In fact, after the experience of 1857, Britain would, with redoubled vigour, promote its policy of divide and rule to consolidate its hold. This should have been expected and resisted. To the contrary, the Congress during 1940-47 appears to have found these divisions advantageous, considering the alacrity with which its leadership accepted partition. Did the nationalist leadership, right up to Partition in 1947, realize that communal tensions did not evolve naturally because of a divide between communities and faiths? It was what the British had made of Hindu–Muslim equations. Disraeli’s 1857
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