Monday, April 14, 2008
Ayesha Jalal and Partition
Dawn, December 25, 2005Book ReviewBetween myth and historyThis book is a collection of essays and articles on Mohammad Ali Jinnah by some of the most distinguished scholars of South Asian historyAyesha Jalal sets the record straight about the misconception over Mohammad Ali Jinnah using Pakistan as a mere ruse against the CongressPakistan’s impeccable record in commemorating the landmarks in its national struggle has not always been matched by an ability to coherently explain their historical significance. Sixty-five years since its adoption by the All-India Muslim League, the Lahore Resolution remains mired in contentious debates among historians of South Asia as well as the protagonists of provincial versus central rights in Pakistan.Not surprisingly, most Pakistanis are no nearer to understanding how the would-be Magna Carta of their territorial statehood relates to their citizenship rights, far less squares the circle of the multiple conceptions of nationhood articulated by Muslims in the pre-independence period.The Resolution’s claim that Indian Muslims were not a minority but a nation was raised on behalf of all the Muslims of the subcontinent. Yet the territorial contours of the newly created homeland for India’s Muslims in 1947 left almost as many Muslim non-citizens outside as there were Muslim citizens within. Even after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 administered a rude shock to the official narratives of national identity, the contradiction between claims of nationhood and the achievement of statehood was never addressed, far less resolved. The silence has been a major stumbling block in Pakistan’s quest for an identity which is consistent with the appeal of Islamic universalism as well as the requirements of territorial nationalism.Instead of treating the Lahore Resolution as an issue of metahistorical significance, an analytically nuanced history of the circumstances surrounding its passage can make for a stronger and more coherent sense of national identity. Discussions about the historical significance of the Resolution have concentrated more on the political implications of the transformation of the Muslim minority community in India into a “nation” rather than on the ambiguities surrounding the demand for Muslim “statehood”.A close analysis of the historical content and actual content of the Resolution, however, suggests that there was no neat progression from an assertion of Muslim nationhood to the winning of separate statehood. My book The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand of Pakistan (Cambridge, 1985) delineated the uneasy fit between the claim of Muslim “nationhood” and the uncertainties and indeterminacies of politics in the late colonial era that led to the attainment of sovereign “statehood”. Instead of grasping the salience of the argument, some historians and publicists on both sides of the 1947 divide have interpreted this as implying that the demand for a Pakistan was a mere “bargaining counter”. In so far as politics is the art of the possible, bargaining is an intrinsic part of that art. To suggest, as some have glibly done, that Mohammad Ali Jinnah used Pakistan as a mere ruse against the Congress is a gross distortion of not only my argument but of the actual history.My argument in The Sole Spokesman, and one that I confirmed in Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850s (Routledge, 2000), was that while the insistence on national status of Indian Muslims became a non-negotiable issue after 1940, the demand for a wholly separate and sovereign state of “Pakistan” remained open to negotiation as late as the summer of 1946. A refusal to acknowledge this is a result of the failure to draw an analytical distinction between “nation” and “state”. More problematic has been a flawed historical methodology that takes the fact of partition as the point of departure for interpreting the historical evolution of the demand for a “Pakistan”.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The historical backdrop of the Lahore Resolution makes plain why a claim to nationhood did not necessarily mean a complete severance of ties with the rest of India ... “Describing India as the greatest Muslim country in the world”, Iqbal called for the establishment of a Muslim state in north-western India which would remain part of the subcontinental whole--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The historical backdrop of the Lahore Resolution makes plain why a claim to nationhood did not necessarily mean a complete severance of ties with the rest of India. Beginning with Mohammad Iqbal’s presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad in December 1930, a succession of Muslims put forward imaginative schemes in the 1930’s about how power might be shared between religiously enumerated “majorities” and “minorities” in an independent India.In staking a claim for a share of power for Muslims on grounds of “cultural difference, these schemes in their different ways challenged Congress’ right to indivisible sovereignty without rejecting any sort of identification with India. Describing India as the greatest Muslim country in the world”, Iqbal called for the establishment of a Muslim state in north-western India which would remain part of the subcontinental whole.If even Iqbal was thinking in terms of an all-India whole, outright secession was simply not an option for Muslims hailing from provinces where they were in a minority. Virtually all the schemes put forward by Muslims living in minority provinces considered themselves as “a nation in minority” that was part of “a larger nation inhabiting Pakistan and Bengal”. If Muslims in Hindustan were seen as belonging to a larger nation in north-western India, religious minorities in “Pakistan” and Bengal were expected to derive security from sharing a common nationality with co-religionists dominating the non-Muslim state.For the notion of reciprocal safeguards to work, Muslims and non-Muslims had to remain part of a larger Indian whole, albeit one that was to be dramatically reconceptualized in form and substance by practically independent self-governing parts. Even schemes with secessionist overtones, most notably that of Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, wanted to carve out half a dozen Muslim states in India and consolidate them into a “Pakistan Commonwealth of Nations.”What all these schemes led to was the claim that Muslims constituted a nation which could not be subjugated to a Hindu majority represented by the Congress. Taking this as its point of departure and avoiding mention of “Partition” or “Pakistan”, the League’s draft resolution called for the grouping of the Muslim majority provinces in northwestern and north-eastern India into independent states “in which the constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign”.There was no reference to a centre even though the fourth paragraph spoke of “the constitution” to safeguard the interests of both sets of minorities, Muslim and non-Muslim. The claim that Muslims constituted a “nation” was perfectly compatible with a federal or confederal state structure covering the whole of India. With “nations” straddling states, the boundaries between states had to be permeable and flexible. This is why years after the adoption of the resolutions, Jinnah and the League remained implacably opposed to the division of the Punjab and Bengal along religious lines.Historians and publicists in India have seized on the contradiction in the demand for a Pakistan based on the Muslim right of self-determination and the apparent unwillingness to grant the same right to non-Muslims living in Punjab and Bengal. Much like their counterparts in Pakistan, they have conveniently glossed over the difference between a purely secessionist demand and one aimed at providing the building block for an equitable power sharing arrangement at the subcontinental level between two essentially sovereign states — “Pakistan based on the Muslim-majority provinces and Hindustan based on the Hindu-majority provinces.”With their singular focus on a monolithic and indivisible concept of sovereignty borrowed from the erstwhile colonial rulers, scholars and students of history on both sides of the 1947 divide have been unable to envisage a political arrangement based on a measure of shared sovereignty which might have satisfied the demands of “majorities” as well as safeguarded the interests of religious minorities in predominantly Muslim and Hindu areas.In 1944 and then again at the time of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the All-India Muslim League at the behest of Mohammad Ali Jinnah refused to accept a “Pakistan” based on the division of the Punjab and Bengal. It was Congress’ unwillingness to countenance an equitable power sharing arrangement with the Muslim League which resulted in the creation of a sovereign Pakistan based on the partition of Punjab and Bengal along ostensibly religious lines.Cast against its will in the role of a state seceding from a hostile Indian union, Pakistan has tried securing its independent existence by espousing an ideology of Muslim “nationhood” over the provincial rights promised in the Lahore Resolution and dispensing with democracy for the better part of its history. It is no wonder that the claims of Muslim nationhood have been so poorly served by the achievement of territorial statehood.Such historical insights may not appeal to the authors of the contending narratives of a Pakistani or an Indian identity. But even national myths require some resemblance to history. Charting a linear course to the winning of Muslim statehood cannot even begin to grasp the vexed nature of the problems which faced a geographically dispersed and heterogeneous community in its bid to be considered a “nation”.Nor can it explain why there are more subcontinental Muslims living outside Pakistan, the much vaunted Muslim homeland, in India and Bangladesh. Instead of being weighted under by opposing national reconstruction informed by the teleology of 1947, Pakistanis and Indians could craft a more accommodative future for the subcontinent by acknowledging the domain of political contingency, containing possibilities for different outcomes, that lay between the adoption of the Lahore Resolution and partition seven years later.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Excerpted with permission fromM.A. Jinnah — Views & Reviews: A Collection of Articles Written by Eminent International Authorities on South Asian HistoryEdited by M.R. KazimiOxford University Press
Remembering Partition 2
http://www.tandooripearl.com/weekly/encounter/20080216/encounter3.htm
The 1947 partition holocaust: an examination in retrospect
By Abdul Sattar Pingar
Although sixty years have passed, yet it is not too late to determine who brought about or caused the holocaust in August 1947 as a result of the partition of India. It is tragic to note that so far there has been no demand either in Pakistan or in India for fixing responsibility for the holocaust, nor has any national monument been erected in honour of the millions who died or were uprooted.The key leaders at the time such as Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten, the last viceroy, never accepted the responsibility for this colossal man-made tragedy. However, Nehru, in an interview with the New York Times in October 1949, said “if we had known the terrible consequences of partition in the shape of killings etc. we might have resisted this division of India.”The holocaust which we witnessed during August and September 1947 was unprecedented and fully exposed the bestiality and brutality inherent in man. There were appalling atrocities -- massacres, arson, looting and rape.All the great leaders of that era died long ago, and there is no doubt they made immense sacrifices for the liberation of India from the British yoke. Mountbatten played a key role in speeding up the process of partition. These leaders in their struggle and zeal for freedom failed to realise that the communal riots, which had already begun, were the harbinger of the great tragedy to come. Churchill predicted in his speech in the House of Commons as far back at 1931 “if we were to wash our hands of all responsibility, ferocious civil war would speedily break out between Muslims and Hindus”. In August 1945, Glancy, then Governor of the Punjab, wrote to Gen Wavell (later Viceroy) “if Pakistan becomes an imminent reality, we shall be heading straight for bloodshed on a wider scale”.Tara Singh in his recorded interview on May 19, 1947, said that Mountbatten told him “in Pakistan, the Muslims would massacre all the Sikhs and Hindus and that in other part of the Punjab, the Sikhs and Hindus would massacre all the Muslims”. In his personal note dated June 26, 1947, Mountbatten observed: “Every responsible person is particularly worried about the situation in Lahore and Amritsar, for if we cannot stop this arson, both cities would be burnt to the ground.” These observations like other warnings fell upon deaf ears.Quite often in history great leaders in their determination to achieve great objectives are known to have cared little about the sufferings their action might cause to the millions. For example, attempts to conquer Russia by Napoleon in 1812 and by Hitler in 1941 cost them utter destruction of their armies in millions. Similarly, Joseph Stalin in his zeal and ambition to enforce collectivisation in the year 1929 created a situation that led to death of millions of peasants.Pol Pot of Cambodia, driven by fierce nationalism and his concept of communism, tried overnight to create a moneyless collective economy by forcible evacuation of Cambodia’s city population to the countryside. It led to death of the millions of people. Numerous such examples can be cited where leaders were utterly unmindful of the sufferings of their populations as they went ahead to achieve their idealistic goals.The 1947 holocaust was no different. The leaders of the two communities and key British officials are therefore jointly responsible for bringing about or causing appalling atrocities to Muslims, Hindus in 1947, particularly in Punjab and Bengal, as a result of transfer of populations, in spite of the warnings which were made from time to time. All of them ignored such warnings. Furthermore, they failed to prepare contingency plans in the event of a sudden breakdown of law and order during the transfer of power. The attitude of each of the leaders, though now dead, towards what happened and was about to happen should be examined by a joint Indo-Pakistan tribunal composed of eminent men of integrity and good reputation. The tribunal should be called the truth commission (on South Africa pattern) to ascertain the truth as to how the holocaust became possible and whether it was avoidable or could have been prevented if sufficient time and energy were devoted to the preparation of a contingency plan to avert the catastrophe.The findings of such a commission will promote goodwill and understanding between the peoples of the two countries and help in reducing mutual distrust, suspicion, hatred and bitterness. This can ultimately reduce the mad armed race between the two countries.The population of Punjab at the time of partition was 14.5 million, with 55 per cent Muslims, 25 per cent Hindus and 20 per cent Sikhs. The migration in Punjab involved 2.5 million non-Muslims from west to east and three millions Muslims from east to west. The population of undivided Bengal comprised 26 million, out of which nine million were Hindus in Muslim Bengal and six million Muslims in Hindu Bengal. There the transfer of populations was comparatively less painful.Neither Gandhi nor Nehru was prepared to examine the horrendous implications of the transfer of population, such as fear of being uprooted from places and environs in which families had lived for generations and shifting to a new climate and culturally alien surroundings and so on. Jinnah had publicly talked about it from time to time and the Muslim League suggested several times to the Congress a discussion of the issue. However, the transfer of population was part of Jinnah’s concept of a homeland for the hundred million Muslims in India.There are examples in history when proper care was taken. In 1920 an exchange of over one million people between Turkey and Greece took place with the help of the League of Nations over a period of one year costing each government ten million sterling pounds. If this example had been considered and applied, perhaps the holocaust could have been avoided in Punjab. But unfortunately all the aforesaid leaders maintained a conspiracy of silence in failing to examine the full implications of the transfer and exchange of population.Similarly, no steps were taken to nip in the bud the large scale preparation of slaughter by Sikhs who collected bombs, mortars, rifles, Tommy guns, machine gun etc. Throughout this period, the killing was pre-medieval in its ferocity. Neither old men nor women were spared, mothers with their babies in their arms were cut down, speared or shot. Both sides (Sikhs and Muslims) were equally merciless.Such an orgy of communal killings was controllable if Mountbatten had requested the British government to send part of its troops stationed in Italy, Germany, Greece and Middle East to India. This was necessary as it was not expected that Indian soldiers (Muslims and Hindu) would remain immune from communal bias when so closely associated with it on the spot, particularly in Punjab.The transfer of power was speeded up by Mountbatten irrespective of the consequences involved. The enormous challenge of handling the communal war and ensuring a peaceful transfer of power never figured in his calculation. The original plan for the transfer of power was envisaged to take place in June 1948, but then it was advanced to August 1947. It would be relevant to mention here that it took two years to separate Orissa from Bihar as a province and a similar period to separate Sindh from the Bombay presidency. Burma’s separation from India had taken three years. According to Mountbatten, all the aforesaid leaders wanted the transfer of power at the greatest possible speed.This means the leaders had not given serious thought to the consequences of speeding up the transfer of power, and it is unbelievable that they expected the partition to be effected in a friendly atmosphere. Patrick Spens, who was the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of India, in his statement recorded on May 22, 1963, said “The main cause was the haste with which we parted with India. The connections of centuries were severed within days without any proper thought. There was a terrible haste. The main factor was that the Labour Government in London wanted to get rid of India as quickly as possible”.There is voluminous evidence available in the form of documents and books, the latest being “The Holocaust of Indian Partition” by Madhav Godbole, “Freedom at Midnight” by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, “India wins Freedom” by Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, “Legend and Reality” by H.M. Seervai, and “Sole Spokesman” by Ayesha Jalal. This article is based on the material collected from these books and the analysis and conclusions are based on the lessons of history.The findings of the commission should establish the truth about the leaders responsible for bringing about the 1947 holocaust. However, the commission could exonerate and forgive the leaders on account of error of judgment in their failure to assess and foresee the catastrophe, particularly in Punjab and Bengal.The commission should also assess the role and contribution of each of the leaders in the freedom struggle. There is no doubt that India’s freedom was possible because of the high quality of statesmanship of these leaders. The role of each leader, on this count, is praiseworthy. For example, Gandhi prevented outbreak of a communal war in Bengal on a scale as witnessed in Punjab because of his presence there which cooled the passions aroused. In fact, Gandhi’s presence in Calcutta constituted one man Boundary force, as observed by Mountbatten.Nehru spent almost nine years in jail for the cause of freedom and laid the foundation of democracy in India. Unfortunately, Jinnah did not survive long enough because of his ill-health to lay the foundation of democracy in Pakistan. But his great role in carving out the world’s biggest Muslim state has been aptly described by Stanley Wolpert in these words: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly any one can be credited with creating a nation. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three”.
The 1947 partition holocaust: an examination in retrospect
By Abdul Sattar Pingar
Although sixty years have passed, yet it is not too late to determine who brought about or caused the holocaust in August 1947 as a result of the partition of India. It is tragic to note that so far there has been no demand either in Pakistan or in India for fixing responsibility for the holocaust, nor has any national monument been erected in honour of the millions who died or were uprooted.The key leaders at the time such as Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten, the last viceroy, never accepted the responsibility for this colossal man-made tragedy. However, Nehru, in an interview with the New York Times in October 1949, said “if we had known the terrible consequences of partition in the shape of killings etc. we might have resisted this division of India.”The holocaust which we witnessed during August and September 1947 was unprecedented and fully exposed the bestiality and brutality inherent in man. There were appalling atrocities -- massacres, arson, looting and rape.All the great leaders of that era died long ago, and there is no doubt they made immense sacrifices for the liberation of India from the British yoke. Mountbatten played a key role in speeding up the process of partition. These leaders in their struggle and zeal for freedom failed to realise that the communal riots, which had already begun, were the harbinger of the great tragedy to come. Churchill predicted in his speech in the House of Commons as far back at 1931 “if we were to wash our hands of all responsibility, ferocious civil war would speedily break out between Muslims and Hindus”. In August 1945, Glancy, then Governor of the Punjab, wrote to Gen Wavell (later Viceroy) “if Pakistan becomes an imminent reality, we shall be heading straight for bloodshed on a wider scale”.Tara Singh in his recorded interview on May 19, 1947, said that Mountbatten told him “in Pakistan, the Muslims would massacre all the Sikhs and Hindus and that in other part of the Punjab, the Sikhs and Hindus would massacre all the Muslims”. In his personal note dated June 26, 1947, Mountbatten observed: “Every responsible person is particularly worried about the situation in Lahore and Amritsar, for if we cannot stop this arson, both cities would be burnt to the ground.” These observations like other warnings fell upon deaf ears.Quite often in history great leaders in their determination to achieve great objectives are known to have cared little about the sufferings their action might cause to the millions. For example, attempts to conquer Russia by Napoleon in 1812 and by Hitler in 1941 cost them utter destruction of their armies in millions. Similarly, Joseph Stalin in his zeal and ambition to enforce collectivisation in the year 1929 created a situation that led to death of millions of peasants.Pol Pot of Cambodia, driven by fierce nationalism and his concept of communism, tried overnight to create a moneyless collective economy by forcible evacuation of Cambodia’s city population to the countryside. It led to death of the millions of people. Numerous such examples can be cited where leaders were utterly unmindful of the sufferings of their populations as they went ahead to achieve their idealistic goals.The 1947 holocaust was no different. The leaders of the two communities and key British officials are therefore jointly responsible for bringing about or causing appalling atrocities to Muslims, Hindus in 1947, particularly in Punjab and Bengal, as a result of transfer of populations, in spite of the warnings which were made from time to time. All of them ignored such warnings. Furthermore, they failed to prepare contingency plans in the event of a sudden breakdown of law and order during the transfer of power. The attitude of each of the leaders, though now dead, towards what happened and was about to happen should be examined by a joint Indo-Pakistan tribunal composed of eminent men of integrity and good reputation. The tribunal should be called the truth commission (on South Africa pattern) to ascertain the truth as to how the holocaust became possible and whether it was avoidable or could have been prevented if sufficient time and energy were devoted to the preparation of a contingency plan to avert the catastrophe.The findings of such a commission will promote goodwill and understanding between the peoples of the two countries and help in reducing mutual distrust, suspicion, hatred and bitterness. This can ultimately reduce the mad armed race between the two countries.The population of Punjab at the time of partition was 14.5 million, with 55 per cent Muslims, 25 per cent Hindus and 20 per cent Sikhs. The migration in Punjab involved 2.5 million non-Muslims from west to east and three millions Muslims from east to west. The population of undivided Bengal comprised 26 million, out of which nine million were Hindus in Muslim Bengal and six million Muslims in Hindu Bengal. There the transfer of populations was comparatively less painful.Neither Gandhi nor Nehru was prepared to examine the horrendous implications of the transfer of population, such as fear of being uprooted from places and environs in which families had lived for generations and shifting to a new climate and culturally alien surroundings and so on. Jinnah had publicly talked about it from time to time and the Muslim League suggested several times to the Congress a discussion of the issue. However, the transfer of population was part of Jinnah’s concept of a homeland for the hundred million Muslims in India.There are examples in history when proper care was taken. In 1920 an exchange of over one million people between Turkey and Greece took place with the help of the League of Nations over a period of one year costing each government ten million sterling pounds. If this example had been considered and applied, perhaps the holocaust could have been avoided in Punjab. But unfortunately all the aforesaid leaders maintained a conspiracy of silence in failing to examine the full implications of the transfer and exchange of population.Similarly, no steps were taken to nip in the bud the large scale preparation of slaughter by Sikhs who collected bombs, mortars, rifles, Tommy guns, machine gun etc. Throughout this period, the killing was pre-medieval in its ferocity. Neither old men nor women were spared, mothers with their babies in their arms were cut down, speared or shot. Both sides (Sikhs and Muslims) were equally merciless.Such an orgy of communal killings was controllable if Mountbatten had requested the British government to send part of its troops stationed in Italy, Germany, Greece and Middle East to India. This was necessary as it was not expected that Indian soldiers (Muslims and Hindu) would remain immune from communal bias when so closely associated with it on the spot, particularly in Punjab.The transfer of power was speeded up by Mountbatten irrespective of the consequences involved. The enormous challenge of handling the communal war and ensuring a peaceful transfer of power never figured in his calculation. The original plan for the transfer of power was envisaged to take place in June 1948, but then it was advanced to August 1947. It would be relevant to mention here that it took two years to separate Orissa from Bihar as a province and a similar period to separate Sindh from the Bombay presidency. Burma’s separation from India had taken three years. According to Mountbatten, all the aforesaid leaders wanted the transfer of power at the greatest possible speed.This means the leaders had not given serious thought to the consequences of speeding up the transfer of power, and it is unbelievable that they expected the partition to be effected in a friendly atmosphere. Patrick Spens, who was the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of India, in his statement recorded on May 22, 1963, said “The main cause was the haste with which we parted with India. The connections of centuries were severed within days without any proper thought. There was a terrible haste. The main factor was that the Labour Government in London wanted to get rid of India as quickly as possible”.There is voluminous evidence available in the form of documents and books, the latest being “The Holocaust of Indian Partition” by Madhav Godbole, “Freedom at Midnight” by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, “India wins Freedom” by Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, “Legend and Reality” by H.M. Seervai, and “Sole Spokesman” by Ayesha Jalal. This article is based on the material collected from these books and the analysis and conclusions are based on the lessons of history.The findings of the commission should establish the truth about the leaders responsible for bringing about the 1947 holocaust. However, the commission could exonerate and forgive the leaders on account of error of judgment in their failure to assess and foresee the catastrophe, particularly in Punjab and Bengal.The commission should also assess the role and contribution of each of the leaders in the freedom struggle. There is no doubt that India’s freedom was possible because of the high quality of statesmanship of these leaders. The role of each leader, on this count, is praiseworthy. For example, Gandhi prevented outbreak of a communal war in Bengal on a scale as witnessed in Punjab because of his presence there which cooled the passions aroused. In fact, Gandhi’s presence in Calcutta constituted one man Boundary force, as observed by Mountbatten.Nehru spent almost nine years in jail for the cause of freedom and laid the foundation of democracy in India. Unfortunately, Jinnah did not survive long enough because of his ill-health to lay the foundation of democracy in Pakistan. But his great role in carving out the world’s biggest Muslim state has been aptly described by Stanley Wolpert in these words: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly any one can be credited with creating a nation. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three”.
