04-10-2004, 03:18 PM
EPILOGUE
Here I propose to stop. For I feel that I have said all that I can say about the subject. To use legal
language I have drawn the pleadings. This I may claim to have done at sufficient length. In doing
so, I have adopted that prolix style so dear to the Victorian lawyers, under which the two sides plied
one another with plea and replication, rejoinder and rebutter, surrejoinder and surrebutter and so on.
I have done this deliberately with the object that a full statement of the case for and against
Pakistan may be made. The foregoing pages contain the pleadings. The facts contained therein are
true to the best of my knowledge and belief. I have also given my findings. It is now for Hindus and
Muslims to give theirs.
To help them in their task it might be well to set out the issues. On the pleadings the following
issues seem to be necessary issues:
(1) Is Hindu-Muslim unity necessary for India's political advancement ? If necessary, is it still
possible of realization notwithstanding the new ideology of the Hindus and the Muslims being two
different nations?
(2) If Hindu-Muslim unity is possible, should it be reached by appeasement or by settlement ?
(3) If it is to be achieved by appeasement, what are the new concessions that can be offered to the
Muslims to obtain their willing co-operation, without prejudice to other interests ?
(4) (4) If it is to be achieved by a settlement, what are the terms of that - settlement ? If there are
only two alternatives, (i) Division of India into Pakistan and Hindustan, or (ii) Fifty-fifty share in
Legislature, Executive and the Services, which alternative is preferable ?
(5) Whether India, if she remained one integral whole, can rely upon both Hindus and Musalmans
to defend her independence, assuming it is won from the British?
(6) Having regard to the prevailing antagonism between Hindus and Musalmans and having regard
to the new ideology demarcating them as two distinct nations and postulating an opposition in their
ultimate destinies, whether a single constitution for these two nations can be built in the hope that
they will show an intention to work it and not to stop it ?
(7) On the assumption that the two-nation theory has come to stay, will not India as one single unit
become an incoherent body without organic unity, incapable of developing into a strong united
nation bound by a common faith in a common destiny and therefore likely to remain a feebler and
sickly country, easy to be kept in perpetual subjection either of the British or-of any other foreign
power ?
(8) If India cannot be one united country, is it not better that Indians should help India in the
peaceful dissolution of this incoherent whole into its natural parts, namely, Pakistan and Hindustan
?
(9) Whether it is not better to provide for the growth of two independent and separate nations, a
Muslim nation inhabiting Pakistan and a Hindu nation inhabiting Hindustan, than pursue the vain
attempt to keep India as one undivided country in the false hope that Hindus and Muslims will
some day be one and occupy it as the members of one nation and sons of one motherland ?
Nothing can come in the way of an Indian getting to grips with these issues and reaching his own
conclusions with the help of the material contained in the foregoing pages except three things :
(1)A false sentiment of historical patriotism, (2) a false conception of the exclusive ownership of
territory and (3) absence of willingness to think for oneself. Of these obstacles, the last is the most
difficult to get over. Unfortunately thought in India is rare and free thought is rarer still. This is
particularly true of Hindus. That is why a large part of the argument of this book has been
addressed to them. The reasons for this are obvious. The Hindus are in a majority. Being in a
majority, their view point must count! There is not much possibility of peaceful solution if no
attempt is made to meet their objections rational or sentimental. But there are special reasons which
have led me to address so large a part of the argument to them and which may not be quite so
obvious to others. I feel that those Hindus who are guiding the destinies of their fellows have lost
what Carlyle calls " the Seeing Eye " and are walking in the glamour of certain vain illusions, the
consequences of which must, I fear, be terrible for the Hindus. The Hindus are in the grip of the
Congress and the Congress is in the grip of Mr. Gandhi. It cannot be said that Mr. Gandhi has given
the Congress the right lead. Mr. Gandhi first sought to avoid facing the issue by taking refuge in
two things. He started by saying that to partition India is a moral wrong and a sin to which he will
never be a party. This is a strange argument. India is not the only country faced with the issue of
partition or shifting of frontiers based on natural and historical factors to those based on the
national factors. Poland has been partitioned three times and no one can be sure that there will be
no more partition of Poland. There are very few countries in Europe which have not undergone
partition during the last 150 years. This shows that the partition of a country is neither moral nor
immoral. It is unmoral. It is a social, political or military question. Sin has no place in it.
