JITENDER GUPTA BOOKS: EXTRACT The Night Shastri Died And Other Stories Vignettes from the veteran journalists overarching autobiography, a sort of a fly-on-the-wall account from Mountbatten to Manmohan. KULDIP NAYAR COMMENTS PRINT MORE SHARING SERVICESSHARE ON PINTEREST_SHARESHARE ON EMAIL TEXT SIZE Beyond The Lines BEYOND THE LINES BY KULDIP NAYAR ROLI BOOKS | PAGES: 420 | RS. 595 Kuldip Nayar, 89, has seen Gandhi at prayer in Birla Mandir, quizzed Nehru, watched Jinnah closely, worked with Shastri and Govind Ballabh Pant. Journalist, editor, author, he has seen history unfold, watched in action people most of the present generation know only as institutions or physical landmarks, say Kamraj University or the Netaji Subhash Airport. “My story is really the story of modern India. Of the freedom struggle, of Partition, of Nehru’s India, of the Bangladesh war, of Emergency and more recently of liberalisation and India as a world power,” he says. Here are vignettes from his overarching autobiography, a sort of a fly-on-the-wall account of how our country came to be, from Mountbatten to Manmohan. Mohammed Ali Jinnah ‘What have I done?’ The catholicity of Hinduism and the compassion of Islam: if such sentiments survived, they made no difference. Villages after villages had been annihilated, the Muslim habitations destroying and burning the Hindu-Sikh ones, and Hindus and Sikhs in turn retaliating or taking the initiative in wiping out the Muslims.... Punjab, 1947 Partition’s bloody bifurcation. (Photograph by Getty Images, From Outlook, July 09, 2012) Riots, in fact, had erupted in Punjab in March 1947 itself. Rawalpindi and Jhelum were the most affected, where many Hindu and Sikh women jumped into wells to save themselves from rape and kidnapping. Lahore became a battleground between Hindus and Sikhs on the one side joining hands, and Muslims on the other. This was the city where Master Tara Singh, the Sikh leader, had unsheathed a sword in front of the state assembly building and raised the slogan of Khalistan.... The men in khaki—the army, the police, and other services—were meant to bring the riots under control but they too were infected by the communal virus. To expect them to be impartial and punish the guilty from their own community was to hope for the impossible. They had lost all sense of right and wrong. These custodians of the people knew they would go scot-free in their “own country” after the transfer. I think it was a blunder to give the choice to civil servants, the police, and the armed forces to opt for India if they were non-Muslims and Pakistan if they were Muslims. A mixed administration would have behaved differently and infused the minorities with confidence. Jinnah would not believe the reports that thousands of people were migrating from both sides of the border. Both the Congress and the Muslim League had rejected the proposal for an exchange of population and had insisted on Muslims and non-Muslims staying back in their homes. Jinnah remained sullen for a few days and then accused India of seeking to undermine Pakistan. Even so, he was deeply concerned not only about the migration of people but also recurrent news that several lakhs of people had been butchered on either side of the border. One day when Jinnah was in Lahore, Iftikhar-ud-din, Pakistan’s rehabilitation minister, and Mazhar Ali Khan, editor of Pakistan Times, flew him in a Dakota over divided Punjab. When he saw streams of people pouring into Pakistan or fleeing it, he struck his hand on the forehead and said despairingly: “What have I done?” Both Iftikhar and Mazhar vowed not to repeat the remark. Mazhar took his wife Tahira into confidence and told her what Jinnah had said, and she communicated Jinnah’s comment to me long after her husband’s death. What to do with Kashmir? Patel with Nehru Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel ‘Kashmir can go to Pakistan’ My impression is that had Pakistan been patient it would have got Kashmir automatically. India could not have conquered it, nor could a Hindu maharaja have ignored the composition of the population, which was predominantly Muslim. Instead, an impatient Pakistan sent tribesmen along with regular troops to Kashmir within days of independence. While it’s true that Nehru was keen on Kashmir’s accession to India, Patel was opposed to it. Sheikh Abdullah told me in an interview later (February 21, 1971) that Patel argued with him that as Kashmir was a Muslim-majority area it should go to Pakistan. Even when New Delhi received the maharaja’s request to accede to India, Patel said: “We should not get mixed up with Kashmir. We already have too much on our plate.” Nehru’s anxiety (on this issue) was clear from his letter to Patel (September 27, 1947), three days before Kashmir’s accession to India: “Things must be done in a way so as to bring about the accession of Kashmir to the Indian union as rapidly as possible with the cooperation of Sheikh Abdullah.” Nehru wanted Indian forces to fight against the Pakistan tribesmen and others advancing in the Valley. It was Mountbatten who asked Nehru to get the instrument of accession signed first before sending troops. From the very outset, the maharaja’s preference was for independence. Failing that, he wanted a merger with India. His fear in relation to the second alternative was that with Nehru at the helm of affairs, he would be reduced to a mere figurehead, and Sheikh Abdullah would be the one with real power. When Patel, otherwise close to the maharaja, suggested that he should “make a substantial gesture to win Sheikh Abdullah’s support”, the maharaja knew his fate was sealed. Mountbatten later told me that Patel had agreed to let Kashmir go to Pakistan if the state so wished. “By sending its irregular troops into the state, Pakistan spoiled the whole thing,” added Mountbatten. He was, however, worried that Nehru’s Kashmiri ancestry would lead him to unwise decisions. (Nehru is reported to have confessed to a British officer: “In the same way as Calais was written on Mary’s heart, Kashmir is written on mine.”) However, Pakistan could not wait. Kashmir had always been a part of the concept of Pakistan and the letter ‘K’ in its name stood for Kashmir. As the Pakistan minister for Kashmir affairs said in 1951, and this has been repeated by many ministers to this day, “Kashmir is an article of faith with Pakistan and not merely a piece of land or a source of rivers.”
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:52:53 +0000
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