India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
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55
Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer International, 1987), pp. 58–67.
56
Sen, Slender was the Thread, p. 242; Prasad and Pal, History of Operations, pp. 276–7.
57
Penderel Moon to Major Billy Short, 18 October 1948, Short Papers, Mss Eur F189/22, OIOC, emphasis added.
58
Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, pp. 146–9. Korbel was the father of Madeleine Albright, who was to herself deal with the Kashmir question in the 1990s when she was secretary of state in President Clinton’s administration.
59
See material in File74, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
60
Swatantra,14 August 1948.
61
Anon., ‘South India and Kashmir’, Swatantra, 25 February 1950.
62
Sheikh Abdullah to C. Rajagopalachari, 27 April 1948, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
63
J. K. Banerji, I Report on Kashmir (Calcutta: The Republic Publications, 1948), pp. 9–10.
64
Y. D. Gundevia, ed., The Testament of Sheikh Abdullah (Dehra Dun: Palit and Palit, 1974), pp. 90–1.
65
V. V. Prasad, ‘New Delhi Diary’, Swatantra, 9 October 1948.
66
P. N. Kaula and K. L. Dhar, Kashmir Speaks (Delhi: S. Chand and Co., 1950), p. 71.
67
K. A. Abbas, ‘The EnchantedValley’, Swatantra, 23 April 1949.
68
‘Marching through Kashmir’, Time, 10 October 1949.
69
Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, p. 25.
70
Kingsley Martin, ‘Kashmir and UNO’, and ‘As Pakistan Sees it’, The New Statesman and Nation, 21 and 28 February 1948.
71
Quoted in Dewan Ram Parkash, Fight for Kashmir (New Delhi: Tagore Memorial Publications, 1948), p. 99.
72
A. Lakshmana Rao, ‘Brigadier Usman’, Swatantra, 10 July 1948.
73
Parkash, Fight for Kashmir, p. 174.
74
K. A. Abbas, ‘Will Kashmir Vote for India?’, the Current, 26 October 1949.
75
Wares Ishaq, ‘Kashmir Will Vote for Pakistan’, the Current, 2 November 1949.
76
Representative here are the interpretations in Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy.
77
On Gurdaspur see Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, esp. pp. 115–16; and, for a rebuttal, Jha, Kashmir, 1947, p. 81.
78
Zaheer, Rawalpindi Conspiracy, pp. 144–5.
79
The quotes that follow are taken from Brecher, Struggle for Kashmir, pp. ix–x.
5. REFUGEES AND THE REPUBLIC
1
DonaldF. Ebright, Free India, the First Five Years: An Account of the 1947 Riots, Refugees, Relief and Rehabilitation (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1954), pp. 46–7, 62–3 etc.
2
A. N. Bali, Now it Can be Told (Jullundur: The Kashvani Prakashan Ltd, 1949), esp. chapter 9.
3
V. V. Prasad, ‘New Delhi Diary’, Swatantra, 25 December 1947.
4
This account is principally based on M. S. Randhawa, Out of the Ashes: An Account of the Rehabilitation of Refugees from West Punjab in Rural Areas of East Punjab (Bombay: privately published, 1954); and Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘The Demographic Upheaval of Partition: Refugees and Agricultural Resettlement in India, 1947–67’, South Asia, vol. 18, no. 1, 1995. Of the roughly 2.5 million farmers who came from West Punjab about 80% were resettled in East Punjab. Others were given land in the Ganganagar area of the former Bikaner state, and in the Terai regions of Uttar Pradesh. In both places there are now flourishing communities of Sikh farmers.
5
Ian Stephen, ‘A Day in Qadian’, The Statesman, 9 January 1949. Mohammad Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s eloquent spokesman in the UN on the Kashmir question, was an Ahmadiya. So was the physicist Abdus Salam, the only Pakistani to be awarded a Nobel Prize. In the 1980s, under the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, the Ahmadiyas were declared as heretics (for their belief in a living Prophet), and have since faced discrimination and persecution.
6
See L. C. Jain, The City of Hope: The Faridabad Story (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1998), which also describes the corrosion of the co-operative spirit by the bureaucracy. See also ‘Experiments in Living: Faridabad-Nilokheri-Etawah’, The Times of India, 14 February 1952.