As a second refuge Mr. Gandhi started by protesting that the Muslim League did not represent the
Muslims and that Pakistan was only a fancy of Mr. Jinnah. It is difficult to understand how Mr.
Gandhi could be so blind as not to see how Mr. Jinnah's influence over the Muslim masses has been
growing day by day and how he has engaged himself in mobilizing all his forces for battle. Never
before was Mr. Jinnah a man for the masses. He distrusted them. 19[f.19] To exclude them from
political power he was always for a high franchise. Mr. Jinnah was never known to be a very
devout, pious or a professing Muslim. Besides kissing the Holy Koran as and when he was sworn
in as an M.L.A., he does not appear to have bothered much about its contents or its special tenets. It
is doubtful if he frequented any mosque either out of curiosity or religious fervour. Mr. Jinnah was
never found in the midst of Muslim mass congregations, religious or political.
Today one finds a complete change in Mr. Jinnah. He has become a man of the masses. He is no
longer above them. He is among them. Now they have raised him above themselves and call him
their Qaid-e-Azam. He has not only become a believer in Islam, but is prepared to die for Islam.
Today, he knows more of Islam than mere Kalama. Today, he goes to the mosque to hear Khutba
and takes delight in joining the Id congregational prayers. Dongri and Null Bazaar once knew Mr.
Jinnah by name. Today they know him by his presence. No Muslim meeting in Bombay begins or
ends without Allah-ho-Akbar and Long Live Qaid-e-Azam. In this Mr. Jinnah has merely followed
King Henry IV of Franceâthe unhappy father-in-law of the English King Charles I. Henry IV was
a Huguenot by faith. But he did not hesitate to attend mass in a Catholic Church in Paris. He
believed that to change his Huguenot faith and go to mass was an easy price to pay for the powerful
support of Paris. As Paris became worth a mass to Henry IV, so have Dongri and Null Bazaar
become worth a mass to Mr. Jinnah and for similar reason. It is strategy ; it is mobilization. But
even if it is viewed as the sinking of Mr. Jinnah from reason to superstition, he is sinking with his
ideology which by his very sinking is spreading into all the different strata of Muslim society and is
becoming part and parcel of its mental make-up. This is as clear as anything could be. The only
basis for Mr. Gandhi's extraordinary view is the existence of what are called Nationalist
Musalmans. It is difficult to see any real difference between the communal Muslims who form the
Muslim League and the Nationalist Muslims. It is extremely doubtful whether the Nationalist
Musalmans have any real community of sentiment, aim and policy with the Congress which marks
them off from the Muslim League. Indeed many Congressmen are alleged to hold the view that
there is no different between the two and that the Nationalist Muslim inside the Congress are only
an outpost of the communal Muslims. This view does not seem to be quite devoid of truth when
one recalls that the late Dr. Ansari, the leader of the Nationalist Musalmans, refused to oppose the
Communal Award although it gave the Muslims separate electorates in teeth of the resolution
passed by the Congress and the Nationalist Musalmans. Nay, so great has been the increase in the
influence of the League among the Musalmans that many Musalmans who were opposed to the
League have been compelled to seek for a place in the League or make peace with it. Anyone who
takes account of the turns and twists of the late Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan and Mr. Faziul Huq, the
late Premier of Bengal, must admit the truth of this fact. Both Sir Sikandar and Mr. Fazlul Huq
were opposed to the formation of branches of the Muslim League in their Provinces when Mr.
