Rethinking Partition in colonial and post-colonial Pakistan: a Gramscian perspective—I

The tragedy of Pakistani society lies not merely in its repeated afflictions, but in its failure to react meaningfully to them.

As Shakespeare observed, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” Yet Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, “Those who do not move do not feel their chains.” “And those” Gotthold Lessing says, “Who mock their chains aren’t always free”.

“In contrast to the Palestinians—whose resistance affirms their subjectivity and whose struggle for liberation is rooted in material conditions, as Marx alludes to—the people of Pakistan seem addicted to their chains: restless, yet directionless, embodying Dante’s chilling warning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.””

This paralysis of will echoes Max Horkheimer’s critique in The Eclipse of Reason, where he notes, “Men have been released from [concentration] camps who have taken over the jargon of their jailers and with cold reason and mad consent... contend that they have not been treated so badly after all.” This eerie normalization of subjugation resonates with the Pakistani condition, where survival—stripped of dignity—is misrecognized as destiny. As Brutus tells Cassius in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Cassius, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

The tragedy did not end with colonial withdrawal. As Frantz Fanon warned, colonialism leaves behind the “germs of rot,” which must be carefully weeded out. In Pakistan’s case, these remnants included the landed aristocracy and comprador bourgeoisie—classes shaped by and loyal to colonial hegemonic designs. In the immediate post-colonial period, power was consolidated into a Bonapartist-Caesarist bloc, led by a civil-military bureaucracy masquerading as a nation-state.

This analysis draws on Gramsci’s key concepts—Caesarism, Bonapartism, cultural hegemony, passive revolution, war of position, and war of manoeuvre—to reinterpret the trajectory of Partition and its aftermath. Each historical phase reflects how the ruling bloc preserved its hegemony by leveraging these dynamics.

I. Colonial India: hegemony through division and domination

Before British colonization, the Indian subcontinent was a loosely connected network of autonomous regions under variable central authority. The people were often alienated from or unaware of imperial authority. British colonialism introduced a centralized state devoid of consent-based legitimacy. Instead, power was exercised through sheer outright coercion, not hegemony.

British rule relied heavily on divide-and-rule strategies. From the Berlin Conference (1884–85), where Africa was partitioned, to the sectarian divisions in Ireland, India and in the Arab world especially Palestine, colonial powers manufactured difference to prevent unity. In India, this led to a long “war of position” punctuated by few but notable frontal attacks.

The 1857 Rebellion—considered India’s first war of independence—was a rare moment of counter-hegemonic unity among Hindus and Muslims. Yet the movement was ultimately defeated due to the rebels’ lack of military experience, strategic leadership, and the decayed central power in Delhi. As Engels noted, the people were deliberately denied the experience needed to command and lead.

Later, Bhagat Singh and his comrades articulated a more mature political consciousness, rooted in class struggle rather than religious sentiment. Their party led a true “war of manoeuvre” that directly threatened the colonial status quo. Alarmed, the British swiftly executed Bhagat Singh and co-opted bourgeois nationalist parties to serve as controlled outlets for popular dissent.

For Gramsci, movements like Gandhi’s were “passive revolutions”—religiously-inflected, non-violent methods that offered temporary catharsis but ultimately helped preserve British rule. Jinnah, a secular bourgeois himself, was increasingly alienated by Nehru and the dominant Congress elite. He, akin to them opted to preserve the class interests under the veneer of Muslim liberation.

II. Partition and the politics of division

India’s partition along religious lines served three key colonial objectives: it granted the indigenous bourgeoisie a state while maintaining colonial power structures; it created two perpetually insecure, hostile states; and it neutralized the Marxist threat in a unified India. Pakistan was designed as a Muslim, anti-Soviet bulwark to serve Western strategic interests in the Middle East.

The 1946 Naval Uprising marked the last serious attempt by subaltern to unite India under a secular, socialist vision. Both Congress and the Muslim League betrayed the movement, selling it out to the British to preserve their own pathways to power.

As Gramsci observed, Capitalist political leaders are often mere expressions of structural forces they cannot fully comprehend or control. The bourgeoisie leaders for him “are the manifestations of specific relations of immediate political, organizational and military forces, they haven’t created themselves and have failed to correct—-if at all they attempted to do so”.

Despite religious differences they all serve their class interests. They’re so much identical to each other that in Shakespeare’s words

“One half of me is yours, the other half yours—

Mine own, I would say — but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.

Despite their ideological differences, Congress and the Muslim League were both bourgeois parties. For Gramsci, such parties either represent producers’ interests or act as parasitic “coachman flies,” making little impact on the state while exploiting its machinery for favouritism.

The partition of India was less the result of communal antagonism or nationalist inevitability, and more a symptom of the British Empire’s terminal crisis. By the end of the Second World War, Britain stood bankrupt—both financially and politically.

Unable to repay its mounting debts to the United States, it found itself under growing pressure to dismantle its colonial holdings. American capital sought access to markets previously monopolized by British imperialism, particularly in South Asia.

In this context, decolonization became not a moral imperative but a geopolitical adjustment—an imperial retreat negotiated under duress.

(To be continued tomorrow)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025