JINNAH: INDIA – PARTITION – INDEPENDENCE
Jaswant Singh
Rupa & Co., 7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi
2009
Pages: 669
Price: Rs. 695
Reviewed by KHAN YASIR
Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence has become a thriller over these days. For a well aware fellow it is difficult not to take any stand on the book, on the treatment meted out to the author by his own political party, on his subsequent revelations regarding the felonies of his party and leaders, etc. What is so provocative in the book? In the words of S. Prasannarajan, the book, “…not only challenges the conventional wisdom on the division of India but has committed the blasphemy of demystifying national heroes like Nehru and Sardar Patel….” This is the original sin of Mr. Jaswant Singh. But the question is: did he say anything new or revealing? The answer is a big NO! Ayesha Jalal is very much right in saying that, “historians are unlikely to find anything dramatically new in Jaswant Singh’s recent book on Jinnah”. Then why such an uproar? She goes on to add, “What is new is a top BJP leader’s acceptance of an interpretation of Jinnah’s role in South Asian history that is now generally accepted by scholars.” Another scholar-historian welcomed the work in these words, “It marks the first effort by a member of the political establishment to ask bold and awkward questions about our foundation.”
And these awkward questions are proving to be very painful to the ‘sons-of-mother-India’, ‘cultural-nationalists’, ‘ultra-nationalists’, and ‘patriots-to-the-core’. The real problem of Indian society is that we are too sentimental; and especially so at the issues which involve the ones we adore, be it our leaders or cricketers. It may be strange for other countries to burn the house of a player or dub him a traitor if he had a bad day on the field – but this is common in India. It is also strange for other countries to make a god out of Dhoni, Tendulkar or Amitabh Bachchan but it is so common in India.
In an Independence Day special issue of Outlook in 2005 Akbar S. Ahmed writes, “Our tendency to make our heroes and villains black-and-white cardboard figures has not only distorted history but has created problems for millions on both sides who are inflamed by wrongly created perceptions of each other.”
In the words of Sunil Khilani, “…someone must be held responsible [for partition] and Indians have been brought up to believe it was one man, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the malevolent interloper, the joker in the pack, who hijacked Indian history from its destined, akhand end.”
So if one is ready to believe that be it Gandhi, Nehru, Patel or Azad all were simple human beings then he can appreciate the critical questions that are raised in the book. Now let’s see the controversies that Jaswant Singh has raised in his book.
Saga of Lost Opportunities: Was partition avoidable? Jaswant Singh emphatically answers in the affirmative. If only clash of egos among the leaders, especially Jinnah and J. L. Nehru, would have been absent. Congress failed to inculcate Jinnah’s demands in the Nehru Report due to opposition of Hindu Mahasabha and Sikhs. This brazenly lacking of accommodative character and apathy on the part of leaders like Motilal Nehru and Gandhi deeply pained Jinnah – “thereafter Jinnah rejected all proposals” (p. 148) and this led to parting of the ways. This far things are digestible but Jaswant Singh makes a further point saying, “at the end of 1928, Jinnah still saw Hindu-Muslim unity as a byword for swaraj and he retained his faith in constitutional methods as the (only) way it could be achieved” (p. 164).
And “immediately after his return to Bombay [from England in October 1928, he went there to convince British Labour Party to include Indian representatives in Simon Commission, an attempt in which he failed], Jinnah warned his countrymen that it was the biggest folly on their part to expect any substantial help from any one party in England and that ‘one hope for India’ was ‘unity between Hindus and Muslims’. However, despite the earlier discussed 1928 Nehru report, Jinnah was not without hope of settling this communal question, and applied himself afresh to achieving just that objective” (p. 170). These points proved that Jinnah was serious about unity of Hindus and Muslims even after the debacle of Nehru Report, and this point finds no mention in our history textbooks.
Before the first round table conference there was an attempt of building understanding between Hindus and Muslims. Well before the conference the Hindu and Muslim representatives met. Muslims represented by Jinnah, Agha Khan and one other gentleman conceptualised India as a federal state, in which authority and power remained with the central government, the constituents having autonomous rights and functions. Sir Chimanlal, Sapru and Shastri would have agreed to these innocuous demands but the whole effort was depressed by the stubbornness of Moonje and Jayakar. ‘A great opportunity was thus lost’. Though Jaswant Singh has not stated it in a straightforward manner but between-the-lines reading suitably concludes that he too considers those demands of Muslims to be legitimate.