Partition remembered
http://www.tandooripearl.com/weekly/encounter/20070811/encounter3.htm
Some reflections on the 1947 partition
By Izzud-Din Pal
MY personal perspective on the migration which accompanied the partition of British India is quite modest compared to the millions of people who went through sufferings unparalleled in modern history. I left Amritsar along with some members of my family by train on August 10, 1947 for Lahore, a mere 33 miles away, and it turned out to be the last train which did not carry dead bodies among its passengers. (I had already lived in Lahore for two years as a student until June 1947.)We all left thinking at that time that it was a temporary escape from the atmosphere of bloodshed which had engulfed the city. I left with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. Others made an attempt to carry whatever they could with them. The family gradually realised that there was no turning back.From the end of July, the breakdown of law and order had engulfed the entire region from Amritsar to Paniput affecting the Muslims in the eastern part of the province, and targeting the Hindus and Sikhs from Lahore to Peshawar in the west.In Amritsar, the normal pattern of life in the city of the Golden Temple represented a working coexistence among Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. I cannot generalise for other cities, but in Amritsar the Sikh-Muslim relations were not hostile. Of course, the Muslim neighbourhoods were separated from the areas of Hindus and Sikhs. On individual level, however, many friendships had in fact evolved in social and political aspects of life. From July, we started to see everything in terms of the community to which somebody belonged. Very few of us could avoid that.Now it was the militant Sikhs with kirpans and guns, conveying a clear message to Muslims that they should ‘go to Pakistan’ or face death. The Radcliffe Award defining the new border had not yet been delivered, but the Sikh community had no doubts about the place of Amritsar in the new India.In Muslim areas of the city, a self-appointed Muslim group vigilante had emerged to fill the vacuum left by the police and the army. They claimed to be ‘ready’ to protect Muslim households in exchange for a hefty fee (with no choice), and those who started to flee from the bloody chaos were subjected to another sizable extortion, and in many cases their homes were ransacked and burnt by members of the same group.The ring leaders of the group moved to Lahore after August 14, and established themselves in McLeod/Nicholson Roads area to focus their attention on Hindu-Sikh population, ultimately taking active part in the allotment of evacuee property on a large scale, which had already developed into a lucrative occupation.It was in this atmosphere that Pakistan was inaugurated on August 14. Lord Mountbatten had played a cruel joke with Muslims during the month of Ramazan. About 12 million people were affected by Partition. How and why all this came to pass?Yasmin Khan, a British historian and a descendant of Punjabi Muslims who were forced to flee the slaughter of 1947, has published an insightful book on the subject (The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, 2007), in which she has drawn on a decade of research to reach some conclusions about this episode. “There was nothing inevitable or pre-planned about the way partition unfolded”, she adds. And further, “There were so many things that could have happened, so many ways it could have gone… What they ended up with was a stripping down, a reduction of everything to labels of religion. That was no at all a certain outcome.”She does not dwell on what was taking place in the Viceroy’s palace, with Lord Mountbatten chairing the political wrangling which was going on among leaders. The main importance of her work is that she focuses on a broad canvas and leads the reader through the confusion, the fear and the horror faced by people uprooted from their homes. Nevertheless, it is in those fateful months, with Lord Mountbatten as the new Viceroy, that the seeds were sown for a terrible calamity to unfold.Ayesha Jalal, in her pioneering study titled The Sole Spokesman, published in 1985, has summarised the developments which took place between March and June 1947, with Mountbatten who came with plenipotentiary powers to settle the issue of Indian independence. The House of Commons had made a decision on June 3, 1947 announcing that India was to be partitioned and that independence would follow not less than a year later. By August 15, the British were gone. Mountbatten had claimed credit for having accomplished “the greatest administrative operation in history in less than two and a half months.”During his negotiations, he felt that Nehru was easy to deal with, but Jinnah was a difficult man to handle. The Indian National Congress had become inclined to offer Jinnah a “moth-eaten” Pakistan, playing upon the criterion of the principle of Muslim majority areas. Mountbatten devised a “Plan Balkan” in line with this criterion. He had been warned about the carnage that would follow if his plan was implemented, which he ignored. He wanted to reduce Jinnah to his size, as he boasted. Ayesha Jalal describes succinctly how blatantly partisan Mountbatten had become in his role as the architect of the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan.The Plan Balkan turned out to be not just Cyril Radcliffe’s “cartographic” demarcation, but a much “refined” line drawn by the political advisors of Lord Mountbatten, according to reliable reports, and was announced on August 18, 1947.Jinnah was consistent in his view that the All India Muslim League represented the interests of all Muslims in the country. With Lord Wavell, he took this position for the formation of the interim cabinet. He held to this position with Mountbatten, hoping that the new Dominion of Pakistan would be able to maintain its relations with the larger entity. The new India was not inclined because this would result in a weaker centre, and according to Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian leaders, their country would need a strong centre to consolidate its new identity. Jinnah, however, kept advocating his view to the end. For various reasons, he thought that keeping such affiliation would be in the interests of Muslims as a whole.Ayesha Jalal examines what happened in the intervening years between 1940 and 1947, and investigates how Jinnah proposed to resolve the contradiction between a demand for a separate Muslim state and the need to safeguard the interests of all Muslims. It is important to note that the Muslim League had come a long way under his leadership when in 1940 it first voiced the demand for establishment of autonomous state or states in north-west and north-east of British India. Only ten years before, the same Muslim League could not muster enough members to fill a quorum for its meetings.Mushirul Hasan of the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, in his book India’s Partition, 2001, suggests that the roots of the rise of Muslim League, and that the Muslims were in need of a special arrangement in a future India, can be traced to the Act of 1935. This act was followed by the establishment of provincial governments, and policies of those held by the Indian National Congress, especially in provinces such as UP and Bombay which had aroused fears by Muslims.Hamza Alavi, a well-known Pakistani sociologist, was of the opinion that it was the salariat class (as he called it) in the Urdu-speaking regions which had become advocates for a separate homeland for Muslims, as they saw better opportunities for advancement in an atmosphere not dominated by Hindus.It remains a controversial issue, and Pakistani historians take a longer view and emphasise the link of the idea of Pakistan with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and later, Iqbal. It does not explain, however, the dominance of leaders from minority provinces in the rejuvenated Muslim League of the period 1937-40.On the 60th anniversary of Pakistan, it is sad to note that the country has not developed as a democratic and a progressive nation, as envisaged by Jinnah. The best tribute that can be offered to his memory is to make a resolve once again to work towards the goals which he had set so eloquently for the nation in his speech of August 11, 1947. The focus has to be turned mainly to improving the welfare of the people under the guidance of a representative and a democratic civilian leadership. In the international sphere, Pakistan has to strengthen her position as a regional power with strong economic links.How a state develops its relations with other states is a very complex issue. There are always long-term considerations which come into play and, with passage of time, the outlook of those who take up leadership position is influenced by these considerations. This is what is summarised in the aphorism according to which states have no enemies or friends, only interests. Pakistan’s interest can easily be defined, given the context of the current world order: the country should play its role in the area of economic relations in the region more productively than it has been able to do in the past.As an alumnus of the Pakistan Movement through my affiliation with the students federation during 1944-47, my memory like many, many old colleagues is still quite fresh about the “welcome” that Pakistan received from the new Dominion of India by withholding the distribution of assets, by disrupting the flow of canal irrigation water, and by self-denial about the promise for a UN-sponsored plebiscite in Kashmir.It is also difficult to ignore the evolving reality, and the need to explore zones of cooperation without conceding legitimate demands.The writer taught economics at Pakistani and Canadian universities before his retirement. izzud-din.pal@videotron.ca
Some reflections on the 1947 partition
By Izzud-Din Pal
MY personal perspective on the migration which accompanied the partition of British India is quite modest compared to the millions of people who went through sufferings unparalleled in modern history. I left Amritsar along with some members of my family by train on August 10, 1947 for Lahore, a mere 33 miles away, and it turned out to be the last train which did not carry dead bodies among its passengers. (I had already lived in Lahore for two years as a student until June 1947.)We all left thinking at that time that it was a temporary escape from the atmosphere of bloodshed which had engulfed the city. I left with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. Others made an attempt to carry whatever they could with them. The family gradually realised that there was no turning back.From the end of July, the breakdown of law and order had engulfed the entire region from Amritsar to Paniput affecting the Muslims in the eastern part of the province, and targeting the Hindus and Sikhs from Lahore to Peshawar in the west.In Amritsar, the normal pattern of life in the city of the Golden Temple represented a working coexistence among Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. I cannot generalise for other cities, but in Amritsar the Sikh-Muslim relations were not hostile. Of course, the Muslim neighbourhoods were separated from the areas of Hindus and Sikhs. On individual level, however, many friendships had in fact evolved in social and political aspects of life. From July, we started to see everything in terms of the community to which somebody belonged. Very few of us could avoid that.Now it was the militant Sikhs with kirpans and guns, conveying a clear message to Muslims that they should ‘go to Pakistan’ or face death. The Radcliffe Award defining the new border had not yet been delivered, but the Sikh community had no doubts about the place of Amritsar in the new India.In Muslim areas of the city, a self-appointed Muslim group vigilante had emerged to fill the vacuum left by the police and the army. They claimed to be ‘ready’ to protect Muslim households in exchange for a hefty fee (with no choice), and those who started to flee from the bloody chaos were subjected to another sizable extortion, and in many cases their homes were ransacked and burnt by members of the same group.The ring leaders of the group moved to Lahore after August 14, and established themselves in McLeod/Nicholson Roads area to focus their attention on Hindu-Sikh population, ultimately taking active part in the allotment of evacuee property on a large scale, which had already developed into a lucrative occupation.It was in this atmosphere that Pakistan was inaugurated on August 14. Lord Mountbatten had played a cruel joke with Muslims during the month of Ramazan. About 12 million people were affected by Partition. How and why all this came to pass?Yasmin Khan, a British historian and a descendant of Punjabi Muslims who were forced to flee the slaughter of 1947, has published an insightful book on the subject (The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, 2007), in which she has drawn on a decade of research to reach some conclusions about this episode. “There was nothing inevitable or pre-planned about the way partition unfolded”, she adds. And further, “There were so many things that could have happened, so many ways it could have gone… What they ended up with was a stripping down, a reduction of everything to labels of religion. That was no at all a certain outcome.”She does not dwell on what was taking place in the Viceroy’s palace, with Lord Mountbatten chairing the political wrangling which was going on among leaders. The main importance of her work is that she focuses on a broad canvas and leads the reader through the confusion, the fear and the horror faced by people uprooted from their homes. Nevertheless, it is in those fateful months, with Lord Mountbatten as the new Viceroy, that the seeds were sown for a terrible calamity to unfold.Ayesha Jalal, in her pioneering study titled The Sole Spokesman, published in 1985, has summarised the developments which took place between March and June 1947, with Mountbatten who came with plenipotentiary powers to settle the issue of Indian independence. The House of Commons had made a decision on June 3, 1947 announcing that India was to be partitioned and that independence would follow not less than a year later. By August 15, the British were gone. Mountbatten had claimed credit for having accomplished “the greatest administrative operation in history in less than two and a half months.”During his negotiations, he felt that Nehru was easy to deal with, but Jinnah was a difficult man to handle. The Indian National Congress had become inclined to offer Jinnah a “moth-eaten” Pakistan, playing upon the criterion of the principle of Muslim majority areas. Mountbatten devised a “Plan Balkan” in line with this criterion. He had been warned about the carnage that would follow if his plan was implemented, which he ignored. He wanted to reduce Jinnah to his size, as he boasted. Ayesha Jalal describes succinctly how blatantly partisan Mountbatten had become in his role as the architect of the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan.The Plan Balkan turned out to be not just Cyril Radcliffe’s “cartographic” demarcation, but a much “refined” line drawn by the political advisors of Lord Mountbatten, according to reliable reports, and was announced on August 18, 1947.Jinnah was consistent in his view that the All India Muslim League represented the interests of all Muslims in the country. With Lord Wavell, he took this position for the formation of the interim cabinet. He held to this position with Mountbatten, hoping that the new Dominion of Pakistan would be able to maintain its relations with the larger entity. The new India was not inclined because this would result in a weaker centre, and according to Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian leaders, their country would need a strong centre to consolidate its new identity. Jinnah, however, kept advocating his view to the end. For various reasons, he thought that keeping such affiliation would be in the interests of Muslims as a whole.Ayesha Jalal examines what happened in the intervening years between 1940 and 1947, and investigates how Jinnah proposed to resolve the contradiction between a demand for a separate Muslim state and the need to safeguard the interests of all Muslims. It is important to note that the Muslim League had come a long way under his leadership when in 1940 it first voiced the demand for establishment of autonomous state or states in north-west and north-east of British India. Only ten years before, the same Muslim League could not muster enough members to fill a quorum for its meetings.Mushirul Hasan of the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, in his book India’s Partition, 2001, suggests that the roots of the rise of Muslim League, and that the Muslims were in need of a special arrangement in a future India, can be traced to the Act of 1935. This act was followed by the establishment of provincial governments, and policies of those held by the Indian National Congress, especially in provinces such as UP and Bombay which had aroused fears by Muslims.Hamza Alavi, a well-known Pakistani sociologist, was of the opinion that it was the salariat class (as he called it) in the Urdu-speaking regions which had become advocates for a separate homeland for Muslims, as they saw better opportunities for advancement in an atmosphere not dominated by Hindus.It remains a controversial issue, and Pakistani historians take a longer view and emphasise the link of the idea of Pakistan with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and later, Iqbal. It does not explain, however, the dominance of leaders from minority provinces in the rejuvenated Muslim League of the period 1937-40.On the 60th anniversary of Pakistan, it is sad to note that the country has not developed as a democratic and a progressive nation, as envisaged by Jinnah. The best tribute that can be offered to his memory is to make a resolve once again to work towards the goals which he had set so eloquently for the nation in his speech of August 11, 1947. The focus has to be turned mainly to improving the welfare of the people under the guidance of a representative and a democratic civilian leadership. In the international sphere, Pakistan has to strengthen her position as a regional power with strong economic links.How a state develops its relations with other states is a very complex issue. There are always long-term considerations which come into play and, with passage of time, the outlook of those who take up leadership position is influenced by these considerations. This is what is summarised in the aphorism according to which states have no enemies or friends, only interests. Pakistan’s interest can easily be defined, given the context of the current world order: the country should play its role in the area of economic relations in the region more productively than it has been able to do in the past.As an alumnus of the Pakistan Movement through my affiliation with the students federation during 1944-47, my memory like many, many old colleagues is still quite fresh about the “welcome” that Pakistan received from the new Dominion of India by withholding the distribution of assets, by disrupting the flow of canal irrigation water, and by self-denial about the promise for a UN-sponsored plebiscite in Kashmir.It is also difficult to ignore the evolving reality, and the need to explore zones of cooperation without conceding legitimate demands.The writer taught economics at Pakistani and Canadian universities before his retirement. izzud-din.pal@videotron.ca
What was Jinnah after? Part 4
http://www.tribuneindia.com/1998/98aug16/sunday/head3.htm
Jinnah Papers: Documenting Partition
AFTER the question of Partition of India was settled in 1947, Mountbatten, the then Viceroy, noted in his personal record that the Indian leaders would regret the decision they had taken in haste. In his speech to the Constituent Assembly in Pakistan on August 11, 1947, Jinnah said, "Any idea of a united India could never have worked. In my judgement it would have led to a terrific disaster. May be that view is correct, may be it is not; only future will tell — that remains to be seen".
To Nehru, it was the Partition but to Jinnah, it was a division. For the Muslim League it was a compromise but to the Congress, it was a settlement. Krishna Menon called it a "shock solution". The Partition resulted in about half-a-million casualties, and the migration of about 12 million people. The kindest thing that can be said about those who took such momentous decisions for the destiny of millions then that they knew not what they were doing. Statesmen who was make no allowance for the unforeseeable, mortgage the future of their country.
A spate of historical literature has appeared on Partition of India. A grandiose publication, Transfer of Power in 12 volumes covering five years, (1942-47), each volume containing about a thousand pages, unfolds how British policy was hammered out week by week, day by day, hour by hour. This work edited by Nicholas Mansergh, formerly Smunts Professor of the History of British Commonwealth, University of Cambridge, is wonderfully a solid performance. Of course, the perspective is British!
Indian political leaders appear in these volumes as social climbers, trembling poltroons, small petty lawyers and banias fighting over trifles, while the British high-ranking officials imbued with a lofty sense of duty and rectitude were advancing India's cause of self-government. Mansergh completed these 12 volumes in 13 years.
As a counterprise, to give an Indian point of view, Indian Council of Historical Research planned in 1976 to produce and publish documents entitled Towards Freedom, covering the period, 1937-47. During these 22 years only two volumes have appeared; the first in 1985, and it is due to the initiative of the present Chairman of the Council, Professor Settar that the second volume in three parts appeared early this year.
The Jamia Hamdard, Delhi, planned to bring out three volumes on the Partition, covering the period, 1937-47. The first volume, 1937-39, published early this year edited by S.A.I. Tirmazi contains 537 documents using some portion of the Quaid-i-Azam papers but in this plethora of diverse documentation Mr Jinnah lies hidden. I have said Mr Jinnah. When the Aligarh Muslim University wanted to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1944, he declines it saying that he was known as Mr Jinnah and would die as Mr Jinnah, nothing more, and nothing less.
Although history may often seem to be a scientific study of the past, its interpretation, however much we may refine our techniques of historical analysis, remains stubbornly national than we often realise. To counterprise our national prejudices, we have to re-examine our pre-suppositions and see the other side of the case. What was really Mr Jinnah's case? Therefore the study of 80,000 pages of the Quaid-i-Azam papers which has 23 volumes of newspapers, and personal clippings is central to the historian's interests.
Jinnah was a man of few words. He wrote no book. He kept no diary. He produced no memoir. He did not go to prison. A prison is often the nursery of memoirs. He was not known as a prodigy of learning. At times his silences baffled others. Nothing could fathom him. He confided in no one except, in Raja of Muhmudabad, Nawab Mohammad Ismail Khan and of course, Sir B.N. Rud until their relations soured, when the latter became the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Jinnah wrote when necessary. Law books he read for his profession, particularly those relating to property and company law. He did not tidy up his correspondence like Nehru with an eye on posterity. His favourite book from which he often quoted in his public speeches — for this man who was often dubbed as obstinate and most uncompromising — was John Morley's book entitled Compromise published first in 1874, an exposition of liberal principles, which emphasises that compromise is to politics, what devotion is to friendship.
The National Archives of Pakistan has brought out the first series of Jinnah paper comprising two volumes in three parts. Originally Dr I.H. Qureshi, sometime Professor of History, at St Stephens, and later Vice-Chancellor, Karachi University, initiated the idea of compiling and publishing Jinnah papers. He took up the matter with President Ayub Khan who approved the proposal, but it was General Zia-ul-Haq who provided the infrastructure. Dr Z.A. Zaidi, a senior researcher in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, was appointed the Editor to undertake this work. He has brought out these volumes in 30 years.
Strangely enough, these volumes are published in reverse order, i.e. from 1947 which is like putting a cart before a horse, denying the reader a consecutive picture of the evolution of Pakistan through successive stages. Volume I (in two parts), Prelude to Pakistan, covers the period, February 20 — June 20, 1947. The text comes to 1800 pages. The second part consists of 14 appendices containing extracts from Mansergh's Transfer of Power volumes and newspapers such as Dawn and Pakistan Times, etc.
There is nothing startlingly new in these documents and they add little to our understanding of Jinnah, and his politics and strategy. Only on three or four themes there is new documentary material drawn chiefly from India Office Records and Churchill papers at Cambridge. It is a pity that Zaidi, though mainly based in London, has completely ignored the valuable Intelligence Department reports 'Loss of Control' which Patrick French has recently used in his work Liberty or Death.
These volumes are limited to the period from February 20 to June 30, 1947. Jinnah's interminable negotiations with the British, his bitter wrangling with the Congress, his total involvement in the civil disobedience movement in Punjab and North-West Frontier left little time to him for correspondence. Of the 1071 letters published in these volumes, his letters number 125. His letters deal with matters of trifling nature such as thanking his donors, congratulating his party workers, sending goodwill wishes to political organisations, giving instruction to his bankers and dealing with his property and shares. The title "Jinnah papers" is a misnomer. Jinnah is mostly a recipient of letters than a letter-writer. He appears supremely an elusive presence throughout on the margin rather than at the centre of affairs.
Some historians insist that Jinnah did not want Pakistan nor did he will it. Nor was he responsible for it; it was, however, the only possible outcome, a product of the curious circumstances for which the chief responsibility lay with the Congress. The first protagonist of the view was Ayesha Jalal, the author of The Sole Spokesman. Jalal tells us what Jinnah did not want, but doesn't tell us what really he wanted. Jalal presents Jinnah as a sad, lonely dying man, utterly helpless, overpowered by events, looking like a sick eagle at the sky. These documents completely dispel this notion.
Jinnah was completely in command of the situation. He was determined to fight for Pakistan. He told Mountbatten on April 3, 1947, that he would have a few acres of the said desert provided it was his own. With great feeling he wrote in May 1947 on a piece of paper meant for himself which Zaidi has reproduced. Jinnah wrote "Pakistan means not only a matter of power and security, of loaves and fishes; there are things of the spirit involved in it. It means sovereignty of people and it will be all that it stands for. Will not people say with those Arabs who said, 'What does it matter, how weak and poor our homelands are, if only we are masters in them' (Vol. I, Document No. 516).
Mountbatten has been strongly criticised by historians in Pakistan and England for what they call a sinister design on his part in altering the India-Pakistan boundary at the last stage. Zaidi's volume throws light on this controversial question, Zaidi has drawn evidence from India Office Records which he has partly used ignoring what exists in the Transfer of Power volumes.
Sir Cyril Radcliffe was appointed the Chairman of the Boundary Commission to delimit the India-Pakistan boundary. He was Lord Chancellor Jowett's nominee. Jinnah had suggested his name first. Nehru had wanted Maurice Gwyer to be the Chairman. Radcliffe had never visited India before. He knew no Indian language, nor did he possess Raginald Coupland's grasp of the Indian constitutional problem. A brilliant Oxford product, and a reputed lawyer, he was known for his long stretches of silences. In India he didn't meet any political leader. He did not attend any hearing of the claimants to the disputed areas. Motilal Setalwad told him then the entire procedure adopted by him in respect of the Boundary Commission proceedings was strange and farcical. Radcliffe completed his work in 36 days, left India having destroyed his papers. Later when asked whether he would return to India, said "God forbid, not even if they ask me. I expect they would shoot me out of hand, both sides".
The question is whether Mountbatten persuaded Radcliffe to alter the boundary award. Was Radcliffe made a scapegoat in Mountbatten's hands ? This issue was raised in the British Parliament, and later in the United Nations in 1948. Curiously enough, V.P. Menon is silent about it in his books.
