The ANP Challenge

#574 by majumdar

I have no doubt as to the culpability of HSS but the issue that Sallubhai raised was that of MAJ (pbuh).

Majumdar bhai, the buck stops at Jinnah. Isn't it the leader who takes responsibility for a screw up?

They were the rulers of India at that point of time, they had no business backing out.

The Brits were here to exploit India, not to care for their wellbeing. And when their own behinds were on the line due to the WW2 and communal disturbances, do you think the safety of Indians would have been their priority?

Harishbhai,

I have no doubt as to the culpability of HSS but the issue that Sallubhai raised was that of MAJ (pbuh).

(As for the British, why would they have cared?)

They were the rulers of India at that point of time, they had no business backing out.

Regards

PS: We are also waiting on his claim that the Barelvi Pir of Manki wanted to kill Nehru.

We can have the discussion on the alleged culpability of Suhrawardy but the issue here was as majumdar pointed out Salman's earlier claim about Wolpert accusing Jinnah, which is clearly not the case.

#570 by majumdar

I dont doubt that Muslim thugs wud have initiated the violence possibly in connivance with some ML govt members. My only point is that SW's stuff does not personally indict MAJ (pbuh).

Majumdar bhai, had not Suhrawardy created conditions ripe for death and destruction, the story might have been different. By declaring a holiday to the police force when they should have been deployed in full strength to prevent any untoward happenings, half of the work was done. The rest was left to the footsoldier to complete.

As for the British, why would they have cared? They weren't the ones dying, were they?

Harishbhai,

(Brutal violence unleashed a year earlier by Muslim thugs in Calcutta had triggered Hindu counterattacks and the murder of more Muslims in Bihar.)

I dont doubt that Muslim thugs wud have initiated the violence possibly in connivance with some ML govt members. My only point is that SW's stuff does not personally indict MAJ (pbuh).

(Mountbatten, however, refused even to consider Suhrawardy's brilliant plan)

As a Bong Hindoo I can only be thankful that Mountbatten sahib did not approve of HSS's "brilliant plan".

Regards

For the avoidance of doubt, Salman still hasn't produced the extract that he claimed (of Wolpert accusing Jinnah) nor has he produced the extract/source of his claim that Pir of Manki wanted to kill Nehru.

Thanks for the clarification. Also I was actually checking the Wikipedia link.

It is there on the NYT website and I acknowledge it.

It is interesting that even there, neither Gandhi nor Wolpert accuse the Muslim League or its leader of violence.

Every British officer, including Governor Sir Frederick Burrows and Chief of the Eastern Command Lt. General Sir Francis Tuker, pointed to Suhrawardy as the villain of the terror that exploded after he gave Calcutta's police a special holiday to "celebrate" Direct Action. What those self-righteous British officers failed to explain, of course, was why the army they commanded was kept in barracks until the rioters had done their worst work. As soon as troops did show themselves, marching through the streets up Garden Reach, Metia Bruz, Beliaghatia, and along the Lower Circular Road, the killers slipped away. Calcutta's Marwari Hindu merchants and bankers also pointed fingers at Suhrawardy. So did their sycophants in every court and bazaar, who soon hired their own thugs to wreak vengeance on Muslim quarters of the city, gutting homes and shops there for months.

Suhrawardy by now was stripped of Calcutta's chief ministership, replaced by Dr. Profullah Chandra Ghosh, leader of West Bengal's Hindu Congress majority provincial government. Nor would Suhrawardy be picked to become chief minister of East Pakistan; his less popular Muslim League rival Khwaja Nazimuddin had been selected instead by Jinnah to take that post in Dhaka. Jinnah knew that Suhrawardy's dream had been to preside over an independent nation of Bengal—Bangladesh—a new nation state he had lobbied hard to have carved out of the Eastern quarter of British India. His vision was to integrate Hindu majority West Bengal and Muslim majority East Pakistan into a single unified land of Bengali speakers, whose language and culture would transcend any differences of religious doctrine or practice.


...

And if you read "Shameful Flight"- the latest work by Stanley Wolpert you would see that Jinnah endorsed Suhrawardy's plan of Bangladesh as well.

