Author’s Views: Narrating the proceedings of the AICC meeting on 14-15 June 1947, quoting Lohia the author says that Gandhi wanted the Congress party to honour the commitments made by its leaders namely Nehru and Patel. He wanted the Congress to accept the principle of partition and having done that should make a declaration regarding its execution. Once the Congress and the Muslim League had signified the acceptance of partition, the British Government and the Viceroy should be told to step aside and the partitioning of the country should be carried out jointly by the Congress and the Muslim League with no intervention from a third party.
The author concludes that though so much has been said about Gandhi, the saint was at the same time a tactician; the above fine and cunning proposal as per author’s knowledge has not been put on record.
Comments: The adjective ‘Fine’ for Gandhi’s advice to the Congress Leaders is very apt but ‘Cunning’ - against whom? From the time of the First RTC (and even before that) Gandhi had times with out number in his speeches, writings, in conferences had driven only this point, ie. “ Leave us alone and get out, we will solve our problems and differences ourselves.” He was even prepared to accept if the nation was embroiled by anarchy and blood shed. But this appeal of his found favour neither with the British nor with the Muslim League. There is nothing cunning in his proposal. He always felt that if two brothers of the family fight and go their separate ways they would still continue to be brothers and there should be no need for a third party to poke its nose. But this approach of Gandhi was never ever agreed to by the Muslim League. They felt the British, who have enslaved the country and exploited its resources for the last 200 years would be more dependable than their own fellow countrymen.
To quote from Gandhi’s speech on 8th August 1942: “ many friends have come and asked me to agree to it (Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan) for the time being to placate Mr. Jinnah, disarm his suspicions and to see how he reacts to it. But I cannot be party to a course of action with a false promise. At any rate, it is not my method…” To impute that Gandhi had cunning proposal is a gross injustice.
The more logical reasoning for acceptance of the proposal was given by Nehru (Page 457): “Even if we get freedom for India (undivided), with that background, it would be very weak India; that is a federal India with far too much power in the federating units. A larger India would have constant troubles, constant disintegrating pulls. And also the fact that we saw no other way of getting our freedom – in the near future, I mean.” It is a historical fact that right from the time of the Romans and Greeks and then the Mouryas and later the Moguls, leaving the powers to federated units and having a weak central leadership invariably resulted in the disintegration of their respective empires. History would have by now repeated itself and the balkanization of the sub-continent would have become a reality. Nehru further said “ if others do not want to be in it, how can we and why should we force them to be in it?” Another important reason was the wanton killings that were going on in Punjab, which Nehru wanted to bring to an early end.
No comments:
Post a Comment