The documents in Jinnah papers show that the Radcliffe Award almost corresponded with the detailed demarcation of the boundary made by Wavell on February 7, 1946, which he communicated to the Secretary of State, Pethick-Lawrence. The proposed boundary outline that Wavell despatched was actually drawn by V.P. Menon and B. N. Rau, thereby including the Muslim majority areas of the district of Gurdaspur, and Amritsar. The matter does not rest there. There is in Zaidi's volume K.M. Pannikar's note The Next Step which readily provided a starting point for the Menon-Rau delimitation of the boundary. Pannikar, a veritable opportunist of the first order, who nurtured ambitions of being appointed the Viceroy's constitutional advisor, wrote a note that the country be partitioned and he laid down the guiding principles for the division of Punjab and Bengal.
Pannikar did not append his signatures to the note, two copies of which were sent in the names of his friend Guy Wint and Freda Martin (Mn Guy Wint) to Wavell and Cripps. They form a part of the correspondence exchanged on January 11, 1946, between Sir William Croft, Deputy Under-Secretary at the Indian office and Sir David Monteath, the permanent Under-Secretary. It was thus Menon-Rau note based on Pannikar's communication which provided almost a readymade material for Radcliffe to prepare his award. The point is that in examining the factors underlying British policy in the period under study it is not so much to Whitchall that we must look but to varied local pressures in India as well as to the harsh force of circumstances and the initiatives of certain individuals holding pivotal position who exercise influence on the formation of policy.
These volumes confirm that it was Winston Churchill who finally persuaded Jinnah to accept the Partition plan. Churchill remained consistent in his hatred towards India and the Congress. These volumes show that Jinnah was closely in touch with Churchill. Jinnah had met Churchill on May 22, 1947, a little more than a week before the Partition plan was to be announced. Zaidi has used Churchill papers, and some part of Mountbatten's papers in the Transfer of Power volumes.
Historians have wondered who this Elizabeth Gilliat was whom Jinnah was writing to occasionally. For long it was thought that it was a fictitious name that Churchill adopted. These volumes clear the mist. Elizabeth Gilliat was Churchill's Secretary. Jinnah was adopting dilatory tactics in accepting the Partition plan as he was opposed to the partitions of Punjab and Bengal. Zaidi does not, however, include other documents relevant to Churchill's message which Mountbatten conveyed to Mountbatten. This message is available in the Transfer of Power volumes. The message was to threaten Jinnah that all British troops would be taken away from India, if Jinnah didn't accept the Partition plan. Churchill had added, 'By God, Jinnah is the only man who's can't do without British help'.
It has almost remained a mystery why the Prime Minister of Punjab, Khizer Hayat Tiwana who was bitterly opposed to the Muslim League. Suddenly resigned on March 2, 1947, to the chagrin of the Congress and Akali leaders whom he didn't care to consult. It must be emphasised that the Unionist Ministry wouldn't have lasted due to the popular Civil Disobedience Movement in Punjab. The documents in Volume I show that it was Jinnah's emissary Sir Mohammed Zafarulla who persuaded Khizer not to betray his community in the hour of trial. It appears that the letter of resignation was drafted by Sir Zafarulla.
There is ample evidence in these volumes (particularly in 2nd part of Vol. I) drawn chiefly from the newspapers Dawn and Pakistan Times that Jinnah masterminded the Civil Disobedience Movement in Punjab and the North Western Frontier. His object was to topple the Khizer and Khan Sahib ministries and to disturb the communal ratio in Assam so that he could grab for Pakistan the largest possible area. In this the designs of the two members of the Viceroy's Executive Council, Abdul Rab Nishter and Ghaznafer Ali Khan are laid bare. The Civil Disobedience Movement had a popular support in which large number of students of Aligarh Muslim University, burqa-clad women, Pirs and Sajjada-Nashin participated. The newspaper material is extremely valuable which is not available in this country, though, sadly enough, extracts from Urdu newspapers and journals are omitted.
This work suffers from a lack of proper editing and annotation. For example, the reader is at a loss to know who. K. Rallia Ram is, a fervent correspondent, who informs Jinnah regularly about the political developments in Punjab. The editor has not cared to identify even Riaz Piracha who became later the Foreign Secretary, Pakistan. In 1946 he was the President of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation. Riaz Piracha is prepared to give up his studies in order to fight for the cause of Pakistan. There are quite a number of individuals flitting across the pages but no attempt is made to identify them.
Jinnah had the habit of making some doodles at times, but he wrote short notes for his own use — these may be called "dispersed meditation", to use Francis Bacon's expression. One of these notes reads as follows:
Money lost — nothing lost
Courage lost — much lost
Honour lost — most lost
Soul lost — all lost (Vol. II, p. 257).
To sum up, uncomfortably bulky as these volumes are, a scrappy collection of documents, some of its valuable material can be easily found in the specialised publications. The whole work lacks sense of direction, a clear-cut design. The documents are listed neither chronologically nor thematically. The index is inadequate, and the references are too perfunctory to be of any value. It lacks Mansergh's almost suffocatingly thorough cross-references. The documentation is ruthlessly selective and aggressively tendentious but it is a pioneering documentary work published in Pakistan on the Partition. One is grateful for Zaidi's immense labours but they were not usefully directed.
Jinnah Papers: Documenting Partition
AFTER the question of Partition of India was settled in 1947, Mountbatten, the then Viceroy, noted in his personal record that the Indian leaders would regret the decision they had taken in haste. In his speech to the Constituent Assembly in Pakistan on August 11, 1947, Jinnah said, "Any idea of a united India could never have worked. In my judgement it would have led to a terrific disaster. May be that view is correct, may be it is not; only future will tell — that remains to be seen".
To Nehru, it was the Partition but to Jinnah, it was a division. For the Muslim League it was a compromise but to the Congress, it was a settlement. Krishna Menon called it a "shock solution". The Partition resulted in about half-a-million casualties, and the migration of about 12 million people. The kindest thing that can be said about those who took such momentous decisions for the destiny of millions then that they knew not what they were doing. Statesmen who was make no allowance for the unforeseeable, mortgage the future of their country.
A spate of historical literature has appeared on Partition of India. A grandiose publication, Transfer of Power in 12 volumes covering five years, (1942-47), each volume containing about a thousand pages, unfolds how British policy was hammered out week by week, day by day, hour by hour. This work edited by Nicholas Mansergh, formerly Smunts Professor of the History of British Commonwealth, University of Cambridge, is wonderfully a solid performance. Of course, the perspective is British!
Indian political leaders appear in these volumes as social climbers, trembling poltroons, small petty lawyers and banias fighting over trifles, while the British high-ranking officials imbued with a lofty sense of duty and rectitude were advancing India's cause of self-government. Mansergh completed these 12 volumes in 13 years.
As a counterprise, to give an Indian point of view, Indian Council of Historical Research planned in 1976 to produce and publish documents entitled Towards Freedom, covering the period, 1937-47. During these 22 years only two volumes have appeared; the first in 1985, and it is due to the initiative of the present Chairman of the Council, Professor Settar that the second volume in three parts appeared early this year.
The Jamia Hamdard, Delhi, planned to bring out three volumes on the Partition, covering the period, 1937-47. The first volume, 1937-39, published early this year edited by S.A.I. Tirmazi contains 537 documents using some portion of the Quaid-i-Azam papers but in this plethora of diverse documentation Mr Jinnah lies hidden. I have said Mr Jinnah. When the Aligarh Muslim University wanted to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1944, he declines it saying that he was known as Mr Jinnah and would die as Mr Jinnah, nothing more, and nothing less.
Although history may often seem to be a scientific study of the past, its interpretation, however much we may refine our techniques of historical analysis, remains stubbornly national than we often realise. To counterprise our national prejudices, we have to re-examine our pre-suppositions and see the other side of the case. What was really Mr Jinnah's case? Therefore the study of 80,000 pages of the Quaid-i-Azam papers which has 23 volumes of newspapers, and personal clippings is central to the historian's interests.
Jinnah was a man of few words. He wrote no book. He kept no diary. He produced no memoir. He did not go to prison. A prison is often the nursery of memoirs. He was not known as a prodigy of learning. At times his silences baffled others. Nothing could fathom him. He confided in no one except, in Raja of Muhmudabad, Nawab Mohammad Ismail Khan and of course, Sir B.N. Rud until their relations soured, when the latter became the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Jinnah wrote when necessary. Law books he read for his profession, particularly those relating to property and company law. He did not tidy up his correspondence like Nehru with an eye on posterity. His favourite book from which he often quoted in his public speeches — for this man who was often dubbed as obstinate and most uncompromising — was John Morley's book entitled Compromise published first in 1874, an exposition of liberal principles, which emphasises that compromise is to politics, what devotion is to friendship.
The National Archives of Pakistan has brought out the first series of Jinnah paper comprising two volumes in three parts. Originally Dr I.H. Qureshi, sometime Professor of History, at St Stephens, and later Vice-Chancellor, Karachi University, initiated the idea of compiling and publishing Jinnah papers. He took up the matter with President Ayub Khan who approved the proposal, but it was General Zia-ul-Haq who provided the infrastructure. Dr Z.A. Zaidi, a senior researcher in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, was appointed the Editor to undertake this work. He has brought out these volumes in 30 years.
Strangely enough, these volumes are published in reverse order, i.e. from 1947 which is like putting a cart before a horse, denying the reader a consecutive picture of the evolution of Pakistan through successive stages. Volume I (in two parts), Prelude to Pakistan, covers the period, February 20 — June 20, 1947. The text comes to 1800 pages. The second part consists of 14 appendices containing extracts from Mansergh's Transfer of Power volumes and newspapers such as Dawn and Pakistan Times, etc.
There is nothing startlingly new in these documents and they add little to our understanding of Jinnah, and his politics and strategy. Only on three or four themes there is new documentary material drawn chiefly from India Office Records and Churchill papers at Cambridge. It is a pity that Zaidi, though mainly based in London, has completely ignored the valuable Intelligence Department reports 'Loss of Control' which Patrick French has recently used in his work Liberty or Death.
These volumes are limited to the period from February 20 to June 30, 1947. Jinnah's interminable negotiations with the British, his bitter wrangling with the Congress, his total involvement in the civil disobedience movement in Punjab and North-West Frontier left little time to him for correspondence. Of the 1071 letters published in these volumes, his letters number 125. His letters deal with matters of trifling nature such as thanking his donors, congratulating his party workers, sending goodwill wishes to political organisations, giving instruction to his bankers and dealing with his property and shares. The title "Jinnah papers" is a misnomer. Jinnah is mostly a recipient of letters than a letter-writer. He appears supremely an elusive presence throughout on the margin rather than at the centre of affairs.
Some historians insist that Jinnah did not want Pakistan nor did he will it. Nor was he responsible for it; it was, however, the only possible outcome, a product of the curious circumstances for which the chief responsibility lay with the Congress. The first protagonist of the view was Ayesha Jalal, the author of The Sole Spokesman. Jalal tells us what Jinnah did not want, but doesn't tell us what really he wanted. Jalal presents Jinnah as a sad, lonely dying man, utterly helpless, overpowered by events, looking like a sick eagle at the sky. These documents completely dispel this notion.
Jinnah was completely in command of the situation. He was determined to fight for Pakistan. He told Mountbatten on April 3, 1947, that he would have a few acres of the said desert provided it was his own. With great feeling he wrote in May 1947 on a piece of paper meant for himself which Zaidi has reproduced. Jinnah wrote "Pakistan means not only a matter of power and security, of loaves and fishes; there are things of the spirit involved in it. It means sovereignty of people and it will be all that it stands for. Will not people say with those Arabs who said, 'What does it matter, how weak and poor our homelands are, if only we are masters in them' (Vol. I, Document No. 516).
Mountbatten has been strongly criticised by historians in Pakistan and England for what they call a sinister design on his part in altering the India-Pakistan boundary at the last stage. Zaidi's volume throws light on this controversial question, Zaidi has drawn evidence from India Office Records which he has partly used ignoring what exists in the Transfer of Power volumes.
Sir Cyril Radcliffe was appointed the Chairman of the Boundary Commission to delimit the India-Pakistan boundary. He was Lord Chancellor Jowett's nominee. Jinnah had suggested his name first. Nehru had wanted Maurice Gwyer to be the Chairman. Radcliffe had never visited India before. He knew no Indian language, nor did he possess Raginald Coupland's grasp of the Indian constitutional problem. A brilliant Oxford product, and a reputed lawyer, he was known for his long stretches of silences. In India he didn't meet any political leader. He did not attend any hearing of the claimants to the disputed areas. Motilal Setalwad told him then the entire procedure adopted by him in respect of the Boundary Commission proceedings was strange and farcical. Radcliffe completed his work in 36 days, left India having destroyed his papers. Later when asked whether he would return to India, said "God forbid, not even if they ask me. I expect they would shoot me out of hand, both sides".
The question is whether Mountbatten persuaded Radcliffe to alter the boundary award. Was Radcliffe made a scapegoat in Mountbatten's hands ? This issue was raised in the British Parliament, and later in the United Nations in 1948. Curiously enough, V.P. Menon is silent about it in his books.
The documents in Jinnah papers show that the Radcliffe Award almost corresponded with the detailed demarcation of the boundary made by Wavell on February 7, 1946, which he communicated to the Secretary of State, Pethick-Lawrence. The proposed boundary outline that Wavell despatched was actually drawn by V.P. Menon and B. N. Rau, thereby including the Muslim majority areas of the district of Gurdaspur, and Amritsar. The matter does not rest there. There is in Zaidi's volume K.M. Pannikar's note The Next Step which readily provided a starting point for the Menon-Rau delimitation of the boundary. Pannikar, a veritable opportunist of the first order, who nurtured ambitions of being appointed the Viceroy's constitutional advisor, wrote a note that the country be partitioned and he laid down the guiding principles for the division of Punjab and Bengal.
Pannikar did not append his signatures to the note, two copies of which were sent in the names of his friend Guy Wint and Freda Martin (Mn Guy Wint) to Wavell and Cripps. They form a part of the correspondence exchanged on January 11, 1946, between Sir William Croft, Deputy Under-Secretary at the Indian office and Sir David Monteath, the permanent Under-Secretary. It was thus Menon-Rau note based on Pannikar's communication which provided almost a readymade material for Radcliffe to prepare his award. The point is that in examining the factors underlying British policy in the period under study it is not so much to Whitchall that we must look but to varied local pressures in India as well as to the harsh force of circumstances and the initiatives of certain individuals holding pivotal position who exercise influence on the formation of policy.
These volumes confirm that it was Winston Churchill who finally persuaded Jinnah to accept the Partition plan. Churchill remained consistent in his hatred towards India and the Congress. These volumes show that Jinnah was closely in touch with Churchill. Jinnah had met Churchill on May 22, 1947, a little more than a week before the Partition plan was to be announced. Zaidi has used Churchill papers, and some part of Mountbatten's papers in the Transfer of Power volumes.
Historians have wondered who this Elizabeth Gilliat was whom Jinnah was writing to occasionally. For long it was thought that it was a fictitious name that Churchill adopted. These volumes clear the mist. Elizabeth Gilliat was Churchill's Secretary. Jinnah was adopting dilatory tactics in accepting the Partition plan as he was opposed to the partitions of Punjab and Bengal. Zaidi does not, however, include other documents relevant to Churchill's message which Mountbatten conveyed to Mountbatten. This message is available in the Transfer of Power volumes. The message was to threaten Jinnah that all British troops would be taken away from India, if Jinnah didn't accept the Partition plan. Churchill had added, 'By God, Jinnah is the only man who's can't do without British help'.
It has almost remained a mystery why the Prime Minister of Punjab, Khizer Hayat Tiwana who was bitterly opposed to the Muslim League. Suddenly resigned on March 2, 1947, to the chagrin of the Congress and Akali leaders whom he didn't care to consult. It must be emphasised that the Unionist Ministry wouldn't have lasted due to the popular Civil Disobedience Movement in Punjab. The documents in Volume I show that it was Jinnah's emissary Sir Mohammed Zafarulla who persuaded Khizer not to betray his community in the hour of trial. It appears that the letter of resignation was drafted by Sir Zafarulla.
There is ample evidence in these volumes (particularly in 2nd part of Vol. I) drawn chiefly from the newspapers Dawn and Pakistan Times that Jinnah masterminded the Civil Disobedience Movement in Punjab and the North Western Frontier. His object was to topple the Khizer and Khan Sahib ministries and to disturb the communal ratio in Assam so that he could grab for Pakistan the largest possible area. In this the designs of the two members of the Viceroy's Executive Council, Abdul Rab Nishter and Ghaznafer Ali Khan are laid bare. The Civil Disobedience Movement had a popular support in which large number of students of Aligarh Muslim University, burqa-clad women, Pirs and Sajjada-Nashin participated. The newspaper material is extremely valuable which is not available in this country, though, sadly enough, extracts from Urdu newspapers and journals are omitted.
This work suffers from a lack of proper editing and annotation. For example, the reader is at a loss to know who. K. Rallia Ram is, a fervent correspondent, who informs Jinnah regularly about the political developments in Punjab. The editor has not cared to identify even Riaz Piracha who became later the Foreign Secretary, Pakistan. In 1946 he was the President of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation. Riaz Piracha is prepared to give up his studies in order to fight for the cause of Pakistan. There are quite a number of individuals flitting across the pages but no attempt is made to identify them.
Jinnah had the habit of making some doodles at times, but he wrote short notes for his own use — these may be called "dispersed meditation", to use Francis Bacon's expression. One of these notes reads as follows:
Money lost — nothing lost
Courage lost — much lost
Honour lost — most lost
Soul lost — all lost (Vol. II, p. 257).
To sum up, uncomfortably bulky as these volumes are, a scrappy collection of documents, some of its valuable material can be easily found in the specialised publications. The whole work lacks sense of direction, a clear-cut design. The documents are listed neither chronologically nor thematically. The index is inadequate, and the references are too perfunctory to be of any value. It lacks Mansergh's almost suffocatingly thorough cross-references. The documentation is ruthlessly selective and aggressively tendentious but it is a pioneering documentary work published in Pakistan on the Partition. One is grateful for Zaidi's immense labours but they were not usefully directed.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
What was Jinnah after? Part 3
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2218/stories/20050909001107800.htm
JINNAH AND PARTITION
By A G Noorani
The Century has given birth to a great epoch; but the great moment finds a petty generation.
- Goethe
THE world waited long for the dawn of India's independence, but what it witnessed was, in the immortal words of Faiz, a stained dawn: India was partitioned amidst bloodshed. Its independence was inevitable. Its partition was not.
Many had mooted it. If V.D. Savarkar propounded the two-nation theory in 1923, Lala Lajpat Rai proposed partition in The Tribune of December 14, 1924: "A clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India." Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned as well. The Muslim League's Lahore Resolution of March 23, 1940, brought the idea into the mainstream of politics. Mohammed Ali Jinnah used the two-nation theory in its justification.
The evidence is irrefutable that it was a bargaining counter he had to devise because in 1939 the Viceroy kept asking him for a concrete "alternative":
(1) A Working Committee draft of October 22, 1939, spoke of a "confederation of free states". (2) On January 19, 1940, Jinnah wrote of two nations "who both must share the governance of their common motherland". (3) Only 24 hours earlier, the draft provided for "a central Agency... the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India". Jinnah dropped it to raise the price. (4) The Lahore Resolution itself envisaged a centre for the interim period ("finally"), a typical Jinnah tactic for bargaining. (5) An English friend of Penderel Moon "who knew Jinnah" was told, "in reply to his expressions of surprise at such a dramatic revolution... that it was a tactical move". (6) There is overwhelming testimony by several of Jinnah's confidants. I.I. Chundrigar, a Leaguer close to him, told H.V. Hodson, the Reforms Commissioner, in April 1940 that the object of the Lahore Resolution was not to create "Ulsters" but to achieve "two nations... welded into united India on the basis of equality". It was, he added, an alternative to majority rule, not a bid to destroy India's unity. Jinnah himself told Nawab Mohammed Ismail Khan, one of the few who thought for himself, in November 1941, that he could not come out with these truths "because it is likely to be misunderstood especially at present". But "I think Mr. Hodson finally understands as to what our demand is." (Hodson regarded it as a bid for a set-up on "equal terms" motivated by the fear that Muslims might be reduced to being "a Cinderella with trade union rights and a radio in the kitchen but still below-stairs".) (7) Professor R.J. Moore's Escape from Empire refers to a file in the Jinnah papers in Pakistan's archives containing his correspondence with Cripps in 1942 on "the creation of a new Indian Union". Significantly, it is still embargoed. (8) On April 25, 1946, he was offered two alternatives - the Pakistan as it came to be established in 1947 or an Indian Union superimposed on groups of Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected the first and said he would consider the second if Congress did the same. His own proposals of May 12 envisaged not Pakistan but a confederation. (9) Mumtaz Daultana, a prominent Leaguer of Punjab, told Ayesha Jalal: "Jinnah never wanted a Pakistan which involved the partition of India and was all in favour of accepting the Cabinet Mission's proposals" of May 16, 1946; which he did. (10) Documents in Volume VI of The Transfer of Power 1942-47 record top League leaders like Nazimuddin and Ispahani of Bengal, Saadullah of Assam, Aurangzeb Khan of the North West Frontier Province and Khaliquzzaman expressing their scepticism to Governors early in 1946. (11) Liaquat Ali Khan suggested federation, not confederation, to Stafford Cripps in 1942.
Sikandar Hyat Khan, Premier of Punjab, was opposed to Pakistan. The Governor of Punjab, H.D. Craik, wrote perceptively to the Viceroy on April 1, 1940: "It is reasonable at present to assume that Muslims would accept something less than partition, but the longer time that elapses without any concrete alternative being put forward, the more the support and favour partition proposals are likely to receive from the Muslim masses, who will now follow Jinnah's lead blindly" (emphasis added, throughout).
As Craik noted, a "concrete alternative" to Pakistan had urgently to be devised. That was not done. The "Muslim masses" fell for it. Jinnah became Quaid-e-Azam, inebriated with power. He could not possibly achieve Pakistan except by an accord with the Congress. He did not adopt a conciliatory approach; but mobilised mass support using abrasive rhetoric. He said at Kanpur on March 30, 1941, that "in order to liberate seven crores of Muslims where they were in a majority he was willing to perform the last ceremony of martyrdom, if necessary, and let two crores of Muslims be smashed". It is unlikely that he was prepared for that, which itself suggests the bargaining tactic he used. But "smashed" they were; thanks not least to the politics of an arrogant man who fancied that the Muslims of India were his to save or get "smashed".
The British government's statement on August 8, 1940, on India and the war said "it goes without saying that they could not contemplate transfer of... [power]... to any system of government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life. Nor could they be parties to the coercion of such elements into submission to such a government". In August Jinnah won the Pakistan he had demanded in March. He had now only to secure Muslims' support in the Pakistan provinces. The Congress also accepted the principle of non-coercion. It made Pakistan inevitable by refusing to propound an alternative to it; by refraining from pointing out forcibly and at the outset that it entailed partition of Punjab and Bengal - and the loss of many a League leader's lands - and by treating Muslim Congressmen as irrelevant.
Jawaharlal Nehru with Sir Stafford Cripps in 1946.
These volumes document the drift. The Jinnah Papers record his enormous success in mobilising the Muslim masses. Even during a long holiday in Srinagar he had to resolve the perpetual feuds among the League's provincial satraps. The piece de resistance are the minutes of his talks with Prem Nath Bazaz. He refused permission to print them.