CHAPTER ONE
Gandhi's Passion
The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi
By STANLEY WOLPERT
Oxford University Press

Read the Review


-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------


Midnight in Calcutta




MAHATMA GANDHI fell into "darkest despair" on the eve of India's independence in August 1947. Savage fighting spread from Punjab and the North-West Frontier to Eastern Bengal and Bihar. Brutal violence unleashed a year earlier by Muslim thugs in Calcutta had triggered Hindu counterattacks and the murder of more Muslims in Bihar. Mayhem, rape, and murder spread to the villages of Bengal as well, each report inciting more massacres of innocents as communal hatred raged across most of South Asia's subcontinent.

On July 17, 1947, acting on the advice of India's prime minister-in-waiting, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the consent of Pakistan's governor-general-to-be M. A. Jinnah, Viceroy Lord Mountbatten won his government's final approval to partition Punjab and Bengal along religious lines prior to Great Britain's withdrawal from India. Their plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi, however, who realized too late that his closest comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led for India's freedom was a nonviolent one.

"Who listens to me today?" a despondent Gandhi muttered. "And why should anyone?" To disillusioned devotees, the Mahatma ("Great Soul") freely confessed his "bankruptcy," admitting that he lived in "a fool's paradise." Nonetheless, the seventy-seven-year-old little Father (Bapu) of his nation did not surrender to sorrow. Great Soul that he was, Gandhi carried on, passionately ignoring daily threats to his life, refusing to silence his criticism of the government, and rejecting appeals to remain in New Delhi to celebrate the dawn of India's freedom at midnight on the Fifteenth of August 15, 1947. "What is there to celebrate?" This "vivisection of the Mother," as he called partition, was fit only for prayer and "deep heart-searching," not for fireworks, proud speeches, and songs.

Gandhi had tried to win Nehru over to his faith in the virtues of simple living, urging his aristocratic Anglophile heir to give up India's democratic throne, abandon the great house he planned to occupy, and instead move into a "village hut." He argued: "I believe that if India, and through India the world, is to achieve real freedom, then ... we shall have to go and live in the villages—in huts, not in palaces." Gandhi feared now that India was approaching its doom, whirling mothlike round the hot light of power till its wings would burn. His duty was to save India from that sad fate, though he well understood it might take his last passionate breath. As Delhi draped itself in miles of festive electric lights and the saffron, white, and green bunting of India's bright national flag symbolizing wishful Hindu-Sikh-Muslim unity, Bapu entrained for Bengal on his lonely pilgrimage of prayer for peace.

"What to do?" was the mantra he muttered daily that November as he walked barefoot through the blood-soaked mud of Noakhali District's scorched villages in Eastern Bengal's anguished Delta. He had gone there in response to his old Quaker friend Muriel Lester's personal plea, made after she had met Hindu widows who had watched their husbands butchered by Muslims. Before their husbands could be cremated, those widows were dragged off to be "converted" and "married" to the same killers. "These women had a dead look," Muriel wrote him, a look of "utter blankness." Gandhi soon saw worse things in Noakhali. Believing as he did that "Truth is God," he could not understand how so much he thought true about India turned out to be so violently false.

Lured back to Delhi by appeals from the new viceroy seeking Gandhi's wise advice on how to stop the killings, Bapu offered it. But Mountbatten was staggered by what this naked "old fool" told him. He consulted Nehru, who explained that the "old boy" was "out of touch" and could hardly be taken seriously when he urged the viceroy immediately to replace his own Congress ally and heir with their most hated Muslim League enemy, Jinnah. Mountbatten agreed, understanding little more about India than what Nehru, Nehru's closest comrade, V. K. Krishna Menon, and his own clever wife, Lady Edwina, explained to him. They all agreed that Gandhi was a saint, but saints should never indulge in practical politics or govern nations, should they?

Gandhi realized soon enough that it was all a charade, a polite royal brush-off, once the tea party ended, the carriages were called, and the servants escorted him down the garden path. That was when he decided to leave Delhi and return to Noakhali, where he was at least listened to, if not worshipped, by villagers too uneducated to be insincere, too timid for flattery or duplicity, too poor to fear that he wanted anything from them. These were the people he loved best and felt most at ease and at home among. Mostly naked, with no possessions to worry about losing, they had nothing to hide; they were as remote from regal Mountbattens and Nehrus as Noakhali was from New Delhi.

