Three
Leaders
By Zulfiqar Rana, MD, MPH
Mobile, AL
Peggy Noonan is a well-established columnist
of the NYT. I guess this gives her instant credibility
to say anything and everything with conviction
and confidence. However, I find it hard to believe
that she has the background to comment on personalities
and events that took place more than 50years ago
half the world away. She uses the Sub-continent
as a case study for Iraq.
She specifically dissects the political lives
of Nehru, Mountbatten and Jinnah and comes up
with the conclusion that despite their charisma
these personalities were not in touch with the
masses. She claims that they failed to see the
bloodshed that took place as soon as the Union
Jack was lowered. She then analyses the three
personalities closely. For Mountbatten she has
this to say:
"The tough, preternaturally self-confident
Mountbatten had been sent by London to oversee
independence, and he was bloody well going to
do it. He was Mountbatten of Burma after all,
and he'd first toured India with his cousin David,
the future Edward VIII. Imperialism was over,
Mountbatten was given his charge: get Britain
out with grace and dignity, part as friends, preserve
the special ties between London and Delhi. For
Mountbatten, speed was everything. He thought
the sectarian violence that had begun to crop
up as independence neared would be quelled by
the transfer of power and partition."
Nehru fares no better either:
"For Nehru, the mission was to secure a free
and democratic India. Only then would he realize
his personal destiny, to become its first Prime
Minister and impose upon its masses the Fabian
socialism that had so impressed him when, as a
young Indian outsider at Cambridge, he was dazzled
by London's salons. (Those salons damaged him
more than any British prison ever did.)"
As far as Jinnah is concerned he is painted with
the same brush by her monotone analysis:
"Jinnah sought to create the world's biggest
Muslim nation, with him as head. On the day of
independence, Pakistan was littered not by little
flags but by pictures of one man: him. He ate
bacon with his eggs, liked whiskey at night, and
seems never to have had a personal religious impulse
he could not squelch. But he too had a destiny,
and if the Subcontinent had to be rent for him
to achieve it, then so be it."
So the three men sort of belonged to the same
ambitious and merciless cabal and were willing
to step on a few skulls to get to the top. What
I find hard to believe is that Jinnah, who knew
that he was dying from TB, would be so power hungry
to go along with this tacit plan.
She takes these mental and structural distances
as a warning sign in Iraq as well – something
that will unleash the same scale of bloodshed
as in the Sub-continent many years ago.
Gandhi makes a short poignant appearance as a
man "who knew their hearts". She notes:
"He had given his life for a free and independent
India but opposed partition and feared the immediate
chaos it would bring. He spent the eve of Independence
mourning. Six months later he was dead."
However, I find it equally ironic that it was
a Hindu’s bullet and not a Muslim’s
that killed him. Maybe he miscalculated the popular
sentiment most of all.
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