I would like you… to tell me what you can about the Punjab tragedy. I know nothing about it save what is allowed to appear in the Press… Nor am I in sympathy with what may be termed by the old expression of ‘hush hush policy’. It is amazing how the country is adopting almost the very measures which it criticized during the British administration…
I have long intended to write to you asking you about the Working Committee resolution on the possible partition of the Punjab. I would like to know the reason behind it…
Invoking his ‘non-coercion’ criterion, Gandhi added in this letter that he was against any partition based on ‘compulsion’ or on ‘the two-nation theory’. While he could think of a ‘willing consent’ to partitioning a province following ‘an appeal to reason and heart’, the Working Committee resolution seemed a submission to violence (94: 153-4). On 11 March he had said:
Jinnah Saheb is my friend. I have gone to his house many a time. If Jinnah Saheb says to me: ‘Concede Pakistan or I will kill you,’ I will reply: ‘You may kill me if you like; but if you want Pakistan, you should first explain it to me. If you convince me that Pakistan is a worthy ideal and Hindus are maligning it for no reason, I shall proclaim to the Hindus from the house-tops that you should get Pakistan’ (94: 99).
Non-coercion was the prescription also of his friend Ghaffar Khan, who had joined Gandhi in Bihar. On 16 March, the Frontier leader said:
The Muslim League wants Pakistan. They can have it only through love and willing consent. Pakistan established through force will prove a doubtful boon.2
On 22 March Gandhi wrote to Vallabhbhai: ‘If you can, please explain your resolution about the Punjab’ (94: 168). He received the following replies:
From Jawaharlal, 25 March: I feel convinced and so did most of the members of the Working Committee that we must press for this immediate division so that reality might be brought into the picture. Indeed this is the only answer to partition as demanded by Jinnah. I found people in the Punjab agreeable to this proposal except Muslims as a rule (94: 154).
From Patel, 24 March: It is difficult to explain to you the resolution about the Punjab. It was adopted after the deepest deliberation… Nothing has been done in a hurry or without full thought… The situation in the Punjab is far worse than in Bihar. The military has taken over control. As a result, on the surface things seem to have quietened down somewhat. But no one can say when there may be a flare-up again. If that happens, I am afraid even Delhi will not remain unaffected. But here of course we shall be able to deal with it (94: 168).
Patel was hinting that a Gandhi camping in Bihar or Noakhali could not understand the realities that he and Nehru were grappling with in Delhi and the Punjab. Having removed himself to the periphery, could Gandhi really appreciate what they faced in Delhi?
Well, he thought he could. In fact he came up with a possible response to the violence that in seven months had leapt from Calcutta to Noakhali to Bihar to the Punjab and was threatening to spread further and escalate. The ‘darkness’ he had been speaking of seemed to go away from his mind, and he knew what step to propose. Before looking at his solution, however, we will take in Gandhi’s encounter with Bihar.
Bihar, March 1947. Almost four months had passed after the killing and destruction of early November, yet Bihar’s Muslims, comprising less than 13 per cent of the population, continued to feel frightened and bitter. Around 7,000 of their number had been killed and nearly 10,000 homes destroyed in the violence that had gripped six districts – Saran, Monghyr, Bhagalpur, Santhal Parganas, Patna and Gaya.3 Apart from a few places where attackers were subdued, the state police merely looked on.
Women and children were brutally killed, wells were stuffed with bodies, villages were burnt down. More than 100,000 Muslims migrated to Bengal, and tens of thousands fled their villages to refugee camps in Patna and other cities in Bihar. Many sold their property for a song.
In several places Hindu neighbours indeed protected defenceless Muslims, and there were stories like that of the headmaster in Gaya district, Sakal Babu, who, supported by students and friends, took all the Muslims of Daulatpur, Nagama and Rasalpur villages to safety in the town of Jehanabad.4 And leaders were not devoid of sympathy. Gandhi’s host in Bihar, minister Syed Mahmud, had noticed that premier S.K. Sinha wept at his helplessness when from their plane the two saw women and children waving frantically at them from rooftops, while their homes were surrounded by a thousands-strong hostile mob.