Dr. K.M. Ashraf was a scholar, a member of the Communist Party of India and the All India Congress Committee (1934-45). Jaweed Ashraf has rendered a service by publishing this study written in 1946 for submission to CPI's general secretary, P.C. Joshi, who did not circulate this critique. Another volume on a similar theme is under publication. Volume 2 has the very revealing minutes of a talk that CPI leader Dr. Z.A. Ahmad had with Jawaharlal Nehru on June 27 and 28, 1945. One of the most brilliant pamphleteers of his day, Joshi's pamphlet, They Must Meet Again, on the Gandhi-Jinnah talks is a classic of its kind.
Lionel Carter's compilation is useful because all Governors of Punjab were in close touch with Prime Minister Sikandar Hyat Khan, a Leaguer out to espouse the flaws in the concept of Pakistan. He drew up a "formula" in July 1942. Its "underlying idea... is... to bring home to all... that Pakistan should it ever eventuate, would smash the Province as it now exists", the Governor reported. (The text of the formula is reproduced on page 317.) It stipulated that the Punjab Assembly could decide to join the Union or not only by a vote of three-fourths of the total membership. If it failed to secure such a vote, a referendum could follow. Its result would, in any case, entail partition of Punjab.
A similar formula was mooted in the proposals which Cripps made to Indian leaders on behalf of the British government in March 1942 - a Constituent Assembly set up immediately after the war; every province having the right to reject the Constitution, but if the majority in favour of accession was less than 60 per cent of the Assembly, the minority would be entitled to demand a plebiscite. Cripps also offered formulae on an interim government to conduct the war. The Cripps offer was rejected by the Congress and the League. Gandhi called it "a post-dated cheque on a tottering bank". But, for the first time ever, the partition of India was put as an item on the agenda.
The Congress' response to the League's demand was strange. On April 2, 1942, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) criticised the secessionist idea, only to add: "Nevertheless, the Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in the Indian Union against their declared and established will.... " Its election manifesto of 1945 reiterated this principle, thus setting at naught the Jagat Narain Lal resolution, adopted by the AICC on May 2, 1942, which ruled out "liberty to any component State or territorial unit to secede".
The Congress would ridicule the Pakistan cry and call Jinnah names. It did not ask him searching questions on his vague demand nor demonstrate vigorously its consequences. Its policy was to parley with the British for immediate transfer of power, leaving Jinnah high and dry, and the communal issue one for it to settle unilaterally once it was in power.
C. Rajagopalachari, Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and M. Asaf Ali disagreed with Gandhi on the Quit India Movement. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad and others blindly followed him. Azad's memoirs India Wins Freedom (1959) was the first exposure of the truths behind the "do and die" cry and the commitment to non-violence. "Truth to tell... it was certainly not non-violent even at the start," K.M. Munshi admitted. Azad recalled: "Gandhiji's idea seemed to be that since the war was on the Indian frontier, the British would come to terms with the Congress as soon as the movement was launched. Even if this did not take place, he believed that the British would hesitate to take any drastic steps with the Japanese knocking at India's doors. He thought that this would give the Congress the time and the opportunity to organise an effective movement."
What was Azad's plan? "As soon as the Japanese army reached Bengal and the British army withdrew towards Bihar, the Congress should step in and take over the control of the country... in this way alone could we hope to oppose the new enemy and gain our freedom.... " He had even recruited volunteers. "I was surprised to find that Gandhiji did not agree with me... if the Japanese army ever came to India it would come not as our enemies but as the enemy of the British."
The AICC passed the Quit India resolution on August 8, 1942. The next morning the leaders were arrested. Gandhi was "very depressed... he had not expected this sudden arrest". He had come to believe that "the Allies could not win the war". Others agreed. Patel "felt convinced that the Allies were going to lose the war", Munshi recorded.
Unlike Nehru and Azad, Rajaji did not acquiesce in Gandhi's decision. He wrote to him on July 18: "It is essential that before a demand for withdrawal can be reasonably made, the major political organisations of the country namely, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, should evolve a joint plan with regard to the provisional government which can take over power." Gandhi retorted on July 20: "Why don't you form a league (sic) with Muslim friends to propagate your idea of settlement?"
It was a fundamental divide. Rajaji knew that transfer of power depended on accord with the League. Gandhi and the Congress sought a deal exclusively with the British. "I am not in favour of making any approach to Jinnah," Patel said when S. Satyamurthi pleaded in the Working Committee in April 1942 for "an approach to the Muslim League".
As in 1937-39, the Congress sought total power. The Pakistan resolution and Jinnah's growing popularity made not the slightest difference to its outlook. Rajaji shared Craik's view that "a concrete alternative" had to be evolved and "urgently", too - tell Jinnah he can have Pakistan, but what next? He got the Madras Congress Legislature Party to adopt the resolutions on April 23, 1942, to "acknowledge the Muslim League's claim for separation" and "invite" it to forge an accord on "a National government" to fight the war - against the Axis. The Leaguers "will themselves say that they don't want it if you do not keep it in your pocket but throw it on the table".
The Congress' plan was bizarre. In 1945, Nehru confided in Z.A. Ahmed: "I may tell you this but do not convey it to anyone else, that sometime before August 1942 Gandhiji gave in to me and others on the question of non-violence... he realised that he would not be able to achieve his larger objective if he stuck on to non-violence... . Our estimate was that if the Japanese occupied the Eastern part of India, conditions of complete administrative disorder and anarchy would be created throughout the unoccupied parts... under these conditions our idea was to organise guerilla forces in order to capture power in territories where the administrative machinery was in a state of collapse." Since "no guerrilla bands can function without the help of the regular army" the possibility of the guerillas fighting the Japanese "in the front line... was ruled out". This confirms Azad's account.
Analysing this very episode in detail, Nirad C. Chaudhuri concluded that both Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose were simply ignorant of international affairs (The Times of India; February 28, 1982). He called Nehru "India's ineffectual angel" in a brilliant review article on the first volume of S. Gopal's biography (The Times Literary Supplement; November 14, 1975). Gandhi could control him with ease.
Remember, on June 22, 1941, Hitler attacked the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. The United States, the `unsinkable aircraft-carrier', was at war with the Axis. True, Singapore fell on January 15, 1942, but as a historian records, by mid-June 1942 "the limit of Japanese power [was] reached". Nehru wrote in his prison diary on November 21, 1943: "My presumption in posing as the sole authority on international affairs is, no doubt, irritating" to the captive audience comprising Azad, Patel, and the rest. The diaries of one of them, Asaf Ali, reveal the enormity of the blunder in which they had acquiesced. (M. Asaf Ali's Memoirs edited by G.N.S. Raghavan; Ajanta, 1994; a neglected work.) He wrote: "A bad gambler's throw has produced this situation... . Gandhiji expected that a compromise would follow the adoption of the Quit India resolution" - the Brits would capitulate in the face of certain defeat.
YET, for all the havoc they had so irresponsibly wrought, the Congress leaders had learnt not a bit. They were sore at Rajaji for his formula in April 1944 - for a plebiscite on Pakistan in areas "wherein the Muslim population is in absolute majority" - and at Gandhi for his variant of this formula which he offered Jinnah during their talks on September 24, 1944. B.R. Ambedkar exposed the flaws in both formulae (Pakistan or The Partition of India; 1946; pages 408-411).
Its crux was division of India - if at all - by a Congress government after it had won power from the British. "The case became one of an executed promise [by Jinnah] against an executory promise" [by Gandhi]. It was vague on essentials. But Gandhi squandered away a fine opportunity to question Jinnah on the Lahore Resolution. Ambedkar listed seven questions. Gandhi asked instead: "What is your definition of `minorities'?" and "What is the connotation of the word `Muslim'... ?"
Nehru and Patel left prison in 1945 with a two-fold resolve - "the Congress should keep as far away from the League as possible", Nehru told the AICC on October 23. "This is war. We shall face the Muslim League and fight it." Patel concurred. The AICC extolled "the methods of negotiation and conciliation vis-a-vis the British... no matter how grave may be the provocation... " Ashraf remarked: "The Congress declared war on the League while at the same time, it adopted a policy of surrender towards British imperialism."
The British were ready to quit. The Congress sought a deal with them. Nehru talked of redressing Muslim grievance, but with whom? Congress Muslims had been marginalised completely. Nehru went so far as to demand on November 11, 1945, that the League must change "its present policy and its leadership". Patel reported to Gandhi on December 28, 1945, his reply to the Aga Khan's plea for talks with Jinnah: "We have decided not to have any truck with him." Gandhi replied on January 11, 1946: "Yours indeed was a fitting reply regarding Jinnahbhai." Nehru was perfectly consistent. He wrote in his diary on December 28, 1943: "Instinctively I think it is better to have Pakistan almost anything if only to keep Jinnah far away and not allow his muddled and arrogant head from (sic) interfering continually in India's progress" (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; First Series: Vol. 13, page 324). He accurately predicted: "I cannot help thinking that ultimately the Muslims of India will suffer most" (ibid; page 24). How was he going to avert that? Forget the League. Had the Congress anything to offer the Muslim minority in our plural society, if only to undermine Jinnah's hold on it?
In a letter to Cripps on January 27, 1946, Nehru hinted at his readiness to accept "separation" coupled with the partition of Punjab and Bengal. Publicly, however, the line was to reject Pakistan without propounding any alternative.
The British government sent a mediatory Mission of three Cabinet Ministers, Secretary of State for India Pethick-Lawrence, A.V. Alexander and Stafford Cripps. It arrived in India on March 23, 1946, and left on June 30. On May 16, 1946, it published "the Mission's Plan". Partition was decisively rejected.
It envisaged a Union confined to defence, foreign affairs and communications based on three groups of provinces. The provinces were free to secede from the groups, after the first general elections under the scheme. But they could not secede from the Union. All they could ask for was "reconsideration of the terms of the Constitution" after 10 years. It would have been open to the provinces of Group A (the States which now form the Union of India) to confer on their group voluntarily subjects beyond the minimum subjects. Group B comprised Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP. Group C comprised Bengal and Assam. Far from establishing a "weak" centre, it would have yielded a strong centre, the India of today in Group A in federal union with Pakistan.
Paragraph 19 laid down the procedure, which the Constituent Assembly had to follow - "divide into three sections", which would "settle the powers and the constitutions for the groups and the provinces".
Patel wrote to Munshi the next day: "An authoritative pronouncement in clear terms has been made against the possibility of Pakistan in any shape or form." Both were accomplished lawyers. Azad exclaimed: "All schemes of partition of India have been rejected once and for all." But by the end of 1946, partition became an agreed inevitability. In cases of contributory negligence, judges ask: "Who had the last clear chance to avert the accident?" This was the last clear chance to save India's unity. Blame for the partition must fall on those who wrecked Cabinet Mission's Plan.
The circumstances in which Jinnah accepted it are as important as his acceptance was radical. Cripps had prepared Scheme A for a limited union and B for partition of India and of Punjab and Bengal. On April 25, Jinnah preferred the union to the Pakistan of today; but, only "if the Congress were prepared to consider it and if he could be assured of that". On May 12, both sides presented their proposals to the Mission. Jinnah's was not for partition but a confederation. In a settlement this bargainer would have improved on his own proposal. He did just that by his acceptance of the Plan. "I do not think any responsible man could have allowed the situation to give rise to bloodshed and civil war. The situation was such that we did, in all anxiety, try to come to a peaceful settlement with the other major party. We had the courage - it was not a mistake - to sacrifice three subjects to the Centre. That has been treated with contempt and defiance by the Congress."
As K.M. Panikkar pointed out on October 10, 1945, no Constituent Assembly can succeed unless a Congress-League accord, on the basics and on the procedures, "is evolved before" it meets. The Plan was a proposal. Words like "we recommend" meant it was not an award. It became a pact between the Congress and the League if it was accepted. The British undertook to transfer power to a Union set up under the pact. Either side could reject it. Conditional acceptance is tantamount to rejection. Acceptance on the basis of one's own "interpretation" is a disingenuous form of rejection. The Plan laid down the fundamentals of both the Union and the Assembly. If they were set up under the Plan, the parties had to abide by the prescribed procedure. It was part of the deal. It said explicitly [para 19 (vii)] that the basics (the Union and the Groups) could not be changed nor "any major communal issue" decided except with the consent of both communities.
However, Patel claimed on May 26 that "it is open to the Constituent Assembly to accept or reject" the Mission's "recommendations". On June 15, he wrote: "We do not accept the groupings as proposed in the scheme." The Plan would be used only to enter the Assembly, not to work the compromise. The Congress would use its majority to do what it pleased. There would be no compromise with the League.
Nehru told the Mission in private on June 10: "The Congress were going to work for a strong centre and to break the group system and they would succeed. They did not think that Mr. Jinnah had any real place in the country." On July 10, he told the press, after he had become Congress president: "What we do there [in the Constituent Assembly], we are entirely and absolutely free to determine. We have not committed ourselves to any single matter to anybody." This is the famous "outburst" which Nehru baiters and Congress apologists alike cite to explain the collapse of the Plan. It is pure myth. Patel had taken the same stand. Azad, who fostered the myth, said on June 26 as Congress president: "I am convinced that the Congress interpretation cannot be challenged." He signed the letter of June 24 intimating acceptance of the Plan, as interpreted by the Congress in a resolution on May 24. The Mission as well as Jinnah had rejected this interpretation on May 25 and June 27, respectively - before Nehru's "outburst" on July 10.
The Congress had 207 members in the Constituent Assembly against 73 of the League. In Group C, comprising Bengal and Assam, it had 32 members against 36 of the League, in a House of 70, with two Independents. Since the League would have had to provide a chairman to work Group C, it would have been left with 35 members against 32 of the Congress. How could the League possibly have prevented Assam's secession? If it did, it would have faced the Congress' retaliation in the entire Constituent Assembly, as the British repeatedly reminded the Congress. No gerrymandering could have prevented Assam's secession. Muslims were only a third of its population.
Once the Constituent Assembly began its work, compromises would have had to be worked out. But the Congress had set its face against any compromise from the outset. It went unilateral in 1942 under Gandhi's leadership. It adopted this stance in 1945-46 also. On both occasions, it was led by Gandhi and he led it from the front with grim determination. He laid down the line publicly and at the outset before others spoke. He told a prayer meeting the very next day after the Plan was out (May 17): "The provinces were free to reject the very idea of grouping... subject to the above interpretation, which he held was right", the Plan was a laudable one.
He wrote to Pethick-Lawrence on May 19: "You say in your answer to a question: `If they do come together on that basis, it will mean that they will have accepted that basis, but they can still change it if by a majority of each party they desire to do so.' You can omit the last portion of the sentence as being superfluous for my purpose. Even the basis in para 15 of the State Paper is a recommendation. Do you regard a recommendation as obligatory on any member of the contemplated Constituent Assembly?"
Gandhi's detailed analysis, dated May 20, appeared in Harijan on May 26: "The best document the British government could have produced in the circumstances." He sought immediate transfer of power. The Plan was "an appeal and an advice... in my opinion, the voluntary character of the statement demands that the liberty of the individual unit should be unimpaired. Any member of the sections is free to join it. The freedom to opt out is an additional safeguard.
"A province could refuse at the outset to sit in the Section assigned to it and participate in its work. The procedure prescribed was what the Mission `proposes' [does not order] what should be done."
The character of the place as a compact between the two parties was studiously ignored. It was a matter between the Congress and the British.
Gandhi met Pethick-Lawrence on May 19 to press his line after meeting the CWC. He asked for "the immediate end of Paramountcy" over the princely states and withdrawal of British troops. "Acceptance of `Quit India' by the British is unconditional whether the Constituent Assembly succeeds or fails." He wanted a "homogeneous National Government", that is, one run by the Congress. This was the very line he took in 1942.
On May 25, the Mission issued a formal statement which said: "The interpretation put by the Congress resolution on paragraph 15 of the statement to the effect that the provinces can in the first instance make the choice whether or not to belong to the section in which they are placed does not accord with the Delegation's intentions."
The issue was squarely joined. On June 13, Gandhi wrote to Cripps ominously: "You will have to choose between the two - the Muslim League and the Congress." Implying there could be no compromise between the two on the basis of the Plan. He said at a meeting that day: "Even the Constituent Assembly plan now stinks. I am afraid we cannot touch it."
Cripps caved in (vide the writer's article "Cripps and India's Partition"; Frontline, August 2 and 16, 2002). A member of the Constituent Assembly had to give an undertaking "that the candidate is willing to serve as a representative of the Province for the purposes of paragraph 19 of the Statement".
This bound him to abide by the Plan once he became a member of the Constituent Assembly elected under the Plan and for its implementation. On June 24, the Mission and the Viceroy met Gandhi and Patel at 8 p.m. Gandhi felt that "by signing the declaration... a member of the Constituent Assembly might be bound morally to accept the Delegation's interpretation". Cripps agreed to the deletion (The Transfer of Power, Vol. VII; page 1,027). The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, furiously protested the next day: "I consider that there has either been a reversal of policy which has not been agreed, or that the assurance given to Mr. Gandhi is not entirely an honest one" (ibid; page 1,032). Prof. R.J. Moore holds that Wavell "justly described" it as "a dishonest assurance" (Escape from Empire, page 138).
The change was Gandhi's idea: "Why not say `under the State Paper as a whole'?" Cripps clutched at the straw. The Plan was scuttled effectively. On June 26, the CWC accepted Gandhi's formulation. "Taking the proposals as a whole", it decided to join the Assembly. Jinnah came to know all about this secret deal, he told Colin Reid of The Daily Telegraph.
The League withdrew its acceptance of the Plan and adopted the "Direct Action" resolution. Wavell, shaken after the Calcutta riots, tried to persuade Gandhi on August 27 to issue a declaration accepting the Plan as it was intended to be worked. He failed. He was convinced that "the Congress are practically asking us to hand over India to a single party".
To Louis Fischer, Gandhi said in confidence on July 17: "Jinnah is an evil genius. He believes he is a prophet." G.D. Birla was told on November 26 that the Plan "will probably have to be changed". He was not averse to "convening our own Constituent Assembly irrespective of the British government" provided the Congress had "a certain degree of status and strength".
Gandhi drew up a "note on the Constituent Assembly" on December 3, 1946. By then, first the Congress and later the League had entered the Interim Government. But the League boycotted the Constituent Assembly on the grounds that the Congress had not accepted the Plan. Gandhi sent his note to Patel on December 4 and wrote: "There is certainly no weakness on our part in giving up the Plan."
Despite his withdrawal, Jinnah had not given up on the Plan. From his queries to Sir B.N. Rau, Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly, "it is a fair inference that his mind had not been finally made up against the League's participation" in the Assembly, B. Shiva Rao of The Hindu noted. But if he entered it despite the Congress' stand, he would have accepted that stand, and the Congress' majority unfettered by the Plan. London invited Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh for talks to resolve the tangle. Nehru did not yield. On December 6, the British government issued a statement which recorded that it had received "legal advice" that the Congress' interpretation was wrong.
It concluded: "There has never been any prospect of success for the Constituent Assembly, except upon the basis of an agreed procedure. Should a Constitution come to be framed by a Constituent Assembly in which a large section of the Indian population has not been represented, His Majesty's Government could not of course contemplate - as the Congress have stated they would not contemplate - forcing such a Constitution upon any unwilling parts of the country." - Accept the Plan and share power, or partition India. The Congress preferred the latter.
On December 15, Gandhi told Congressmen from Assam: "As soon as the time comes for the Constituent Assembly to go into Sections, you will say, `Gentlemen Assam retires.' Each unit must be able to decide and act for itself... . Else I will say that Assam had only manikins and no men. It is an impertinent suggestion that Bengal should dominate Assam in any way" - by 35 votes to 32, presumably.
As with the Plan, so with the statement, the Congress professed to accept it but subject to its interpretation. As late as on May 16, 1947, Mountbatten pleaded with Patel to accept the Plan. If the League misbehaved in Section C, it risked retaliation at the Centre, he pointed out. He had admitted to London on May 1, 1947, that Jinnah "might be right in... [his] belief" that the Congress had no intention of working the Plan "fairly" and that "Mr. Jinnah's fears had some foundation". The Plan was "dead". The Congress' stand led the British to declare on February 20, 1947, that power would be transferred by June 30, 1948, whether to a Union or to provinces. Like Cripps, Mountbatten plumped for the Congress. If he "fell foul of Congress it would be impossible to continue to run the country".
Not surprisingly, on March 8 the Congress asked for the partition of Punjab and Bengal and invited the League for talks. Gandhi's note suggests that he was prepared for partition. The Assembly could frame a Constitution "for all the Provinces, States and units that may be represented" in it. His instructions to the CWC removed all doubt. But it was to be a Pakistan minus not only Assam but also the NWFP, "the Sikhs in the Punjab and may be Baluchistan". He called them "seceders" from Groups B and C. The British would have to quit. "It will be open to the boycotters to avail themselves of the Constitution" framed "for whole India". Jinnah's truncated Pakistan would rejoin India (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 86; page 286).
Gandhi's reaction on February 24 to the British declaration shows the sharpness of his intellect: "This may lead to Pakistan for those provinces or portions which may want it... The Congress provinces... will get what they want."
He gave a formula on April 4: Jinnah to be Prime Minister of India - backed by a Congress majority in the Constituent Assembly and liable to a sack any moment. An elaboration of April 10 hinted at partition as an alternative to the League entering the Constituent Assembly. Thus the League was offered an Assembly freed from the Cabinet Mission's restrictions - with Jinnah as Prime Minister as a sweetener - or a Pakistan minus even the NWFP. When neither worked, he said on May 6: "The Congress should in no circumstances be party to partition. We should tell the British to quit unconditionally."
He wrote to Mountbatten on May 8 asking him to "leave the government of the whole of India, including the States, to one party". On June 3, 1947, the Partition Plan was published, which both the parties accepted. The next day Gandhi said: "I tried my best to bring the Congress round to accept the proposal of May 16. But now we must accept what is an accomplished fact."
H.M. Seervai's comment is fair: "It is sad to think that Gandhi's rejection of the Cabinet Mission's Proposal for an Interim Government and of Cabinet Mission's Plan should have had the unfortunate consequence of destroying the unity of a free India for which he had fought so valiantly and for so long" (Partition of India; 1994; page 177).
Sir Chimanlal Setalvad wrote: "The cherished boon of a United India had fallen into their (the Congress) lap, but they by their own want of political wisdom threw it out and made it beyond their reach." It was "a great personal triumph for Mr. Jinnah... But has he succeeded in doing good to the Muslims themselves and to his country?" Partition had laid "the foundations of interminable quarrels" and would "bring untold suffering to generations yet unborn" (The Times of India, June 15, 1947).
Azad told the Viceroy on April 8 that partition would "spell disaster for the Mussulmans". But Nehru and Patel were set on it. Gandhi, however, began campaigning against partition after his return to Delhi on May 24, driving Mountbatten to denounce him repeatedly in private as "a dangerous Trotskyist", a Wrecker. He found the change hard to understand. Gandhi, as well as Nehru and Patel, rejected the Sarat Bose-Suhrawardy pact on a united Bengal as a sovereign state. It would have buried the two-nation theory at the very birth of Pakistan. Jinnah told Mountbatten on April 6, 1947, that a united Bengal was acceptable to him. Gandhi, however, demanded for the minorities in united Bengal safeguards, which he would not concede to the minorities in a united India. (vide the writer's essay on the united Bengal plan in The Partition in Retrospect edited by Amrik Singh; pages 246-258.)
