.
Referendums have also been held in Sikkim and Pondicherry to decide if they
wanted to be a part of India. In 1967, Goa voted to not be included in
Maharashtra, establishing their Konkani identity as distinct from Marathi. And
if Arvind Kejriwal has his way, there might be another on its way: a referendum
to decide if Delhi wants full statehood.
Unlike the Brexit, however, all but one – the Goa referendum – had what
one could call managed outcomes: their results were mostly known even before
the first vote was cast. Nevertheless, each referendum was a result of a
fascinating series of historical events and bears recounting.
North-Western Frontier Province and
Sylhet
Though Britain has just exited the European Union after an orderly
referendum, Indians were not given such democratic options as the former
colonial power exited its empire 1947. After plans for a United India fell through, a
partition scheme was drawn up by a Malayali civil servant VP Menon who served
as the Constitutional Adviser to the Viceroy and had Vallabhbhai Patel's
confidence. This came to be known as the June 3 plan (which is when it was
announced) or the Mountbatten Plan, after India’s last viceroy.
Ordinary Indians had little choice in the matter. Congressmen and
Leaguers, themselves elected by a very narrow franchise at the time, simply
decided the matter amongst themselves, electing to partition Bengal and Punjab.
People like the Tamils and Sindhis weren’t even asked their opinion and were
simply bundled wholesale from the Raj to either India or Pakistan.
However, there were two exceptions: Sylhet and the North-West Frontier
Province, currently on the Pakistan-Afghan border, both of saw referendums. One
of these, the one in the NWFP, was a farce, since the Congress boycotted it. If
they had participated, the Congress would have had a good chance of winning ‒
it was the only Muslim province where they had a ministry in 1947. But the Congress
did not want an East Pakistan-style situation where India had a distant
satellite province. This led NWPF leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to dolefully
declare, “You have thrown us to the dogs.”
The case of Sylhet in 1947 was even curiouser. Then in Assam and now in
Bangladesh, it was the only district which got its own vote, out of the blue,
even as British India’s largest province Bengal was simply slashed with so much
as a by your leave. How then did Sylhet get such special treatment?
Sylhet was a Muslim-majority district within a Hindu-majority Assam.
Apart from the religious divide, there was also a linguistic one. Muslims in
Sylhet either spoke the Sylheti language or were Bengalis from eastern Bengal.
Given this, the Congress in Assam, controlled by upper caste Axomiya Hindus of
Upper Assam, were in many ways keen to see Sylhet be shunted out of the
province, helping make their political position stronger in a more homogenous
province. In discussions with the British Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946, therefore,
Assam’s Prime Minister Gopinath Bordoloi said that it was his desire to “hand
over Sylhet to East Bengal”.
As a result, during the referendum, the Congress, which otherwise had an
excellent network in Assam, didn’t really support the “in” side, which mostly
consisted of local Sylheti Hindus. In the end, Sylhet voted to break away from
Assam and join what was then East Pakistan.
However, the politics over language and religion didn’t die out with the
exit of Sylhet. In fact, the recent Bharatiya Janata Party win in Assam
announced on May 19, 2016, was driven by the exact same xenophobic fears of
Muslim Bengalis as those that pushed the Congress to welcome the Sylhet
plebiscite in 1947.
Junagadh and Kashmir
The British might have been the paramount power in the subcontinent
since 1757 but come the Brexit of 1947, it dawned on everyone that they
directly only controlled three-fifths of the subcontinent’s land area. Even as
India and Pakistan achieved independence, so did a massive 562 princely states
from British rule. Here, the last Viceroy of India, Louis Mountbatten, who had
close links with the Congress and a personal friendship with Nehru, stepped in.
On July 25, 1947, he called a special session of the Chamber of the
Princes and, in his capacity as the Crown’s representative, urged them to merge
with India – a successful move, as most states, awed by an appeal from a man
who was both Viceroy and cousin to the King of England, signed the instrument
of accession with India. Travancore and Jodhpur caused some trouble but
negotiations led by Mountbatten eventually won them over.
