Number of words: 231

It is this one single step, acknowledged and encouraged by Minto, among of course, various other factors, which we examine in subsequent chapters that contributed to a ‘separation’ mentality. And indisputably this rejection of personal enfranchisement and acceptance of the device of reservation, based on religion, finally moved the Muslim political personality of India towards an eventual separation for which a sentiment had been growing ever since Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan refused to have anything to do with the Indian National Congress. But a question arises: Did the British do no more than simply acknowledge what already existed? Or did they, in fact, incite, create or encourage a separatist tendency, as a number of historians assert? Also, was this Simla Deputation, in Maulana Muhammad Ali’s words, ‘a command performance’? Or was it more a consequence of the existing situation than any cause of separateness? There are, and will perhaps always remain, two schools of thought about this. But there is another, an even more worrisome, query that confronts us here. Elections, the very first step of democratic representation are to unite through electing public representatives jointly, that is by providing a platform and giving a voice, through vote, to all eligible adults; but what if the process of democratically electing itself becomes divisive, as clearly in this case it did?

Excerpted from Page 13 of ‘Jinnah: India-Partition Independence’ by Jaswant Singh