Yet, as Jayaprakash confirmed to Gandhi,5 the overall record of the state government was appallingly inadequate. No passion to control the violence descended down from Bihar’s ministers to officials and the police. The province still had several British officers, but their willingness to act was eroded both by the attitude of the ministers and by the officers’ memory of Quit India.
Some in Bihar justified the November violence as a means of saving Hindus across India, including in Bihar, from attacks of the Noakhali kind. A pamphlet issued by the provincial Hindu Mahasabha claimed that Bihar’s Muslims had planned surprise attacks on the Hindus but the latter had ‘wisely taken time by the forelock’, pre-empting the supposed plan.6
Told by Prasad that many Biharis thought ‘they had done well’, Gandhi replied that ‘it was to save them from that sin that he had come’.7 He knew that the real impact of the Bihar violence had been to sway Muslims across the subcontinent in favour of Pakistan.
A report (1 Dec. 1946) by the Bihar Muslim League had alleged ‘genocide’ and spoken of the ‘fascism’ of the ‘Hindu Congress’; and from November 1946 onwards pictures of the Bihar killings were displayed in the Punjab and the NWFP as proof that Muslims would be unsafe in Hindu-majority India.8
Telling premier Sinha that the Bihar killings were ‘like the Jallianwala massacre’,9 Gandhi spoke with similar bluntness to officials, Congress committees and the public. To Congress workers in Bir he said (19 March):
Is it or isn’t it a fact that quite a large number of Congressmen took part in the disturbances?.. How many of the 132 members of your Committee were involved?.. I have also worked in the Congress. Today I am not even a four-anna member. But there was a time when I was… all in all. Hence I know the Congress inside out…
I wish to ask you, how could you live to see an old woman of 110 years being butchered before your eyes?.. I will not rest nor let others rest. I [will] wander all over on foot and ask the skeletons [what] happened. There is such a fire raging in me that I [will] know no peace till I have found a solution for all this…
If I find that my comrades are deceiving me, I will be furious and I shall walk barefoot on and on through hail or storm. I would throw away the soft seat and other amenities which you have offered me (94: 147-48).
There was, he said on 5 March, a way out for Bihar:
The Hindus of Bihar have committed a grave sin. They will raise the head of Bihar much higher if they do honest reparations, greater in magnitude than their crimes. There is an English saying: ‘The greater the sin, the greater the saint’ (94: 75-6).
Abducted women, stolen goods and illegal arms should be returned, Gandhi said, to the police—or, he added, to him, Rajendra Prasad or Syed Mahmud. Or to Ghaffar Khan, who was also in Bihar to assist. If Bihar wanted its fame back, ‘rebuild what you have destroyed,’ he said.10 The government on its part should catch culprits and award due punishment (94: 114).
Khusropur, 14 March: I want a genuine feeling of repentance and an honest atonement for the atrocities committed by thousands of Hindus on a handful of Muslims… Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are all engaged in a bitter feud in the Punjab… If you sincerely think that the way of the Punjab is the proper answer to the challenge of the times, you are free to follow it. I plead with you in all earnestness to tell me frankly that you do not approve of my way. I will not be hurt by your honesty.
I shall not say that Bihar has ignored my past services. I do not want you to do anything for my sake. I want you to work in the name of God
, our Father. Confess your sins and atone for them with God alone as witness (94: 111-3).
Bihar being the land of Sita and of the Buddha, Gandhi’s utterances invoked the Ramayana and the Buddha’s life. Large numbers, at times exceeding a lakh, attended his prayer meetings, where he collected funds for Muslim refugees. When a beggar gave four annas, Gandhi exclaimed: ‘This is true charity! These are the people of Bihar!’ (94: 80) On 11 March he cast himself in a beggar’s role while explaining the dynamics of retaliation:
If I am starving and you feed me, the contentment in my eyes will brighten your face too… Suppose I am starving and demand food from you by abusing you. You will drive me away, saying: ‘Go and starve yourself to death.’ My abuses will not get me food. They will, however, make me feel that I am a brave man. Again, if you ask your gate-keeper to beat me up for my abuses, that will sow the seeds of hatred against you in my heart… The next day I shall gather a few friends and retaliate. Or, if you manage to kill me, it will create among my relations and friends a feeling of revenge against you… (94: 99)
Gandhi was in Bihar for most of March, half of April and about a third of May. Most of his nights in the province were spent in Mahmud’s home on the bank of the Ganga, but he managed to visit several villages and towns, at times on foot. But it was summer and Bihar’s roads were dusty, making walking more difficult than it had been in Noakhali.
