Pakistan Travelogue II

Wavell on Gandhi


They do not want Jinnah and the league in and Gandhi at the end exposed Congress`s policy of domination tha ever before.The more I see of that old man, the more I regard him as an UNSCRUPULOUS OLD HYPOCRITE

``Wavell`` by Penderel Moon Page 352-53

The Calcutta riots:

The truth:

A letter Wavell to Pethick Lawrence:

Transfer of Power Volume 9 Page 879

... it reads:

The Congress leadership is convinced that all the trouble was deliberately engineered by the Muslim League ministry, but I have no seen satisfactory evidence to that effect.The latest estimate of casualties was that appreciably more Muslims than Hindus were killed


More TRUTH about Calcutta riots coming up...

Re: # 612

What is sad is that you can`t see the apparent contradiction in what the writer above is writing .... a man is incorruptible but he is also driven by power urge? That is rather strange because incorruptible doesn`t only mean financial integrity.

Now here is a man who knew all leaders of the subcontinent closely.... H V Hodson.... an advisor to the Viceroy

It was not for any venal motive that he changed. Not even his political enemies ever accused Jinnah of corruption or self seeking. He could be bought by no one and for no price. Nor was he in the least degree a weather cock swinging in the wind of popularity or changing his politics to suit the chances of the time. He was a steadfast idealist as well as a man of scrupulous honour.

Re: # 611

No... it is clear that we have many Gandhis of our own... including those 90 000 you took prisoner in 1971....

I know its` not politically correct, especially on this site, but i sincerely believe that partition was the best thing that happened to us.The sad part is that the fallout is still lingering.We should move on.Many of the interactors have to be middle aged or old, as they seem to be stuck in a time warp and cannot erase stale images and bygone notions that , atleast in india, are history.More than half of india is under 25 years of age, and the last thing they want is to be burdened by the past.They are more concerned about what car or bike to buy, where to go for vacation, and the poor are equally ambitious in their own way.Many of them are studying, `cause they know that it is the only way out.There are many progressive state govts. in india that are doing a bang up job in the field of education helping them along the way.All these interacts seem to be out of whack with the new generation.Egads, you guys must be old!!!.The city of Kolkata is a prime example.If one goes by the interacts on this site, Kolkata must be a communist anachronism.Far from it!!!. The commies have transformed the city both architecturally and industrially.Techno parks are sprouting up , retail companies are making a beeline there and arts and entertainment are flourishing.Kolkata has the best bars , if any entertainment guide in India is to be believed, and i have seen pictures and tv shorts on Kolkata`s famous `hookah` bars, the first city in india to create this concept.Alcohol and the heady concoction of the hookah.Perfect way to end the day!!!.The `dancing girls` of maharashtra, pissed at being out of a job, due to the closing of the dance bars outside mumbai city limits, bought train tickets to new delhi to protest outside the supreme court and central govt. offices.One woman said that she`ll be forced to become a prostitute again due to the closure of these bars(NDTV news item).If this isn`t women`s empowerment and democracy in action, tell me??.Freedom to choose their own vocation and demand justice.Factories can hire women for night shifts (it is now law) opening new employment and equal opportunity for men and women and maximising industrial output.India is surely on the move!!.

Re: # 612

I am afraid... the account of a photojournalist wouldn`t do...

Re: # 614

You see this ``official nationalist`` version of history was discredited rather brilliantly by Hormansji Seervai, Advocate General of Maharashtra, in his book ``Partition of India: legend and reality``

You see you are wrong when you say that the Muslim League benefitted from Calcutta violence... Just read HISTORY for once and you will see what the situation is:


1) Calcutta violence made partition of Bengal inevitable, something which Muslim League was totally and completely opposed to.

2) Jinnah was bullied into joining the Interim government which he didn`t want to.


Your reading of history is based on simplistic notions.... it has no nuances and no calculations for reality.... your version is like a cheap B rate Bollywood movie... or a Hollywood one for that matter...

Re: # 613

The history of the world is replete with false saints and liars....

