The question as to who was responsible for India’s Partition into two independent countries has been dominating media headlines for the past few weeks. Some writers and political parties have taken the stand that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was mainly responsible for India’s Partition, while some others have tried to pin the responsibility on Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. A surprising feature of these comments is that most of them are based on the assumption that the British only had a marginal role in the Partition when it happened in 1947 and that the main responsibility lay with India’s leaders.
It is true that after the assumption of power by the Labour Party in Britain in 1945, Britain had been genuine in its intention to quit India without destroying the unity of the country. But this change in the attitude of the British government towards India’s demand for Independence was a post-World War II development — Britain had been left too weak and debilitated to continue its role of imperial domination over India by use of force.
After the revolt of 1857, the British government had appointed a commission to examine what exactly went wrong in their assessment of the situation in India and what should be done to tighten their hold over the country. Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay in a note dated May 14, 1858, to the Governor-General had unabashedly advocated the policy of "divide and rule". He stated: "Divide et impera was the old Roman motto and it should be ours". Sir John Wood, another ardent colonialist, in a letter to Governor-General Elgin had said in plain words, "We have maintained our power by playing off one party against the other and we must continue to do so".
http://newageislam.com/dont-forget-british-zeal-to-divide-india/debate/d/1764
