Opinion Ghosts that haunt India

Children can be frightened by tales of ghosts. Young nations need simple fairy tales of perfect heroes and dastardly villains....

August 23, 2009 02:15 AM IST First published on: Aug 23, 2009 at 02:15 AM IST

Children can be frightened by tales of ghosts. Young nations need simple fairy tales of perfect heroes and dastardly villains. It is essential for a nation to have an unsullied birth. If the birth is traumatic then those memories have to be exorcised. Later,when the children grow up,the fairy tales are forgotten. Ghosts are just creatures of a frightened mind.

I had thought India had grown to teenage years with its angst and aggro. But the Jaswant Singh episode tells me that childhood is still continuing. Many want to believe that their founding fathers were perfect human beings and the villain at the birth of the nation,Jinnah,was a pure horror with no redeeming features. When I was a child,I was told the storyGandhi,Nehru and Patel fought hard for Indias freedom; the fiendish British divided and ruled; Jinnah was a stooge of the British and full of venom if not envy and hatred; he divided India single-handedly.

Fifty years back,Maulana Azad exploded this fairy tale in his India Wins Freedom. He recounted in detail the course of events in the two years preceding the Partition. Most of Jaswant Singhs account of those two years is in consonance with Maulanas account. Ram Manohar Lohias memoirs about the meeting on June 14-15,1947,when the Congress considered the Partition,are in the public domain. Gandhi sat silent. Maulana smoked quietly and Nehru and Patel carried the argument for the Partition while the young-bloods Jaya Prakash and Lohia openly spoke against it.

The rush to Pakistan came late,around the middle of April 1947. Until then the outcome was open,thanks to the Cabinet Mission Plan,which both the Congress and the Muslim League had accepted. But each had a different interpretation. Jinnah wanted some guarantee of minority rights from the British before they left. His guarantee came in the form of three zones in which India was to be grouped,with a weak centre at the top. Gandhi and Nehru took the view that once the British had gone,the Constituent Assembly in which the Congress had majority (although it failed to win a single Muslim seat) would be free to alter the zonal details as it pleased. That was after all the British Parliaments way; no previous Parliament could bind any future one.

When Jinnah heard this explained by Nehru on July 10,1946,he knew he had lost the game. He would not have any guarantee for minority rights once the British left if the Cabinet Mission Plan was adopted. All his life he had thought he could outplay anyone in the closed-door game of negotiations about Constitution-making. Now he had played his last hand and lost. So he took to the streets and August 16,1946,began a year-long civil war between Muslims and Hindus across British India.

Through this year of bloodshed,negotiations continued and an interim government was formed with the Congress and the League sharing portfolios. But Liaqat Ali Khan as Finance Member moved a budget with severe taxation of profits quoting Nehrus fiery socialist speeches in defence. The Congress was outraged. The interim government was paralysed in acrimony.

It was at this point that with Mountbatten as the new Viceroy,the idea came to the Congress leaders that they would not be able to share power with the Muslim League. Gandhijis romantic suggestion that Jinnah be made Prime Minister was too shocking for Mountbatten for him to put to Patel and Nehru. Patel by this timemid April 1947was convinced that Partition was the easier way out. Then Mountbatten convinced Nehru. By June 3,1947,Partition had been accepted by both the Congress and the League.

All the above is well documented and has been known for 50 years. I have read the material as has Jaswant Singh. Having read his book,I can vouch for his truthfulness. It is open to the Congress to deny this story as it has been doing since August 15,1947. It is open to the BJP to wallow in its ignorance and champion Patel as their mascot.

Luckily most Indians can read books,unlike their political netas. So go ahead and get rid of the ghost!

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