Jinnah tried to revive it in 1937. Notwithstanding their opposition, when the branches of the League
were formed in the Punjab and in Bengal within one year both were compelled to join them. It is a
case of those coming to scoff remaining to pray. No more cogent proof seems to be necessary to
prove the victory of the League.
Notwithstanding this Mr. Gandhi instead of negotiating with Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League
with a view to a settlement, took a different turn. He got the Congress to pass the famous Quit India
Resolution on the 8th August 1942. This Quit India Resolution was primarily a challenge to the
British Government. But it was also an attempt to do away with the intervention of the British
Government in the discussion of the Minority question and thereby securing for the Congress a free
hand to settle it on its own terms and according to its own lights. It was in effect, if not in intention,
an attempt to win independence by bypassing the Muslims and the other minorities. The Quit India
Campaign turned out to be a complete failure.
It was a mad venture and took the most diabolical form. It was a scorch-earth campaign in which
the victims of looting, arson and murder were Indians and the perpetrators were Congressmen.
Beaten, he started a fast for twenty-one days in March 1943 while he was in gaol with the object of
getting out of it. He failed. Thereafter he fell ill. As he was reported to be sinking the British
Government released him for fear that he might die on their hand and bring them ignominy. On
coming out of gaol, he found that he and the Congress had not only missed the bus but had also lost
the road. To retrieve the position and win for the Congress the respect of the British Government as
a premier party in the country which it had lost by reason of the failure of the campaign that
followed up the Quit India Resolution, and the violence which accompanied it, he started
negotiating with the Viceroy. Thwarted in that attempt, Mr. Gandhi turned to Mr. Jinnah. On the
17th July 1944 Mr. Gandhi wrote to Mr. Jinnah expressing his desire to meet him and discuss with
him the communal question. Mr. Jinnah agreed to receive Mr. Gandhi in his house in Bombay.
They met on the 9th September 1944. It was good that at long last wisdom dawned on Mr. Gandhi
and he agreed to see the light which was staring him in the face and which he had so far refused to
see.
Here I propose to stop. For I feel that I have said all that I can say about the subject. To use legal
language I have drawn the pleadings. This I may claim to have done at sufficient length. In doing
so, I have adopted that prolix style so dear to the Victorian lawyers, under which the two sides plied
one another with plea and replication, rejoinder and rebutter, surrejoinder and surrebutter and so on.
I have done this deliberately with the object that a full statement of the case for and against
Pakistan may be made. The foregoing pages contain the pleadings. The facts contained therein are
true to the best of my knowledge and belief. I have also given my findings. It is now for Hindus and
Muslims to give theirs.
To help them in their task it might be well to set out the issues. On the pleadings the following
issues seem to be necessary issues:
(1) Is Hindu-Muslim unity necessary for India's political advancement ? If necessary, is it still
possible of realization notwithstanding the new ideology of the Hindus and the Muslims being two
different nations?
(2) If Hindu-Muslim unity is possible, should it be reached by appeasement or by settlement ?
(3) If it is to be achieved by appeasement, what are the new concessions that can be offered to the
Muslims to obtain their willing co-operation, without prejudice to other interests ?
(4) (4) If it is to be achieved by a settlement, what are the terms of that - settlement ? If there are
only two alternatives, (i) Division of India into Pakistan and Hindustan, or (ii) Fifty-fifty share in
Legislature, Executive and the Services, which alternative is preferable ?
(5) Whether India, if she remained one integral whole, can rely upon both Hindus and Musalmans
to defend her independence, assuming it is won from the British?
(6) Having regard to the prevailing antagonism between Hindus and Musalmans and having regard
to the new ideology demarcating them as two distinct nations and postulating an opposition in their
ultimate destinies, whether a single constitution for these two nations can be built in the hope that
they will show an intention to work it and not to stop it ?
