Lets Kill Gandhi

by Gandhi, Tushar A.

  'I told the Parliamentary delegation that heralded the Cabinet Mission and the Cabinet Mission itself that they had to choose between the two parties or even three. They were doomed to fail, if they tried to please all, holding them all to be in the right. I had hoped that you were bravely and honestly trying to extricate yourself from the impossible position. But my eyes were opened when, if I understood you correctly, you said that Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and the League members were equally in the right with the Congress members and that possibly Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah was more so. I suggested that this was not humanly possible. One must be wholly right in the comparative sense. You have to make your choice at this very critical stage in the history of this country. If you think that Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah is on the whole more correct and more responsible than the Congress, you should choose the League as your advisers and in all matters be frankly and openly guided by them.

  'You threw out a hint that Quaid-i-Azam might not be able to let you quit even by 15th August especially if Congress members did not adopt a helpful attitude. This was for me a startling statement. I pointed the initial mistake of the British being party to splitting India into two. It is not possible to undo the mistake. But I hold that it is quite possible and necessary not to put a premium upon the mistake. This does not in any way impinge upon the very admirable doctrine of fair play. Fair play demands that I do not help the mistaken party to fancy that the mistake was no mistake but a belated and only partial discharge of an obligation.

  'You startled me by telling me that, if the partition had not been made during British occupation, the Hindus being the major party would have never allowed partition and held the Muslims by force under subjection. I told you that this was a grave mistake. The question of numbers was totally untenable in this connection. I cited the classic example of less then one hundred thousand British soldiers holding India under utter subjection. You saw no analogy between the two instances. I suggested the difference was only one of degree.

  'I place the following for you consideration:

  (a) The Congress has solemnly declared that it would not hold by force any Province within the Union.

  (b) It is physically impossible for millions of caste ridden Hindus to hold well-knit though fewer millions of Muslims under subjection by force.

  (c) It must not be forgotten that Muslim dynasties have progressively subjected India by exactly the same means as the English conquerors later did.

  (d) Already there has been a movement to win over to the Muslim side the so-called scheduled classes and the so-called aboriginal races.

  (e) The caste Hindus who are the bugbear are, it can be shown conclusively, a hopeless minority Of these the armed Rajputs are not yet nationalists as a class. The Brahmins and the Banias are still untrained in the use of arms. Their supremacy, where it exists, is purely moral. The Shudras count, I am sorry, more as schedule class than anything else. That such Hindu society by reason of its mere superiority in numbers can crush millions of Muslims is an astounding myth.

  'This should show you why, even if I am alone, I swear by nonviolence and truth together standing for the highest order of courage before which the atom bomb pales into insignificance, not to say of a fleet of dreadnaughts.

  'I have not shown this to any of my friends.'

  Mountbatten replied the very same day: 'I am glad you wrote because after reading your letter, I feel that almost from first to last I must have failed to make clear to you my meaning. I am glad that you have not shown your letter to others, since I should be very sorry that views should be attributed to me which I did not, in fact, express. I hope you will agree to discuss these matters again at our next meeting.' Unfortunately, there are no records to show that the two ever discussed these matters again. The fact remains that, for all his efforts, Gandhi failed to influence anyone to believe in what he felt was the right thing to do for his country.

  During the last week of June and beginning of July the confrontation between the Congress and League ministers came to a boil. The situation became so volatile that, in exasperation, all the Congress ministers threatened to walk out of the government. The question of the continuation of the League ministers in the interim government could no longer be postponed. Uncharacteristically, it was Jinnah who solved the problem, rather than, as usual, creating one. He declared that he himself would be the governor general of Pakistan. Mountbatten now felt himself free to act. Jinnah again made the surrender of portfolios held by the League ministers a matter of prestige, 'It would be an insult for the League Ministers to be asked to surrender their portfolios. The League would not tolerate such humiliation'. When Mountbatten suggested a formula which would satisfy everyone, Jinnah threatened to denounce as 'illegal' under the 1935 Government of India Act the viceroy's plans to reconstitute the interim government . Legal opinion obtained from London seemed to uphold Jinnah's objections. Mountbatten earned a respite. He could show that he had made efforts and he could also justify Jinnah's bullying tactics by citing legal validity. This lasted till the third week of July.