Two men foresaw the consequences clearly. Azad predicted that the fate of Muslims going to Pakistan would be worse than that of uninvited guests (Kamalistan; March 1956; page 28). Nehru told Z.A. Ahmed that if the Congress accepted Pakistan "Hindu opinion inside the Congress would go over to the Hindu Sabha". He had noted in his Autobiography that "many a Congressman was a communalist under his nationalist cloak".
SINCE 1939, Jinnah played irresponsibly with fire. True, as R.C. Majumdar, a historian with a pro-Hindu Right bias, accepted, "one important factor which was responsible to a very large extent for the emergence of the idea of partition of India on communal bias... was the Hindu Mahasabha" (Struggle for Freedom, 1969; page 611).
But Nehru's and Jinnah's remedies - wholly different though they were - proved worse than the disease. Gandhi, a devout Hindu, was an enemy of communal violence. He was livid when idols were placed inside mosques. He said on November 30, 1947: "It is the duty of those who have installed the idols to remove them from there... By thus installing idols in the mosques they are desecrating the mosques and also insulting the idols" (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi; Vol. 90; page 144).
He would have given his life to save the Babri Mosque as, indeed, he did to save the Muslims.
It is men of fine qualities who failed India. It had no Nelson Mandela; a man of vision with a passion and talent to reach out to the adversary and compromise. The Congress leaders failed dismally. But Jinnah also could well have assured Assam publicly that it would not be coerced - and thus saved the Plan that he himself hailed as an achievement.
Jinnah's dream was shattered with the partition of Punjab and Bengal, and the massive killings. For a secular Pakistan, the presence of a large, powerful and articulate minority was indispensable. Their exodus also affected Muslims in India adversely. It is not in Pakistan but in India that the values of democracy and rule of law, which he cherished all his life, are respected. Yet, the fact remains that though he recklessly broke the mould of constitutional discourse and played with fire, the final responsibility for partition was not his. He had "no real place in the country", Nehru had declared.
In a sense, Jinnah was an expellee whose dreams lie buried in India as well as in Pakistan. He might well have cried in the words the gifted poet Sahir Ludhianvi used when he was honoured by the Ludhiana Government College, which had expelled him for communist activities:
Tu aaj bhi hai merey liye jannate khayal /hai tujh mein dafn meri jawani ke chaar saal
Lekin hum in fizaon ke paaley huey to hain /Gar yan ke nahin to yan se nikaley huey to hain
(You are for me still the heaven of my dreams / On your grounds lie buried four years of my youth.
But I have been very much brought up in its atmosphere/If I do not belong to it, I was at least an expellee from this place).
Jinnah Papers: Quest for Political Settlement in India 1 October 1943-31 July 1944; Second Series Volume X; Editor-in-Chief Z.H. Zaidi; Quaid-e-Azam Papers Project; distributors Oxford Unviersity Press, Karachi; pages 775, Rs.750.
Hindu-Muslim Question and Our Freedom Struggle 1857-1935 by K.M. Ashraf, Volumes 1 and 2; Sunrise Publications, New Delhi; pages 290 and 328, Rs.1,575 for the set.
Punjab Politics 1940-1943: Governor's Fortnightly Reports edited by Lionel Carter; Manohar; distributed by Foundation Books; pages 427, Rs.995.
JINNAH AND PARTITION
By A G Noorani
The Century has given birth to a great epoch; but the great moment finds a petty generation.
- Goethe
THE world waited long for the dawn of India's independence, but what it witnessed was, in the immortal words of Faiz, a stained dawn: India was partitioned amidst bloodshed. Its independence was inevitable. Its partition was not.
Many had mooted it. If V.D. Savarkar propounded the two-nation theory in 1923, Lala Lajpat Rai proposed partition in The Tribune of December 14, 1924: "A clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India." Punjab and Bengal were to be partitioned as well. The Muslim League's Lahore Resolution of March 23, 1940, brought the idea into the mainstream of politics. Mohammed Ali Jinnah used the two-nation theory in its justification.
The evidence is irrefutable that it was a bargaining counter he had to devise because in 1939 the Viceroy kept asking him for a concrete "alternative":
(1) A Working Committee draft of October 22, 1939, spoke of a "confederation of free states". (2) On January 19, 1940, Jinnah wrote of two nations "who both must share the governance of their common motherland". (3) Only 24 hours earlier, the draft provided for "a central Agency... the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India". Jinnah dropped it to raise the price. (4) The Lahore Resolution itself envisaged a centre for the interim period ("finally"), a typical Jinnah tactic for bargaining. (5) An English friend of Penderel Moon "who knew Jinnah" was told, "in reply to his expressions of surprise at such a dramatic revolution... that it was a tactical move". (6) There is overwhelming testimony by several of Jinnah's confidants. I.I. Chundrigar, a Leaguer close to him, told H.V. Hodson, the Reforms Commissioner, in April 1940 that the object of the Lahore Resolution was not to create "Ulsters" but to achieve "two nations... welded into united India on the basis of equality". It was, he added, an alternative to majority rule, not a bid to destroy India's unity. Jinnah himself told Nawab Mohammed Ismail Khan, one of the few who thought for himself, in November 1941, that he could not come out with these truths "because it is likely to be misunderstood especially at present". But "I think Mr. Hodson finally understands as to what our demand is." (Hodson regarded it as a bid for a set-up on "equal terms" motivated by the fear that Muslims might be reduced to being "a Cinderella with trade union rights and a radio in the kitchen but still below-stairs".) (7) Professor R.J. Moore's Escape from Empire refers to a file in the Jinnah papers in Pakistan's archives containing his correspondence with Cripps in 1942 on "the creation of a new Indian Union". Significantly, it is still embargoed. (8) On April 25, 1946, he was offered two alternatives - the Pakistan as it came to be established in 1947 or an Indian Union superimposed on groups of Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected the first and said he would consider the second if Congress did the same. His own proposals of May 12 envisaged not Pakistan but a confederation. (9) Mumtaz Daultana, a prominent Leaguer of Punjab, told Ayesha Jalal: "Jinnah never wanted a Pakistan which involved the partition of India and was all in favour of accepting the Cabinet Mission's proposals" of May 16, 1946; which he did. (10) Documents in Volume VI of The Transfer of Power 1942-47 record top League leaders like Nazimuddin and Ispahani of Bengal, Saadullah of Assam, Aurangzeb Khan of the North West Frontier Province and Khaliquzzaman expressing their scepticism to Governors early in 1946. (11) Liaquat Ali Khan suggested federation, not confederation, to Stafford Cripps in 1942.
Sikandar Hyat Khan, Premier of Punjab, was opposed to Pakistan. The Governor of Punjab, H.D. Craik, wrote perceptively to the Viceroy on April 1, 1940: "It is reasonable at present to assume that Muslims would accept something less than partition, but the longer time that elapses without any concrete alternative being put forward, the more the support and favour partition proposals are likely to receive from the Muslim masses, who will now follow Jinnah's lead blindly" (emphasis added, throughout).
As Craik noted, a "concrete alternative" to Pakistan had urgently to be devised. That was not done. The "Muslim masses" fell for it. Jinnah became Quaid-e-Azam, inebriated with power. He could not possibly achieve Pakistan except by an accord with the Congress. He did not adopt a conciliatory approach; but mobilised mass support using abrasive rhetoric. He said at Kanpur on March 30, 1941, that "in order to liberate seven crores of Muslims where they were in a majority he was willing to perform the last ceremony of martyrdom, if necessary, and let two crores of Muslims be smashed". It is unlikely that he was prepared for that, which itself suggests the bargaining tactic he used. But "smashed" they were; thanks not least to the politics of an arrogant man who fancied that the Muslims of India were his to save or get "smashed".
The British government's statement on August 8, 1940, on India and the war said "it goes without saying that they could not contemplate transfer of... [power]... to any system of government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life. Nor could they be parties to the coercion of such elements into submission to such a government". In August Jinnah won the Pakistan he had demanded in March. He had now only to secure Muslims' support in the Pakistan provinces. The Congress also accepted the principle of non-coercion. It made Pakistan inevitable by refusing to propound an alternative to it; by refraining from pointing out forcibly and at the outset that it entailed partition of Punjab and Bengal - and the loss of many a League leader's lands - and by treating Muslim Congressmen as irrelevant.
Jawaharlal Nehru with Sir Stafford Cripps in 1946.
These volumes document the drift. The Jinnah Papers record his enormous success in mobilising the Muslim masses. Even during a long holiday in Srinagar he had to resolve the perpetual feuds among the League's provincial satraps. The piece de resistance are the minutes of his talks with Prem Nath Bazaz. He refused permission to print them.
Dr. K.M. Ashraf was a scholar, a member of the Communist Party of India and the All India Congress Committee (1934-45). Jaweed Ashraf has rendered a service by publishing this study written in 1946 for submission to CPI's general secretary, P.C. Joshi, who did not circulate this critique. Another volume on a similar theme is under publication. Volume 2 has the very revealing minutes of a talk that CPI leader Dr. Z.A. Ahmad had with Jawaharlal Nehru on June 27 and 28, 1945. One of the most brilliant pamphleteers of his day, Joshi's pamphlet, They Must Meet Again, on the Gandhi-Jinnah talks is a classic of its kind.
Lionel Carter's compilation is useful because all Governors of Punjab were in close touch with Prime Minister Sikandar Hyat Khan, a Leaguer out to espouse the flaws in the concept of Pakistan. He drew up a "formula" in July 1942. Its "underlying idea... is... to bring home to all... that Pakistan should it ever eventuate, would smash the Province as it now exists", the Governor reported. (The text of the formula is reproduced on page 317.) It stipulated that the Punjab Assembly could decide to join the Union or not only by a vote of three-fourths of the total membership. If it failed to secure such a vote, a referendum could follow. Its result would, in any case, entail partition of Punjab.
A similar formula was mooted in the proposals which Cripps made to Indian leaders on behalf of the British government in March 1942 - a Constituent Assembly set up immediately after the war; every province having the right to reject the Constitution, but if the majority in favour of accession was less than 60 per cent of the Assembly, the minority would be entitled to demand a plebiscite. Cripps also offered formulae on an interim government to conduct the war. The Cripps offer was rejected by the Congress and the League. Gandhi called it "a post-dated cheque on a tottering bank". But, for the first time ever, the partition of India was put as an item on the agenda.
The Congress' response to the League's demand was strange. On April 2, 1942, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) criticised the secessionist idea, only to add: "Nevertheless, the Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in the Indian Union against their declared and established will.... " Its election manifesto of 1945 reiterated this principle, thus setting at naught the Jagat Narain Lal resolution, adopted by the AICC on May 2, 1942, which ruled out "liberty to any component State or territorial unit to secede".
The Congress would ridicule the Pakistan cry and call Jinnah names. It did not ask him searching questions on his vague demand nor demonstrate vigorously its consequences. Its policy was to parley with the British for immediate transfer of power, leaving Jinnah high and dry, and the communal issue one for it to settle unilaterally once it was in power.
C. Rajagopalachari, Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and M. Asaf Ali disagreed with Gandhi on the Quit India Movement. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad and others blindly followed him. Azad's memoirs India Wins Freedom (1959) was the first exposure of the truths behind the "do and die" cry and the commitment to non-violence. "Truth to tell... it was certainly not non-violent even at the start," K.M. Munshi admitted. Azad recalled: "Gandhiji's idea seemed to be that since the war was on the Indian frontier, the British would come to terms with the Congress as soon as the movement was launched. Even if this did not take place, he believed that the British would hesitate to take any drastic steps with the Japanese knocking at India's doors. He thought that this would give the Congress the time and the opportunity to organise an effective movement."
What was Azad's plan? "As soon as the Japanese army reached Bengal and the British army withdrew towards Bihar, the Congress should step in and take over the control of the country... in this way alone could we hope to oppose the new enemy and gain our freedom.... " He had even recruited volunteers. "I was surprised to find that Gandhiji did not agree with me... if the Japanese army ever came to India it would come not as our enemies but as the enemy of the British."
The AICC passed the Quit India resolution on August 8, 1942. The next morning the leaders were arrested. Gandhi was "very depressed... he had not expected this sudden arrest". He had come to believe that "the Allies could not win the war". Others agreed. Patel "felt convinced that the Allies were going to lose the war", Munshi recorded.
Unlike Nehru and Azad, Rajaji did not acquiesce in Gandhi's decision. He wrote to him on July 18: "It is essential that before a demand for withdrawal can be reasonably made, the major political organisations of the country namely, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, should evolve a joint plan with regard to the provisional government which can take over power." Gandhi retorted on July 20: "Why don't you form a league (sic) with Muslim friends to propagate your idea of settlement?"
It was a fundamental divide. Rajaji knew that transfer of power depended on accord with the League. Gandhi and the Congress sought a deal exclusively with the British. "I am not in favour of making any approach to Jinnah," Patel said when S. Satyamurthi pleaded in the Working Committee in April 1942 for "an approach to the Muslim League".
As in 1937-39, the Congress sought total power. The Pakistan resolution and Jinnah's growing popularity made not the slightest difference to its outlook. Rajaji shared Craik's view that "a concrete alternative" had to be evolved and "urgently", too - tell Jinnah he can have Pakistan, but what next? He got the Madras Congress Legislature Party to adopt the resolutions on April 23, 1942, to "acknowledge the Muslim League's claim for separation" and "invite" it to forge an accord on "a National government" to fight the war - against the Axis. The Leaguers "will themselves say that they don't want it if you do not keep it in your pocket but throw it on the table".
The Congress' plan was bizarre. In 1945, Nehru confided in Z.A. Ahmed: "I may tell you this but do not convey it to anyone else, that sometime before August 1942 Gandhiji gave in to me and others on the question of non-violence... he realised that he would not be able to achieve his larger objective if he stuck on to non-violence... . Our estimate was that if the Japanese occupied the Eastern part of India, conditions of complete administrative disorder and anarchy would be created throughout the unoccupied parts... under these conditions our idea was to organise guerilla forces in order to capture power in territories where the administrative machinery was in a state of collapse." Since "no guerrilla bands can function without the help of the regular army" the possibility of the guerillas fighting the Japanese "in the front line... was ruled out". This confirms Azad's account.
Analysing this very episode in detail, Nirad C. Chaudhuri concluded that both Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose were simply ignorant of international affairs (The Times of India; February 28, 1982). He called Nehru "India's ineffectual angel" in a brilliant review article on the first volume of S. Gopal's biography (The Times Literary Supplement; November 14, 1975). Gandhi could control him with ease.
Remember, on June 22, 1941, Hitler attacked the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. The United States, the `unsinkable aircraft-carrier', was at war with the Axis. True, Singapore fell on January 15, 1942, but as a historian records, by mid-June 1942 "the limit of Japanese power [was] reached". Nehru wrote in his prison diary on November 21, 1943: "My presumption in posing as the sole authority on international affairs is, no doubt, irritating" to the captive audience comprising Azad, Patel, and the rest. The diaries of one of them, Asaf Ali, reveal the enormity of the blunder in which they had acquiesced. (M. Asaf Ali's Memoirs edited by G.N.S. Raghavan; Ajanta, 1994; a neglected work.) He wrote: "A bad gambler's throw has produced this situation... . Gandhiji expected that a compromise would follow the adoption of the Quit India resolution" - the Brits would capitulate in the face of certain defeat.
YET, for all the havoc they had so irresponsibly wrought, the Congress leaders had learnt not a bit. They were sore at Rajaji for his formula in April 1944 - for a plebiscite on Pakistan in areas "wherein the Muslim population is in absolute majority" - and at Gandhi for his variant of this formula which he offered Jinnah during their talks on September 24, 1944. B.R. Ambedkar exposed the flaws in both formulae (Pakistan or The Partition of India; 1946; pages 408-411).
Its crux was division of India - if at all - by a Congress government after it had won power from the British. "The case became one of an executed promise [by Jinnah] against an executory promise" [by Gandhi]. It was vague on essentials. But Gandhi squandered away a fine opportunity to question Jinnah on the Lahore Resolution. Ambedkar listed seven questions. Gandhi asked instead: "What is your definition of `minorities'?" and "What is the connotation of the word `Muslim'... ?"
Nehru and Patel left prison in 1945 with a two-fold resolve - "the Congress should keep as far away from the League as possible", Nehru told the AICC on October 23. "This is war. We shall face the Muslim League and fight it." Patel concurred. The AICC extolled "the methods of negotiation and conciliation vis-a-vis the British... no matter how grave may be the provocation... " Ashraf remarked: "The Congress declared war on the League while at the same time, it adopted a policy of surrender towards British imperialism."
The British were ready to quit. The Congress sought a deal with them. Nehru talked of redressing Muslim grievance, but with whom? Congress Muslims had been marginalised completely. Nehru went so far as to demand on November 11, 1945, that the League must change "its present policy and its leadership". Patel reported to Gandhi on December 28, 1945, his reply to the Aga Khan's plea for talks with Jinnah: "We have decided not to have any truck with him." Gandhi replied on January 11, 1946: "Yours indeed was a fitting reply regarding Jinnahbhai." Nehru was perfectly consistent. He wrote in his diary on December 28, 1943: "Instinctively I think it is better to have Pakistan almost anything if only to keep Jinnah far away and not allow his muddled and arrogant head from (sic) interfering continually in India's progress" (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; First Series: Vol. 13, page 324). He accurately predicted: "I cannot help thinking that ultimately the Muslims of India will suffer most" (ibid; page 24). How was he going to avert that? Forget the League. Had the Congress anything to offer the Muslim minority in our plural society, if only to undermine Jinnah's hold on it?
In a letter to Cripps on January 27, 1946, Nehru hinted at his readiness to accept "separation" coupled with the partition of Punjab and Bengal. Publicly, however, the line was to reject Pakistan without propounding any alternative.
The British government sent a mediatory Mission of three Cabinet Ministers, Secretary of State for India Pethick-Lawrence, A.V. Alexander and Stafford Cripps. It arrived in India on March 23, 1946, and left on June 30. On May 16, 1946, it published "the Mission's Plan". Partition was decisively rejected.
It envisaged a Union confined to defence, foreign affairs and communications based on three groups of provinces. The provinces were free to secede from the groups, after the first general elections under the scheme. But they could not secede from the Union. All they could ask for was "reconsideration of the terms of the Constitution" after 10 years. It would have been open to the provinces of Group A (the States which now form the Union of India) to confer on their group voluntarily subjects beyond the minimum subjects. Group B comprised Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP. Group C comprised Bengal and Assam. Far from establishing a "weak" centre, it would have yielded a strong centre, the India of today in Group A in federal union with Pakistan.
Paragraph 19 laid down the procedure, which the Constituent Assembly had to follow - "divide into three sections", which would "settle the powers and the constitutions for the groups and the provinces".
Patel wrote to Munshi the next day: "An authoritative pronouncement in clear terms has been made against the possibility of Pakistan in any shape or form." Both were accomplished lawyers. Azad exclaimed: "All schemes of partition of India have been rejected once and for all." But by the end of 1946, partition became an agreed inevitability. In cases of contributory negligence, judges ask: "Who had the last clear chance to avert the accident?" This was the last clear chance to save India's unity. Blame for the partition must fall on those who wrecked Cabinet Mission's Plan.
The circumstances in which Jinnah accepted it are as important as his acceptance was radical. Cripps had prepared Scheme A for a limited union and B for partition of India and of Punjab and Bengal. On April 25, Jinnah preferred the union to the Pakistan of today; but, only "if the Congress were prepared to consider it and if he could be assured of that". On May 12, both sides presented their proposals to the Mission. Jinnah's was not for partition but a confederation. In a settlement this bargainer would have improved on his own proposal. He did just that by his acceptance of the Plan. "I do not think any responsible man could have allowed the situation to give rise to bloodshed and civil war. The situation was such that we did, in all anxiety, try to come to a peaceful settlement with the other major party. We had the courage - it was not a mistake - to sacrifice three subjects to the Centre. That has been treated with contempt and defiance by the Congress."
As K.M. Panikkar pointed out on October 10, 1945, no Constituent Assembly can succeed unless a Congress-League accord, on the basics and on the procedures, "is evolved before" it meets. The Plan was a proposal. Words like "we recommend" meant it was not an award. It became a pact between the Congress and the League if it was accepted. The British undertook to transfer power to a Union set up under the pact. Either side could reject it. Conditional acceptance is tantamount to rejection. Acceptance on the basis of one's own "interpretation" is a disingenuous form of rejection. The Plan laid down the fundamentals of both the Union and the Assembly. If they were set up under the Plan, the parties had to abide by the prescribed procedure. It was part of the deal. It said explicitly [para 19 (vii)] that the basics (the Union and the Groups) could not be changed nor "any major communal issue" decided except with the consent of both communities.
However, Patel claimed on May 26 that "it is open to the Constituent Assembly to accept or reject" the Mission's "recommendations". On June 15, he wrote: "We do not accept the groupings as proposed in the scheme." The Plan would be used only to enter the Assembly, not to work the compromise. The Congress would use its majority to do what it pleased. There would be no compromise with the League.
Nehru told the Mission in private on June 10: "The Congress were going to work for a strong centre and to break the group system and they would succeed. They did not think that Mr. Jinnah had any real place in the country." On July 10, he told the press, after he had become Congress president: "What we do there [in the Constituent Assembly], we are entirely and absolutely free to determine. We have not committed ourselves to any single matter to anybody." This is the famous "outburst" which Nehru baiters and Congress apologists alike cite to explain the collapse of the Plan. It is pure myth. Patel had taken the same stand. Azad, who fostered the myth, said on June 26 as Congress president: "I am convinced that the Congress interpretation cannot be challenged." He signed the letter of June 24 intimating acceptance of the Plan, as interpreted by the Congress in a resolution on May 24. The Mission as well as Jinnah had rejected this interpretation on May 25 and June 27, respectively - before Nehru's "outburst" on July 10.
The Congress had 207 members in the Constituent Assembly against 73 of the League. In Group C, comprising Bengal and Assam, it had 32 members against 36 of the League, in a House of 70, with two Independents. Since the League would have had to provide a chairman to work Group C, it would have been left with 35 members against 32 of the Congress. How could the League possibly have prevented Assam's secession? If it did, it would have faced the Congress' retaliation in the entire Constituent Assembly, as the British repeatedly reminded the Congress. No gerrymandering could have prevented Assam's secession. Muslims were only a third of its population.
Once the Constituent Assembly began its work, compromises would have had to be worked out. But the Congress had set its face against any compromise from the outset. It went unilateral in 1942 under Gandhi's leadership. It adopted this stance in 1945-46 also. On both occasions, it was led by Gandhi and he led it from the front with grim determination. He laid down the line publicly and at the outset before others spoke. He told a prayer meeting the very next day after the Plan was out (May 17): "The provinces were free to reject the very idea of grouping... subject to the above interpretation, which he held was right", the Plan was a laudable one.
He wrote to Pethick-Lawrence on May 19: "You say in your answer to a question: `If they do come together on that basis, it will mean that they will have accepted that basis, but they can still change it if by a majority of each party they desire to do so.' You can omit the last portion of the sentence as being superfluous for my purpose. Even the basis in para 15 of the State Paper is a recommendation. Do you regard a recommendation as obligatory on any member of the contemplated Constituent Assembly?"