7
Dorothy Jane Ward, India for the Indians (London: Arthur Barker Ltd, 1949), pp. 187–9.
8
See V. N. Dutta, ‘Punjabi Refugees and the Urban Development of Greater Delhi’, in R. E. Frykenberg, ed., Delhi through the Ages (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993).
9
Anon., ‘A Glimpse into Crowded Bombay’, Swatantra, 7 August 1948.
10
H. L. Mansukhani, ‘The Resettlement of Sind Refugees’, Swatantra, 11 September 1948.
11
Anon., ‘A Glimpse into Crowded Bombay’.
12
R. M. Lala, ‘Kolwada: Landmark of Swaraj’, the Current, 3 May 1950.
13
Gardner Murphy, In the Minds of Men: The Study of Human Behavior and Social Tensions in India (New York: Basic Books, 1953), pp. 170–5.
14
Taya Zinkin, Reporting India (London: Chatto and Windus,1962), pp. 25–6, 31.
15
Prafulla K. Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal (Calcutta: Naya Udyog, 1999), p. 33.
16
Joya Chatterji, ‘Right or Charity? The Debate over Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947–50’, in Suvir Kaul, ed., The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p. 99.
17
Sir Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Brothers from over the River: The Refugee Problem of India’, The Modern Review, September 1948.
18
Chakrabarti, Marginal Men, chapter 3.
19
See letters and statements of1948–50 in Voice of New India, A Tale of Woes of East Pakistan Minorities (Calcutta: D. R. Sen, 1966), pp. 13–51.
20
The Current, 4 February 1953.
21
‘Squatters’ Colonies’, Economic Weekly, 5 June 1954.
22
See undated memorandum (c. 1954?) in File 6, Meghnad Saha Papers, Seventh Instalment, NMML.
23
See ‘Report of a Tour of Inspection of some of the Refugee Homes in North-west India’ (1955), reproduced in Seminar, no.510, February 2002.
24
‘Congress may Lose West Bengal – if Refugees Remain Unsettled’, Economic Weekly, 10 July 1954. There is now a growing literature of memoirs written (or spoken) by Bengali refugees. For a sampling of works in English, see Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, eds, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India (Kolkata: Stree, 2003); Gargi Chakravartty, Coming out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal (New Delhi: Bluejay Books, 2005); Manas Ray, ‘Growing Up Refugee’, History Workshop Journal, no. 53, 2002.
25
See R. M. Lala, ‘Refugees’, the Current, 29 March 1950.
26
SWJN2, vol. 4, pp. 115–17. (The original broadcast was in Hindi.)
27
Aparna Basu, Mridula Sarabha: Rebel with a Cause (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 8.
28
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Delhi: Kali for Women), pp. 91–3, 97–8. Cf. also Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (New Delhi: Viking, 1998), chapter 4.
29
See Chitra Bhanu, ‘Food Situation Getting Worse in Malabar’, Swatantra, 29 July 1947; ‘Famine Conditions in East Godavari’, Swatantr
a, 4 October 1947; P. V. C. Rao, ‘The Food Debacle’ and ‘Lesson of Gujerat Famine’, Swatantra, 7 August 1948 and 12 February 1949.
30
Clare and Harris Wofford, India Afire (New York: The John Day Co., 1951), pp. 105–6, 113–15; ‘Communists in Hyderabad’, Swatantra, 28 May 1949.
31
Ananth Rao Kanangi, ‘Communists in Andhra’, the Current, 3 May 1950.
32
Quoted in John H. Kautsky, Moscow and the Communist Party of India (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1956), p. 49.
33
G. S. Bhargava, ‘Balchandra Triambak Ranadive’, Swatantra, 22 April 1950.
34
D. Jayakanthan, A Literary Man’s Political Experiences, trans. M. S. Venkataramani (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976), pp. 19–22.
35
Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), chapter 13.
36
Quoted in M. R. Masani, The Communist Party of India: A Short History (Bombay: Bhavan’s Book University, 1967), pp. 78–9.
37
Pravda, 25 November 1949, quoted in Mahavir Singh, Soviet View of the Indian National Congress (New Delhi: Sanchar Publishing House, 1991), p. 22.
38
Penderel Moon to his father, 5February 1949, Moon Papers, Mss Eur F230/23, OIOC.
