Divided India with its two Dominions has now had
three months of experience of political freedom, and we can put to ourselves
the question as to what lessons we can legitimately draw from it.
We have valued political freedom both as an end in
itself and as a means for the social and economic reconstruction of the
country. The events of the three months have not only prevented the Government
of the Dominion of India from embarking on the work of reconstruction, for
which there is such an urgent need, but have also shown that it is impossible
for the Dominion to attend to this need unless its Government has behind it the
power that is required to maintain effectively and securely the freedom that
has been won. It is also now clear that this freedom is being threatened in a
variety of ways by enemies from without as well as from within and the
government is not strong enough to take all the steps necessary to meet the
threat successfully. It is now passing through the ‘Munich’ phase of its
existence. It is now in the same position as Chamberlain and his Government
when they had to face Hitler at Munich.
The risk to India’s freedom comes from Pakistan
from without and from the protagonists from within of the policy of the Muslim
League. These latter are found not only among the masses of people, who have
secretly stored large quantities of arms and ammunition and built underground
factories for the manufacture of modern weapons of warfare, but also among the
Muslim officials, civil as well as military, who are still in the service of
the Government of India. It is against this danger that measures have to be
taken, and they have to be taken without a moment’s delay.
The risk from Pakistan is not imaginary but real.
It is the logical corollary from the ideology which lies behind the whole
Pakistan movement, and it is the only inference that can be legitimately drawn
from the conduct of the masses of people in Pakistan, of the Muslim National
Guards, of the Pakistan Army and Police, and even of the Pakistan Government
which has been either unable to control the activities of all these or
unwilling to do so for fear of loss of popular support. These activities have
resulted in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs, the
abduction of their women, the forcible conversion of thousands to Islam, the
destruction or appropriation of their property, and their migration in mass
across the Pakistan frontiers into India in circumstances which brought to them
unprecedented suffering and misery.
For some time to come, the policy of the Government
of India and the programme of its work should be based on the hypothesis that
Pakistan is a hostile neighbour. Realism requires this. No blunder or folly that
the Government of India might commit would be more disastrous in its
consequences than to ignore the hostile and unfriendly character of the
Government of Pakistan or its failure to take all adequate measures to protect
the country and itself against that hostility.
The hostility is implicit in the ideology of
Pakistan. What the ideology wants is not merely the creation of an independent
sovereign Muslim State in the areas of India where the Muslims are in a
majority. It is much more than this and the establishment of Pakistan with the
boundaries laid down by the Radcliffe Committee is only the first step. No one
should forget in this connection that neither Mr. Jinnah nor the Muslim League
is the creator of Pakistan ideology. They are merely the instruments that have
come into existence to give effect to it, and they are therefore bound by that
ideology. Those who have originated it and who have been promulgating it aim,
first, at the extension of Pakistan boundaries to include the whole of the old
Provinces of the Punjab, Bengal and Assam, and the State of Kashmir, and next,
at the creation of a number of Pakistans in other parts of the Dominion of
India and the Indian States, and finally the reduction of the Hindus in India
to the position of a minority and setting up of a Muslim sovereign State over
the whole country. Nothing less than the re-establishment of the Mughal Empire
as conceived by Aurangazeb will satisfy them. This is what is implicit in their
conception of Pakistan and it is this ideology that has to be taken notice of.
Even Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League accepted the
Radcliffe Award as something temporary and as a matter of expediency. They have
not abandoned the claim to Pakistan–which included Assam also–referred to in
the Lahore resolution of December 1940. But it is to Mr. Chaudari Rahmat Ali,
the founder of “The Pakasia Cultural Movement”, that we have to turn to obtain
a complete understanding of the concept of Pakistan. In the pamphlets which he
has issued on the subject, there is a map which is of a revealing character. It
provides not merely for the present Pakistan but also for a Pakistan inside
each Province of India and in the leading States, whose area will bear the same
proportion to the total area of the Province or the State as the Muslim
population in it bears to the total population. In the United Provinces, for
instance, where the Muslims form 14 per cent of the population, a territory
equivalent in area to 14 per cent of the area of U.P. should be carved out into
a separate Muslim State. Similarly in every other region of the country. In his
view, India is not a country but a continent and should therefore contain not
one State but a number of States. This is the character of the Pakistan
ideology from the territorial standpoint. This should not be dismissed as the
outpourings from the mind of an unpractical dreamer. For it is outpourings like
these, and the systematic propaganda carried on in their favour for less than a
decade, that have been responsible for the two-nation theory taking deep root
among the Muslim masses, and for the partition of the country and the inhuman
massacres and destruction of property that came in its wake. This will be the
ideal for the Pakistan Government to pursue, and it is against this that the
Government of India has to guard itself. It was only the other day that a
serious demand was made by the Muslim League Party in the Madras Legislature
for the creation of a Mapilastan in Malabar where the Muslims are in a
majority.
