Remembering H.M. Seervai (1906-1996)

Re: # 34 YLH

I am agreeing with you here. It`s all because of Congress.... After confirmation from the jurist - there is no doubts whatsover....

Which means that my hypothesis is probably correct - that congress may have planned partition all long...... I mean why else would they reject 14 points jinnah came up with - right?

Either way - TNT was right thing to do and for right reasons.... I hope you agree with that.

Re: # 30

Yes I suppose Inayetullah Mashriqi, whose party tried to assassinate the Quaid-e-Azam (twice?), would be a hero to you

Re: # 29

The lack of Congress leaders` co-ordination with each other had one major factor. The real power of the Congress lay outside the party with Gandhi, who was not even a member since the 1930s I believe. The party president was thus a puppet whose strings Gandhiji loved to have in his own hands... one suspects that as the Congress President Maulana Azad had begun to assert his independence, which may have been a factor for his replacement... Azad was definitely made to feel like an outsider in the Congress party during the CMP and its aftermath.

Infact ... let me go further and say that I won`t be surprised if one day the world stumbles onto Jinnah-Azad correspondence which sheds completely new light on the whole issue.

I mean-one very uncharacteristic move on Jinnah`s part was his deliberate snubbing of Azad when they met in Simla... those who have read Jinnah know that Jinnah was always very formal and proper- so his refusal to shake hands with Azad (when he shook hands with Ghaffar Khan) is very hard to explain.

-YLH

Re: # 31

They say truth is stranger than fiction.

Re: # 32

Well that is precisely what one of your most respected jurists and constitutional experts is saying.. Infact there are no ifs and buts... he says it straight out in his book.

So yes... maybe he was an ISI agent after all.

Re: # 17 aisha
//...Parsees are the most dignified group of people in the subcontinent,... No wonder Quaid-e-Azam MA Jinnah married one...//

So jinnah married a Parsi because Parsis are ``most dignified group of people in the subcontinent``? After all the claim to scholarship, truth and discovery - we get this gem?

HP, YLH

Yeah it`s all Congress`s Fault :) Congress made jinnah do things....Congress made muslims[of the ``pure`` variety] go banannas....

Have you considered the possibility that this may be Congress`s plan all along?.... I mean - in heart of hearts they knew that this TNT thing is right - even though they never said it officially.... They knew that Hindus and (Pure)Muslims are really two separate people....

And time has proved them right....

So blame it on Congress and move on....Partition was inevitable ... Where Congress screwed up was they didn`t have any plans of a good security arrangement and refugee settlement....

Re: # 26 YLH
//...the truth is out there...//

What is this - X-files? :)

we can write thesis after thesis on partition and independence but the only and real credit for the Independence of united Hindustan goes solely to Adolf Hitler. Had he not started the WWII, we would have never been freed. Leaders like Jinnah and Gandhi did not have it in them to fight and abolish colonialism in the presence of rancid colonialists like Churchill. The only people who had it in them to fight colonialism was Ali Brethern who unfortunately died too early. We may like it or not, but in the absence of a second world war our only hope was people like Allama Inayatullah Mashriqi and his militant group.

Yasser,

“Congress did not put up a United front and the characters as they emerge are quite individualistic:”

Interesting! So Seervai suggested that the Congress really had no party policy on the most important negotiation about the future of India. And three most important leaders of Congress namely Gandhi, Nehru and Azad were not on the same page.

That clearly meant that the congress had NOT seriously considered Muslim demands and had not foreseen all the possible problems and issues that may come up before the British leave. It also meant that the Congress had no plans as to how they would deal with the Muslims demands even when British left a united India or in three zones per the CMP.

From all the partition papers and record it appears that the British kept a good record of the progress in negotiations but we are yet to see any notes, policy papers or even memos between the congress leaders themselves or any other correspondence that would show us a unified Congress agenda at the CMP negotiation. While we do get a glimpse of how Jinnah was proceeding with his plans in the Jinnah Papers, the congress, Gandhi, Nehru or even Azad and congress as a party did not have anything to show why they took unrealistic positions at the negotiations.(Besides some books.)

Imo, the chaotic and irresponsible approach taken by the Congress was mostly responsible for the partition and later the massacre that took place in Punjab and the other areas of India.

This is tragic that the most important party-the Congress- in the united India approached the single most important event in the Indian history casually and w/o any preparations.
Once the Congress and its leaders paved the way for partition due to their own incompetence and ill-preparedness, they went on to blame Jinnah and Muslims for the partition of India.

This is a huge personal disappointment for me. More papers are coming out now from the secret archives and it is becoming absolutely clear that bulk of the blame for the partition must be laid at the Congress’s ineptness.

I am not going into Sadna’s claims as she has never shown to have good judgment on political issues. She argues issues from the Hindutva standpoint and that is a totally emotional plank and no logical arguments can come from such a rabid religious viewpoint.