  On 19 July 1947 the Indian Independence Bill was passed by the British Parliament and royal assent was given to it. The viceroy reconstituted the interim government, dividing it for all practical purposes into two provisional administrations, one for the Indian Union and the other for Pakistan. The two parts would consult each other only on matters of common concern, but act independent of each other in all other respects. A couple of days after the leaders of the three parties had given their assent to the partition plan, a small high-powered committee, comprising representatives of the Congress, the League and the Sikhs, was set up with the viceroy as chairman. The group would consider various problems arising from the decision for partition and the transfer of power. After the Punjab and Bengal provinces had decided in favour of their own partition, this committee was replaced by a Partition council, with wider powers and authority to take final decisions. A press release had been issued stating that all the parties in the Council had agreed before the viceroy that partition would be affected in a 'brotherly spirit'. Gandhi was sceptical about the sincerity of the expressed sentiments; experience had taught him differently. 'I am afraid we are deceiving ourselves and the people,' he remarked during the course of a conversation.

  It was decided to invite Sir Cyril Radcliffe to serve as chairman of the Punjab and Bengal Boundary Commissions. His terms of reference were to demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of either province 'on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of the Muslims and non-Muslims'. In doing so he was to also take into account 'other factors'. This gave hope to both the parties that the Boundary Commission would give them more than could be reasonably expected. The Muslim League hoped that it would give them Calcutta and the Sikhs hoped their property holdings and other qualifications would give them a better chance in the Punjab. The expectations were running high on all sides; it was apparent that not all could be fulfilled, and disappointments arising from unfulfilled expectations further fuelled the existing tension.

  Excitement reached a high in the second half of June in the neighbouring cities of Lahore and Amritsar. Both the cities were in the debatable zone in the Punjab; both had predominantly Hindu and Sikh populations and were built up largely by their capital and enterprise. They owned the bulk of the commercial and industrial assets and the moveable and immovable property. Amritsar was the religious capital of the Sikhs and Lahore was the capital of the Sikh empire founded by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Muslim League demanded the inclusion of both the cities in Pakistan on 'political grounds'. Since the announcement of the partition plan, both the cities were in the grip of absolute anarchy. In Lahore within the course of a day, more than a hundred homes had been reduced to ashes. As the month of June wore on, the refugee problem increasingly claimed more of Gandhi's time and attention. Some of them advised Gandhi to visit Haridwar, where 32,000 of them from Rawalpindi and various other towns of West Punjab were huddled together in about half a do
zen refugee camps.

  The officials in charge of the camps tried to garland Gandhi, but instead received a verbal lashing. Gandhi then went on to visit all the refugee quarters.

  A news report filed by Reuters caught Gandhi's attention the day after his visit to the Haridwar refugee camp. It described a grand ceremony planned in London to mark the introduction in Parliament of the Independence Bill, announcing the birth of two nations. There was a thoughtless levity in England about the impending division of India. It was not as if they were ignorant of the tragedy and the violence that had preceded and threatened to follow independence. Lord Pethick-Lawrence made a rather flippant speech in Parliament during the debate on the Independence Bill. Describing an incident during his student days at Cambridge, he said one day their college porter left them one afternoon to go home as his wife was likely to deliver their baby that evening. The next morning he came back with a rather long face and reported that, instead of the single baby he was expecting, his wife had presented him with twins! 'Something like that has happened in India. Mother India has been in labour for a very long time, and everyone was wondering what would be the character of the infant that would come into being. Lo and behold! Instead of one State emerging from the womb of Mother India, twin States are emerging, as described in the bill.'