Implicit also in the Pakistan ideology is the
contemptuous attitude adopted by it towards Hindustan and the Hindu social
order. Mr. Jinnah and some of the members of the present Pakistan Government
have given expression to it. In the view of Mr. Rahmat Ali, there are in India
today six religions–Dravidianism, Akhootism (religion of the scheduled
classes), Caste Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, Buddhism and
Zoroastrianism–besides Islam; and all of them except Hinduism have lost their
vigour and vitality and are in a state of decay and decline. But even Hinduism
is losing its strength and deserves to lose it because of its exclusiveness.
The tendency to look upon the scheduled classes as a community completely
separated from the Caste Hindus is an integral part of the Pakistan ideology,
and the inference that is drawn from it is that the time has come to convert to
Islam all the scheduled classes not only in Pakistan but also in India and
carry on propaganda among the Caste Hindus in favour of Islam. The ideal aimed
at is to so increase the number of Muslims in the land that the Hindus will be
reduced to the position of a minority. Work on these lines is being carried on
in Sind where Mr. Mandal, the scheduled castes Minister, has called on them to
wear separate badges to distinguish them from Caste Hindus. In East Bengal and
in several other regions, there is a vigorous movement for the conversion of
the scheduled classes on a large scale. If this process goes on uninterruptedly
for a few years, the danger of the Hindus becoming a minority in areas where
they are now in a majority will become real, and the claim will then be put
forward to establish Muslim majority rule in such areas on the grounds of
democracy and justice! It is a danger like this that creates a doubt whether
the right to carry on religious propaganda should be included among the
fundamental rights of citizens.
The significance of this element in Pakistan
ideology is best brought out by a reference to the contention of Mr. Jinnah and
the Muslim League that Pakistan is the only solution of the Indian communal
problem. For, events have now shown that the Pakistan as established on August
15th has not only failed to solve the problem but also aggravated it in a
variety of ways. What Mr. Jinnah originally meant was that the Hindus in the
sovereign State of Pakistan would not have the status of citizens, but only of
hostages serving as a guarantee against any ill-treatment of the Muslim
minorities in India. But it is not in this way that the contention has to be
understood or interpreted today. For, the communal problem, so far as Western
Pakistan is concerned, is being solved in quite a different way. It involves
the extermination of the Hindus and Sikhs from the North-West Frontier Province
and West Punjab. This has been achieved for all practical purposes. In Sind,
Hindus find life and property to be so very insecure that they are evacuating
the Province in large numbers. And if, under the leadership of Mr. Mandal, the
process of converting the scheduled classes goes on, there will be no minority
communities in Western Pakistan to trouble the Government. This systematic
policy of extermination of Caste Hindus and their evacuation brings an
additional advantage. It places at the disposal of the Muslim masses there the
rich lands and the other valuable properties left behind by the evacuees. This
is a windfall to them and has been a powerful factor in stimulating the masses
to acts of atrocity against the minorities.
Some may be disposed to think that the Government
of Pakistan had nothing to do with these atrocities. But this is not a correct
view. The Pakistan Government is a ‘League’ Government and the happenings in
Calcutta, Noakhali, Tipperah, the Punjab and the Frontier Province during the
last fifteen months are a part of the ‘League’ policy of striking terror into
the Hindu minority. Moreover, while Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress spokesmen
have systematically condemned the communal massacres and thrown the whole of
their moral weight on the side of communal harmony and peace and the
establishment of a purely secular State, and while Mahatma Gandhi has even gone
to the extent of being ready to sacrifice his life in the cause of the
protection of the Muslim minorities, it was only in a halting and a vacillating
manner that the Pakistan atrocities were condemned by Mr. Jinnah and the
responsible members of his Cabinet. What a contrast between the efforts of
Mahatma Gandhi to bring about peace and the hesitation on the part of Mr.
