Partition Players’ Politics: IV
By Dr. Khan Dawood L. Khan
Chicago, IL

Gandhi’s total pacifism in face of WWII (and Hitler’s atrocities) was not fully shared by the Congress party, although the party had also refused to support the British in the war. Gandhi wrote to the Congress Working committee on their differences: “For Congress, non-violence has always been a matter of policy; for me, it is a creed… Since propagation of non-violence is the mission of my life, I must pursue it in all weathers.” Since Jinnah and the League supported the British in the war, their position received a distinct boost, while the Congress remained mired in explanations.
Jinnah had called for ‘Direct Action’ (16 August 1946), but that was after the WWII (not during it). That call came just one year to the date before partition – when all else had failed. While he was in London, for meetings with the Attlee government, Jinnah publicly declared that he “shared” Churchill’s apprehensions “regarding the possibility of civil war and riots in India.”
This was interpreted as a warning – Pakistan or civil war. Congress had been demanding “Quit India” for four years; the timing of this demand (8 August 1942) angered the Churchill government, because then Japan had been threatening an attack on India. The Congress party wanted the British troops to fight the Japanese and defend, but must leave immediately thereafter. The British quelled the disturbances that followed the “Quit India” movement by arresting Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee the next day. Jinnah opposed the Congress call-to-action because, to him, it was “to coerce the British Government to surrender to a Congress Raj” while the British, under direct German attack, were preoccupied with WWII.
Ayesha Jalal (‘The Sole Spokesman’), quoted in ‘The Oxford History of British Empire’, tells us that “Jinnah might have settled for something less than a separate state provided he had parity at the center, which the Congress would never have accepted.” Apart from Jinnah and his doctors, no one knew that the aging and gaunt Muslim, an inveterate smoker, had serious health problems. Wavell (a former Viceroy) thought it was pleurisy, but had the British or others known in 1946-47 how serious his ailment (TB or lung cancer) really was, they could have easily waited it out by extending the process. Had this been the case, there would have been no partition and no Pakistan 58 years ago.
Gandhi was serious about the Congress forming a government with the Muslim League, and even advised Mountbatten, in their very first meeting, to invite Jinnah, as the first Prime Minister of undivided India. To the Viceroy, the suggestion was “undoubtedly mad,” and he never even raised it with Jinnah. It was roundly ridiculed and denounced, and vehemently by both the emotional and charismatic, Nehru and the pragmatist and nationalist, Vallabhai Patel, the future PM and Home Minister, respectively. Patel was most responsible for bringing the princely states after partition, by force or negotiations, into the India’s fold. Gandhi was often criticized by ultraconservative Hindus for making friendly overtures toward Muslims, in general, and a fellow Gujrati, “Jinnah bhai,” in particular. And, when he began reciting verses from the Qur’an in this addresses and temples, he was ridiculed as “Mohammed Gandhi” and “Slave of Jinnah” and even accused as a “traitor.” The opposition to his ways became so intense that a radical Hindu nationalist killed him (30 January 1948), just months after the partition.
Gandhi was a bundle of contradictions, both in his personal life and political views. His ‘autobiography’ mentions quite a few instances. Others are brutally pointed out by V. S. Naipaul in “India: A Wounded Civilization” and “An Area of Darkness,” and in other articles including Grenier (above), David Lewis Schaefer (‘What did Gandhi do ? One Sided Pacifist’, April 2003) and other sources (in Parts I & II of this article). Gandhi would start something with major plans (a protest, a fast, etc) but would stop (or change) it suddenly, based on the dictates of his ‘inner voice’; a pattern that would confuse and frustrate many of his own supporters. His ‘holy poverty’ and self-sufficiency lifestyle was financially supported by billionaire industrialist, Birla. Sarojini Naidu (the poet) once joked that it costs a fortune “to keep Gandhi living in poverty.” Publicly indifferent to the image, he insisted on going over his secretaries’ records of events and ‘choosing the version which he liked best’ because, he said: “I want only one gospel in my life.”