  The British regarded Indian unity as their proudest achievement and claimed that they deplored its dismemberment. The viceroy had even told the Indian leaders that a clause had especially been incorporated in the bill to enable the seceders to come back into the union by mutual agreement. Gandhi felt that if the Reuters' report was to be relied upon, the British Parliament was going to set its imprimatur on India's partition with a fanfare which was wholly incompatible with the spirit of what the viceroy had been telling them.

  'The papers today talk of a grand ceremonial to take place in London over the division of India into "two nations" which were only the other day one nation,' Gandhi remarked during his prayer meeting on 23 June. 'What is there to gloat over in the tragedy? We have hugged the belief that though we part, we do so as friends and brothers belonging to one family. Now, if the newspaper report is correct, the British will make of us "two nations" and that with a flourish of trumpets. Is that to be the parting shot? I hope not.' How were the people going to meet this challenge? he asked. 'This division of India with sub-division of Provinces puts us on our mettle. If the major partner is true to his salt, the foreshadowed wisdom can be confounded not in the shape of avoiding partition, however distasteful it might be, but by right behaviour on the part of the major partner, by always acting as one nation, by refusing to treat Muslim minorities as aliens in their own home.'

  He wrote to Patel: 'Look at Reuters' wire in today's papers. The bill will create two nations!!! What is the value then of these pompous talks that are going on here? If you have not given your consent to it you can prevent this crime against the Indian nation. After the bill is passed, nobody is going to listen to you'. A few days later Gandhi received a note from the viceroy stating that Nehru, Patel and he, all felt that Gandhi should 'unquestionably be shown' the Indian Independence Bill. Accordingly, Gandhi went with the Congress leaders to the viceroy the next morning. His immediate reactions to the draft Bill are on record, scribbled partly in pencil and partly in ink:

  Some declaration should be made, if it cannot be included in the Statute, that dominion status would be temporary.

  That it would be equal treatment for the two.

  There is nothing to show that Pakistan is a seceder and that the entity of India is retained in spite.

  No province can go over to the other dominion without consent.

  Pakistan Assembly will not meet before the appointed date.

  The States' position is uncomfortably weak. May 1946 statement should not be used to block progress.

  Describing Gandhi's observations on the Bill, Pyarelal writes: 'The irritation had blown off but the steely barb had, if possible, entered even deeper into his heart, when he addressed his prayer meeting on the 5th July. He was not disposed, he remarked, like many critics to read a sinister meaning in the Bill. The fact that there were two Indias instead of one was bad enough in itself. Both had the same status, and the Muslim League was entitled to full credit for bringing about a state of things which seemed to be impossible only, as it were, the day before. They had undone the solemn declaration of the Cabinet Mission. They had succeeded in compelling consent from the Congress and the Sikhs to the division. The thing that was in itself did not become good because the parties concerned had accepted it, no matter that the causes dictating acceptance were different in each case. It was hardly any comfort that Jinnah did not get all he wanted. The difference was not at all in kind. He wanted a sovereign state. That he had in the fullest measure.

  'As he read and reread the Bill, Gandhiji went on to say, he saw that the three parties had subjected themselves consciously or unconsciously to public judgement in terms of the Bill. Though the British were divesting themselves of all power, by becoming party to the division and having two members in the Commonwealth family possessing conflicting ideals and interests, they had put themselves to be weighed in the balance. So long as the two parts had any connection with Great Britain, the latter would be judged by action following the Bill rather than by its language, however generous and just it might read. He was afraid it would be a superhuman task to reconcile conflicting interests and treat them equally. What would happen if one decided to go out of the Commonwealth when the Constitution Act was passed?... The relation to the Princes remained in a most unsatisfactory condition. Here, again, British honour was at stake. The British would certainly be blamed if any mishap occurred.