Read two books:

1) Gandhi: Behind the mask of divinity

2) Ungandhian Gandhi

You will see the true face of that ``Saint``.

re:#610 by Mantolives
Giving statements urging people to remain peaceful is fine. It is easy for Jinnah, sitting in his plush office, smoking cigar (or chillum) and sipping whisky to urge his followers to remain peaceful during Calcutta riots but did he ever visit the scene of riots and do anything practical on the field?
Sorry to say, your Jinnah comes out as an hypocrite. Only his party benefitted from the violence in Calcutta. He was able to prove conclusively his hold on muslims and his ability to create trouble when he wanted.
Sridhar

#610 by Mantolives on April 12, 2005 9:52am PT

Yes but Gandhi`s still famous and associated with sainthood and jinnah is an unknown....

It`s like comparing the Taj Mahal to the minar-e-Pakiland....

re: Jinnah`s legacy
http://iref.homestead.com/Messiah.html
(Pakistan was one month old. Karachi was its mushrooming capital. On the sandy fringes of the city an enormous tent colony had grown up to house the influx of minor government officials. There was only one major government official, Mahomed Ali Jinnah, and there was no need for Jinnah to take to a tent. The huge marble and sandstone Government House, vacated by British officialdom, was waiting. The Quaid-i-Azam moved in, with his sister, Fatima, as hostess. Mr. Jinnah had put on what his critics called his ``triple crown``: he had made himself Governor-General; he was retaining the presidency of the Muslim League -- now Pakistan`s only political party; and he was president of the country`s lawmaking body, the Constituent Assembly.)
My comments: Jinnah did not believe in democracy but was paying only lip service. He gave himself all powers after Pak came into being, power as Governor-General (he sure liked the sound of that word). If he truly believed in instituting democracy in Pak, he should have called for elections and got himself elected as the PM (or President).

The note of personal triumph was so unmistakable that I wondered how much thought he gave to the human cost: more Muslim lives had been sacrificed to create the new Muslim homeland than America, for example, had lost during the entire second World War. I hoped he had a constructive plan for the seventy million citizens of Pakistan. What kind of constitution did he intend to draw up?

``Of course it will be a democratic constitution; Islam is a democratic religion.``

Margaret Burke-White goes on:

(I ventured to suggest that the term ``democracy`` was often loosely used these days. Could he define what he had in mind?

``Democracy is not just a new thing we are learning,`` said Jinnah. ``It is in our blood. We have always had our system of zakat -- our obligation to the poor.``

This confusion of democracy with charity troubled me. I begged him to be more specific.

``Our Islamic ideas have been based on democracy and social justice since the thirteenth century.``

This mention of the thirteenth century troubled me still more. Pakistan has other relics of the Middle Ages besides ``social justice`` -- the remnants of a feudal land system, for one. What would the new constitution do about that? .. ``The land belongs to the God,`` says the Koran. This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the ``true Islamic principles`` one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nation`s laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because ``the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy.``)

My comments: Having usurped power at the very inception of Pakistan, Jinnah was saying that Pak would be democratic because it is Islamic and democracy is in its blood! No wonder so many Pakis are deluded today. The delusion started at the highest level, with Jinnah himself.

(The trend of events in Pakistan would support the theory that Jinnah carried the banner of the Muslim landed aristocracy, rather than that of the Muslim masses he claimed to champion. There was no hint of personal material gain in this. Jinnah was known to be personally incorruptible, a virtue which gave him a great strength with both poor and rich. The drive for personal wealth played no part in his politics. It was a drive for power. ....)
My comments: This drive for power, that started with Jinnah, continues to this day. Mushy is unwilling to give up power and is driving his country to the abyss. It all started with Jinnah.
More on the leagacy of Jinnah:
http://newsstuff.0catch.com/article5.htm
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040722-051231-9906r.htm
Sridhar

Re: # 610, OK Yasser, it seems you know everything about 1947 and the tragedies visited specifically on Muslims then. So now will you please also tell us about the people behind tragedies that East Pakistanis (Muslims and Hindus) faced leading up to 1971, and the tragedies, arrogances and ample opportunities therein? Also the justice meted out?

I will understand if you have to be careful:- as per The Nation, a fine Pakistani newspaper, in March, a ‘sensitive agency’ tortured Punjab Assembly member Rana Sanaullah for the sin of quoting the Humood-ur-Rehman Commission Report on the floor of the legislature.

Was Gandhi responsible for that, too?

Re: # 607

It is a tragedy that Gandhi atoned for his sins too late...

He had ample opportunity to bring about communal harmony but he blew it with his arrogance and his desire to keep India under Congress` tutelage...