Three states, however, still held out: Hyderabad, Kashmir and the tiny
principality of Junagadh. On November 1, 1947, Mountbatten offered to Jinnah, with Congress backing, an
option of a plebiscite in all three states. Jinnah refused, arguing legally
that the Independence of India Act gave the ruler and not the people the option
to decide – a curious position given that Pakistan’s weak military strength
meant that this was an offer Jinnah should have jumped on.
Mountbatten handled the negotiations with Hyderabad but failed to
convince the Nizam, leading to the Indian Army invading and annexing the state
to India in September 1948.
In Junagadh, the Muslim nawab, a man whose only love, it seems, were
animals (he had hundreds of dogs and preserved the Asiatic lion at Gir) opted
for Pakistan. In return, Pakistan till this day recognises his claim to
Junagadh – a fairly hopeless campaign whose only mark now seems to be thiswebsite.
The nawab's accession might have been technically legal but given that
Junagadh was in the middle of Gujarat, with no border with Pakistan, this went
squarely against India’s interests. Supported by India, on October 24, 1947,
volunteers rose up against the nawab and captured the tiny state. On February
20, 1948, India conducted a plebiscite in which a little more than 2 lakh
people voted. India won the vote, with a grand total of 91 people opting for
Pakistan.
It wasn’t over though. In many ways, this suited Pakistan. Junagadh was
a tiny principality. The real prize was Kashmir. Would the referendum in
Junagadh set a precedent for Kashmir – a mirror image of the Gujarati state,
with a Hindu king and a Muslim-majority populace? On September 22, 1947,
Pakistan’s prime minister asked a Mountbatten aide, “Why, if it was
suggested that a referendum should be held in Junagadh one should not be held
in Kashmir?”
Kashmir, meanwhile, saw large-scale insurrections against its maharaja in August 1947. Taking advantage of this, Pathan
tribesmen, supported and armed by Pakistan, streamed into Kashmir. The Maharaja
panicked and acceded to India, which accepted his decision provisionally, subject to the
caveat that a plebiscite would take place later, after the invaders had been
drive out. The invaders were never driven out – the western half of Jammu and
Kashmir is still under Pakistani control.
While Jawaharlal Nehru did make promises of a plebiscite, given that
most commentators assumed India would lose, he didn’t pursue it with any real
heart. In 1953, all hopes for a referendum were snuffed out as Nehru ousted
Sheikh Abdullah, Kashmir’s tallest leaders, from the post of prime minister of
Jammu and Kashmir and proceeded to imprisonhim for 11 years.
Sikkim and Pondicherry
The most contentious referendum in the subcontinent took place not,
paradoxically, during the bitter 1947 partition but in the tiny Buddhist
kingdom of Sikkim in 1975. In 1947, a popular vote in Sikkim actually rejected
merger with India and relations continued with Delhi much as they had under the
British Raj. Sikkim was a protectorate of India, with Delhi handling Gangtok’s
defence and foreign affairs – an arrangement quite similar to Bhutan today.
After the 1962 Indo-China war, though, things changed – made worse in
the 1970s by the Sikkimese king, the Chogyal making moves to free his country
from Indian control. Indira Gandhi, though, was having none of that. In April,
1975, with intrigue lashing the tiny kingdom, the Indian Army took control of
the Chogyal’s palace. A highly controversial referendum was then held on the
question of the abolishment of the monarchy and, practically, merger with
India. A whopping 98% opted for India. So clouded was this move that no less
than an Indian Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, admitted that India’s annexation of Sikkim was “not a desirable step”.
In contrast, Pondicherry, a tiny French colony on India’s south-east
coast was the least contentious and most democratic of India’s referendums. The
will of the people to merge with India was clear. On October 18, 1954, of 178
legislators, 170 voted to accede with India
Goa
In 1967, six years after the Indian Army had expelled the Portuguese
from their Indian colonies, Goa voted to decide whether it would remain a Union
territory or be merged with Maharashtra.
Much of the Goan question centered around the the linguistic issue of
whether Konkani should be considered a dialect of Marathi. Given the consensus
around linguistic states in India, classifying it as a dialect meant merger. Of
course, like all issues of socio-lingusitics, the language question also hid a
social schism – in Goa this divide was between Hindus and Christians. The
former were seen to be more keen on a merger.
In the end, Goans stuck to their Konkani identity and decided by a
majority of 54% to not merge their homeland with Maharashtra.
