Centerfield

Indian Unity What-If

Reviews of this book on the Indian/Pakistani partition inspired me to post about some related mail exchanged by FDR and Churchill about it during WWII.

President Roosevelt counterproposed a loose, American - Revolution - union - style Continental Congress to give unity a chance to be worked out. Churchill thought ethnic cleansing was a better solution, though.

The mail sequence was that, after a British commission examining issues in freeing India released a report favoring partition, FDR was unhappy. He send Churchill mail pointing out that this would surely involve considerable tragedy (which it did), and that since India was multiethnic already, he didn't understand why this was necessary. FDR suggested trying the Articles of Confederation that backed the Continental Congress until the Constitution came into force. Churchill replied with a letter from an Indian Muslim group noting that Hindus were the ethnic majority, and fearing persecution in an independent India.

So, whadja think? Possibility or hopeless? I think it would've had problems, and Muslims WOULD have suffered persecution, but less than either side did in the ethnic cleansing.