Jinnah!
Note should also be taken in this connection of the
policy enunciated by the Pakistan Prime Minister in regard to the migration
into Pakistan of’ Muslims from Provinces and States of India other than the
East Punjab. He made it clear that such Muslims would not be allowed to enter
Pakistan. At the same time encouragement is being given by the League
organisations, and organisations closely following its policy and programme, to
Muslims from Indian Provinces migrating in large numbers into States like
Bhopal and Hyderabad, even though there has been no persecution of Muslim
minorities in the Provinces concerned. It is now known that this is part of a
deliberate plan to swell the numbers of Muslims in States ruled by Muslim
rulers with a Hindu majority among their subjects, and make them fully armed so
that, if need arises, they might be used to terrorise the un-armed Hindu
citizens. Sixty to seventy thousand Muslims have thus migrated to Bhopal and
more than a hundred thousand to Hyderabad. All these are important steps in the
creation of ‘Pakistans’ within, and in the neighbourhood of, the Dominion of
India which will serve as centres of attack if any trouble arises between
Pakistan and India.
It is from this standpoint that the policy of the
Pakistan Government towards Indian States has to be examined. There was a time
when Mr. Jinnah declared that, with the lapse of the paramountcy of the British
crown, Indian States, big as well as small, became fully sovereign and were
therefore free to remain independent or accede to the Dominion of India or
Pakistan according to their will and pleasure. It is in pursuance of this
policy that he welcomed the accession of Junagadh to Pakistan, even though
there was no geographical contiguity between the two, and even though the large
majority of the citizens of Junagadh are Hindus and the territory itself is
surrounded on almost all sides by sates which have acceded to the Dominion of
India. The only explanation for this is that Junagadh has a strategic value of
great significance and provides the Pakistan Government with facilities for
concentrating its troops in a region which will easily serve as a jumping-off
ground to attack India any time. It has already become a place for
concentrating some Pakistani forces, resulting in a movement of Indian forces to
the neighbourhood. The Hindu subjects of Junagadh are against its accession to
Pakistan and some of them have formed a Provisional Government in opposition to
the rule of its Nawab. It may so happen that there is a real rebellion against
ruler by the Hindu subjects, and this will give further excuse for the Pakistan
Government to intervene with larger forces. Of course, the Government of India
has protested against this policy of Pakistan, but in politics protests will
never been heeded unless there is the fear that they will be backed up by
military force, which is not the case at present.
The policy which the Pakistan Government is
pursuing towards Kashmir is entirely in conflict with what it has done in
respect of Junagadh. According to the original doctrine of Mr. Jinnah, Kashmir
is now a sovereign independent State and is therefore free to remain
independent or accede to either Dominion according to the will and pleasure of
its ruler. But unfortunately the ruler in this case is a Hindu, while the majority
of his subjects are Muslims. The Pakistan Government assumes that the majority
of the Muslim subjects are anxious that Kashmir should accede to the Pakistan
Dominion, and it has therefore called upon the Kashmir ruler to abide by such
wishes and threatened him with all kinds of coercive action–economic as well as
political–to compel him to adopt such a course. There is no justification for a
policy like this except that it is consistent with Pakistan ideology. Even
Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of the Muslims in Kashmir, expressed the view that
the question of accession is not so important or urgent as that of introducing
Responsible Government. One reason why Pakistan has adopted this attitude
towards Kashmir is that it believed that the Gogovernment of the Dominion of
India is not, from the military point of view strong enough to afford
assistance to the Kashmir ruler even if he requests for such assistance.
Contrast all this with the attitude of the Government of India towards
Hyderabad where, for months, a struggle has been going on between the ruler and
his subjects who want the State to accede to the Dominion of India and
introduce Responsible Government.