  'Some of the doings of the authorities in Pakistan had given ground for the fear, he went on to point out, that there would be an attempt to estrange schedule classes in Pakistan from their Hindu brethren. There had been reports of Muslim League speakers holding forth that the scheduled classes in Pakistan could have separate electorates. (Separate electorates were later forced on the minorities in Pakistan in the teeth of their opposition.) Was that to be a call for joining Islam of the Pakistani type?—Gandhiji asked. There had been tales of forcible conversions. Was Pakistan a means of converting non-caste-Hindus to a special brand of Islam? The world was fast growing out of the dogmas and creeds which had so sickened and confused it that it had begun to deny the very existence of the Maker. Happily that stage of negation was quickly passing and enlightened faith in the supreme Maker of the Universe was being restored. Was the Islam of Pakistan going to be in the vanguard of that movement for the restoration of universal faith? Or, was it to pass through darkness and denial of God in the name of God?

  'Jinnah, Gandhiji concluded, had thus unwittingly placed Hinduism also on trial. He had said on the previous day that those who believed in India as a nation could have no minority and majority question; all are entitled to equal privileges and equal treatment. The Hindus had the rare opportunity of refining their religion of all dross and showing the strict justness that the brand of Hinduism of the Indian Union was the same as universal religion. Thus viewed, the Indian Independence Bill could be taken as the final examination of all the parties involved in the Bill. It was possible to turn Pakistan, which he had declared an evil, into unadulterated good. If all the forebodings were dispelled and enmities were turned into friendship and mutual distrust gave place to trust'.

  With the partition of India came the contentious question of the division of its public assets and wealth and, especially, the division of its armed forces. Between the 1st and 11th July, the Partition Council laid down the principles which were to govern division. The fixed assets would naturally belong to the provinces they were situated in, but other assets—down to the blotters in government offices—had to be fairly divided between the two nations. While Sir Cyril Radcliffe patiently drew a line through the map of India, the Partition Council sat in New Delhi day after day, fighting over who would get
what. A desk went to Pakistan and its matching chairs remained with India. A magnificent steed remained in India, while its equally magnificent saddle was shipped off to Pakistan. Everything was to be divided and every item was fought over by the two sides. The question of dividing the armed forces between the two nations was, in the words of Lord Ismay: 'The biggest crime and the biggest headache.' 'The army is now being divided into Hindu and Muslim,' Lord Selborne reported to the House of Lords, 'in the manner in which sides are picked before a football match. It is impossible that peace will be maintained'.

  Gandhi had hoped that it would be possible to write into the treaty of separation itself a provision for joint defence. It was a difficult proposition but not an impossible one, if both the parties were parting as friends and not as enemies, it was feasible. There was something wrong, he remarked at his prayer meeting on 6 July, that they missed the enthusiasm that should accompany such a great event as the imminent advent of full freedom. The reason for the lack of enthusiasm was no doubt to be found in the division of the country into two states which were to be turned into two armed camps. There was to be no common defence force. The army was to be divided; preparations were on to achieve this. They used to talk glibly during 'the glorious and strenuous days of opposition to British rule' of having no army for the suppression of internecine quarrels, which would be non-existent, and they wanted no defence force against a foreign enemy. But military expenditure was now to be maintained at a very high level without any near prospect of substantial reduction. In fact there was the awful prospect of a definite increase in the military expenditure—all for fighting amongst themselves—and they would have the spectacle of the two newly created states engaging in a ludicrous race for the increase of armaments all for mutual slaughter! Was India's freedom a preparation for the abandonment of all they had learnt to prize as dear to them? Instead of self-glorification, he felt it was time for deep self-introspection, self-examination and self-castigation. As the chief actor in the fight for freedom during the past thirty years, he said he was certainly full of searching questions within himself. 'Is the fight, acclaimed as noble, to result in this—the approaching inglorious end? In deep anguish I cry with the Vedic seers, "O Lord, Lead us from darkness into light".'