39
Anon., ‘Rounding up of Communists in Hyderabad’, Swatantra, 4 June 1949; Wofford and Wofford, India Afire, pp. 118–19.
40
Amit Kumar Gupta, The Agrarian Drama: The Leftists and the Rural Poor in India, 1934–51 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), pp. 464–5.
41
SWJN2, vol. 4, pp. 52–3.
42
See correspondence in G. M. Nandurkar, Sardar’s Letters – Mostly Unknown – Post-Centenary, vol. 2 (Ahmedabad: Sardar Patel Smarak Bhavan, 1981), pp. 20–2, and vol. 3 (1983), pp. 42–3.
43
Baroo, ‘Enter the Sangh’, Swatantra, 10 September 1949. For a sympathetic contemporary portrait of the RSS, see Jagat S. Bright, Guruji Golwalkar and R.S.S. (Delhi: New India Publishing Co., 1951).
44
Letter quoted in the Current, 19 October 1949.
45
N. S. Muthana, ‘Golwalkar’s Climb on Congress Ladder’, the Current, 9 November 1949.
46
News report in the Current, 16 November 1949.
47
Dewan Chaman Lall, quoted in Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudesia, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000).
48
R. G. Casey, An Australian in India (London: Hollis and Carter, 1947), p. 114.
49
Albert Mayer, Pilot Project, India: The Story of Rural Development at Etawah, Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), p. 13.
6. IDEAS OF INDIA
1
Hindustan Times, 10 and 11 December 1946.
2
In the description of the independent Anglo-Indian member, Frank Anthony. Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report (reprint New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1988), hereafter cited as CAD, vol. 8, p. 329.
3
K. Santhanam, quoted in Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (1966; reprint New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 13. The varied ideologies and political trends represented in the Assembly are discussed in S. K. Chaube, Constituent Assembly of India: Springboard of Revolution, 2nd edn (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), esp. chapters 8 to 10.
4
Winston Churchill quoted in CAD, vol. 2, pp. 267, 271.
5
See ‘Summary of representations received in office regarding “Rights of Minorities”’, in File 37, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
6
Austin, The Indian Constitution, p. 71.
7
CAD, vol. 1, pp. 59–61. That Nehru would mention the Soviet Revolution alongside the other two may be considered by some characteristic of his broadmindedness, by others as characteristic merely of his lack of discrimination.
8
SeeCAD, vol. 4, pp. 737–62.
9
Cf.Austin, The Indian Constitution, pp. 314–15.
10
The words are those of Ambedkar. See CAD, vol. 9, p. 974. The contributions of Munshi, Aiyar and Rau to the making of the Indian Constitution were immense. They prepared dozens of notes and minutes on specific subjects, the more important of which are reproduced in B. Shiva Rao, ed., The Framing of India’s Constitution: Select Documents, 4 vols (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1968). On K. M. Munshi’s role, see also N. H. Bhagwati, ‘An Architect of the Constitution’, in Munshi at Seventy-Five (Bombay: Dr K. M. Munshi’s 76th Birthday Celebration Committee, 1962).
11
In the preface to the 1999 edition of his book, Austin amends this slightly, speaking of unity, social revolution and democracy as ‘the three strands of a seamless web’. Austin’s work is indispensable, but see also the long critique by Upendra Baxi, ‘“The Little Done, the Vast Undone” – Some Reflections on Reading Granville Austin’s The Indian Constitution’, Journal of the Indian Law Institute, vol. 9, 1967, pp. 323–430.
12
CAD, vol. 7, p. 39.
13
Ibid., vol. 7, pp. 219, 285, 350, 387 etc.
14
Ibid., vol. 7, p. 305.
15
For a good discussion of how this choice was made, see E. Sridharan, ‘The Origins of the Electoral System’, in Zoya Hasan, E. Sridharan and R. Sudarshan, eds, India’s Living Constitution (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002). See also ‘Report by the Constitutional Adviser on his Visit to U.S.A., Canada, Ireland and England’, in Shiva Rao, Select Documents, vol. 3, pp. 217–26.
16
Nehru, quoted in Austin, The Indian Constitution, p. 121.
17
The phrase is Granville Austin’s. See The Indian Constitution, p. 50.