But before reaching Noakhali, his train steamed into Calcutta's noisy, bustling station, arriving five hours late in that smoky magnificent "City of Dreadful Night." Imperial bullies later hammered her into the richest, sexiest, sickest capital of the grandest empire on earth, built along the wrong side of a river named Hughli atop dung-filled mud at whose ancient womb worshippers of the Mother Goddess Kali laid petals of puja and slaughtered sacrificial goats and lambs. Gandhi considered all modern cities satanic, the ugliest fruit of Western civilization. He had long sought refuge from their soul-crushing noise, industrial speed, and poisonous air, preferring the harmony of India's ancient village community. And the train ride (he adamantly refused to fly) was exhausting. Noisy crowds awaiting his arrival at every stop, shoving, shouting, banging at his carriage windows; even a glimpse of the Mahatma—his darshan—was considered a blessing to devout Hindus. He tried to wave them off and to spin or pray in peace, but they never left him alone, testing his patience, causing him often to lose it, making him shout angrily at them through toothless gums. Too tired to move on immediately to East Bengal, he got into a car that was waiting at Calcutta's station to drive him to suburban Sodepur, where his Bengali disciple Satish Chandra Das Gupta had established a retreat for the hand-spinning of cotton.

He never planned far ahead. "One step enough for me," he often said, quoting the last words of the hymn he loved best, "Lead, Kindly Light," by Cardinal Newman. He waited at all times for instructions from his "inner voice" before making his next move. Only now he heard many voices, mostly those of anxious Muslims importuning him to stay in Calcutta. The Muslim minority there feared that the transfer of power to a Hindu Congress government in West Bengal would revive riots that had started a year ago, on August 16. That was proclaimed "Direct Action Day" by Quaid-i-Azam ("Great Leader") Jinnah, president of the Muslim League. Of all his failures, the one Gandhi regretted most was not convincing Jinnah of the error of his insistence on partition, the dreadful operation that was to bring Pakistan to birth by virtually bleeding Mother India to death. If only Mountbatten and Nehru had agreed last April to tempt Jinnah by offering him the premier crown of thorns! Now it was too late, and the sole penance Gandhi could perform was to spend the remaining days of his life in Pakistan, trying to protect minorities there from extortion and violence by the Muslim majority. He resolved to leave India, moving either to Karachi or Lahore on that final pilgrimage, but first he would visit Noakhali once again to bring what little comfort his unarmed presence could to Hindus living there in daily fear of death.

Calcutta's anxieties that the previous year's orgy of terror would be repeated, however, inspired him now to launch one of his most creative initiatives in problem solving. The man most widely blamed for the mass murder of Hindus and the torching of their property in the days and weeks following Direct Action Day was Bengal's Muslim League Chief Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. Every British officer, including Governor Sir Frederick Burrows and Chief of the Eastern Command Lt. General Sir Francis Tuker, pointed to Suhrawardy as the villain of the terror that exploded after he gave Calcutta's police a special holiday to "celebrate" Direct Action. What those self-righteous British officers failed to explain, of course, was why the army they commanded was kept in barracks until the rioters had done their worst work. As soon as troops did show themselves, marching through the streets up Garden Reach, Metia Bruz, Beliaghatia, and along the Lower Circular Road, the killers slipped away. Calcutta's Marwari Hindu merchants and bankers also pointed fingers at Suhrawardy. So did their sycophants in every court and bazaar, who soon hired their own thugs to wreak vengeance on Muslim quarters of the city, gutting homes and shops there for months.

Suhrawardy by now was stripped of Calcutta's chief ministership, replaced by Dr. Profullah Chandra Ghosh, leader of West Bengal's Hindu Congress majority provincial government. Nor would Suhrawardy be picked to become chief minister of East Pakistan; his less popular Muslim League rival Khwaja Nazimuddin had been selected instead by Jinnah to take that post in Dhaka. Jinnah knew that Suhrawardy's dream had been to preside over an independent nation of Bengal—Bangladesh—a new nation state he had lobbied hard to have carved out of the Eastern quarter of British India. His vision was to integrate Hindu majority West Bengal and Muslim majority East Pakistan into a single unified land of Bengali speakers, whose language and culture would transcend any differences of religious doctrine or practice. Mountbatten, however, refused even to consider Suhrawardy's brilliant plan, just as he had ignored Gandhi's proposal to replace Nehru with Jinnah. Though Suhrawardy's dream of becoming the king of Bengal was thus aborted, he lived to emerge less than a decade later (but only briefly to remain) as prime minister of Pakistan. He was removed by martial coup and died a few years later in Beirut.