Gandhi's detailed analysis, dated May 20, appeared in Harijan on May 26: "The best document the British government could have produced in the circumstances." He sought immediate transfer of power. The Plan was "an appeal and an advice... in my opinion, the voluntary character of the statement demands that the liberty of the individual unit should be unimpaired. Any member of the sections is free to join it. The freedom to opt out is an additional safeguard.
"A province could refuse at the outset to sit in the Section assigned to it and participate in its work. The procedure prescribed was what the Mission `proposes' [does not order] what should be done."
The character of the place as a compact between the two parties was studiously ignored. It was a matter between the Congress and the British.
Gandhi met Pethick-Lawrence on May 19 to press his line after meeting the CWC. He asked for "the immediate end of Paramountcy" over the princely states and withdrawal of British troops. "Acceptance of `Quit India' by the British is unconditional whether the Constituent Assembly succeeds or fails." He wanted a "homogeneous National Government", that is, one run by the Congress. This was the very line he took in 1942.
On May 25, the Mission issued a formal statement which said: "The interpretation put by the Congress resolution on paragraph 15 of the statement to the effect that the provinces can in the first instance make the choice whether or not to belong to the section in which they are placed does not accord with the Delegation's intentions."
The issue was squarely joined. On June 13, Gandhi wrote to Cripps ominously: "You will have to choose between the two - the Muslim League and the Congress." Implying there could be no compromise between the two on the basis of the Plan. He said at a meeting that day: "Even the Constituent Assembly plan now stinks. I am afraid we cannot touch it."
Cripps caved in (vide the writer's article "Cripps and India's Partition"; Frontline, August 2 and 16, 2002). A member of the Constituent Assembly had to give an undertaking "that the candidate is willing to serve as a representative of the Province for the purposes of paragraph 19 of the Statement".
This bound him to abide by the Plan once he became a member of the Constituent Assembly elected under the Plan and for its implementation. On June 24, the Mission and the Viceroy met Gandhi and Patel at 8 p.m. Gandhi felt that "by signing the declaration... a member of the Constituent Assembly might be bound morally to accept the Delegation's interpretation". Cripps agreed to the deletion (The Transfer of Power, Vol. VII; page 1,027). The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, furiously protested the next day: "I consider that there has either been a reversal of policy which has not been agreed, or that the assurance given to Mr. Gandhi is not entirely an honest one" (ibid; page 1,032). Prof. R.J. Moore holds that Wavell "justly described" it as "a dishonest assurance" (Escape from Empire, page 138).
The change was Gandhi's idea: "Why not say `under the State Paper as a whole'?" Cripps clutched at the straw. The Plan was scuttled effectively. On June 26, the CWC accepted Gandhi's formulation. "Taking the proposals as a whole", it decided to join the Assembly. Jinnah came to know all about this secret deal, he told Colin Reid of The Daily Telegraph.
The League withdrew its acceptance of the Plan and adopted the "Direct Action" resolution. Wavell, shaken after the Calcutta riots, tried to persuade Gandhi on August 27 to issue a declaration accepting the Plan as it was intended to be worked. He failed. He was convinced that "the Congress are practically asking us to hand over India to a single party".
To Louis Fischer, Gandhi said in confidence on July 17: "Jinnah is an evil genius. He believes he is a prophet." G.D. Birla was told on November 26 that the Plan "will probably have to be changed". He was not averse to "convening our own Constituent Assembly irrespective of the British government" provided the Congress had "a certain degree of status and strength".
Gandhi drew up a "note on the Constituent Assembly" on December 3, 1946. By then, first the Congress and later the League had entered the Interim Government. But the League boycotted the Constituent Assembly on the grounds that the Congress had not accepted the Plan. Gandhi sent his note to Patel on December 4 and wrote: "There is certainly no weakness on our part in giving up the Plan."
Despite his withdrawal, Jinnah had not given up on the Plan. From his queries to Sir B.N. Rau, Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly, "it is a fair inference that his mind had not been finally made up against the League's participation" in the Assembly, B. Shiva Rao of The Hindu noted. But if he entered it despite the Congress' stand, he would have accepted that stand, and the Congress' majority unfettered by the Plan. London invited Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh for talks to resolve the tangle. Nehru did not yield. On December 6, the British government issued a statement which recorded that it had received "legal advice" that the Congress' interpretation was wrong.
It concluded: "There has never been any prospect of success for the Constituent Assembly, except upon the basis of an agreed procedure. Should a Constitution come to be framed by a Constituent Assembly in which a large section of the Indian population has not been represented, His Majesty's Government could not of course contemplate - as the Congress have stated they would not contemplate - forcing such a Constitution upon any unwilling parts of the country." - Accept the Plan and share power, or partition India. The Congress preferred the latter.
On December 15, Gandhi told Congressmen from Assam: "As soon as the time comes for the Constituent Assembly to go into Sections, you will say, `Gentlemen Assam retires.' Each unit must be able to decide and act for itself... . Else I will say that Assam had only manikins and no men. It is an impertinent suggestion that Bengal should dominate Assam in any way" - by 35 votes to 32, presumably.
As with the Plan, so with the statement, the Congress professed to accept it but subject to its interpretation. As late as on May 16, 1947, Mountbatten pleaded with Patel to accept the Plan. If the League misbehaved in Section C, it risked retaliation at the Centre, he pointed out. He had admitted to London on May 1, 1947, that Jinnah "might be right in... [his] belief" that the Congress had no intention of working the Plan "fairly" and that "Mr. Jinnah's fears had some foundation". The Plan was "dead". The Congress' stand led the British to declare on February 20, 1947, that power would be transferred by June 30, 1948, whether to a Union or to provinces. Like Cripps, Mountbatten plumped for the Congress. If he "fell foul of Congress it would be impossible to continue to run the country".
Not surprisingly, on March 8 the Congress asked for the partition of Punjab and Bengal and invited the League for talks. Gandhi's note suggests that he was prepared for partition. The Assembly could frame a Constitution "for all the Provinces, States and units that may be represented" in it. His instructions to the CWC removed all doubt. But it was to be a Pakistan minus not only Assam but also the NWFP, "the Sikhs in the Punjab and may be Baluchistan". He called them "seceders" from Groups B and C. The British would have to quit. "It will be open to the boycotters to avail themselves of the Constitution" framed "for whole India". Jinnah's truncated Pakistan would rejoin India (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 86; page 286).
Gandhi's reaction on February 24 to the British declaration shows the sharpness of his intellect: "This may lead to Pakistan for those provinces or portions which may want it... The Congress provinces... will get what they want."
He gave a formula on April 4: Jinnah to be Prime Minister of India - backed by a Congress majority in the Constituent Assembly and liable to a sack any moment. An elaboration of April 10 hinted at partition as an alternative to the League entering the Constituent Assembly. Thus the League was offered an Assembly freed from the Cabinet Mission's restrictions - with Jinnah as Prime Minister as a sweetener - or a Pakistan minus even the NWFP. When neither worked, he said on May 6: "The Congress should in no circumstances be party to partition. We should tell the British to quit unconditionally."
He wrote to Mountbatten on May 8 asking him to "leave the government of the whole of India, including the States, to one party". On June 3, 1947, the Partition Plan was published, which both the parties accepted. The next day Gandhi said: "I tried my best to bring the Congress round to accept the proposal of May 16. But now we must accept what is an accomplished fact."
H.M. Seervai's comment is fair: "It is sad to think that Gandhi's rejection of the Cabinet Mission's Proposal for an Interim Government and of Cabinet Mission's Plan should have had the unfortunate consequence of destroying the unity of a free India for which he had fought so valiantly and for so long" (Partition of India; 1994; page 177).
Sir Chimanlal Setalvad wrote: "The cherished boon of a United India had fallen into their (the Congress) lap, but they by their own want of political wisdom threw it out and made it beyond their reach." It was "a great personal triumph for Mr. Jinnah... But has he succeeded in doing good to the Muslims themselves and to his country?" Partition had laid "the foundations of interminable quarrels" and would "bring untold suffering to generations yet unborn" (The Times of India, June 15, 1947).
Azad told the Viceroy on April 8 that partition would "spell disaster for the Mussulmans". But Nehru and Patel were set on it. Gandhi, however, began campaigning against partition after his return to Delhi on May 24, driving Mountbatten to denounce him repeatedly in private as "a dangerous Trotskyist", a Wrecker. He found the change hard to understand. Gandhi, as well as Nehru and Patel, rejected the Sarat Bose-Suhrawardy pact on a united Bengal as a sovereign state. It would have buried the two-nation theory at the very birth of Pakistan. Jinnah told Mountbatten on April 6, 1947, that a united Bengal was acceptable to him. Gandhi, however, demanded for the minorities in united Bengal safeguards, which he would not concede to the minorities in a united India. (vide the writer's essay on the united Bengal plan in The Partition in Retrospect edited by Amrik Singh; pages 246-258.)
Two men foresaw the consequences clearly. Azad predicted that the fate of Muslims going to Pakistan would be worse than that of uninvited guests (Kamalistan; March 1956; page 28). Nehru told Z.A. Ahmed that if the Congress accepted Pakistan "Hindu opinion inside the Congress would go over to the Hindu Sabha". He had noted in his Autobiography that "many a Congressman was a communalist under his nationalist cloak".
SINCE 1939, Jinnah played irresponsibly with fire. True, as R.C. Majumdar, a historian with a pro-Hindu Right bias, accepted, "one important factor which was responsible to a very large extent for the emergence of the idea of partition of India on communal bias... was the Hindu Mahasabha" (Struggle for Freedom, 1969; page 611).
But Nehru's and Jinnah's remedies - wholly different though they were - proved worse than the disease. Gandhi, a devout Hindu, was an enemy of communal violence. He was livid when idols were placed inside mosques. He said on November 30, 1947: "It is the duty of those who have installed the idols to remove them from there... By thus installing idols in the mosques they are desecrating the mosques and also insulting the idols" (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi; Vol. 90; page 144).
He would have given his life to save the Babri Mosque as, indeed, he did to save the Muslims.
It is men of fine qualities who failed India. It had no Nelson Mandela; a man of vision with a passion and talent to reach out to the adversary and compromise. The Congress leaders failed dismally. But Jinnah also could well have assured Assam publicly that it would not be coerced - and thus saved the Plan that he himself hailed as an achievement.
Jinnah's dream was shattered with the partition of Punjab and Bengal, and the massive killings. For a secular Pakistan, the presence of a large, powerful and articulate minority was indispensable. Their exodus also affected Muslims in India adversely. It is not in Pakistan but in India that the values of democracy and rule of law, which he cherished all his life, are respected. Yet, the fact remains that though he recklessly broke the mould of constitutional discourse and played with fire, the final responsibility for partition was not his. He had "no real place in the country", Nehru had declared.
In a sense, Jinnah was an expellee whose dreams lie buried in India as well as in Pakistan. He might well have cried in the words the gifted poet Sahir Ludhianvi used when he was honoured by the Ludhiana Government College, which had expelled him for communist activities:
Tu aaj bhi hai merey liye jannate khayal /hai tujh mein dafn meri jawani ke chaar saal
Lekin hum in fizaon ke paaley huey to hain /Gar yan ke nahin to yan se nikaley huey to hain
(You are for me still the heaven of my dreams / On your grounds lie buried four years of my youth.
But I have been very much brought up in its atmosphere/If I do not belong to it, I was at least an expellee from this place).
Jinnah Papers: Quest for Political Settlement in India 1 October 1943-31 July 1944; Second Series Volume X; Editor-in-Chief Z.H. Zaidi; Quaid-e-Azam Papers Project; distributors Oxford Unviersity Press, Karachi; pages 775, Rs.750.
Hindu-Muslim Question and Our Freedom Struggle 1857-1935 by K.M. Ashraf, Volumes 1 and 2; Sunrise Publications, New Delhi; pages 290 and 328, Rs.1,575 for the set.
Punjab Politics 1940-1943: Governor's Fortnightly Reports edited by Lionel Carter; Manohar; distributed by Foundation Books; pages 427, Rs.995.
What was Jinnah after? Part 2
ASSESSING JINNAH
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2217/stories/20050826003003400.htm
A.G. NOORANI
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was an Indian nationalist who did not believe that nationalism meant turning one's back on the rights of one's community. The Congress stipulated that, virtually.
IGNORANT biographers have made much of the fact that at a reception in his honour on January 12, 1915, Gandhi asked Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was presiding, to speak in Gujarati; implying that he was embarrassed because he knew only English. But Gujarati and Cutchi were the only two languages Jinnah spoke perfectly; "beautifully", M.C. Chagla recalled. His devoted follower M.A.H. Ispahani put it delicately: "Even in this language [English] the meticulous don would have found some flaws" (The Jinnah I Knew ; page 107).
But, with the indifference to matters of substance that marks most writings on Jinnah, they overlook a more significant aspect to the relationship. Dr. Ajeet Jawed draws pointed attention to its implications. When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, Jinnah was a national leader towering above Motilal Nehru, Tej Bahadur Sapru and M.R. Jayakar. He was a colleague of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He performed a central role in the Congress, the Muslim League and the Home Rule League (HRL). Gandhi's demand was certainly presumptuous, if not insulting. But it revealed his pronounced tendency to establish his ascendancy. It worked with all others - save Jinnah. In his correspondence, he even advised Jinnah gratuitously about his wife. In October 1916, addressing a conference over which Jinnah presided, Gandhi referred to him as "a learned Muslim gentleman ... . an eminent lawyer and not only a member of the Legislature but also president of the biggest Islamic association in India" (Secular and Nationalist Jinnah; page 193).
Gandhi was "cutting Jinnah to size", as a sectarian leader. Jinnah was neither put out nor deflected from the course he followed. Chimanlal Setalvad and he remained two persons who never subordinated their will and judgment to him. On his part, till the end Jinnah treated Gandhi as a peer. He was not forgiven for this. Jinnah could not be "domesticated" like the Nehrus and Sardar Patel, nor co-opted.
Equally wrong is the impression that Jinnah was embittered because Gandhi, in effect, ousted him from two bodies - from the Home Rule League of which Jinnah was president, and from the Congress. About what happened in the former, we have Jayakar's detailed account in his memoirs, The Story of My Life (Vol. I, pages 316-318 and 404-5). In December 1919, Jinnah invited Gandhi to join the HRL as its president. So much for his ambition and ego. He overruled Jayakar's opposition, which was based on Gokhale's advice: "Be careful that India does not trust him on occasions where delicate negotiations have to be carried on with care and caution... . He has done wonderful work in South Africa... . but I fear that when the history of the negotiations... is written with impartial accuracy, it will be found that his actual achievements were not as meritorious as is popularly imagined."
The concluding part of two-part article.
Gandhi promised Jayakar that he would not change the HRL's character. He became its president in March 1920. Gandhi and Jinnah had cooperated at the Amritsar session of the Congress in November 1919. At the Calcutta Congress in September 1920, Gandhi unfolded his programme of non-cooperation. Jinnah said that while he was "fully convinced of non-cooperation" he found Gandhi's programme unsound. Gandhi was able to win over the doubters. He failed with Jinnah. Maulana Shaukat Ali tried to assault Jinnah, but was stopped by his friends. Gandhi took the battle to the HRL and presiding over its session on October 3, 1920, had its objectives changed in breach of his promises. It was a coup. Nineteen veterans resigned from the HRL, including Jinnah, Jayakar and K.M. Munshi (vide Jayakar, page 405 for the text of the letter). Gandhi flouted his promises to Jayakar, as he recorded.
On October 30, 1920, Jinnah wrote a letter to Gandhi which is of historic importance: "I thank you for your kind suggestion offering me `to take my share in the new life that has opened up before the country'. If by `new life' you mean your methods and your programme, I am afraid I cannot accept them; for I am fully convinced that it must lead to disaster. But the actual new life that has opened up before the country is that we are faced with a Government that pays no heed to the grievances, feelings and sentiments of the people; that our own countrymen are divided; the Moderate Party is still going wrong; that your methods have already caused split and division in almost every institution that you have approached hitherto, and in the public life of the country not only amongst Hindus and Muslims but between Hindus and Hindus and Muslims and Muslims and even between fathers and sons; people generally are desperate all over the country and your extreme programme has for the moment struck the imagination mostly of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means complete disorganisation and chaos. What the consequence of this may be, I shudder to contemplate; but I, for one, am convinced that the present policy of the Government is the primary cause of it all and unless that cause is removed, the effects must continue. I have no voice or power to remove the cause; but at the same time I do not wish my countrymen to be dragged to the brink of a precipice in order to be shattered. The only way for the Nationalists is to unite and work for a programme which is universally acceptable for the early attainment of complete responsible government. Such a programme cannot be dictated by any single individual, but must have the approval and support of all the prominent Nationalist leaders in the country; and to achieve this end I am sure my colleagues and myself shall continue to work."
This was not an intimation of parting of ways but a plea for unity against the British, differences on the methods notwithstanding.
With Jawaharlal Nehru at the residence of Dr. Rajendra Prasad.
At the Nagpur session in December 1920, Gandhi's capture of the Congress was complete. Only, it was a victory procured by a Faustian deal with the Ali brothers on Khilafat. Jinnah was in a minority of one. Decades later, Munshi lauded him for his courage. Ian Bryant Wells' comment is fair: "By taking up the Khilafat issue, he gained substantial support for his own political programme." Without the Ali brothers' support, he could not have pushed through his programme.
Before long, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) ordained that Congressmen should give 2,000 yards of hand-spun yarn every month. Jinnah was still not embittered. This is what he said on February 19, 1921: "Undoubtedly Mr. Gandhi was a great man and he had more regard for him than anyone else. But he did not believe in his programme and he could not support it" (The Collected Works of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah; edited by Syed Shatifuddin Pirzada; Vol. I; page 411. Emphasis added throughout). Jinnah attended the Congress' annual session in Ahmedabad in 1921. The yarn requirement was another matter.
Jinnah knew what was at stake. He accurately predicted that the movement would divide the communities and breed disrespect for law and order. He supported the Khilafat cause, opposed the Ali brothers' methods, and gave up once Turkey made its own decision. He told the League: "We are not going to rest content until we have attained the fullest political freedom in our own country. Mr. Gandhi has placed his programme of non-cooperation, supported by the authority of the Khilafat Conference, before the country... . The operations of this scheme will strike at the individual in each of you, and therefore it rests with you alone to measure your strength and to weigh the pros and cons of the question before you arrive at a decision. But once you have decided to march, let there be no retreat under any circumstances... . One degrading measure upon another, disappointment upon disappointment, and injury upon injury, can lead a people only to one end. It led Russia to Bolshevism. It has led Ireland to Sinn Feinism. May it lead India to freedom... I would still ask the Government not to drive the people of India to desperation, or else there is no other course left open to the people except to inaugurate the policy of non-cooperation, though not necessarily the programme of Mr. Gandhi."
He convened a meeting of representative Muslims in Delhi in March 1927, which put forth four major demands. One of these was for a one-third representation in the Central Legislature. A committee of the Congress, set up to examine their import, accepted the demands. Its members were Motilal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Maulana Mohammed Ali and Srinivasa Iyengar. The AICC accepted the committee's views with minor changes.
The Hindu Mahasabha led by Madan Mohan Malaviya opposed these demands, as did Muslims in some provinces. Opposition to the Simon Commission divided the League, but Jinnah supported the Congress in the campaign to boycott this all-White body. The alternative constitutional proposals adopted in the famous Nehru Report dashed Jinnah's hopes. The Report did not even refer to Jinnah's proposals, or to their acceptance by the Congress. Jinnah now put forth his 14-points. Their rejection and his personal humiliation at the All-Parties Convention are chapters in a story told several times over. (For a crisp, documented account vide Uma Kaura's classic Muslims, and Indian Nationalism; Manohar; 1977.)
Three myths must be laid to rest. First, it did not mark "a parting of ways". Jinnah said in his speech at the Convention: "We are all sons of the soil. We have to live together... If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends." The second myth is that soon after this Convention, "Jinnah found himself in the company of the Aga Khan" and other reactionaries. The Aga Khan convened an All-India Muslim Conference in Delhi on December 31, 1928, around the same time as the All-Parties Convention on the Nehru Report in Calcutta. Wolpert `records' how Jinnah came late, looked around and what he wore. It is a fabrication. While the Ali brothers and even radicals like the Leftist poet Maulana Hasrat Mohani participated, in sheer disgust at the outcome of the Calcutta Convention, Jinnah did not. He had rejected the invitation brusquely.
The third is about Motilal Nehru's attitude. His letter to Gandhi on August 14, 1929, reported his talks with the Hindu Mahasabha leaders: "We agreed that the Hindu opposition to the Muslim demands was to continue and even be stiffened up by the time the Convention was held." He concluded: "You will see that the stumbling block in our way is this question of one-third Muslim representatives and on this point even the most advanced Musalmans like Dr. M.A. Ansari, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Mr. T.A.K. Sherwani and others are all very strongly in favour of the concession. I would therefore ask you to direct your attention now to the Mahasabha leaving Ali Brothers and Mr. Jinnah to stew in their own juice." (The Indian Nationalist Movement 1885 - 1947; Select Documents; edited by B.N. Pandey; Macmillan; pages. 63-64). This document establishes that: the convention failed because of the Hindu Mahasabha's obduracy; Motilal Nehru cooperated with the Mahasabha leaders though he saw no harm in the demand; and the "advanced Musalmans" failed to stand up to the Congress leaders for the community's rights, which Jinnah did without falling in the Aga Khan's camp of pro-British reactionaries. This is what made Jinnah truly unique - clarity of thought, moral courage, and sturdy, uncompromising independence. These were the qualities that made him so formidable an adversary later and so tragic in his fall from the ideals he once espoused.
Jinnah continued to cooperate with Gandhi even after Nagpur. In December 1929, he went all the way to Sabarmati Ashram to discuss the Viceroy's announcement of a Round Table Conference. Documents published recently show Jinnah pleading with the Viceroy on his behalf and that of the Congress in 1929-30. "I am left with the impression that Mr. Gandhi himself is responsible," he wrote.
His wife Ruttie's death in her 30th year, on February 20, 1929, shook Jinnah to the core. He withdrew from society and became distant. To think that it changed his political outlook is to underestimate the man's commitment and to fly in the face of the record. Even in 1937, eight years later, he saw "no difference between the ideals of the Muslim League and of the Congress, the ideal being complete freedom for India".
On July 21, 1937, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Rajendra Prasad: "During the general election in U.P. [United Provinces] there was not any conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League." With characteristic Nehruvian consistency, he proposed "the winding up of the Muslim League group in the U.P. and its absorption in the Congress".
With daughter Dina, Liaquat Ali Khan and his wife.
In later years, Azad professing, as ever, superior wisdom pinned the blame on Nehru. It was Azad, not Nehru, who gave the surrender terms to Khaliquzzaman: the League's group "shall cease to function as a separate group" (for the text vide Indian Politics 1936-1942; by R. Coupland; Oxford University Press; page 111). Sapru's letter to B. Shiva Rao of The Hindu, dated November 16, 1940, referred to his experience of "party dictatorship or Congress Ministries wherever they have existed... . So long as these people were in power they treated everybody else with undisguised contempt". That experience led him to believe that the "Western type of majority rule in India will not do. And we shall have to come to some arrangement by which we may take along with us the minorities in matters of general interest" (Crusader for Self-Rule; Rima Hooja; Rawat Publishers; page 280). This is precisely what Jinnah came to hold and for the same reason - the Congress' refusal to share power.