Within days of his arrival there were signs of remorse in Bihar’s Hindus, and Gandhi was given confessional letters, stolen goods and arms by some of the November attackers. Pyarelal recorded a scene from the village of Masaurhi, where fearful destruction had occurred:
After the prayer address, Gandhiji stayed on to collect money for the Muslim relief fund. There was a stampede as everybody pushed forward to be the first to put his or her copper into the Mahatma’s hands. As he bent forward with outstretched hands, he read in those faces, aquiver with emotion, the unmistakable evidence that repentance had at last crept into their hearts.11
Relieved by Gandhi’s arrival, Bihar’s Muslims slowly regained their confidence, but the provincial Muslim League was critical of his disapproval of its demands for ‘Muslim pockets’ and a Muslim police in Bihar. In the end Gandhi agreed to Muslim refugees settling in villages with ample Muslim populations instead of returning to the scenes of their suffering, but he would not concede that only a Muslim police could protect Muslim citizens. That would be accepting the two-nation theory.
However, even though premier Sinha disliked the idea, he would insist on an inquiry into the Bihar violence and the ministry’s handling of it. The Muslim League too had asked for such an inquiry. On Gandhi’s urging, a one-man commission under Justice Reuben of the Patna High Court was announced, but it was denied resources or help.
The government of Bihar—‘his’ Congress ministry in ‘his’ Bihar—was no keener on justice than Bengal’s League ministry, and not more enthusiastic about their ‘guest’. Not only was Mahmud criticized by his colleagues for pressing Gandhi to come to Bihar; before long the relief portfolio was taken away from Mahmud.
From the Punjab, meanwhile, Gandhi was receiving serious word. On 23 March he told his prayer audience:
A friend has written that a semblance of peace appears to have been established in the Punjab. But this peace and tranquillity has come through military occupation. Everyone is preparing openly for a fight and is busy collecting arms (94: 176).
The resignation of Khizr, the only Muslim leader in the Punjab trusted by Hindus and Sikhs, had led to complete polarization in the province. Once the Congress resolution of 8 March spoke of two Punjabs, militant Muslim groups made up their minds to push out West Punjab’s Hindus and Sikhs, while their Sikh and Hindu counterparts in East Punjab nursed a parallel resolve regarding Muslims.
GANDHI’S SOLUTION
‘I would know no peace till I have found a solution for all this’ – we saw that he said this on 19 March. Before the month ended he knew what he should ask for. As with all inspired solutions, his looks self-evident in hindsight, but at the time it was far from obvious. It took shape as he contemplated the realities around him.
The Punjab was waiting to explode again. Bihar too was viciously polarized, as was much of India. So was the interim government in Delhi. As for the long term, Jinnah hated the division of the Punjab and Bengal as much as the Congress hated India’s division.
Weighing up these realities, Gandhi saw that a Jinnah-led Muslim League government in Delhi, if installed with the Congress’s agreement, could address all of them. Remedying polarization across the subcontinent, a Congress-supported Jinnah government could preserve the unity not only of the Punjab and Bengal but also of India as a whole.
Reckoning that the Congress majority in the Central Assembly would prevent a Jinnah ministry from going too far, Gandhi also recalled something from his 1944 talks with the League leader. Refusing then to draw a clear picture of Pakistan, Jinnah had indirectly conveyed an interest in a role in India as a whole. Gandhi thought the League leader might accept his offer.