Gandhi had long known and liked Suhrawardy, who for three decades had admired him as well. So when Muslim friends pressed him to stay on in Calcutta, at least until after Independence Day, the Mahatma agreed to do so, on one condition—that Shaheed Suhrawardy share the same roof with him so that they could appeal to Muslims and Hindus alike to live in peace in this greatest of all Indian cities. "Adversity makes strange bed-fellows," Gandhi told his prayer meeting that August 11. Suhrawardy agreed, and they moved into the abandoned Hydari House, a once-splendid residence whose terrified Muslim owners had fled, leaving it to be robbed and ruined by looters and hoodlums. They seemed an odd couple, the almost naked Bapu and Bengal's Big Daddy dressed meticulously in his white linen or beige silk suits. But Gandhi's genius for symbolic gestures was never wiser than this experiment in Hindu-Muslim cohabitation. It visibly demonstrated to Calcutta's millions of angry and fearful Hindus and Muslims alike that a Mahatma and the Muslim League leader most often blamed for instigating the worst of last year's riots could peacefully live under a single roof. They stayed there together for almost a week, answering the most hostile, angry questions as honestly as they could, as fearlessly as both of these remarkable men had lived all their lives. It proved to be a potent lesson in the practical possibility of peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and the powers of love. Of the lessons Gandhi had labored most of his life to teach, this was one of the most important. The interlude with Suhrawardy, however, was his last demonstration of the miraculous force of love and the value of trust and faith in one's fellow man as well as in truth. Pacifist Horace Alexander, whose leadership of the Society of Friends had first brought him to India in 1929, was invited by Gandhi to join them in Hydari House, where Alexander proved useful in helping to keep crowds of irate Hindus from breaking in that first night. "Why have you come here?" they shouted at Gandhi. "Why did you not go to places from where the Hindus have fled?"

"I have come here to serve not only Muslims but Hindus," he explained. The hooligans told him to "go away," but Gandhi was never easily dissuaded or intimidated from doing what he believed to be right. "You can obstruct my work, even kill me. I won't invoke the help of the police. You can prevent me from leaving this house, but what is the use of your dubbing me an enemy of the Hindus? I will not accept the label." The Mahatma then asked them what good it would do now to "avenge" the wrongs committed in 1946.

On August 14, Gandhi argued again with the young Hindus who had so angrily challenged him the previous day. By evening he had won their hearts and minds. "What a spell-binder this old man is!" one of them cried. "No matter how heavy the odds, he does not know ... defeat." That same convert volunteered to help guard Hydari House against any future attacks. An estimated ten thousand people gathered to hear Gandhi's prayer that evening. "If the flames of communal strife envelop the whole country," Bapu asked, "how can our newborn freedom survive?"

He awoke at 2 A.M. on August 15, having slept through Nehru's "Tryst with Destiny" speech at midnight. When he left Hydari House for his morning walk, crowds followed him, keen for just a glimpse of the Mahatma. Soon after he returned, West Bengal's new cabinet arrived, seeking his blessings. "Wear the crown of thorns," Gandhi told them. "Strive ceaselessly to cultivate truth and non-violence. Be humble. Be forbearing ... beware of power; power corrupts. Do not let yourselves be entrapped by its pomp and pageantry. Remember, you are in office to serve the poor in India's villages."

How obvious it seemed to him now, that simple prescription for using power most wisely, and yet how long it had taken him to learn. And how difficult it was to avoid life's lures and traps, the pomp and the wrong passions.

(C) 2001 Stanley Wolpert All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-19-513060-X

#564 by MantoLives

The claim Salman had originally made was that Wolpert accused Jinnah personally of violence.