(7) On the assumption that the two-nation theory has come to stay, will not India as one single unit
become an incoherent body without organic unity, incapable of developing into a strong united
nation bound by a common faith in a common destiny and therefore likely to remain a feebler and
sickly country, easy to be kept in perpetual subjection either of the British or-of any other foreign
power ?
(8) If India cannot be one united country, is it not better that Indians should help India in the
peaceful dissolution of this incoherent whole into its natural parts, namely, Pakistan and Hindustan
?
(9) Whether it is not better to provide for the growth of two independent and separate nations, a
Muslim nation inhabiting Pakistan and a Hindu nation inhabiting Hindustan, than pursue the vain
attempt to keep India as one undivided country in the false hope that Hindus and Muslims will
some day be one and occupy it as the members of one nation and sons of one motherland ?
Nothing can come in the way of an Indian getting to grips with these issues and reaching his own
conclusions with the help of the material contained in the foregoing pages except three things :
(1)A false sentiment of historical patriotism, (2) a false conception of the exclusive ownership of
territory and (3) absence of willingness to think for oneself. Of these obstacles, the last is the most
difficult to get over. Unfortunately thought in India is rare and free thought is rarer still. This is
particularly true of Hindus. That is why a large part of the argument of this book has been
addressed to them. The reasons for this are obvious. The Hindus are in a majority. Being in a
majority, their view point must count! There is not much possibility of peaceful solution if no
attempt is made to meet their objections rational or sentimental. But there are special reasons which
have led me to address so large a part of the argument to them and which may not be quite so
obvious to others. I feel that those Hindus who are guiding the destinies of their fellows have lost
what Carlyle calls " the Seeing Eye " and are walking in the glamour of certain vain illusions, the
consequences of which must, I fear, be terrible for the Hindus. The Hindus are in the grip of the
Congress and the Congress is in the grip of Mr. Gandhi. It cannot be said that Mr. Gandhi has given
the Congress the right lead. Mr. Gandhi first sought to avoid facing the issue by taking refuge in
two things. He started by saying that to partition India is a moral wrong and a sin to which he will
never be a party. This is a strange argument. India is not the only country faced with the issue of
partition or shifting of frontiers based on natural and historical factors to those based on the
national factors. Poland has been partitioned three times and no one can be sure that there will be
no more partition of Poland. There are very few countries in Europe which have not undergone
partition during the last 150 years. This shows that the partition of a country is neither moral nor
immoral. It is unmoral. It is a social, political or military question. Sin has no place in it.
As a second refuge Mr. Gandhi started by protesting that the Muslim League did not represent the
Muslims and that Pakistan was only a fancy of Mr. Jinnah. It is difficult to understand how Mr.
Gandhi could be so blind as not to see how Mr. Jinnah's influence over the Muslim masses has been
growing day by day and how he has engaged himself in mobilizing all his forces for battle. Never
before was Mr. Jinnah a man for the masses. He distrusted them. 19[f.19] To exclude them from
political power he was always for a high franchise. Mr. Jinnah was never known to be a very
devout, pious or a professing Muslim. Besides kissing the Holy Koran as and when he was sworn
in as an M.L.A., he does not appear to have bothered much about its contents or its special tenets. It
is doubtful if he frequented any mosque either out of curiosity or religious fervour. Mr. Jinnah was
never found in the midst of Muslim mass congregations, religious or political.
Today one finds a complete change in Mr. Jinnah. He has become a man of the masses. He is no
longer above them. He is among them. Now they have raised him above themselves and call him
their Qaid-e-Azam. He has not only become a believer in Islam, but is prepared to die for Islam.
Today, he knows more of Islam than mere Kalama. Today, he goes to the mosque to hear Khutba
and takes delight in joining the Id congregational prayers. Dongri and Null Bazaar once knew Mr.