18
An excellent discussion of the framing of the fundamental rights section is contained in B. Shiva Rao, ed., The Framing of India’s Constitution: A Study (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1968), chapter 7.
19
Austin, The Indian Constitution, p. 56.
20
CAD, vol. 4, p. 769.
21
CAD, vol. 11, pp. 711–13.
22
CAD, vol. 7, p. 360.
23
CAD, vol. 11, p. 616.
24
Intervention by Shibban Lal Saxena, CAD, vol. 11, pp. 705–6.
25
Ibid., p. 212.
26
Interventions by Loknath Misra and K. Hanumanthaiya, CAD, vol. 11, pp. 799, 617.
27
CAD, vol. 5, pp. 54–5.
28
Intervention by Balkrishna Sharma, CAD, vol. 5, pp. 74–6.
29
Speech of 17 December 1946, CAD, vol. 1, p. 102.
30
CAD, vol. 4, p. 546.
31
Ibid., vol. 4, p. 859.
32
CAD, vol. 5, pp. 211–13.
33
Ibid., vol. 5, p. 271.
34
CAD, vol. 7, p. 306; CAD, vol. 8, p. 300.
35
Intervention by Naziruddin Ahmad, CAD, vol. 8, pp. 296–7.
36
CAD, vol. 1, p. 138.
37
CAD, vol. 4, p. 668.
38
CAD, vol. 7, p. 356.
39
CAD, vol. 5, pp. 202–3; vol. 11, pp. 608–9.
40
CAD, vol. 9, p. 667–9.
41
Intervention by Brajeshwar Prasad, CAD, vol. 10, p. 239.
42
CAD, vol. 8, pp. 344–5.
43
CAD, vol. 5, p. 210.
44
Regrettably, there is no
biography of Jaipal Singh. See, however, P. G. Ganguly, ‘Separatism in the Indian Polity: A Case Study’, in M. C. Pradhan et al., eds, Anthropology and Archaeology: Essays in Commemoration of Verrier Elwin (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1969).
45
CAD, vol. 1, pp. 143–4.
46
CAD, vol. 7, pp. 559–60.
47
Intervention by Brajeshwar Prasad, CAD, vol. 9, p. 281.
48
CAD, vol. 1, pp. 26–7.
49
Hindustan Times, 11 December 1946.
50
CAD, vol. 8, p. 745.
51
CAD, vol. 7, pp. 20–31.
52
See Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Languages and the Linguistic Problem, Oxford Pamphlet on Indian Affairs, no. 11 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1943); Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000).
53
Nehru, ‘The Question of Language’, in his The Unity of India: Collected Writings, 1937–1940 (London: Lindsay Drummond, 1941), pp. 241–61.
54
Letter to Krishnachandra, 12 May 1945, in CWMG, vol. 80, p. 117.
55
See letters in CWMG, vol. 80, pp. 181, 317–18; vol. 81, pp. 33–4, 332.
56
Austin, The Indian Constitution, p. 267.
57
Cf. interventions by B. Pocker Sahib Bahadur and Jaipal Singh, CAD, vol. 4, pp. 553, 554.
58
CAD, vol. 7, p. 235.
59
Article 343 of the Constitution of India.
60
This section is based on Ambedkar’s last speech to the Constituent Assembly – CAD, vol. 11, pp. 972–81.
61
John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1999), p. 347. The making of the Japanese constitution is discussed in chapters 12 and 13.
62
Courtney Whitney, quote dibid., p. 373.
63
Austin, The Indian Constitution, pp. 308, 309–10, 328.
7. THE BIGGEST GAMBLE IN HISTORY
1
‘Vignhneswara’ (V. Raghunathan), Sotto Voce: A Social and Political Commentary, vol. 1: The Coming of Freedom (Madras: B. G. Paul and Co., 1951), p. 203.
2
Quoted in the Current, 18 July 1951.
3
‘Disintegration of the Congress’, the Current, 9 May 1951.
4
See S. H. Desai, ‘Sardar Patel’, the Current, 14 August 1948; A. S. Iyengar, All Through the Gandhian Era: Reminiscences (Bombay: Hind KitabsLtd, 1950), pp. 289–95 (section titled ‘Nehru and Patel’; V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 20–3.