Gandhi spent many hours with Richard Casey (British Governor of Bengal), discussing many things from his spinning and weaving to Casey’s irrigation schemes. This is how Casey summarized these discussions: “He [Gandhi] is credited by many of his followers with being a saint and a statesman. While I [Casey] have a considerable regard for him [Gandhi], I do not believe that he is either. What claim has he to statesmanship? There is a simple criterion for determining whether a man is a statesman; the passage of time should show that he was right in his major political decisions three times out of four. I do not think Mr. Gandhi can claim this record … Perhaps one might say that amongst saints he is a statesman and amongst statesmen, a saint.”
Quite different from Gandhi was the man who was to become the PM of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru. He had a socialist view of nationhood, different from Gandhi’s ‘orientalist’-religious view, which called on Indians to build a new society, ‘Ram Rajya’ (the rule of Hindu God, or of one God for all).
Nehru was a polished Westernized socialist of a mold different from other Indian politicians: emotional, complex, liberal and not really a pragmatist like Vallabhai Patel, the Home Minister.
In addition to “Jinnah’s will,” it was “Britain’s willingness” that writers like Sashi Tharoor and others think “that created Pakistan, not Nehru’s willfulness.” There may be some support for the view but I doubt if Nehru’s role could be so conveniently relegated. Previous parts to this article included several instances in the partition process where Nehru’s actions did a lot instead to damage his dream of keeping India united.
Nehru was well-versed in history and aware of reactions to the British Empire and its rule. As a student, he visited Dublin and thought Sinn Fein (‘Ourselves Alone’) founded in 1907 was “a most interesting movement.” He wrote about it (7 November, 1907) to his father and a known Congress leader, Motilal, “Their policy is not to beg for favors but to wrest them. They do not want to fight England by arms but ‘to ignore her, boycott her and quietly assume the administration of Irish affairs … They say that if its policy is adopted by the bulk of the country, English rule will be thing of the past.” That was when Gandhi was still in South Africa. Since then, the southern 26 counties of Ireland became a Republic (1922), but the remaining 6 counties (Northern Ireland) have been under British control, as the entire Ireland has been since the Norman invasion of late 12th century. The basis of this centuries-long conflict has been not only religious (Catholic vs Protestants) but also the occupied Irish/Gaelic vs the occupiers (Normans/English).
There are some very obvious parallels to the Indian situation, only the Irish-English conflict is longer, by several centuries, than India-Britain or India’s Hindu-Muslim. Since about the mid-1960’s till mid-90’s, an ultra-radical Irish catholic group, IRA, had been in violent religious conflict with their own fellow Irish Protestants
Like Gandhi, Nehru also wanted to keep India united, but one cannot ignore his own consistency in this. He was the person responsible for sowing the seeds of linguistic and regional conflicts that continued for long (and some still do in certain areas and on certain matters): the States’ Reorganization on linguistic basis (1950’s), not too long after Independence.
He was a Gandhi follower, and believed in ‘non-violence’ and preached it in all international situations, but during the Hindu-Muslim riots in Bihar, he even wanted to use airplane to attack the fighting groups (Gandhi criticized it as the British way); he was also involved (rightly or not) in war with China and Pakistan. When, after vacillating for years, he invaded Goa (a Portugese colony, south of Mumbai) and took it over (within 26 hours), it seems President Kennedy (one of Nehru’s admirers but irked at his frequent criticism) told the Indian ambassador in Washington, DC: “India might now consider delivering fewer self-righteous sermons on non-violence.” Nehru’s last visit to the US (November 1961) was, according to President Kennedy, “the worst state visit he had suffered.” For what was generally perceived in the West as his self-righteous hypocrisy in international affairs, Nehru was often ridiculed and satirized – even in a poem (‘The Pandit’) By Ogden Nash:
Just how shall we define a Pandit?/ It’s not a panda or a bandit./ But rather a Pandora’s box / of sophistry and paradox. / Though Oxforf [sic] gave it a degree/ it maintains its neutrality / by quietly hating General Clive / as hard as if he were alive. / On weighty international questions / it’s far more Christian than most Christians ;/ It’s ever eager, being meek/ to turn someone else’s cheek./Oft has it said all men are brothers, / and set that standard up for others,/ yet as it spoke it gerrymandered / proclaiming its private Pakistandard. / The neutral Pandit walks alone, / and if abroad, it casts a stone, It walks impartial to the last, / ready at time to stone a caste. / Abandon I for now the pandit, / I fear I do not understand it. (To be continued)



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