Jinnah by name. Today they know him by his presence. No Muslim meeting in Bombay begins or
ends without Allah-ho-Akbar and Long Live Qaid-e-Azam. In this Mr. Jinnah has merely followed
King Henry IV of Franceâthe unhappy father-in-law of the English King Charles I. Henry IV was
a Huguenot by faith. But he did not hesitate to attend mass in a Catholic Church in Paris. He
believed that to change his Huguenot faith and go to mass was an easy price to pay for the powerful
support of Paris. As Paris became worth a mass to Henry IV, so have Dongri and Null Bazaar
become worth a mass to Mr. Jinnah and for similar reason. It is strategy ; it is mobilization. But
even if it is viewed as the sinking of Mr. Jinnah from reason to superstition, he is sinking with his
ideology which by his very sinking is spreading into all the different strata of Muslim society and is
becoming part and parcel of its mental make-up. This is as clear as anything could be. The only
basis for Mr. Gandhi's extraordinary view is the existence of what are called Nationalist
Musalmans. It is difficult to see any real difference between the communal Muslims who form the
Muslim League and the Nationalist Muslims. It is extremely doubtful whether the Nationalist
Musalmans have any real community of sentiment, aim and policy with the Congress which marks
them off from the Muslim League. Indeed many Congressmen are alleged to hold the view that
there is no different between the two and that the Nationalist Muslim inside the Congress are only
an outpost of the communal Muslims. This view does not seem to be quite devoid of truth when
one recalls that the late Dr. Ansari, the leader of the Nationalist Musalmans, refused to oppose the
Communal Award although it gave the Muslims separate electorates in teeth of the resolution
passed by the Congress and the Nationalist Musalmans. Nay, so great has been the increase in the
influence of the League among the Musalmans that many Musalmans who were opposed to the
League have been compelled to seek for a place in the League or make peace with it. Anyone who
takes account of the turns and twists of the late Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan and Mr. Faziul Huq, the
late Premier of Bengal, must admit the truth of this fact. Both Sir Sikandar and Mr. Fazlul Huq
were opposed to the formation of branches of the Muslim League in their Provinces when Mr.
Jinnah tried to revive it in 1937. Notwithstanding their opposition, when the branches of the League
were formed in the Punjab and in Bengal within one year both were compelled to join them. It is a
case of those coming to scoff remaining to pray. No more cogent proof seems to be necessary to
prove the victory of the League.
Notwithstanding this Mr. Gandhi instead of negotiating with Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League
with a view to a settlement, took a different turn. He got the Congress to pass the famous Quit India
Resolution on the 8th August 1942. This Quit India Resolution was primarily a challenge to the
British Government. But it was also an attempt to do away with the intervention of the British
Government in the discussion of the Minority question and thereby securing for the Congress a free
hand to settle it on its own terms and according to its own lights. It was in effect, if not in intention,
an attempt to win independence by bypassing the Muslims and the other minorities. The Quit India
Campaign turned out to be a complete failure.
It was a mad venture and took the most diabolical form. It was a scorch-earth campaign in which
the victims of looting, arson and murder were Indians and the perpetrators were Congressmen.
Beaten, he started a fast for twenty-one days in March 1943 while he was in gaol with the object of
getting out of it. He failed. Thereafter he fell ill. As he was reported to be sinking the British
Government released him for fear that he might die on their hand and bring them ignominy. On
coming out of gaol, he found that he and the Congress had not only missed the bus but had also lost
the road. To retrieve the position and win for the Congress the respect of the British Government as
a premier party in the country which it had lost by reason of the failure of the campaign that
followed up the Quit India Resolution, and the violence which accompanied it, he started
negotiating with the Viceroy. Thwarted in that attempt, Mr. Gandhi turned to Mr. Jinnah. On the
17th July 1944 Mr. Gandhi wrote to Mr. Jinnah expressing his desire to meet him and discuss with
him the communal question. Mr. Jinnah agreed to receive Mr. Gandhi in his house in Bombay.
They met on the 9th September 1944. It was good that at long last wisdom dawned on Mr. Gandhi
and he agreed to see the light which was staring him in the face and which he had so far refused to
see.