Re: # 608

Oh please... give me a break.

As for the Muslim League government... as some one had pointed out on earlier thread... it would not make sense to unleash violence there as it would undermine the case for Pakistan... Infact ... Calcutta violence had only one consequence... League`s desire to keep Bengal united would be unfulfilled...

This is precisely why Suhrawardy was removed by League High command... and Nazimuddin, a quiet gentleman who was untainted with violence was brought in. And this was precisely why Suhrawardy spent the next the months close to partition going around with Gandhi, with Jinnah`s blessings, trying to put out the fires that Congress` insistence on the partition of Bengal and Punjab had started...

-YLH

Re: # 606

``Ofcourse Muslims were killed in Bihar and then Hindus in Noakhali.... ``

I think its the other way round.

``There was no violence except in Calcutta, which was in any event a Hindu Majority city. ``

and ruled by Muslim League.

MAHATMA`S MIRACLE

The presence of India`s ``Great Soul`` averted a slaughter in Calcutta on Independence night. But it was Gandhi`s final triumph

BY MEENAKSHI GANGULY/CALCUTTA

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On the evening of Aug. 15, 1947, as thousands of British and Indian luminaries gathered in New Delhi for a sumptuous dinner to celebrate independence, one important guest was missing: Mahatma Gandhi, the frail old man who had fought the hardest to free 400 million Indians from colonial rule, was fasting in an abandoned house in Calcutta, a city consumed by rage and fear.
Gandhi had forsaken the New Delhi banquet in the hope that his presence might deter communal clashes from erupting in the eastern province of Bengal, which was to be wrenched in two by partition. Over the previous year, thousands of rioting Hindus and Muslims in Bengal had killed each other. Gandhi was worried that the slaughter would repeat itself. ``I have taken many risks, perhaps this is the greatest of all. Who knows what will happen?`` he wrote on Aug. 13, four days after arriving in Calcutta. ``If things go wrong here they will go wrong everywhere. If things improve here, then perhaps they will improve everywhere.``

It looked as if things would go wrong, even for Gandhi. An ugly Hindu crowd awaited him outside the Hydari Mansion in Beliaghata, a troubled and filthy neighborhood, when Gandhi drove up in a Chevrolet two days before independence. ``Traitor!`` they yelled. ``Save Hindus, not Muslims!`` As soon as Gandhi was bundled inside the run-down shelter by his worried attendants, the enraged demonstrators stoned the house, shattering window panes. Gandhi, 77, was visibly upset and exhausted. Religious strife had become so furious over the past year that, despite his constant prayers for unity, it had become apparent to him that Hindus and Muslims hated each other too much to go on living together.

The Calcutta that Gandhi had hoped to heal was still seething from events of the previous year. After power-sharing talks with the Congress Party broke down, the Muslim League called a ``direct action day.`` Gathered at appointed locations on Aug. 16, 1946, Muslim mobs went out to kill Hindus and destroy their property. Bengal was governed by the Muslim League, and Chief Minister H.S. Suhrawardy is alleged to have played an important part in goading Muslim rioters. Four days later, the streets were piled with dead and injured. The police, under Suhrawardy`s control, vanished once the sectarian violence flared.

Even today, 50 years on, the horror is still fresh in the memory of survivors. A Hindu freedom fighter named Ram Ratan Mukherjee lived in a Muslim neighborhood. On the morning of the riots, a Muslim friend warned him about the threat to Hindus, but a disbelieving Mukherjee refused to leave. That afternoon, a mob slashed his skull with an ax and plundered his home. ``There was tremendous fear all over the city,`` recalls Mukherjee, now 86. ``Friends and neighbors had suddenly become enemies.`` Rashidul Hossain had lived in the same area as a boy. He recalls the assault on his Hindu neighbors: ``The women were all screaming. The mob threw down one of the owners from the second floor. I saw a dead woman being dragged by her legs. I remember wondering why there was no blood. I still have nightmares about that woman.`` Then Hindus like Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay, a butcher by profession, organized gangs to take revenge. He recalls: ``I handed out guns, swords, grenades. For every dead Hindu, I ordered ten Muslim corpses.``

Soon the unrest engulfed other parts of the country. In Noakhali, a district in east Bengal, Muslim sailors returned from Calcutta carrying tales of atrocities committed against their brethren. Revenge was swift. Enraged Noakhali Muslims ransacked Hindu homes, and scores of Hindu women were abducted and raped. Hundreds of kilometers away in Bihar, Hindus retaliated by attacking their Muslim neighbors, meting out atrocities with equal vengeance. Gandhi, horrified by the violence, set off in November on a one-man peace mission to these trouble-torn areas.