The appeal made by the Pakistan Government to
Britain and the Dominions in the British Commonwealth to interfere the affairs
of India and solve the communal problem, is also a part of the same shock
tactics whose aim is to discredit the Government of India and obtain from the
British a verdict which, if we are to judge from the previous awards given by
the British Government, is sure to be unduly favourable to the Muslim community
and prejudicial to the Hindu community. The world knows by this time that not a
small part of the responsibility for the communal tangle in India has to be
borne by the British. The partition of India is merely the culmination of the
policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ steadily pursued by them from the very beginning, a
policy which resulted in the separate electorates created by Lord Minto, the
communal award of Ramsay MacDonald, the grouping of Provinces by the Cabinet
Delegation in 1946, and the establishment of the two Dominions of Pakistan and
India in 1947. Liberals and Conservatives and Labour have all adhered to this
policy, and Mr. Jinnah knows too well that the British could be safely relied
on to put forward a solution to the communal problem which would help him in
taking another step or two to give a more comprehensive shape to the concept of
Pakistan. On no other ground is it possible to explain this appeal to the Dominions,
of which South Africa with its anti Indian racial policy is one.
Mr. Jinnah has not stopped here. This appeal to
Britain and the Dominions had its echo in the charges which the Pakistan
delegates to the U.N.O. General Assembly made against the Government of the
Dominion of India. They called for a U.N.O. enquiry into the atrocities
committed by the Hindu majority against the Muslim minorities, as if the Muslim
majorities in Pakistan were quite innocent! This attitude is in no way
different from that adopted by Greece towards Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria.
Mr. Jinnah would certainly welcome the supervision of the Government of India
by a Committee of the United Nations Assembly.
No further evidence is required to support the
thesis that realism requires that for some time to come–that is, until the
Government of India acquires effective power and strength to maintain the
freedom of the country–it has to adopt a wary and cautious policy towards
Pakistan and look upon Pakistan as a hostile and unfriendly neighbour which
will use all means–fair or foul–for the purpose of achieving its goal. Pakistan
will also welcome any aid from Britain and America, on any terms whatever,
provided they help her in creating confusion in the Dominion of India as a
prelude to the destruction of India’s freedom.
In adopting the Hitlerian tactics which it has been
adopting, and in its attempt to achieve the goal of Pakistan as conceived by
the originators of the idea, it has to be recognised that the Pakistan
Government has certain advantages which India does not at all possess, or
possess to the same degree and extent as Pakistan does. In the first place, it
knows exactly what its aim is. It is definite about its goal. Secondly, the
Pakistan Government is a dictatorial Government dominated by one individual who
is known for the inflexibility of his will. Mr. Jinnah is at one and the same
time the Governor-General of Pakistan, the President of the Pakistan
Constituent Assembly, and the President of the All-India Muslim League. He has
no rivals or competitors. It is through him alone that the Pakistan Government
speaks and every other spokesman merely repeats what he says. There are,
therefore, no divided counsels or conflicting voices in Pakistan. This is not
the case in India. There is not one authoritative spokesman. There is the word
of Mahatma Gandhi. There is the Congress President. There is Pandit Nehru and
there is Sardar Patel. Besides these, there are persons like Prime Minister
Pant of the U.P. On many crucial points, they express different views, and
sometimes the public become confused and bewildered. This is a serious defect
with the Government of the Dominion of India. The time has come when these
divided counsels have to be abandoned and when there should be only one
authoritative spokesman. Thirdly, there is a solidarity among the Muslims in
Pakistan and in India on which Mr. Jinnah can always rely for support. It is
this solidarity that gave him victory in his scheme for the partition of the
country. The nationalist Muslims, respectable and patriotic as they are, have
not so far shown any capacity for organised action strong enough to break the
Muslim League solidarity. Even today they do not have any real organisation.
Thc League Parties continue to flourish in the Provinces and the States and
there is not much to show that their political outlook is changed. In contrast
with the solidarity among the Muslims, there is the division in Hindu society.
