The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition

by Raja Narendra Singh Sarila

The USSR’s powerful victory over Germany in 1945 had increased Joseph Stalin’s ambitions to extend his country’s influence into territories on its periphery; indeed, he had already started to do so in Eastern Europe. To the Soviet Union’s southern border lay the region of the Persian Gulf with its oil fields – the wells of power – that were of vital interest to the West. Under the circumstances, Britain could ill afford to lose control over the entire Indian subcontinent that had served as its military base in dominating the Indian Ocean area and the countries around the Persian Gulf for more than half a century and which was also the main source of manpower for the Imperial Army. Once the British realized that the Indian nationalists who would rule India after its independence would deny them military cooperation under a British Commonwealth defence umbrella, they settled for those willing to do so by using religion for the purpose. Their problem could be solved if Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League Party, would succeed in his plan to detach the northwest of India abutting Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang and establish a separate state there – Pakistan. The proposition was a realizable one as a working relationship had been established between the British authorities in India and Jinnah during the Second World War and he was willing to cooperate with Britain on defence matters if Pakistan was created.