An important feature of the book is that Jaswant Singh (maybe presuming the controversies?) has tried to say his words from the mouths of others as far as possible; here too without any critical opinion but in his own words he mentioned what Sir Chimanlal has said about the obstinacy of the Moonje and Jayakar when he said, “In his memoirs, Sir Chimanlal Setalvad has mentioned that if the first round table conference did not achieve all that was expected, and if, ultimately, not only was dominion status not brought about but India had to be partitioned, some at least of the beginnings of those momentous happenings are to be found in the Hindu delegation’s refusal to accept the Agha Khan’s offer. Sapru and Shastri were not averse to accepting the Muslim proposals, but they were intimidated by the opposition of their colleagues, and of course, of the Hindu Mahasabha” (p. 179).
Further (on p. 192) he quoted Agha Khan at length (though with the clarification that these comments might be subjective) but he does not contradict them anywhere. It is regarding the failure of Second Round Table Conference in 1931, on Jinnah’s demand of very few powers at centre, except in respect of defence and external affairs; all other powers to be transferred to provinces, Gandhi would have agreed. Jaswant Singh quotes Agha Khan, “perhaps he [Gandhi] might have seen his way to accept our viewpoint, but Pandit Malaviya and the Hindu Mahasabha exerted great pressure against us, deploying arguments based on abstract political doctrines and principles which, as the partition of 1947 proved, were totally unrelated to the realities of India”. Then Jaswant Singh assert on the next page, “Gandhi knew the power of communal appeal and he also knew what it would mean for Congress if he committed himself publicly to stand against Hindu demands.”
Next opportunity came after the 1937 UP elections. Congress swept the polls with 134 out of 228 seats but Jaswant Singh terms this success of Congress as “lopsided success” because it won not a single Muslim majority seat while the League won 29 out of 66 Muslim majority seats. He adds, “negotiations between the Muslim League and the Congress, for a coalition broke down primarily because the Congress filled with its sense of majority, set such very hard conditions for inducting the League ministers into the cabinet that the leader of UPMLPB, Khaliquzzaman had no option but to turn them down. Doubts arise whether the Congress was interested more in absorbing the UP Muslim League than in forming a coalition with it” (p. 224).
Another opportunity arrives in the shape of Cabinet Mission Plan. According to the statement of May 16, 1946, that provided for a loose federation with one constituent assembly for making constitution for the proposed Indian union. Its long term scheme visualised three groupings of provinces 1) Hindu majority 2) Muslim majority 3) Bengal and north eastern provinces, all with separate legislature and executive. The merit of the scheme lies, in the words of Jaswant Singh that, “Jinnah had altered the League’s stand; he had supported the proposed scheme, in the process virtually abandoning a sovereign Pakistan but insisting upon the groupings of provinces with residuary powers” (p. 380).
But this last opportunity of letting not the country dichotomise was also foolishly grounded. On July 10 at a press conference Nehru asserted things that were against the letter and spirit of Cabinet Mission Plan. He said that Congress is not committed before anyone and it is free to alter the Cabinet Mission Plan in the Constituent Assembly. Jaswant expressed his dismay at such unfortunate unfolding of the event, “such assertions, and made at this critical juncture, completely reversed the gains of the 16 May proposals and their acceptance by all. Predictably this made Jinnah even more suspicious of Congress’ real intentions, in consequence more obstinate in his opposition to any effort for cooperation with the Congress…. To further compound difficulties, Nehru even then did not recognize his error, or that there was much to be gained by silence, or that this statement had greatly upset prospects of a settlement” (ibid). Even a hardliner of Patel’s stature commented that ‘Nehru’s remarks were a consequence of his emotional immaturity’ – This was the end of it, ‘one of those unfortunate events which changed the course of history’ (Maulana Azad).
Who Partitioned the Nation? 8 March 1947, the Congress Working Committee adopted a resolution, with full support of Nehru and Patel which provided for the division of Punjab into Muslim and non-Muslim parts. Jaswant Singh has to say a very little known or very little emphasised thing on this resolution. He comments, “The date of the adoption of this resolution by the Congress was unfortunate for it was when Gandhi was away on his great healing mission in Bihar, Maulana Azad was ill and also absent. Patel and Nehru had both known, all along, that the two absentees would oppose the resolution” (p. 418). An angry Gandhi also asked three weeks later the need for the resolution but it was too late then to return or repent….
Then comes the AICC meeting of 14-15 June 1947, that meeting was an utter formality for what was going to happen was decided from the very outset despite the fact that a whopping majority of those who were present including Gandhi, Azad, Lohia, Jayaprakash, Agha Khan, etc. were opposed to partition. Although Nehru and Patel carried the day. Throughout the chapter related to this topic Jaswant Singh has carefully avoided to say anything concrete on his own; he kept on quoting Lohia at length. The attitude of Nehru and Patel was ‘psychopathic’ throughout the meeting. Everyone present opposed the partition in one or two sentences and he kept mum for it was not difficult to comprehend that it is futile to waste any energy in defending the unity of the nation in such a determined opposition by stalwart leaders namely Nehru and Patel.