If he did, peace and unity could return to an India about to be free. Here was an answer at the top that might simultaneously bring mutual confidence at ground level and enable the winding down of private militias. Among the many breathing more freely would be his companion Ghaffar Khan, who, as Gandhi daily saw, was weighed down by two spectres: Hindu-Muslim violence and the subjugation, in any Pakistan, of his Frontier province. The Frontier leader agreed at once with the idea.
Gandhi fleshed out five key components of his proposal: One, let Jinnah head an interim government of his choice, comprising League members alone or including others as well. Two, unless an impartial umpire, e.g. the Viceroy, were to rule that a League measure was against the national interest, the Congress would back the League government and its measures in the Central Assembly.
Three, private bands should be disbanded. Four, Muslim Groups could be formed in India, but without Assam, the Frontier province, East Punjab and West Bengal, unless, as a result of the League’s persuasion (as distinct from coercion) any or all of these areas also opted to join the Muslim Groups. The fifth and final item in the plan was that if Jinnah and the League were not willing, under these terms, to form a cohesive government, Nehru and the Congress should be given the same opportunity.12 (94: 209-10 & 228-9)
The date when he hit upon his ‘Jinnah card’ is not precisely known, but it was certainly before 1 April, for on that day he revealed it to Mountbatten (1900-79), the new Viceroy, who had invited Gandhi to meet him in Delhi. Nehru too had urged Gandhi to come to Delhi—to speak to a conference of Asian leaders he had convened, where the Mahatma was certain to be a great draw.
Arriving in Delhi by train on 31 March, Gandhi had a ninety-minute interview with Mountbatten that day. At another long meeting on 1 April, Gandhi presented his Jinnah proposal to the Viceroy.
Notes by Pyarelal and Mountbatten inform us of what happened at the 1 April interview. Apparently the Viceroy began by remarking, in truth or flattery or both, that Gandhi’s ‘nonviolence had won’ and that the British ‘had decided to quit as a result of India’s nonviolent struggle’.13
Gandhi proposed the dissolution of the interim government and spelt out his five points. A ‘staggered’ Mountbatten obtained Gandhi’s permission ‘to discuss the matter with Pandit Nehru and Maulana Azad, in strict confidence, the next time they came to see me’.14 Since Vallabhbhai’s ‘opposition to any such plan was well-known’, he was excluded.15 Patel had convinced himself that the only alternative to partition was civil war.16
Patel met Gandhi off the train on 31 March and it was he who dropped Gandhi at Viceroy’s House for the 1 April interview. His certainty that partition was the best way out contributed to the pessimism in Gandhi’s remarks at his prayer meeting on the evening of 1 April:
Whatever the Congress decides will be done; nothing will be according to what I say. My writ runs no more. If it did, the tragedies in the Punjab
, Bihar and Noakhali would not have happened. No one listens to me any more (94: 216-7).
The next day, however, Gandhi again met the Viceroy and reiterated his proposal. At this meeting (2 April) Mountbatten accused Gandhi of proposing a League government but designing a Congress one, for surely he expected Jinnah to reject the offer?
However, the Viceroy (to quote his words) became convinced of his caller’s ‘burning sincerity’ when Gandhi offered all his services to the Viceroy to ‘get the Jinnah government through, first by exercising his influence with Congress to accept it and secondly by touring the length and breadth of the country getting all the people of India to accept the decision’.17
Half an hour after Gandhi had left him, Azad met the Viceroy, who recorded his discussion with the Congress’s leading Muslim figure:
I told [Azad] straightaway of Gandhi’s plan, of which he already knew from Gandhi that morning. He staggered me by saying that in his opinion it was perfectly feasible of being carried out, since Gandhi could unquestionably influence the whole of Congress to accept it and work it loyally. He further thought that there was a chance that I might get Jinnah to accept it, and he thought that such a plan would be the quickest way to stop bloodshed.18
The Viceroy however secured Azad’s assent to the view that other solutions might be more practical.19 For though assuring Gandhi that he would examine the scheme and privately admitting to his staff that ‘it would not be very easy for Mr Jinnah to refuse Mr Gandhi’s offer’ and that ‘basically Mr Gandhi’s objective was to retain the unity of India and basically he was right in this’,20 Mountbatten in fact was hostile to the scheme.
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 79