He had received short shrift from Gandhi and the British at the Round table Conference in London and decided in desperation to settle down there. Returning to India, he arrived at a pact with Rajendra Prasad in 1934, in which he abandoned separate electorates. In the light of 1928, he insisted that the Congress secure the Mahasabha's assent as well (for the text vide Marguerite Dove's Forfeited Future; page 462). Nehru, however, went so far as to assert: "There are only two parties in the county, the Congress and the government." Jinnah retorted: "There is a third party in the country and that is the Muslims." If in 1928 Jayakar questioned Jinnah's credentials as a representative, in 1937 Nehru did likewise: "May I suggest to Mr. Jinnah that I come into greater touch with the Muslim masses than most of the members of the League." The Congress, at one remove Nehru himself, represented everybody and would lay down the terms for the future.
Jinnah accepted the challenge and built up through mass politics a representative capacity that stunned all. Nothing in his past should have surprised any. Men like Mohammed Iqbal and Maulana Mohammed Ali had come to regard him as the "only" Muslim leader. At the League's session in October 1937, Jinnah pleaded: "Let the Congress first bring all principal communities in the country and all principal classes of interest under its leadership." He had in mind, not merger, but "a pact", a concept he had "always believed in". But Nehru had no use for "pacts" between "handfuls of upper-class people". Jinnah, in his view, represented them alone. There really was no "minority problem". The people were concerned with bread and butter. Economic issues alone mattered.
Jinnah laid bare his heart in a much neglected speech at Aligarh in February 1938 in which he recalled the past: "At that time there was no pride in me and I used to beg from the Congress." The first "shock" came at the RTC; the next, in 1937. "The Musalmans were like the No Man's land. They were led by either the flunkeys of the British government or the camp-followers of the Congress... . The only hope for minorities is to organise themselves and secure a definite share in power to safeguard their rights and interests."
He had said in October 1937 that "all safeguards and settlements would be a scrap of paper unless they were backed up by power". In Britain the parties alternate in holding power. "But such is not the case in India. Here we have a permanent Hindu majority... ."
This is where Jinnah's recipe went disastrously wrong. The solution lay, not in aggravating the communal divide by his two-nation theory; but in the tactics of the Jinnah of old - mobilise both communities, espouse secular values and seek protection for the rights of all minorities as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had urged him to do.
Jinnah refashioned the League and made it a progressive body. He told the students at the AMU: "What the League has done is to set you free from the reactionary elements of Muslims and to create the opinion that those who play their selfish game are traitors. It has certainly freed you from that undesirable element of Maulvis and Maulanas. I am not speaking of Maulvis as a whole class. There are some of them who are as patriotic and sincere as any other but there is a section of them which is undesirable. Having freed ourselves from the clutches of the British government, the Congress, the reactionaries and so-called Maulvis, may I appeal to the youth to emancipate our women." Later he delivered "a warning to the landlords and capitalists who have flourished at our expense" (J. Ahmad; Vol. I; pages 39, 43 and 507).
What was his alternative, the Viceroy asked Jinnah. He replied on October 5, 1939, that "an escape from the impasse ... lay in the adoption of Partition". His article in Time and Tide of London on January 19, 1940, spoke of "two nations who must both share in the governance of their common motherland... so that the present enmities may cease and India may take its part amongst the great nations of the world" - as one nation. An identical contradiction was made in his speech of August 11, 1947: "a nation of 400 million". The Pakistan Resolution of March 23, 1940, did not refer to the two-nation theory that Jinnah now began to advocate with greater stridency. It envisaged in the last paragraph an interim centre prior to partition, which Ambedkar alone noted. Even 24 hours before its adoption, the draft provided for a limited centre (vide the writer's article, "The Partition of India"; Frontline; January 4, 2002).
In a real sense our leaders were a profoundly ignorant and arrogant lot. They failed the crucial test which Edmund Burke propounded in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents written in 1770. He held that "the temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first duty of a Statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn".
It is not any "interest" alone which prevents self-education. So does Hubris. Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru were men of colossal pride and vanity beyond the ordinary. Jinnah should have known that besides the inherent falsity of the poisonous concept, a nationalism based on religion degenerates into violent sectarianism. Gandhi acting as "the supreme leader" never seriously strove for conciliation in a plural society. Nehru denied the validity of the concept itself. Both spurned Jinnah. He painted himself into a corner from which he did not know how to escape.
We know in retrospect how and why things went wrong. Jinnah did not devise a formula for power-sharing in a united India. The Congress was adamant against sharing power with him. Nehru forgot the lessons of 1914 when socialists expected the workers to rise against their governments when they went to war. The workers turned out to be more chauvinistic than the "upper classes". So it was with communal feeling in a deeply religious society which Nehru least understood. Neither did Jinnah. He espoused the two-nation theory. While its consequences affect India, it holds his own state hostage.
We now find the problem of a "permanent majority" in all plural societies in Europe, Asia and Africa. On December 20, 1986, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's spokesman in Madras (now Chennai) said "two nations... coexist in one country". The LTTE does not propound sincerely a "viable alternative to Eelam", though.
Arend Lijphart's seminal work, Democracy in Plural Societies, published in 1982, propounded the concept of "consociational democracy". This would have been unthinkable to the Congress. It implied a national pact on power sharing. Safeguards are not enough. Empowerment is crucial.
From 1906 to 1936, the basis for discourse on the minority problem in India was a pact on safeguards for the minorities. What Jinnah said at the RTC in London on September 5, 1931, was conventional wisdom then: "The new Constitution should provide for reasonable guarantees to Muslims and if they are not provided, the new Constitution is sure to break down." Jawaharlal Nehru had no patience with anything that preceded his arrival on the scene of Indian politics. In a letter to Gandhi on September 11, 1931, he branded Jinnah's proposition as "narrow communalism".
Nehru's was a nationalism that denied the very fundamentals of Indian society, so far removed was he from the realities. Even Jinnah's moderation in 1931 was of no avail against Nehru's obdurate refusal to recognise that minorities were entitled to some rights. Nehru's was an absolutist secularism garnished with a socialism that he could only dimly perceive. A colossal intellectual failure all round produced a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions. Tragedy, it has been said, lies not so much in the conflict between good and evil as between one good force and another.
Like Nehru, Jinnah also shattered the established basis of discourse. Nehru did so on the minorities' rights, Jinnah on India's unity; Nehru in arrogant ignorance, Jinnah in arrogant reliance on his tactical skills. Jinnah's greatness lay in the pre-1940 record when he was a tireless conciliator, a real statesman. Both men were secularists. Therein lies the tragedy. Nehru harmed secularism by denying the legitimacy of minority rights. Jinnah ruined it by the two-nation theory.
The leaders drifted apart not only politically but also in personal estrangement. After 1937, Jinnah's rhetoric became abusive. Gandhi did not spare comments of a personal nature, either.
In the aftermath of Partition, rhetoric on both sides, Indian and Pakistani, verged on abuse. Pakistanis questioned Nehru's sincerity as a secularist. On the Indian side, a portrait of Jinnah came to be painted of a man rude, arrogant and bereft of humanity. Sarojini Naidu's was a portrait of a man of deep sensitivity and refinement: "a naive and eager humanity, an intuition quick and tender as a woman's, a humour gay and winning as a child's".
Unlike Chagla, Jinnah's other junior, Yusuf Meheralli, went to prison and courageously argued back with him. But he never denigrated Jinnah. He told an American reporter: "After half an hour's conversation with Jinnah one returns a devotee." Men as diverse as V.P. Menon, Frank Moraes, P.B. Gajendragadkar, A.S.R. Chari, Mohammed Yunus and M.O. Mathai have testified to Jinnah's warmth and impeccable good manners. He would argue patiently with the young.
The great short-story writer Sadat Hasan Manto interviewed Jinnah's chauffeur and wrote an essay, "Mera Saheb" (My Boss), which was published in a collection called Ganje Farishte (Bald Angels). An English translation was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India of February 10, 1985, by Mr. Ghazeli (a pen name, of course). It reveals a man intensely human and in pain. Whenever memories of his dead wife and estranged daughter possessed him, their clothes would be spread out on the carpet for a while. He would then walk to his bedroom, wiping tears. Memoirs of his ADC Ata Rabhani, I was the Quaid's ADC (Oxford University Press; 1996) reveal a clubbable gentleman.
But the caricature of "whiskey, pork and Savile Row suit" came to stay. No one mentioned two respected Congress presidents who were devotees of Bachus. One, a man of religion, was a notorious alcoholic; the other, a lawyer, was a notorious addict. In a state of inebriation he once kicked a bucket containing food; the guests fled. Jinnah's neighbour in New Delhi, Sir Sobha Singh, recalled that he always drank in strict moderation.
Remember, Jinnah was eagerly sought after to sit on committees. A good committee man must be a good listener with a talent for compromise. No one cares to ask why it was that while Jinnah got along famously with Tilak, Malaviya and Lajpat Rai, he had problems with Gandhi. "Lalaji had generally not much difficulty in working with M.A. Jinnah." They would walk into each other's room with ease "sometimes several times in the course of the same day... and go together to Malaviyaji to continue the discussion" (Lajpat Rai by Feroz Chand; Publications Division; page 499).
That people were surprised when Jinnah's stout defence of Bhagat Singh in the Assembly was brought to light recently shows how little he was understood. "The man who goes on a hunger strike has a soul. He is moved by that soul" and was prepared to die for the cause, Jinnah thundered. Few had as good a record on civil liberties. "I thoroughly endorse the principle, that while this measure should aim at those undesirable persons who indulge in wanton vilification or attack upon the religion of any particular class or upon the founders and prophets of a religion, we must also secure this very important and fundamental principle that those who are engaged in historical works, those who are engaged in bonafide and honest criticisms of a religion shall be protected" (CW, Vol. III, page 208). (Vide the writer's essay "Jinnah's commitment to liberalism"; Economic and Political Weekly; January 13, 1990.)
Yet, it is doubtful if, in the entire history of India's struggle for freedom, anyone else has been subjected to such a sustained, determined denigration and demonisation as Jinnah has been from 1940 to this day, by almost everyone - from the leaders at the very top to academics and journalists. In his Autobiography Nehru maliciously caricatured him as one who distrusted, if not disliked, the masses and attributed to him a suggestion, he "once privately" made, that "only matriculates should be taken into the Congress". No authority for this palpable falsehood is cited. Jinnah was not one to make such a remark privately which went against his entire outlook. Nehru wrote thus in 1936. Nearly two decades earlier Jinnah's strong assertion to the contrary was made publicly and in London on August 13, 1919, in his evidence before the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Government of India Bill.
The Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu was downright rude: "Question 3633: How long have you been in public life Mr. Jinnah? - (Answer) Since I was twenty-one (i.e. 1897). 3634: Have you ever known any proposal come from any government which met with your approval? - Oh, Yes... 3636: You must have felt very uncomfortable?... "
Major Ormsby "Q 3810: You speak really as an Indian Nationalist? - I do." Lord Islington asked: "Q 3884: You would say that there are people in India who though they may be not literate, have a sufficient interest in the welfare of the country to entitle them to a vote? - I think so, and I think they have a great deal of common sense... . I was astonished when I attended a meeting of mill hands in Bombay when I heard some of the speeches, and most of them were illiterates." Could such a man have made the suggestion Nehru attributed to him in 1936? Not surprisingly, in 1937 Jinnah converted the League into a mass organisation, pledged to complete independence.
Interestingly, the next day Jinnah took his wife Ruttie to the theatre. He had as a student performed in plays and even toyed with the idea of becoming an actor. When they returned home, a little after midnight Ruttie gave birth to their daughter Dina. It was on August 14-15, 1919, a devoted friend of both recorded (Ruttie Jinnah: The Story of a Great Friendship; Kanji Dwarkadas; page 18).
Addressing the League in 1924, Jinnah proudly noted that "the ordinary man in the street has found his political consciousness". He mentioned "Mahatma Gandhi" and threatened that if the British did not respond Indians should "as a last resort make the government by legislature impossible" and resort to "parliamentary obstruction and constitutional deadlocks". This was the language of a Congressman, not liberals like Sapru.
Most of Jinnah's friends were non-Muslim and they remembered him affectionately. Kanji Dwarkadas' two volumes of memoirs, India's Fight for Freedom and Ten Years to Freedom, are well documented. K.M. Munshi said "Jinnah warned Gandhiji not to encourage the fanaticism of Muslim religious leaders" in the Khilafat movement. He wrote in his Pilgrimage to Freedom (1968): "When Gandhiji forced Jinnah and his followers out of the Home Rule League and later the Congress, we all felt, with Jinnah that a movement of an unconstitutional nature, sponsored by Gandhiji with the tremendous influence he had acquired over the masses, would inevitably result in widespread violence, barring the progressive development of self-governing institutions based on a partnership between educated Hindus and Muslims. To generate coercive power in the masses would only provoke mass conflict between the two communities, as in fact it did. With his keen sense of realities Jinnah firmly set his face against any dialogue with Gandhiji on this point."
Even so Jinnah did not part company with him. Three other episodes followed - the Nehru Report, the RTC in London, and the Congress' arrogance of power (1937-39). He appealed to Gandhi in 1937, through B.G. Kher, to tackle the situation. Jinnah drew a blank.
Belatedly, on December 6, 1945, Gandhi confided to the Governor of Bengal, R.G. Casey: "Jinnah had told him that he (Gandhi) had ruined politics in India by dragging up a lot of unwholesome elements in Indian life and giving them political prominence, that it was a crime to mix up politics and religion the way he had done."
In 1936, even as he set out mobilising Muslim support, Jinnah refused to exploit the Shahidganj Mosque issue in Lahore and doused the fires. Jinnah was no Advani (vide the author's article "Ayodhya in reverse"; Frontline, February 16, 2000). The Governor of Punjab wrote: "I am greatly indebted to the efforts of Mr. Jinnah for this improvement and I wish to pay an unqualified tribute to the work he has done and is doing."
Pothan Joseph was handpicked by Jinnah to be Editor of the League's organ Dawn. He recalled that "there was no trace of pressure or censure and he was anxious to test his views by inviting criticism in the seclusion of his drawing room... the notion of his having been a common bully in argument is fantastic, for the man was a great listener... he was really a man with a heart, but determined never to be duped or see friends let down. He didn't care a hang about being misrepresented as Mir Jaffer or Judas Iscariot. No one could buy him nor would he allow himself to be betrayed by a kiss."
Amazingly, Jinnah's superb record as an MP remains yet to be studied - as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly he spoke on a variety of subjects; the Motor Vehicles and the Post Office Acts included. On March 10, 1930, he denounced the restrictive orders imposed on Vallabhbhai Patel and on January 22, 1935, the detention of Sarat Bose. He emulated the combative style of British MPs. The British, arrogant as ever, resented it. Indians, thin-skinned, took it personally.
Dewan Chaman Lall, a close friend for 30 years and a noted Congress MP, recalled Jinnah's efforts for settlement before and after 1940 and said in 1950: "He was a lovable, unsophisticated man, whatever may be said to the contrary. And he was unpurchasable."
Sarojini Naidu did not change her opinion of the man even after he began to advocate partition. She described him at a press conference in Madras on January 18, 1945, as the one incorruptible man in the whole of India. "I may not agree with him, but if there is one who cannot be bought by title, honour or position, it is Mr. Mohammed Ali Jinnah." Predictably Nehru was "upset" by her "excessively foolish speech" (SWJN: First Series; Vol. 13, page 546).
Surely, any decent biography, any honest appraisal must reckon with the entire record. No serious effort has been made to explain the change. Why did a man who wrote on March 17, 1938, that "it is the duty of every true nationalist, to whichever party or community he may belong, to help achieve a united front" against the British advocate the partition of India on March 23, 1940? Why, indeed?
The reason is not hard to seek. Jinnah was an Indian nationalist who did not believe that nationalism meant turning one's back on the rights of one's community. The Congress stipulated that, virtually. Its shabby record on Muslims in the Congress bears recalling; some day Jinnah lost his balance, abandoned Indian nationalism and inflicted on both his nation and his community harm of lasting consequences. Nehru, in contrast, stood by the secular ideal till his dying day.
In a moment of relaxation.
Pakistanis, on the other hand, wilfully shut their eyes to Jinnah's grave mistakes and canonise him. They overlook the damage inflicted on Pakistan itself, let alone the Muslims of India.
Jinnah's record from 1906 to 1940 does not obliterate the record of 1940-48 any more than Nehru's brave fight, against all odds, for secularism in India or Gandhi's conscious choice of martyrdom alters the record prior to 1947. Gandhi knew his life was in peril, but did not compromise and did not flinch one bit.
The record prior to 1940 only deepens the tragedy that befell Jinnah, and because of him, the India he loved and the community whose interests he sought to advance. Responsibility for the partition was not his exclusively; but his share was enormous.
The League's Resolution of March 23, 1940, brought partition into the realm of the possible. The collapse of the Cabinet Mission's Plan of May 16, 1946, for a united India dragged it into the abyss of inevitability. For this, Jinnah was not a bit responsible. That phase deserves a closer study than it has received.
Indians and Pakistanis must come to terms with Jinnah's record in its entirety. He was of a heroic mould but fell prey to bitterness and the poison that bitterness breeds. In the present age, some will be talking of his virtues; others of his failings alone. Posterity alone will do him justice.
Some day, the verdict of history on Jinnah will be written definitively. When it is written, that verdict will be in the terms Gibbon used for Belisarius: "His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection. He raised himself without a master or a rival and so inadequate were the arms committed to his hand, that his sole advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of his adversaries" (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Modern Library; Vol. II, page 240).
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2217/stories/20050826003003400.htm
A.G. NOORANI
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was an Indian nationalist who did not believe that nationalism meant turning one's back on the rights of one's community. The Congress stipulated that, virtually.
IGNORANT biographers have made much of the fact that at a reception in his honour on January 12, 1915, Gandhi asked Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was presiding, to speak in Gujarati; implying that he was embarrassed because he knew only English. But Gujarati and Cutchi were the only two languages Jinnah spoke perfectly; "beautifully", M.C. Chagla recalled. His devoted follower M.A.H. Ispahani put it delicately: "Even in this language [English] the meticulous don would have found some flaws" (The Jinnah I Knew ; page 107).
But, with the indifference to matters of substance that marks most writings on Jinnah, they overlook a more significant aspect to the relationship. Dr. Ajeet Jawed draws pointed attention to its implications. When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, Jinnah was a national leader towering above Motilal Nehru, Tej Bahadur Sapru and M.R. Jayakar. He was a colleague of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He performed a central role in the Congress, the Muslim League and the Home Rule League (HRL). Gandhi's demand was certainly presumptuous, if not insulting. But it revealed his pronounced tendency to establish his ascendancy. It worked with all others - save Jinnah. In his correspondence, he even advised Jinnah gratuitously about his wife. In October 1916, addressing a conference over which Jinnah presided, Gandhi referred to him as "a learned Muslim gentleman ... . an eminent lawyer and not only a member of the Legislature but also president of the biggest Islamic association in India" (Secular and Nationalist Jinnah; page 193).
Gandhi was "cutting Jinnah to size", as a sectarian leader. Jinnah was neither put out nor deflected from the course he followed. Chimanlal Setalvad and he remained two persons who never subordinated their will and judgment to him. On his part, till the end Jinnah treated Gandhi as a peer. He was not forgiven for this. Jinnah could not be "domesticated" like the Nehrus and Sardar Patel, nor co-opted.
Equally wrong is the impression that Jinnah was embittered because Gandhi, in effect, ousted him from two bodies - from the Home Rule League of which Jinnah was president, and from the Congress. About what happened in the former, we have Jayakar's detailed account in his memoirs, The Story of My Life (Vol. I, pages 316-318 and 404-5). In December 1919, Jinnah invited Gandhi to join the HRL as its president. So much for his ambition and ego. He overruled Jayakar's opposition, which was based on Gokhale's advice: "Be careful that India does not trust him on occasions where delicate negotiations have to be carried on with care and caution... . He has done wonderful work in South Africa... . but I fear that when the history of the negotiations... is written with impartial accuracy, it will be found that his actual achievements were not as meritorious as is popularly imagined."
The concluding part of two-part article.
Gandhi promised Jayakar that he would not change the HRL's character. He became its president in March 1920. Gandhi and Jinnah had cooperated at the Amritsar session of the Congress in November 1919. At the Calcutta Congress in September 1920, Gandhi unfolded his programme of non-cooperation. Jinnah said that while he was "fully convinced of non-cooperation" he found Gandhi's programme unsound. Gandhi was able to win over the doubters. He failed with Jinnah. Maulana Shaukat Ali tried to assault Jinnah, but was stopped by his friends. Gandhi took the battle to the HRL and presiding over its session on October 3, 1920, had its objectives changed in breach of his promises. It was a coup. Nineteen veterans resigned from the HRL, including Jinnah, Jayakar and K.M. Munshi (vide Jayakar, page 405 for the text of the letter). Gandhi flouted his promises to Jayakar, as he recorded.
On October 30, 1920, Jinnah wrote a letter to Gandhi which is of historic importance: "I thank you for your kind suggestion offering me `to take my share in the new life that has opened up before the country'. If by `new life' you mean your methods and your programme, I am afraid I cannot accept them; for I am fully convinced that it must lead to disaster. But the actual new life that has opened up before the country is that we are faced with a Government that pays no heed to the grievances, feelings and sentiments of the people; that our own countrymen are divided; the Moderate Party is still going wrong; that your methods have already caused split and division in almost every institution that you have approached hitherto, and in the public life of the country not only amongst Hindus and Muslims but between Hindus and Hindus and Muslims and Muslims and even between fathers and sons; people generally are desperate all over the country and your extreme programme has for the moment struck the imagination mostly of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means complete disorganisation and chaos. What the consequence of this may be, I shudder to contemplate; but I, for one, am convinced that the present policy of the Government is the primary cause of it all and unless that cause is removed, the effects must continue. I have no voice or power to remove the cause; but at the same time I do not wish my countrymen to be dragged to the brink of a precipice in order to be shattered. The only way for the Nationalists is to unite and work for a programme which is universally acceptable for the early attainment of complete responsible government. Such a programme cannot be dictated by any single individual, but must have the approval and support of all the prominent Nationalist leaders in the country; and to achieve this end I am sure my colleagues and myself shall continue to work."
This was not an intimation of parting of ways but a plea for unity against the British, differences on the methods notwithstanding.
With Jawaharlal Nehru at the residence of Dr. Rajendra Prasad.
At the Nagpur session in December 1920, Gandhi's capture of the Congress was complete. Only, it was a victory procured by a Faustian deal with the Ali brothers on Khilafat. Jinnah was in a minority of one. Decades later, Munshi lauded him for his courage. Ian Bryant Wells' comment is fair: "By taking up the Khilafat issue, he gained substantial support for his own political programme." Without the Ali brothers' support, he could not have pushed through his programme.
Before long, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) ordained that Congressmen should give 2,000 yards of hand-spun yarn every month. Jinnah was still not embittered. This is what he said on February 19, 1921: "Undoubtedly Mr. Gandhi was a great man and he had more regard for him than anyone else. But he did not believe in his programme and he could not support it" (The Collected Works of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah; edited by Syed Shatifuddin Pirzada; Vol. I; page 411. Emphasis added throughout). Jinnah attended the Congress' annual session in Ahmedabad in 1921. The yarn requirement was another matter.
