Three
Leaders
By Dr. Khan Dawood L. Khan
Chicago, IL
This
is a comment on 'Three Leaders' by Dr. Zulfiqar
Rana published in Pakistan Link, April 14. The
author was commenting on the March 23 column (“What
Nobodies Know”) by Peggy Noonan in the Wall
St. Journal. What Noonan, a WSJ contributing editor
(NOT a New York Times columnist, as the author
indicated) presented in her column revolved around
this: “The minute you rise to govern you
become another step removed from the lives of
those you govern. Which means you become removed
from reality.” Not exactly a revelation!
To illustrate what she called the “lessons
in the dangers of elitist detachment” (her
column’s sub-title), she brought up the
post-partition violence in India -- described
in “Freedom at Midnight,” a 30-year
old book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
she had been reading -- and war in Iraq. She then
pointed to what she thought these two events share:
Those involved in India's partition (Mountbatten,
Nehru and Jinnah) were just as unprepared for
the resulting violence 60 years ago as the US
planners have been for the violent quagmire in
Iraq now. She saw the parallel this way: “[T]hose
in positions of authority in Washington were taken
aback by and not prepared for the strength and
durability of the insurgency in Iraq. Obviously
India in 1947 is not Iraq in 2006. But there is
a lesson both have in common.” Referring
to the lack of foresight in both Indian and US
groups, she said: “They didn't know.”
True, the results in these two countries were
far more severe than any of them could have imagined,
but we cannot ignore that in one case a colonial
power was terminating its rule after partitioning
the subcontinent to transfer power to two opposing
groups, while in the other a superpower that doesn’t
consider itself an occupying force, using its
enormous power and technology, is planning to
stay for some indefinite period to see a democracy
established in a country held together, despite
its violently fractious groups.
She was not critical of just the Indian leaders,
as the PL writer implies, but of US leaders also.
She also readily admits that “[t]his is
a problem with government and governing bodies
-- with the White House, Downing Street, with
State Department specialists, and the Council
on Foreign Relations, and West Point, too. It
is not so much a matter of fault as it is structural.”
She generalizes further: “Elites become
detached, and governments are composed of elites.”
No novel thoughts or insight here, either!
She seems quite impressed by Mountbatten (“a
decisive and dynamic man, a great one I think”),
but seemed to have misinterpreted his assignment.
He could NOT “have resisted partition,”
but he could have “slowed it” a bit:
Prime Minister Attlee’s mandate to him was
a smooth disentanglement of Britain from India,
by no later than June 1948. Attlee and his Labor
Party were committed, even before the election
they won, to granting independence to India. Shortly
after becoming the Viceroy (February 1947), Mountbatten
realized that no rapprochement between the Congress
and Muslim League was possible, and by the summer,
preparations were underway for partitioning the
country. In what’s referred to as his “unseemly
haste” and other megalomaniac preferences,
Mountabatten even failed to achieve one of the
key components of his mandate: a military alliance
with either India and Pakistan (only Sri Lanka/Ceylon
agreed to have British bases on its land). True,
he could have “lessened [partition’s]
impact (he claims he tried to and was surprised
at what did happen), but did NOT. His biographer
Philip Ziegler cites evidence that Mountbatten
in fact rejected military intelligence reports
from Field Marshall Auchinlek (British Commander-in-Chief
in India) that violence, already escalating for
a year, would worsen; he even rejected the Commander's
recommendation for leaving British troops behind
after independence as a deterrent. Auchinlek and
senior military personnel were also highly critical
of Mountbatten and his egocentric and self-serving
ways.
Other than Jinnah and his doctor, no one knew
or suspected in 1946/47 (except perhaps Wavell,
immediate predecessor to Mountbatten) that Jinnah
was that sick and was to die soon. Noonan says,
“Within a year of independence, he [Jinnah]
was dead.” No to quibble, he actually died
on September 11, 1948, which was little more than
a year AFTER the independence, and two-plus months
after the Attlee deadline (June 1948). In any
case, it is idle speculation to worry about what
could have happened had others deliberated and
tried to prolong the negotiations with that eventuality
in mind (also remember, Gandhi died 30 January
1948, or about 8 months before Jinnah).
Actually, according to Ayesha Jalal (1985), 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.”
Jinnah had doubts till the final months if he
would get what he wanted. We also know that to
avoid partition Gandhi had even recommended to
Mountbatten that Jinnah be the first PM of independent
India, but that was strongly opposed by Nehru
and Patel, and even Mountbatten thought it would
not fly and therefore the matter was never brought
to Jinnah.
I am puzzled, however, by this comment by PL writer:
“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 tacit plan.”
The “plan” about partition was anything
but “tacit.” As to being “power
hungry,” almost every single leader was
(except perhaps Gandhi) then, as now. The lines
were drawn, every one had ego, Mountbatten's being
the biggest.
On India’s partition, there are far more
recent and exhaustive books that Noonan could
have reviewed. Some were cited in my own five-part
article on ‘Partition Players’ Politics’,
published by Pakistan Link (September 9 –
October 14, 2005): http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/Sep05/09/02.HTM
(Part I; Sept 9) and http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/Oct
05/14/03.HTM (Part V; October 14; includes 14
references).
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