Noakhali was his first stop. When he arrived at the district along the waterways of the Ganges delta, many residents were unwilling to heed his message of non-violence: he was a Hindu and had come to defend other Hindus, they said. But Gandhi persisted. He walked from village to village, cajoling and scolding until there was a semblance of peace. Shobha Rani Debnath says she and several other Hindu children had hidden in the fields during the turmoil. When she finally crept back to her house, she found only its burned remains. Debnath was taken to a refugee camp where Gandhi spotted the girl. ``Everyone was crying and asking him for help. He talked a lot, but when he saw me, he smiled and gave me an orange. He was so gentle,`` says Debnath, now 59 and a grandmother of six. ``He said I would soon be able to go home again.``

Mohammad Abdul Nnan, 62, takes visitors to an abandoned temple and speaks sadly of his Hindu friends who left after the riots. ``I saw terrible things when I was a boy. It only calmed down after Gandhi came,`` he says. ``Why? Because Gandhi was a natural leader. People loved him because he loved the country and not a religion. Such people don`t exist any more.`` Gandhi spoke with the Muslims as well, asking them to reassure their Hindu neighbors. Recalls Ashoka Gupta, who worked with the Mahatma in Noakhali: ``Gandhi had immense power over everyone because people believed that he spoke the truth. His message was simple, but he could always captivate people.``

Gandhi eventually left Noakhali with a promise to return the following August, when it would become part of the new Pakistan. He never did. When Gandhi arrived in Calcutta on Aug. 9 on his way to Noakhali, Chief Minister Suhrawardy pleaded for him to stay on and protect the Muslims. Suhrawardy personally feared the rage of the Hindus, who wanted to assassinate him for his part in what were being called the ``great Calcutta killings`` of the previous year. Gandhi agreed to remain in the city and protect the Muslims as long as Suhrawardy and his Muslim League guaranteed the safety of the Hindus in Noakhali.

They consented, and Gandhi and Suhrawardy together moved into Hydari Mansion. Exasperated by the cursing and stone throwing of the crowds gathered outside, Gandhi invited a few of the Hindu protesters in for a chat. ``I have nearly reached the end of my life`s journey. I have not much further to go,`` he told them. ``But let me tell you that if you again go mad, I will not be a living witness of it.`` Chastened, the crowds eventually dispersed.

Among them was Jugal Ghosh, a Hindu extremist and a bodybuilder. In the riots that had wracked Calcutta the year before, Ghosh had hunted down fleeing Muslims and massacred them. ``I promised my gang ten rupees for each murder and five rupees for an injury,`` says Ghosh today. ``It was a lot of money at that time, but most people did not want to be paid. They wanted revenge.``

Ghosh was preparing another assault against Calcutta`s frightened Muslim minority that August. But first, he paid a visit to Hydari Mansion. ``I wanted to see the man that the whole country was mad about,`` Ghosh recalls. And, perhaps he wanted to find out why such a devout Hindu as Gandhi had come to protect Calcutta`s Muslims from Hindu wrath. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd outside the building to hear Gandhi. ``I was very disappointed,`` says Ghosh. ``Gandhi had no biceps, no triceps, no forearms. I saw an old man with no teeth. When he spoke he made a `whoosh, whoosh` sound.``

Gandhi`s brawn may not have impressed the muscle man, but his message did. ``What he said began to make a lot of sense,`` says Ghosh, who today lives at Hydari Mansion, hoping to convert it into a Gandhi museum. ``Gandhi said, `Blood for blood will not solve the problem. Then this violence will never end.` I understood that he was right. I had enjoyed killing the Muslims, but then they killed my 19-year-old son. The more I killed of them, the more they would kill of mine. I pledged that I would stop killing and started working with Gandhi.`` In the next two days, Gandhi held prayer meetings and walked through neighborhoods, pleading with vicious killers. The bodybuilder became a regular companion on Gandhi`s rounds.