``3) India would have been a dominion much like Australia and Canada as early as 1925.``

Load of Crapo and a big WHAT IF. Race very much played a role in how the Brits viewed their colonies and anyone who thinks the Brits would have goven India the same legal and constitutional staus as Canada and Australia is living in a fool`s paradise.

The Komagata Maru incident is a classic example of the White colonial power and its white dominions twisting the rules to benefit themselves.

Re: # 24

Dear HP...

I appreciate your input as usual. I think it is a question of analysis... and he does a brilliant job as I am sure you will see once you have the book in your hand.

The points that Seervai makes vis a vis Cabinet Mission Plan are the following:

1) Congress did not put up a United front and the characters as they emerge are quite individualistic: Jinnah and Nehru/Gandhi are showing their hand as to opposite positions i.e. Partition and centralised United India. Azad stands between Mahomed Ali Jinnah and Nehru/Gandhi ...

2) That Cabinet Mission Plan, in its final form, was completely and totally based on Azad`s recommendations and he quotes Azad on this. Azad very seriously thought that he had solved the communal problem.

3) He then shows how far Jinnah had to bend backwards to accomodate Azad and CMP from the bargaining counter.

4) He blames not only Nehru but Gandhi, whose position that ``either one party is right or wrong`` is lambasted in the book for being absolutely wrong as both parties were partly right and partly wrong ... and the solution lay in bringing together all the partly rights to form a whole right.

The final impression one gets is ... that Jinnah acted extremely honorably and kept his part of the bargain through out and Azad acted honorably as well... but it was Nehru and Gandhi who acted duplicitiously (his word not mine) which wrecked the whole plan... because recall that Congress had not only given the impression but had given their word that they had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, before Nehru dropped the famous bombshell...

To argue ofcourse that it was not advantageous for Congress to accept the plan is just nonsense because it was the plan in toto of their President Maulana Azad, who accepts it... (unless a Muslim was not good enough even as a President)... and Nehru as the successor was honour bound by it.

Secondly recall that the nonsense that Sadna spewed a few months ago about CMP, which we both countered, ... is the general tenor of the argument against CMP... but I think facts rubbish the entire view... based as it was (as far as Sadna goes) on a weird notion that ``Foreign affairs`` are a ``communal issue``... a view which finds no justification when going through the facts.

-YLH

Re: # 23

Yes... and Seervai is a Pakistani ISI agent.

So whats new...

But the truth is out there...

Re: # 19
//...As for TNT - it was neither wrong nor right....//

Who said so? TNT was right....It was the ``perfect solution``.... Faithfuls on oneside - kafirs on the other....Muslims on oneside - dhimmis on the otherside.....

It was the right thing to do..... It was the perfect ``final solution`` to the age old question - can pure muslims live with kafirs?....Heil Jinnah, the man who could implement the solution using just a type-writer.....

Yasser,

“Seervai`s another great work Partition of India - Legend and Reality. His account of partition will remain the most authoritative version for the foreseeable future. He was the first scholar to make full use of the official British documents. After a careful analysis and examination of the documents, Seervai proves his case that it was Mountbatten who was largely responsible for the massacres and population exchanges just before and after independence.”
“According to the author, Jinnah was a sincere nationalist and believed in a secular and democratic future for India. However, he was concerned about the rights of the Muslims and it was only when he realized that the Congress would not provide Muslims with equal opportunity after independence, that he embraced the concept of Pakistan, and worked successfully for its implementation.”

I have not read the book so it would be really hard to comment on his conclusions. However, I would like to you to consider two issues with regards to the conclusions quoted above.

1. Mr Seervai was not a politician himself and relied on written records to reach his conclusions.
2. He was also not a historian by profession. So chances are that he was perhaps unable to accurately analyze the evidence presented to him.

Mr. Seervai apparently was a lawyer par excellence and anal retentive and as anal go, with questionable analytical skills. This means that he possibly had problems looking into the grey areas. Especially, when political negotiations are riddled with several games and sub plots contained within apparently simple positions.

Cabinet Mission and its plan were not really as simple as it is made out to be. The situation was unique and none of the player-British-Congress-ML- had any prior experience in handling such a unique situation. Indian independence, with so many players doing their things, was not as simple as for instance Singapore independence or even the Indonesian independence was.

In situations like that, do you think the cut and dry method used by Seervai in analyzing an extremely complex situation was an appropriate way to reach his conclusions?
Secondly, Jinnah was a very smart man and it is clear that he at times used Pakistan and partition as bargaining points. While going thru some of the record, I also feel that often British were perhaps using the partition as a ruse to bring the congress in line.
Is it possible that congress mistakenly did not take the partition threat seriously?

Since you have read Mr. Seervai’s book, can you summarize Seervai’s analyses of Congress position at the cabinet mission negotiations?

PS. I have ordered his book.

Re: # 22 ferozk

Another nuanced view on events of 1947???? Come on :)

This is just another episode in White-wash Mr Jinnah soap opera....