Yaar Yasser, I haven't followed all the previous interacts so I may not be aware of everything going on here for the past 3-4 days. However, Majumdar bhai's post #537 which reproduces an earlier post by Salman is clear and says Wolpert blamed Muslims (note his post). I merely provided the reference Majumdar bhai was asking for in response to his post.

However, please note that I tried to verify this claim and I could not find the quote in "Gandhi's Passion". Please tell us of the exact page number so that I can see it for myself.

I do not have the book with me. The excerpt I posted is from an online source (New York Times), you may visit the link to read more.

nor can I see the said quote on the link you produced.

Re: # 562

Harish bhai,

This is not fair. You can see what was asked was different.

The claim Salman had originally made was that Wolpert accused Jinnah personally of violence. That is the evidence Majumdar was asking for. That is the evidence Salman has failed to produce.

We've already acknowledged that Salman changed his story.
However, please note that I tried to verify this claim and I could not find the quote in "Gandhi's Passion". Please tell us of the exact page number so that I can see it for myself.

Re: # 546

In addition to my post 555

The more I read your posts, the more I realize how important it is to expose the lies of Bacha Khan, Wali Khan and their followers.

For your information: Republican Party was formed by bureaucrats and a bunch of Punjabi feudals to undercut the Muslim League. Its biggest leader was Dr. Khan Sahab - yes the CM of NWFP and Bacha Khan's elder brother. Yes it did have people like Feroz Khan Noon, who had jumped on the Muslim League ship briefly - but were essentially establishment men. However the true Muslim Leaguers, Sardar Abdul Rab Nishtar, Khaliquzzaman, Raja of Mahmoodabad etc stayed put.

In 1950s, Suhrawardy created the Jinnah Awami Muslim League along with Mamdot and Mujeeb-ur-rahman. This later developed into the Awami League.

Even the NAP had roots partly in the Muslim League. Renowned leftist Mian Iftikharuddin (Jinnah's greatest supporter and owner of Pakistan Times) who left th Muslim League in 1951 formed the Azad Pakistan Party which was later merged into the NAP. However, the leftists in the NAP were soon sidelined by the Pushtun-ethno-nationalist element and ultimately became a family party of the Bacha Khan family. As for GM Syed... he left the Muslim League.

As for your claim that the Muslim League in India merged into Congress is a funny claim. Muslim League still exists in India and infact External Affairs State Minister of India, Mr. E Ahamed is a Muslim Leaguer.


Be original stop using my lines. Let me repeat: You stop lying about Jinnah and I'll stop telling the truth about those two-bit cowards and third rate dishonest unprincipled crooks you call Bacha Khan and his family.

So far you've not been able to prove a single one of my claims to be a lie. You tried to get off on a technicality by claiming that NAP was banned in 1975 knowing full well that the entire Khan family (and all the leaders of the banned NAP) was part of the Nizam-e-Mustafa Movement to establish Islamic Law in 1977.

Furthermore, we still await for evidence that you've promised us but never produced.

#537 by majumdar

Salman: HIS FAVORITE AUTHOR STANLEY WOLPERT HAS ALSO BLAMED MUSLIMS FOR STARTING THAT VIOLENCE.)

Majumdar bhai: Can you quote the extracts.

Majumdar bhai,

From "Gandhi's Passion" by Stanley Wolpert (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wolpert-gandhi.html)"

"MAHATM A GANDHI fell into "darkest despair" on the eve of India's independence in August 1947. Savage fighting spread from Punjab and the North-West Frontier to Eastern Bengal and Bihar. Brutal violence unleashed a year earlier by Muslim thugs in Calcutta had triggered Hindu counterattacks and the murder of more Muslims in Bihar. Mayhem, rape, and murder spread to the villages of Bengal as well, each report inciting more massacres of innocents as communal hatred raged across most of South Asia's subcontinent."

Some more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Action_Day

Salman writes:

"oh so you the prophet or you are just scoring points because the last time you talked about The Prophet you were comparing him with Jinnah and telling us Jinnah was better than him. "

So still playing the Bacha Khan-style "Jinnah is not Muslim enough" card against me?

But let's not forget that you've already declared that I am a kafir- a born one at that. So why does it matter?

Re: # 545

No I was merely responding to your erroneous claim (as all of your claims are always erroneous) that I had run away.

Pathetic.