To quote Lohia regarding the heat and intensity of the meeting, “Nehru and Patel were offensively aggressive to Gandhiji at this meeting… what appeared to be astonishing then, as now, though I can now understand it somewhat better, was exceedingly rough behaviour of these two chosen disciples towards their master. There was something psychopathic about it. They seemed to have set their heart on something and, whenever they scented that Gandhiji was preparing to obstruct them, they barked violently.” And so the destiny of the country was decided.
What Jinnah Wanted Actually? “Jinnah as the pre-eminent voice of the Muslims of India, certainly from about 1937 onwards, wanted a share of India’s sovereignty when it arrived; a recognisable seat in the decision making apparatus of the independent India; given that, he had repeatedly said the ‘Muslims of India would abandon all claims to a separate nationhood’:” (p. 503) and thus “Pakistan had been no more than a ‘negotiating idea’, a tactical ploy to obtain greater political role for the Muslims of India so that they could become arbiters of their own political and social destiny, instead of leaving it in the ‘unreliable political hands of a Hindu Congress’” (p. 499).
In fact Jaswant Singh endorses the research Ayesha Jalal made a quarter of a century ago in which she concluded that;
ü Jinnah never intended to create Pakistan as a sovereign nation state. His objective was to preserve Muslim interest by wresting greater autonomy for provincial governments. He feared Congress leaders’ ambition to create a strong unitary and central state and so for gaining a better bargaining ground he played the independent Pakistani card merely as a bluff.
ü Partition could have been averted had the Congress been prepared to cede more power to the provinces.
ü Nehru and Patel were ready to pay the price of dividing the motherland for centralized power in a unitary state after exiling a maimed, mutilated, and moth eaten Pakistan to Muslim League.
ü Jinnah’s battle was against the ‘Congress Raj’ and not the Hindu community as such.
Confessions: According to Jaswant Singh, Nehru belatedly realised his follies. He told Mountbatten on his departure, “It is difficult for me or anyone to judge of what we have done during the last year or so. We are too near to it and too intimately connected with the events. Maybe we have made many mistakes, you and we.” He also wrote to Nawab of Bhopal answering one of his queries, “I know we [are] to blame in many matters… partition came and we accepted it… perhaps we acted wrongly… it is difficult to judge now”.
But it is easy (at least academically) to judge NOW and Jaswant Singh has done exactly this when he says, “The leaders of Indian National Congress, in the period between outbreak of war in 1939 and the country’s partition in 1947, showed in general, a sad lack of realism, of foresight, of purpose and of will” (p. 495). And “what certainly pushed the situation towards partition was Nehru’s inability to restrain himself, to always give his views to the press, and in a manner that almost on every occasion generated huge controversies, wiping out all earlier achievements” (p. 505).
This is the whole context in which Jaswant Singh has said that, “in the process Jinnah did not win Pakistan, as the Congress leaders – Nehru and Patel finally conceded Pakistan to Jinnah, with the British acting as an ever helpful midwife” (p. 510).
In the end Jaswant Singh nostalgically look back to the leadership skills and political accurateness of Tilak who did not hesitate to compromise with League in 1916 that gave India Lucknow Pact; he lamented the political immaturity and short-sightedness of Nehru and Patel, and mourned that if only Azad’s suggestion that ‘Indian federation should deal with just three subjects: defence, foreign affairs, and communications; thus granting maximum autonomy to the provinces’ would have been accepted by Nehru and Patel as Gandhi was inclined in favour of such a proposal (p. 516) the history of the subcontinent would positively have been different.
Significance for Indian Muslims: Holding Jinnah solely responsible for the partition is not holding a person but a community responsible for the crime. Indian Muslims have for long been suffered for this uncommitted crime and have virtually looked down upon as those people who vivisected the nation. In this context Jaswant Singh’s comments are extremely pertinent and prove that much of such guilt feeling has been deliberately instilled by ‘moulding history’. He says, “Modern Indian historiography has not sufficiently analysed the role of such Muslim parties as the Khaksars, Ahrars, Khudai Khidmatgars, Momins and such others who opposed the partition of India” (p. 482).
In the end the picture emerges conclusively that partition became a reality – however nightmarish – not due to the clash between nationalism and communalism as is commonly believed in India but on the dispute over the distribution of power between centre and provinces and on disagreements over the provisions for the protection of minorities from majoritarianism in the would-be emerging democratic order. The role of clashes of egos and strained relations between Nehru and Jinnah also played their role.
But it is high time we Indians realised, in the words of Sunil Khilani that, “… for all but one year of his life, Jinnah was a major figure in Indian history, an actor on our historical stage… returning him to his proper place in Indian history allows us to see him more clearly – as a leader wrestling, alongside Ambedkar, Gandhi, Nehru, with the questions of how to deal with differences”.