Jaswants 'shock therapy

The burning of Jaswant Singhs book on Jinnah and partition in India shows that passions have not cooled over this issue as yet. There must have been something 'seriously toxic in the contents that caused this Hindu fury. In the last six decades, the 'secular Indian state has consistently taught its citizens that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was 'the man who broke up India with the deliberate help of the British colonists. It has been nailed in the Indian mind that Jinnah was a separatist and the All-India Muslim League with its 'Two-Nation creed was a communalist party, both being the 'culprits in 'violating the sanctity of 'Mother India. Jaswant Singhs work has shattered this widely held Indian belief. Hence, the shock and the violent public reaction. To Jaswant, the villain of partition is not Jinnah but the Congress because it was Congress hubris and uncompromising attitude, which left the League with two stark choices: either to accept perpetual subjugation of Congress or to struggle for a separate Muslim homeland. It opted for the latter. Thus, if Jinnah adopted a 'communalist stance, it is Congress that has to be blamed and if he demanded division, it was not out of his wounded vanity rather due to Congress dictatorial posture. Well before the Congress officially accepted Mountbattens partition plan at its special meeting on June 14/15, 1947, it had passed unanimous resolutions in 1934, 1942, 1945 and March 1947 conceding Pakistan directly or indirectly. Even at its aforementioned special meeting no Congressman except Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan uttered a single word against partition. The March 8, 1947 Congress Working Committee resolution demanding the division of Punjab - and in principle the break-up of India - had the full support of Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhai Patel. On April 21, 1947, Nehru publicly stated that those who demanded Pakistan could have it. The official historical discourse in India has also purposely cultivated a mythical Nehru-Gandhi relationship with Gandhi as the 'political father of Nehru. Jaswants research has blown apart this myth. Way back in the 1927 Madras session, these two stalwarts clashed with one another: Gandhi insisting on dominion status whereas Nehru demanding complete independence for India. Moreover, Nehru disagreed with several other Gandhian precepts: you expected the Khadi Movement to spread rapidlyour Khadi work is almost wholly divorced from politics.What then can be done?you only criticise and no helpful lead comes from you After reading Gandhis articles in Young India, he lamented: I have often felt how very different my ideals were from yours You misjudge greatly.I neither think that the so-called Ramaraj was very good in the past, nor do I want it back. And while disagreeing with his 'Mahatma that Indian poverty could be eradicated by village employment, Nehru lambasted: You do not say a word against the semi-feudal zamindari systemor against the capitalist exploitation of both the workers and the consumers. Gandhi could not digest such strictures lightly and shot back: The differences between you and me appear to me to be so vast and radical that there seems no meeting ground between us. It is through Jaswant that we now know that Gandhi complained in June 14, 1947 special meeting of the Congress that Nehru and Patel had not taken him into confidence before giving their acceptance of the partition plan to Mountbatten. While recounting some sharp exchanges in that fateful meeting, Jaswant appends: Messrs Nehru and Patel were offensively aggressive to Gandhi ji.There was something psychopathic about it. They seemed to have set their heart on something and, whenever they scented that Gandhi ji was preparing to obstruct them, they barked violently. It is both disheartening and insulting because 'sons are not expected to bark at their Bapu. It is in this context that Jaswant has dubbed Nehru as 'the draftsman of Indias partition and agrees with the Indian historian, B R Nanda that Nehru and Patel agreed to the partition of India because they were avid for power. Only the cool-minded Hindus can absorb such historical realism. It is difficult for them to understand why their larger-than-life heroes failed to keep India united. Seeing the writing on the wall, earlier than the others, Gandhi had jotted on a scrap of paper in 1946: I dont want to die a failure. But I may be a failure. Nehru admitted his defeat a year after partition in a letter to the Nawab of Bhopal: Can you imagine the sorrow that confronts me when I see after more than 30 years of incessant effort the failure of much that I longed for passionately? It was not so with the Quaid, who stood much taller in the entire galaxy of Indian leaders. Jaswant thinks that all the Congress leaders were easily duped by Mountbatten in the last moments of the epic drama, except Jinnah, but Richard Hough in Mountbatten: Hero of our time goes a step further in his analysis: Nehru and Congress were battered into accepting partition.No one had really the time to think, except Jinnah who got 90 percent of what he wanted. Email: qizilbash2000@yahoo.com