Union Minister P Chidambaram is playing petty politics by exploiting Maulana Azad’s claim that Sardar Patel was the first important Congress leader to endorse the idea of the country’s division
When Mr Narendra Modi said recently that the Congress had presided over India’s partition, thereby altering the nation’s history and geography, it was in response to the Congress’s charge that the Bharatiya Janata Party was distorting both. His remark came more as a retort than an accusation. Yet, the Congress was sufficiently needled to give vent to its thinly disguised prejudice against Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Union Minister for Finance P Chidambaram was quick to allege that it was the Iron Man’s approval of partition that had subdued Jawaharlal Nehru’s opposition and made the latter go along — against his wishes, one presumes.
Interestingly, Mr Modi is the not the only one to have raked up the matter. Congress’s valuable ally Mulayam Singh Yadav too has added his bit understanding of the issue by claiming that the Congress instigated the partition by refusing to heed Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s demand for Muslim representation of his choice in the 1937 Government.
Mr Yadav is of course playing a game. By virtually exonerating Jinnah (who, one presumes from the Samajwadi Party leader’s comments, was extremely reasonable) and laying the blame exclusively at the Congress’s doorsteps, the former Union Minister is seeking to win over the minority vote-bank by drawing them further away from a Congress which ‘did not even bother to offer representation to the community which Jinnah’s Muslim league represented’. Unfortunately for Mr Yadav, bipartisan history does not back his claim, though it’s true that both the Congress and the Muslim league made many mistakes on their way to partition.
We must return to Mr Chidambaram and his history for just one moment. If one is to believe the Union Finance Minister, there would have been no partition had Sardar Patel not backed the idea — because then Nehru would not have fallen in line. In other words, the Union Minister is stating that Sardar Patel is to be held responsible for the country’s division and that the independent-minded Nehru, for all his bluff and bluster, tamely caved in before Sardar Patel’s stand. Since Mr Chidambaram does not provide historical material to substantiate his position, barring Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s observations in the latter’s book, India Wins Freedom, we have to fall back upon material that has emerged to put the Minister’s remarks in context.
It’s difficult to believe the Maulana’s claim that “the man in India who first fell for lord Mountbatten’s idea (of partition) was Sardar Patel.” The Sardar falling for Mountbatten’s charm! It’s impossible to comprehend. Any doubts on that count have been cleared by Rafiq Zakaria, well-known politician and author of the book, The Man Who Divided India — An Insight into Jinnah’s leadership and its Aftermath (2001), and other works. Zakaria writes in one place, “Nehru first gave in (to Mountbatten’s idea) and later Patel felt compelled to do so.” Given the excellent rapport that Nehru shared with Mountbatten, this is more believable. What does Mr Chidambaram have to sayIJ
Former Union Home Secretary Madhav Godbole puts the controversy in a neutral perspective in his very readable book, The Holocaust of Indian Partition: An Inquest: “There is no unanimity among critics as to who first fell to the charms of Mountbatten...” Godbole does not blindly hold Patel accountable.
If the Samajwadi Party leader traced the roots of partition to the 1937 incident, Mr Chidambaram conveniently stopped the search for a scapegoat with Sardar Patel. What both appear to forget, for their own different reasons, is that Jinnah was determined at all costs to carve out a separate Muslim state, and the 1937 incident or the passage which Mr Chidambaram refers to, are mere props for those who are today willing to play down the Muslim league supremo’s obstinacy and fix Sardar Patel. No amount of Patel-bashing or Jinnah-sympathising is going to change the truth.
Just how fixated the later-to-be Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam was to disintegrate India (as determined as today’s Pakistani state and non-state elements are), can be understood by even a cursory reading of history. But, if one does not immediately wish to delve into old dusty book covers, here is a new offering: Former senior Pakistani diplomat Husain Haqqani’s book, Magnificent Delusions. Admittedly, it’s not a historical work in the sense that we understand history to be, but the book does offer a refreshing perspective in parts and derives material from established historical sources. Mr Yadav should especially demonstrate an interest in reading it (although it’s hard to imagine the Samajwadi Party leader wading through a 388-page book written in English, a language he is inimical to). During a speech in March 1944, which Mr Haqqani quotes, Jinnah let the cat out of the bag when he said: “Pakistan is not the conduct or misconduct of the Hindus. It has always been there… Hindus and Muslims, though living in the same towns and villages, had never blended into one nation; they were always two separate entities.”
In other words, Jinnah would have demanded Pakistan even if the Congress had been ‘flexible’, because he believed that Hindus and Muslims couldn’t share a nation.
Not just that — and it punctures Mr Yadav’s fond belief that Jinnah deserves a better deal — the Muslim league supremo went on to say, according to Mr Haqqani in his book: “We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilisation... By all cannons of international law, we are a nation.” And this was a full three years before partition. Despite all its earlier desperate attempts at appeasement, the Congress could not bring itself to change Jinnah’s mind.
We were in 1944. Rewind to 1940, and we are face to face with a no less bellicose Jinnah and his Muslim league which, for the first time, formally placed its demand for a separate state of Pakistan with Islam as the ‘unifier’ From then to the year of partition, the Muslim league kept up its aggression and its supporters indulged in terrible violence (which invited an equally gruesome counter-response from the other side of the community). Those who believe that Jinnah hardened his stance only after the Congress rebuffed him (at the instance of Sardar Patel!) are either naïve or don’t wish to face the truth.
It is true, as Maulana Azad is quoted by Mr Chidambaram as observing, that Sardar Patel backed partition. The Iron Man was a pragmatic leader. Moreover, he was furious with Jinnah’s Direction Action call of 1946 which had vitiated the communal atmosphere and unleashed large-scale violence against the Hindus in Calcutta, and wanted nothing more to do with the Muslim league.
Nehru could have rejected the partition idea which Sardar Patel first allegedly endorsed; he would have had Mahatma Gandhi’s backing too. Yet, he, like Sardar Patel, had realised the futility of trying to do business with the Muslim league and concluded that partition was the only solution.