Jinnah knew what was at stake. He accurately predicted that the movement would divide the communities and breed disrespect for law and order. He supported the Khilafat cause, opposed the Ali brothers' methods, and gave up once Turkey made its own decision. He told the League: "We are not going to rest content until we have attained the fullest political freedom in our own country. Mr. Gandhi has placed his programme of non-cooperation, supported by the authority of the Khilafat Conference, before the country... . The operations of this scheme will strike at the individual in each of you, and therefore it rests with you alone to measure your strength and to weigh the pros and cons of the question before you arrive at a decision. But once you have decided to march, let there be no retreat under any circumstances... . One degrading measure upon another, disappointment upon disappointment, and injury upon injury, can lead a people only to one end. It led Russia to Bolshevism. It has led Ireland to Sinn Feinism. May it lead India to freedom... I would still ask the Government not to drive the people of India to desperation, or else there is no other course left open to the people except to inaugurate the policy of non-cooperation, though not necessarily the programme of Mr. Gandhi."
He convened a meeting of representative Muslims in Delhi in March 1927, which put forth four major demands. One of these was for a one-third representation in the Central Legislature. A committee of the Congress, set up to examine their import, accepted the demands. Its members were Motilal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Maulana Mohammed Ali and Srinivasa Iyengar. The AICC accepted the committee's views with minor changes.
The Hindu Mahasabha led by Madan Mohan Malaviya opposed these demands, as did Muslims in some provinces. Opposition to the Simon Commission divided the League, but Jinnah supported the Congress in the campaign to boycott this all-White body. The alternative constitutional proposals adopted in the famous Nehru Report dashed Jinnah's hopes. The Report did not even refer to Jinnah's proposals, or to their acceptance by the Congress. Jinnah now put forth his 14-points. Their rejection and his personal humiliation at the All-Parties Convention are chapters in a story told several times over. (For a crisp, documented account vide Uma Kaura's classic Muslims, and Indian Nationalism; Manohar; 1977.)
Three myths must be laid to rest. First, it did not mark "a parting of ways". Jinnah said in his speech at the Convention: "We are all sons of the soil. We have to live together... If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends." The second myth is that soon after this Convention, "Jinnah found himself in the company of the Aga Khan" and other reactionaries. The Aga Khan convened an All-India Muslim Conference in Delhi on December 31, 1928, around the same time as the All-Parties Convention on the Nehru Report in Calcutta. Wolpert `records' how Jinnah came late, looked around and what he wore. It is a fabrication. While the Ali brothers and even radicals like the Leftist poet Maulana Hasrat Mohani participated, in sheer disgust at the outcome of the Calcutta Convention, Jinnah did not. He had rejected the invitation brusquely.
The third is about Motilal Nehru's attitude. His letter to Gandhi on August 14, 1929, reported his talks with the Hindu Mahasabha leaders: "We agreed that the Hindu opposition to the Muslim demands was to continue and even be stiffened up by the time the Convention was held." He concluded: "You will see that the stumbling block in our way is this question of one-third Muslim representatives and on this point even the most advanced Musalmans like Dr. M.A. Ansari, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Mr. T.A.K. Sherwani and others are all very strongly in favour of the concession. I would therefore ask you to direct your attention now to the Mahasabha leaving Ali Brothers and Mr. Jinnah to stew in their own juice." (The Indian Nationalist Movement 1885 - 1947; Select Documents; edited by B.N. Pandey; Macmillan; pages. 63-64). This document establishes that: the convention failed because of the Hindu Mahasabha's obduracy; Motilal Nehru cooperated with the Mahasabha leaders though he saw no harm in the demand; and the "advanced Musalmans" failed to stand up to the Congress leaders for the community's rights, which Jinnah did without falling in the Aga Khan's camp of pro-British reactionaries. This is what made Jinnah truly unique - clarity of thought, moral courage, and sturdy, uncompromising independence. These were the qualities that made him so formidable an adversary later and so tragic in his fall from the ideals he once espoused.
Jinnah continued to cooperate with Gandhi even after Nagpur. In December 1929, he went all the way to Sabarmati Ashram to discuss the Viceroy's announcement of a Round Table Conference. Documents published recently show Jinnah pleading with the Viceroy on his behalf and that of the Congress in 1929-30. "I am left with the impression that Mr. Gandhi himself is responsible," he wrote.
His wife Ruttie's death in her 30th year, on February 20, 1929, shook Jinnah to the core. He withdrew from society and became distant. To think that it changed his political outlook is to underestimate the man's commitment and to fly in the face of the record. Even in 1937, eight years later, he saw "no difference between the ideals of the Muslim League and of the Congress, the ideal being complete freedom for India".
On July 21, 1937, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Rajendra Prasad: "During the general election in U.P. [United Provinces] there was not any conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League." With characteristic Nehruvian consistency, he proposed "the winding up of the Muslim League group in the U.P. and its absorption in the Congress".
With daughter Dina, Liaquat Ali Khan and his wife.
In later years, Azad professing, as ever, superior wisdom pinned the blame on Nehru. It was Azad, not Nehru, who gave the surrender terms to Khaliquzzaman: the League's group "shall cease to function as a separate group" (for the text vide Indian Politics 1936-1942; by R. Coupland; Oxford University Press; page 111). Sapru's letter to B. Shiva Rao of The Hindu, dated November 16, 1940, referred to his experience of "party dictatorship or Congress Ministries wherever they have existed... . So long as these people were in power they treated everybody else with undisguised contempt". That experience led him to believe that the "Western type of majority rule in India will not do. And we shall have to come to some arrangement by which we may take along with us the minorities in matters of general interest" (Crusader for Self-Rule; Rima Hooja; Rawat Publishers; page 280). This is precisely what Jinnah came to hold and for the same reason - the Congress' refusal to share power.
He had received short shrift from Gandhi and the British at the Round table Conference in London and decided in desperation to settle down there. Returning to India, he arrived at a pact with Rajendra Prasad in 1934, in which he abandoned separate electorates. In the light of 1928, he insisted that the Congress secure the Mahasabha's assent as well (for the text vide Marguerite Dove's Forfeited Future; page 462). Nehru, however, went so far as to assert: "There are only two parties in the county, the Congress and the government." Jinnah retorted: "There is a third party in the country and that is the Muslims." If in 1928 Jayakar questioned Jinnah's credentials as a representative, in 1937 Nehru did likewise: "May I suggest to Mr. Jinnah that I come into greater touch with the Muslim masses than most of the members of the League." The Congress, at one remove Nehru himself, represented everybody and would lay down the terms for the future.
Jinnah accepted the challenge and built up through mass politics a representative capacity that stunned all. Nothing in his past should have surprised any. Men like Mohammed Iqbal and Maulana Mohammed Ali had come to regard him as the "only" Muslim leader. At the League's session in October 1937, Jinnah pleaded: "Let the Congress first bring all principal communities in the country and all principal classes of interest under its leadership." He had in mind, not merger, but "a pact", a concept he had "always believed in". But Nehru had no use for "pacts" between "handfuls of upper-class people". Jinnah, in his view, represented them alone. There really was no "minority problem". The people were concerned with bread and butter. Economic issues alone mattered.
Jinnah laid bare his heart in a much neglected speech at Aligarh in February 1938 in which he recalled the past: "At that time there was no pride in me and I used to beg from the Congress." The first "shock" came at the RTC; the next, in 1937. "The Musalmans were like the No Man's land. They were led by either the flunkeys of the British government or the camp-followers of the Congress... . The only hope for minorities is to organise themselves and secure a definite share in power to safeguard their rights and interests."
He had said in October 1937 that "all safeguards and settlements would be a scrap of paper unless they were backed up by power". In Britain the parties alternate in holding power. "But such is not the case in India. Here we have a permanent Hindu majority... ."
This is where Jinnah's recipe went disastrously wrong. The solution lay, not in aggravating the communal divide by his two-nation theory; but in the tactics of the Jinnah of old - mobilise both communities, espouse secular values and seek protection for the rights of all minorities as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had urged him to do.
Jinnah refashioned the League and made it a progressive body. He told the students at the AMU: "What the League has done is to set you free from the reactionary elements of Muslims and to create the opinion that those who play their selfish game are traitors. It has certainly freed you from that undesirable element of Maulvis and Maulanas. I am not speaking of Maulvis as a whole class. There are some of them who are as patriotic and sincere as any other but there is a section of them which is undesirable. Having freed ourselves from the clutches of the British government, the Congress, the reactionaries and so-called Maulvis, may I appeal to the youth to emancipate our women." Later he delivered "a warning to the landlords and capitalists who have flourished at our expense" (J. Ahmad; Vol. I; pages 39, 43 and 507).
What was his alternative, the Viceroy asked Jinnah. He replied on October 5, 1939, that "an escape from the impasse ... lay in the adoption of Partition". His article in Time and Tide of London on January 19, 1940, spoke of "two nations who must both share in the governance of their common motherland... so that the present enmities may cease and India may take its part amongst the great nations of the world" - as one nation. An identical contradiction was made in his speech of August 11, 1947: "a nation of 400 million". The Pakistan Resolution of March 23, 1940, did not refer to the two-nation theory that Jinnah now began to advocate with greater stridency. It envisaged in the last paragraph an interim centre prior to partition, which Ambedkar alone noted. Even 24 hours before its adoption, the draft provided for a limited centre (vide the writer's article, "The Partition of India"; Frontline; January 4, 2002).
In a real sense our leaders were a profoundly ignorant and arrogant lot. They failed the crucial test which Edmund Burke propounded in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents written in 1770. He held that "the temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first duty of a Statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn".
It is not any "interest" alone which prevents self-education. So does Hubris. Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru were men of colossal pride and vanity beyond the ordinary. Jinnah should have known that besides the inherent falsity of the poisonous concept, a nationalism based on religion degenerates into violent sectarianism. Gandhi acting as "the supreme leader" never seriously strove for conciliation in a plural society. Nehru denied the validity of the concept itself. Both spurned Jinnah. He painted himself into a corner from which he did not know how to escape.
We know in retrospect how and why things went wrong. Jinnah did not devise a formula for power-sharing in a united India. The Congress was adamant against sharing power with him. Nehru forgot the lessons of 1914 when socialists expected the workers to rise against their governments when they went to war. The workers turned out to be more chauvinistic than the "upper classes". So it was with communal feeling in a deeply religious society which Nehru least understood. Neither did Jinnah. He espoused the two-nation theory. While its consequences affect India, it holds his own state hostage.
We now find the problem of a "permanent majority" in all plural societies in Europe, Asia and Africa. On December 20, 1986, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's spokesman in Madras (now Chennai) said "two nations... coexist in one country". The LTTE does not propound sincerely a "viable alternative to Eelam", though.
Arend Lijphart's seminal work, Democracy in Plural Societies, published in 1982, propounded the concept of "consociational democracy". This would have been unthinkable to the Congress. It implied a national pact on power sharing. Safeguards are not enough. Empowerment is crucial.
From 1906 to 1936, the basis for discourse on the minority problem in India was a pact on safeguards for the minorities. What Jinnah said at the RTC in London on September 5, 1931, was conventional wisdom then: "The new Constitution should provide for reasonable guarantees to Muslims and if they are not provided, the new Constitution is sure to break down." Jawaharlal Nehru had no patience with anything that preceded his arrival on the scene of Indian politics. In a letter to Gandhi on September 11, 1931, he branded Jinnah's proposition as "narrow communalism".
Nehru's was a nationalism that denied the very fundamentals of Indian society, so far removed was he from the realities. Even Jinnah's moderation in 1931 was of no avail against Nehru's obdurate refusal to recognise that minorities were entitled to some rights. Nehru's was an absolutist secularism garnished with a socialism that he could only dimly perceive. A colossal intellectual failure all round produced a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions. Tragedy, it has been said, lies not so much in the conflict between good and evil as between one good force and another.
Like Nehru, Jinnah also shattered the established basis of discourse. Nehru did so on the minorities' rights, Jinnah on India's unity; Nehru in arrogant ignorance, Jinnah in arrogant reliance on his tactical skills. Jinnah's greatness lay in the pre-1940 record when he was a tireless conciliator, a real statesman. Both men were secularists. Therein lies the tragedy. Nehru harmed secularism by denying the legitimacy of minority rights. Jinnah ruined it by the two-nation theory.
The leaders drifted apart not only politically but also in personal estrangement. After 1937, Jinnah's rhetoric became abusive. Gandhi did not spare comments of a personal nature, either.
In the aftermath of Partition, rhetoric on both sides, Indian and Pakistani, verged on abuse. Pakistanis questioned Nehru's sincerity as a secularist. On the Indian side, a portrait of Jinnah came to be painted of a man rude, arrogant and bereft of humanity. Sarojini Naidu's was a portrait of a man of deep sensitivity and refinement: "a naive and eager humanity, an intuition quick and tender as a woman's, a humour gay and winning as a child's".
Unlike Chagla, Jinnah's other junior, Yusuf Meheralli, went to prison and courageously argued back with him. But he never denigrated Jinnah. He told an American reporter: "After half an hour's conversation with Jinnah one returns a devotee." Men as diverse as V.P. Menon, Frank Moraes, P.B. Gajendragadkar, A.S.R. Chari, Mohammed Yunus and M.O. Mathai have testified to Jinnah's warmth and impeccable good manners. He would argue patiently with the young.
The great short-story writer Sadat Hasan Manto interviewed Jinnah's chauffeur and wrote an essay, "Mera Saheb" (My Boss), which was published in a collection called Ganje Farishte (Bald Angels). An English translation was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India of February 10, 1985, by Mr. Ghazeli (a pen name, of course). It reveals a man intensely human and in pain. Whenever memories of his dead wife and estranged daughter possessed him, their clothes would be spread out on the carpet for a while. He would then walk to his bedroom, wiping tears. Memoirs of his ADC Ata Rabhani, I was the Quaid's ADC (Oxford University Press; 1996) reveal a clubbable gentleman.
But the caricature of "whiskey, pork and Savile Row suit" came to stay. No one mentioned two respected Congress presidents who were devotees of Bachus. One, a man of religion, was a notorious alcoholic; the other, a lawyer, was a notorious addict. In a state of inebriation he once kicked a bucket containing food; the guests fled. Jinnah's neighbour in New Delhi, Sir Sobha Singh, recalled that he always drank in strict moderation.
Remember, Jinnah was eagerly sought after to sit on committees. A good committee man must be a good listener with a talent for compromise. No one cares to ask why it was that while Jinnah got along famously with Tilak, Malaviya and Lajpat Rai, he had problems with Gandhi. "Lalaji had generally not much difficulty in working with M.A. Jinnah." They would walk into each other's room with ease "sometimes several times in the course of the same day... and go together to Malaviyaji to continue the discussion" (Lajpat Rai by Feroz Chand; Publications Division; page 499).
That people were surprised when Jinnah's stout defence of Bhagat Singh in the Assembly was brought to light recently shows how little he was understood. "The man who goes on a hunger strike has a soul. He is moved by that soul" and was prepared to die for the cause, Jinnah thundered. Few had as good a record on civil liberties. "I thoroughly endorse the principle, that while this measure should aim at those undesirable persons who indulge in wanton vilification or attack upon the religion of any particular class or upon the founders and prophets of a religion, we must also secure this very important and fundamental principle that those who are engaged in historical works, those who are engaged in bonafide and honest criticisms of a religion shall be protected" (CW, Vol. III, page 208). (Vide the writer's essay "Jinnah's commitment to liberalism"; Economic and Political Weekly; January 13, 1990.)
Yet, it is doubtful if, in the entire history of India's struggle for freedom, anyone else has been subjected to such a sustained, determined denigration and demonisation as Jinnah has been from 1940 to this day, by almost everyone - from the leaders at the very top to academics and journalists. In his Autobiography Nehru maliciously caricatured him as one who distrusted, if not disliked, the masses and attributed to him a suggestion, he "once privately" made, that "only matriculates should be taken into the Congress". No authority for this palpable falsehood is cited. Jinnah was not one to make such a remark privately which went against his entire outlook. Nehru wrote thus in 1936. Nearly two decades earlier Jinnah's strong assertion to the contrary was made publicly and in London on August 13, 1919, in his evidence before the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Government of India Bill.
The Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu was downright rude: "Question 3633: How long have you been in public life Mr. Jinnah? - (Answer) Since I was twenty-one (i.e. 1897). 3634: Have you ever known any proposal come from any government which met with your approval? - Oh, Yes... 3636: You must have felt very uncomfortable?... "
Major Ormsby "Q 3810: You speak really as an Indian Nationalist? - I do." Lord Islington asked: "Q 3884: You would say that there are people in India who though they may be not literate, have a sufficient interest in the welfare of the country to entitle them to a vote? - I think so, and I think they have a great deal of common sense... . I was astonished when I attended a meeting of mill hands in Bombay when I heard some of the speeches, and most of them were illiterates." Could such a man have made the suggestion Nehru attributed to him in 1936? Not surprisingly, in 1937 Jinnah converted the League into a mass organisation, pledged to complete independence.
Interestingly, the next day Jinnah took his wife Ruttie to the theatre. He had as a student performed in plays and even toyed with the idea of becoming an actor. When they returned home, a little after midnight Ruttie gave birth to their daughter Dina. It was on August 14-15, 1919, a devoted friend of both recorded (Ruttie Jinnah: The Story of a Great Friendship; Kanji Dwarkadas; page 18).
Addressing the League in 1924, Jinnah proudly noted that "the ordinary man in the street has found his political consciousness". He mentioned "Mahatma Gandhi" and threatened that if the British did not respond Indians should "as a last resort make the government by legislature impossible" and resort to "parliamentary obstruction and constitutional deadlocks". This was the language of a Congressman, not liberals like Sapru.
Most of Jinnah's friends were non-Muslim and they remembered him affectionately. Kanji Dwarkadas' two volumes of memoirs, India's Fight for Freedom and Ten Years to Freedom, are well documented. K.M. Munshi said "Jinnah warned Gandhiji not to encourage the fanaticism of Muslim religious leaders" in the Khilafat movement. He wrote in his Pilgrimage to Freedom (1968): "When Gandhiji forced Jinnah and his followers out of the Home Rule League and later the Congress, we all felt, with Jinnah that a movement of an unconstitutional nature, sponsored by Gandhiji with the tremendous influence he had acquired over the masses, would inevitably result in widespread violence, barring the progressive development of self-governing institutions based on a partnership between educated Hindus and Muslims. To generate coercive power in the masses would only provoke mass conflict between the two communities, as in fact it did. With his keen sense of realities Jinnah firmly set his face against any dialogue with Gandhiji on this point."
Even so Jinnah did not part company with him. Three other episodes followed - the Nehru Report, the RTC in London, and the Congress' arrogance of power (1937-39). He appealed to Gandhi in 1937, through B.G. Kher, to tackle the situation. Jinnah drew a blank.
Belatedly, on December 6, 1945, Gandhi confided to the Governor of Bengal, R.G. Casey: "Jinnah had told him that he (Gandhi) had ruined politics in India by dragging up a lot of unwholesome elements in Indian life and giving them political prominence, that it was a crime to mix up politics and religion the way he had done."
In 1936, even as he set out mobilising Muslim support, Jinnah refused to exploit the Shahidganj Mosque issue in Lahore and doused the fires. Jinnah was no Advani (vide the author's article "Ayodhya in reverse"; Frontline, February 16, 2000). The Governor of Punjab wrote: "I am greatly indebted to the efforts of Mr. Jinnah for this improvement and I wish to pay an unqualified tribute to the work he has done and is doing."
Pothan Joseph was handpicked by Jinnah to be Editor of the League's organ Dawn. He recalled that "there was no trace of pressure or censure and he was anxious to test his views by inviting criticism in the seclusion of his drawing room... the notion of his having been a common bully in argument is fantastic, for the man was a great listener... he was really a man with a heart, but determined never to be duped or see friends let down. He didn't care a hang about being misrepresented as Mir Jaffer or Judas Iscariot. No one could buy him nor would he allow himself to be betrayed by a kiss."
Amazingly, Jinnah's superb record as an MP remains yet to be studied - as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly he spoke on a variety of subjects; the Motor Vehicles and the Post Office Acts included. On March 10, 1930, he denounced the restrictive orders imposed on Vallabhbhai Patel and on January 22, 1935, the detention of Sarat Bose. He emulated the combative style of British MPs. The British, arrogant as ever, resented it. Indians, thin-skinned, took it personally.
Dewan Chaman Lall, a close friend for 30 years and a noted Congress MP, recalled Jinnah's efforts for settlement before and after 1940 and said in 1950: "He was a lovable, unsophisticated man, whatever may be said to the contrary. And he was unpurchasable."
Sarojini Naidu did not change her opinion of the man even after he began to advocate partition. She described him at a press conference in Madras on January 18, 1945, as the one incorruptible man in the whole of India. "I may not agree with him, but if there is one who cannot be bought by title, honour or position, it is Mr. Mohammed Ali Jinnah." Predictably Nehru was "upset" by her "excessively foolish speech" (SWJN: First Series; Vol. 13, page 546).
Surely, any decent biography, any honest appraisal must reckon with the entire record. No serious effort has been made to explain the change. Why did a man who wrote on March 17, 1938, that "it is the duty of every true nationalist, to whichever party or community he may belong, to help achieve a united front" against the British advocate the partition of India on March 23, 1940? Why, indeed?
The reason is not hard to seek. Jinnah was an Indian nationalist who did not believe that nationalism meant turning one's back on the rights of one's community. The Congress stipulated that, virtually. Its shabby record on Muslims in the Congress bears recalling; some day Jinnah lost his balance, abandoned Indian nationalism and inflicted on both his nation and his community harm of lasting consequences. Nehru, in contrast, stood by the secular ideal till his dying day.
In a moment of relaxation.
Pakistanis, on the other hand, wilfully shut their eyes to Jinnah's grave mistakes and canonise him. They overlook the damage inflicted on Pakistan itself, let alone the Muslims of India.
Jinnah's record from 1906 to 1940 does not obliterate the record of 1940-48 any more than Nehru's brave fight, against all odds, for secularism in India or Gandhi's conscious choice of martyrdom alters the record prior to 1947. Gandhi knew his life was in peril, but did not compromise and did not flinch one bit.
The record prior to 1940 only deepens the tragedy that befell Jinnah, and because of him, the India he loved and the community whose interests he sought to advance. Responsibility for the partition was not his exclusively; but his share was enormous.
The League's Resolution of March 23, 1940, brought partition into the realm of the possible. The collapse of the Cabinet Mission's Plan of May 16, 1946, for a united India dragged it into the abyss of inevitability. For this, Jinnah was not a bit responsible. That phase deserves a closer study than it has received.
Indians and Pakistanis must come to terms with Jinnah's record in its entirety. He was of a heroic mould but fell prey to bitterness and the poison that bitterness breeds. In the present age, some will be talking of his virtues; others of his failings alone. Posterity alone will do him justice.
Some day, the verdict of history on Jinnah will be written definitively. When it is written, that verdict will be in the terms Gibbon used for Belisarius: "His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection. He raised himself without a master or a rival and so inadequate were the arms committed to his hand, that his sole advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of his adversaries" (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Modern Library; Vol. II, page 240).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)