The Congress has so far done little to put an end to this division. Congress
Governments in some of the Provinces–notably and prominently in Madras–have
accentuated these divisions by pursuing a purely communal policy. In addition
to all this there are political divisions created by the activities of the
Communists, the Socialists, the Kisans and the Hindu Mahasabha. Another
advantage which the Pakistan Government possesses is that Islam is a
proselytizing religion. It believes in mass conversions. It can bring political
pressure to compel non-Muslims to become Muslims and remove the obstacle that
non-Muslim minorities may otherwise create. Not so is the case with Hinduism.
It believes in the equality of all religions and in toleration. It is time now
to consider whether this creed is to be continued or whether something like the
Shuddhi movement is to be introduced to bring back to the Hindu fold
those who were in the past taken out of it through pressure. Another advantage
which Pakistan possesses is the appeal which it is able to make to the
Pan-Islamic sentiment and thus win the moral and material support of Muslim
people living in other countries. It is a mistake to ignore the strength of
this sentiment. There is an awakening of the Muslims, from Gibraltar to the Bay
of Bengal. Its political significance is seen today in the united front of the
Arab and other Muslim States against the Jews in Palestine. Through the U. N.
O. a closer contact is being established among all the Islamic States and
between Pakistan and the other Muslim States. There is no such extra territorial
sentiment to which the Dominion of India can appeal. Finally, it is to be noted
that the British are more sympathetic towards Pakistan than towards India.
There is nothing strange in this. It is in keeping with their tradition. The
British Governors in the Pakistan Provinces, and the British financial and
other adviser of the Pakistan Government are there to maintain the closest
association between Pakistan and Britain. It is quite possible that the United
States also may come to the aid of Pakistan, as she did in the case of Turkey
and Greece, through the application of the Truman doctrine.
Though India is the bigger of the two Dominions,
the problems it has to face are more complicated and varied. There is more of
heterogeneity among her peoples and more of division in the politically
conscious sections. To create a strong and efficient State in such an
atmosphere requires a larger amount of statesmanship, and statesmanship of the
highest quality. The primary task, however, of this statesmanship is the creation
of instruments of power with which it will be in a position to deaf with
external as well as internal dangers. What the principal source of these
dangers is has been pointed out above. It is the centre from which there is
every possibility of India experiencing today what she experienced at the hands
of Mahmud of Ghazni, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdalli in the bygone
days. Effort, therefore, should be concentrated on the building up of military
strength without which the freedom of the State cannot be maintained. Every
scheme of reconstruction should be judged, for the time being, by the one
standard of the extent to which it will make the Dominion of India strong from
the military point of view. Rapid industrialisation of the country, agricultural
improvement, socialistic economy,–all these are necessary and desirable, but we
have to realise that today they are necessary and desirable because, without
them, we will not be strong enough to defend ourselves from the dangers that
are the inevitable outcome of the Pakistan ideology. It may be that Right is on
the side of the Dominion of India, but in the real world the claim to Right has
no validity unless it is backed up by Might. It is on this simple truth that
the policies of the Government of the Dominion of India should be based.
As a first step in this programme, the Government
should once for all decide whether it believes in the doctrine of non-violence
as preached by Mahatma Gandhi or is prepared to discard it. There is now no
room for vacillation on this issue. It is not here argued that non-violent
methods of fighting are less efficacious than violent methods. It is quite
possible that they are really more efficacious. But even for carrying on a
non-violent war, there must be an army trained and disciplined in the methods
of non-violence. No such army exists today and no effort has been made all
these years to create such an army. A crore of men in the country believing in
non-violence as an article of faith and trained to practise it through yoga and
tapas can beat back any attack from anywhere. But where are the experts
who can give such training and where are the persons who are eager to undergo
such discipline? Is the Government or Mahatma Gandhi in a position to create
such an army? If this is found an impossible and an impracticable task, the
only alternative is to create an army, as the term is normally understood. It
may necessitate universal military training. It will necessitate
industrialisation of the country’s economy and the liquidation of all vested
interests. This is the task which lies ahead of the Government of the Dominion
of to India. In no other way will it be possible to overcome the danger arising
out of the ideology of Pakistan, the greatest danger that India has to face
today. There is no security or safety for India as long as this ideology
inspires the Government of Pakistan and the League-minded Muslims inside India.
* Written on the 24th of October, 1947.