“Judge not by the glib words spoken with a forked tongue,
judge by the actions that follow them.”
-
Anurupa Cinar
Hi, Everyone! In March
1940, the Muslim League made a formal demand for Pakistan. And by May 1940,
Gandhi started talking with a forked tongue!
While researching
Gandhi I have noticed he has a remarkable talent for expressing two opposing
ideas and making them seem reasonable. The unpleasant point is made in a
negative form and the one intended to be applauded, quoted, and publicized is
made very positively.
I am giving a prime example of it below:
“‘As a man of
nonviolence,’ he [Gandhi] observed, ‘I cannot forcibly resist the proposed
partition if the Muslims of India really insist upon it.’”
That’s the negative form, and a euphemistic way of really saying he
will accept Pakistan—for the Muslims in India were most certainly insisting
upon it . . . !
In
the next sentence he says:
“But I can never
be a willing party to the vivisection. . . .”[1]
How
very much this sentence been quoted . . . ! Though, even in
that there is a catch, for he can claim to be an “unwilling” party to the
vivisection. There’s his out.
See
how it is? I intend to devote a whole post one day to highlighting many of
Gandhi’s such double-talk.
Congress
was certainly wishing to get rid of Jinnah. Pakistan plan was insidiously being
spoken off in an agreeable way. Check out what Gandhi has to say— openly
published in his Harijan —to an
Englishman.
“While answering
an Englishman, Gandhi replied in Harijan of May 4, 1940: ‘I would any day
prefer Muslim rule to British rule. . . . The partition proposal
had altered the face of Hindu-Muslim problem. . . .’ And he granted
that “Pakistan cannot be worse than foreign domination.’”
And
Keer further asks, as a comment on this flimflaming of Gandhi’s:
“Was
it an explanation of his stand or a direction for the Muslim leaders to draw up
their plans?”[2]
By
1942, Congress was done with these oblique references to accepting Pakistan.
Jinnah and the Muslim League were becoming a big hindrance in their path.
Viceroy Linlithgow was not entertaining their demands, especially ones that
aimed at giving Congress sole power in free India. The Congress High Command
now made a drastic, treacherous move.
“The Working
Committee of the Indian National Congress proclaimed emphatically by a
resolution at Delhi in April 1942, ‘that the Congress could not think in terms
of compelling the people of any territorial unit to join the Indian Union
against their declared and established will.’
This
historic resolution brought into bold relief the fact that the Congress
favoured the provinces with the right of self-determination or secession and
such secession was called by the Muslims ‘Pakistan.’
Dealing with Congress resolution four years later, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya had to admit: ‘It is evident that the passage concedes the division of India into more than one State and gives the go-by to the Unity and integrity of India.’”[3]
Pakistan
resolution was now passed by the Congress Working
Committee . . . ! And that in April 1942—five years before
Partition and independence.
The
All-India Congress Committee, though, was as yet clueless re this treacherous
resolution of their Working Committee.
Now
the Congress High Command had to ensure that the A.I.C.C. too accepted the
Pakistan resolution. Rajagopalachari set to work to do the deed.
“On 23 April
1942 Rajagopalachari managed to get two resolutions passed by the Congress
members in the Madras legislature. The first recommended to the All-India
Congress Committee (which was about to meet in Allahbad) that Congressmen
should acknowledge the Muslim League’s claim for separation, should the same be
persisted in when the time came for framing the constitution of India . . .
The resolution urged that ‘to sacrifice the chances of
the formation of a national government for the doubtful advantage of
maintaining a controversy over the unity of India is the most unwise policy’
and that it had become necessary to choose the lesser
evil. . . .
The Muslim
League was naturally jubilant at its ideal of Pakistan having been brought down
at last from the clouds of speculation to the level of practical
politics . . .
The All-India
Congress Committee, meeting in Allahabad on 29 April, rejected his resolution
by an overwhelming majority and adopted a counter-resolution ‘that any proposal
to disintegrate India by giving liberty to any component State or territorial
unit to secede from the Indian Union or Federation will be detrimental to the
best interests of the people of the different States and provinces and the
country as a whole and the Congress, therefore, cannot agree to any such
proposal.’”[4]
The
Congress members were not in favor of their High Command’s sellout of the
Motherland. They stated so, unequivocally in their resolution.
But
the Congress High Command who were absolute dictators of the Congress (and had
disregarded, overturned, and schemed against relatively minor issues) were not
about to let their Delhi resolution of acceding Pakistan, upon which depended
their getting total power in free India (or so they believed,) be swept away.
“Upon this Dr. Sayyid
Abdul Latif of Hyderabad asked Maulana Azad whether Jagat Narayan’s resolution
had in any way modified or affected the Delhi resolution of the Working
Committee. Maulana Azad in his letter of August 6, 1942, replied: ‘No part of the Delhi resolution to which you refer has in
any way been affected or modified by any subsequent resolution of the A.I.C.C.’”
“To the same question of Dr. Latif, Jawaharlal
Nehru also replied that Babu Jagat Narayan’s ‘resolution does not in any way
override the Delhi Working Committee resolution.’”[5]
· So
the Congress Working Committee resolution acceding Pakistan reigned supreme—as affirmed by the
Congress dictators on August 6, 1942.
Read
on to discover the Machiavellian timing of this Delhi resolution . . .
Anurupa
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