In New Delhi on Aug. 14, the clock ticked down to midnight and people danced in the streets, shouting triumphant slogans, hugging strangers and distributing food. Thousands turned out to gaze upon their new leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress officers drove through the capital waving from a convoy of cars. Many historians believe that Gandhi`s absence from Delhi was a deliberate snub. His dismay over partition would have dampened the party. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, wrote later that Gandhi ``also realized that it would be difficult to fit him into the program in the way in which not only he himself but the people generally would feel that he was entitled.``

In Calcutta, the evening passed without mishap. Hindus and Muslims embraced at midnight and welcomed each other into their temples and mosques. They were as jubilant about independence as they were about having survived the night without riots. Photographs from that day show thousands of people flooding the streets, waving the Indian flag. Gandhi had brought peace to the most volatile part of the country, even as entire army regiments struggled to keep the calm in Punjab. Mountbatten said in a radio broadcast that Gandhi was ``the one-man boundary force who kept the peace while a 50,000 strong force was swamped by riots.``

An early riser, Gandhi awoke on Aug. 15 and prepared for his daily morning prayer. He had already announced he would spend the day fasting and praying. But a huge crowd gathered in front of the house. Political workers, journalists and hangers-on had turned up to celebrate the Mahatma`s miracle of peace in Calcutta. Gandhi came out on the front porch and folded his palms in the namaste greeting. But when reporters hurried forward to ask for comments, he said crossly that there was nothing really to rejoice about and that he did not feel like talking. He then locked himself in his room dictating letters, spinning cotton on his creaky wheel and meeting with Congress party members who started trickling in later in the day. Says Ashoka Gupta, one of those visitors: ``When I went to see him, he was very sad. He said, `See where we are today? Try and work hard to put an end to all this violence.` I sat with him for about 10 or 15 minutes. But he was so upset, none of us felt like talking too much. Political leaders came to ask for advice. He met them all, but he was sadder and sadder.``

He had reason for sadness. Independence capped a wretched year for Gandhi, one in which he realized that Indians--even his Congress party disciples--had never really accepted ahimsa, or nonviolence. Freedom had come but not, as he had hoped, through peaceful and moral coercion. It had been won by hate. Indians had united in their loathing of the British, and Gandhi`s satyagraha--peaceful civil disobedience--was only a means of expressing their resentment. Rancor against the British was quickly replaced by religious hatred.

The calm that steamy night in Calcutta restored Gandhi`s reputation as a miracle-worker. But he was more realistic. ``The joy of the crowd is there, but not in me is any satisfaction,`` he wrote three days later. ``Hindu-Muslim unity seems to be too sudden to be true. They ascribe this transformation to me. I wonder! Probably things would have been like this even if I had not been on the scene.``

To Gandhi, this sudden bonding among religious foes seemed tenuous. For a year, while he pleaded for brotherhood, he had received letters denouncing him. Both Hindus and Muslims accused him of favoring the other. That anger, he knew, could not go away so easily. Even after all of Gandhi`s sermons at Hydari Mansion, Mukhopadhyay, the butcher, remained unswayed. Recalls the fierce-looking 83-year-old, ``I refused to surrender a single sword, pistol or even a needle that had been used for the defense of the motherland.`` He did not believe in nonviolence, refusing to trust the Muslims, and wanted to be prepared for fresh battle. Two weeks after independence, Mukhopadhyay got his chance: violence again broke out in Calcutta. Gandhi promptly went on a fast-unto-death, demanding peace. As before, his moral blackmail worked, and the rioting subsided. ``He was such an important symbol for the people,`` says Dr. Sushila Nayar, his physician.

But even at the moment of his greatest triumph on Aug. 15, Gandhi`s aura had begun to fade. He called upon the people of Calcutta to join him in fasting and praying. ``You know my way of celebrating great events, such as today`s, is to thank God for it and, therefore, to pray,`` he told a friend. His request went largely unheeded. Instead, a mob burst into the British governor`s mansion and ransacked it. A disgusted Gandhi called the attack a ``very sorry affair,`` but he knew his days as India`s conscience, healer and miracle-worker were drawing to a close. ``There was a time when mine was a big voice,`` he had said at a prayer meeting a few months before independence. ``Then everyone obeyed what I said. Now neither the Congress, nor the Hindus nor the Muslims listen to me... I am crying in the wilderness.`` Five months after independence, Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu fanatic.

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