‘Here was a task which normally should have taken years to accomplish but which had to be compressed into the short space of a few weeks!’
On 15 August 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was not in Delhi. He was in faraway Calcutta to stop the communal carnage in the city.
On 20 February, Prime Minister Clement Attlee made a statement in the House of Commons announcing His Majesty’s government’s decision that peaceful transfer of power into responsible Indian hands “by a date not later than June 1948”. The word Independence was never mentioned.
Lord Mountbatten succeeded Lord Wavell as Viceroy and Governor General. He arrived in Delhi on 22 March 1947. Even before he was sworn in, he wrote to Gandhiji and Mr Jinnah, inviting them to Delhi for discussions.
During the next few weeks, the Viceroy met leaders of all important political parties. The outcome was not encouraging. Mr Jinnah insisted on Partition. Eventually, the Congress leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and C. Rajagopalachari accepted the inevitable. Nehru said, it was “the lesser evil”. Gandhiji did not agree.
On 3 June, Lord Mountbatten broadcast over All India Radio, giving details of the plan to divide India. He was followed by Jawaharlal Nehru, M.A. Jinnah and Baldev Singh.
The AICC met in New Delhi on 14 June. It passed a resolution accepting the 3 June plan. The resolution was moved by Pandit Gobind Ballabh Pant and reluctantly seconded by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Nehru and Patel also spoke. Minor differences were ironed out.
Now I quote from V.P. Menon’s book, Transfer of Power in India. “The issue was clinched when Gandhiji supported the resolution. He said he was not pleading on behalf of the Working Committee, but the All India Congress Committee must weigh the pros and cons of its rejection. He said that his views on the plan were well known. The acceptance of the plan did not involve the Congress Working Committee. There were two other parties to it, the British Government and the Muslim League. If at this stage the All India Congress Committee rejected the Working Committee’s decision, what would the world think of it? The consequences of rejection would be the finding of a new set of leaders, who would not only be capable of constituting the Congress Working Committee but of taking charge of the government. They should not forget that the peace in the country was very essential at this juncture. The Congress was opposed to Pakistan and he was one of those who had steadfastly opposed the division of India. Yet he had come before the All India Congress Committee to urge the acceptance of the resolution of India’s division. Sometimes certain decisions, however unpalatable they might be, had to be taken.”
The resolution was passed 157 for, 29 against, 32 neutral. Is it not staggeringly strange that so momentous a decision was taken by 218 AICC members, without any debate or meaningful discussion?
Acharya Kripalani, the secretary of the Congress Working Committee also spoke. He said, “I must admit the truth of this charge (of the decision the C.W.C had taken was out of fear) but not in the sense in which it is made. The fear is not for the lives lost or of the widow’s wail, or the orphan’s cry, or of the many houses burned. The fear is that if we go on like this, retaliating and heaping indignities on each other, we shall progressively reduce ourselves to a stage of cannibalism and worse. In every fresh communal acts of the previous fight become the norm.”
V.P. Menon was a practical and wise man. I quote him. “Thus was the plan accepted by the three main political parties. But accepting was one thing its implementation was a different matter altogether. Here was a task which normally should have taken years to accomplish but which had to be compressed into the short space of a few weeks! It was a task before which anybody would have quailed, for it was one which seemed verily tempt the Gods.”
Lord Mountbatten, who had commanded armies and navies, did not anticipate that partition would be followed by millions of Hindus and Sikhs migrating to India, millions of Muslims going to Pakistan. Before reaching their destination lakhs would be brutally murdered, women raped, children not spared. If thought had been given to the migration problem by Mountbatten, Nehru, Patel and others for an orderly migration no lives would have been lost.
Horrendous communal riots took place in Delhi and many parts of north India. These should have been anticipated. The facts are given in G.D Khosla’s book, Stern Reckoning.
HAPPY
INDEPENDENCE DAY