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INDIA: Long Shadow
Introductory: This is an extraordinary article from the Time Magazine, because it has almost a Dewey defeats Truman quality to it. Time Magazine’s partiality to Gandhi and the Congress is well known. For example there is not even a single objectionable quote attributed to Jinnah in this piece that can be verified from any primary source. This piece came out along with the horrible cover about which Jinnah had to say this: ”As I think the description ‘Mohammed Ali Jinnah His Moslem Tiger Wants to Eat the Hindu Cow’ is offensive to the sentiments of the Hindu community, I cannot put my autograph on the cover page …” (in response to a letter dated 24 July 1946) Ian Talbott Jinnah : Role Model for future generations of Pakistanis” Leicester 2000. In hindsight we know what Jinnah did next. He accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. Subsequently it was the Congress that broke the agreement and even the Time Magazine was forced to eat its words but we will produce that article at a later date.-PTH Admin
——————–
India’s festering sun beat down impartially on New and Old Delhi—on the precisely geometric, grandly drab preserves of the British Raj, on the noisy, squalid, sprawling native town. A sweat-soaked British wallah might change his shirt four times before settling down to an evening burra peg of bad Australian whiskey in the garden of the Cecil Hotel. Even the calloused, naked feet of shirtless Indians burned as they padded along the teeming Chandni Chauk. In the brassy glare, the flowering trees near the Viceroy’s residence seemed to bear sparks rather than blossoms. The rind of an orange would shrivel the moment it was peeled from its fruit. Here & there an exhausted cow rested, sacred and undisturbed, in the traffic lanes of the boulevards.
Delhi in the spring heat of 1946 was not relaxed; it was taut with waiting, gravid with conflict and suspense. Two Socialist lawyers and a former Baptist lay preacher from Britain had sat for 25 days in the southeast wing of the viceregal palace, preparing to liquidate the richest portion of empire that history had ever seen—to end the British Raj, the grand and guilty edifice built and maintained by William Hawkins and Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and the Marquess Wellesley, the brawling editor James Silk Buckingham and the canny merchant Lord Inchcape, and by the great Viceroys, austere Curzon and gentle Halifax. The Raj was finished: scarcely a voice in Britain spoke against independence; scarcely an Indian wanted the British to stay; scarcely a leader in India questioned the sincerity of Britain’s intention to get out. The only questions were “when?” and “how?”
Last week the three members of the British Cabinet Mission strove to force Indians to take the ultimate step—agreement on the constitution of an independent state. Much like a judge locking a hung jury in an uncomfortable room, Ministers Lord Pethick-Lawrence, A. V. Alexander and Sir Stafford Cripps prepared for a long Easter weekend in Kashmir’s cool mountains with a message that when they returned “they hoped to find sufficient elements of agreement on which a settlement will be based.”
Inside the cream stucco Imperial Hotel, beneath the propeller-blade fans, zealots and schemers argued, intrigued and speculated in more tongues than the Ganges has mouths. When they repeated to each other (as they often did) that now at last Britain’s colonial policy had lumbered to the point where Whitehall really wanted to free India, hope revived. When they reflected (as they often did) that civil war had never been closer, despair reached .its depth. The issue seemed to turn on one man—Mohamed Ali Jinnah. Last week all India watched Jinnah’s words and actions.
Man with an Angora Cap. While the Cabinet Mission still talked with India’s leaders, a meeting was held in the courtyard of Anglo-Arabic College across Delhi from the Viceroy’s palace. Green and white banners flaunted unacademic slogans: “Pakistan or die,” “We are determined to fight.” The speeches were equally inflammatory. Said Abdul Qaiyum Khan from the North-West Frontier Province: “I hope the Moslem nation will strike swiftly before [a Hindu] government can be set up in this country. . . . The Moslems will have no alternative but to take out their swords.” Said Sirdar Shaukat Hyat Khan of the Punjab (which furnishes more than half the troops of the Indian regular army): “The Punjabi Moslems . . . will fight for you unto the death.”
One of the wealthiest of Moslem leaders, Sir Firozkhan Noon, a Punjab landowner, did not hesitate to wave the Red flag; “If neither [the Hindus nor the British] give [Pakistan] to us . . . if our own course is to fight, and if in that fight we go down, the only course for Moslems is to look to Russia. … I will be the first to lose every rupee I have in order that we may be free in this country.” Five thousand Moslems cheered. Even the women in the purdah enclosure to the left of the platform could be heard-applauding behind their screen.
The presiding officer was neither shocked nor carried away by the incendiary speeches. Mohamed Ali Jinnah, clad in black angora cap, a long black sherwani (tunic), and tight-fitting black churidar on his wire-thin legs, smiled his ice-cold smile. He was at the peak of his power. He was the man who might say whether one-fifth of the world’s people would be free. His 5 ft. 11 in. and 119 Ibs. stood between India and independence.
Man with a Monocle. After the meeting, Jinnah got out of his political costume as soon as possible, relaxed in his comfortable New Delhi home (he has a more palatial one on Bombay’s Malabar Hill). He changed quickly to a tropical grey suit, blue & black striped tie, black & white sport shoes. Later, as he read to a reporter passages from one of his past speeches, Jinnah screwed a monocle into his right eye. He wears Moslem dress only because his enemies sneer that Jinnah, head of India’s Moslem League, is lax in his religious observances. (“Jinnah does not have a beard; Jinnah does not go to the Mosque; Jinnah drinks whiskey!”) With his perfect English, which he speaks better than his native Gujerati, his slick grey hair and graceful, precise gestures, he might be a European diplomat of the old school. How such a man at a fateful moment in history came to be the spokesman for millions of Moslem peasants, small shopkeepers and soldiers, is a story of love of country and lust for power, a story that twists and turns like a bullock track in the hills.
Jinnah was born on Christmas Day, 1876, the eldest son of Jinnah Poonja, a wealthy Karachi dealer in gum arabic and hides. The boy grew up in an atmosphere of wealth among a doting family. After going to school in Bombay and Karachi, young Jinnah, “a tall thin boy in a funny long yellow coat,” as Poetess Sarojini Naidu described him, went to England. At the age of 16 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn to read law. Soon after Jinnah returned to India, his father lost his money. Three hard, jobless years followed, until briefs and money started coming in.
Man of Unity. In 1940 Bombay Moslems elected him to the Supreme Legislative Council. Jinnah rose steadily in the councils of the nationalists and in the courtrooms of India. He revisited England and there, in 1913, enrolled in the Moslem League. “Typical of his sense of honor,” wrote his rhapsodic biographer Naidu,* “he partook of it something like a sacrament . . . made his two sponsors take a solemn preliminary covenant that loyalty to the Moslem League . . . would in no way and at no time imply even the shadow of disloyalty to the larger national cause to which his life was dedicated.”
During World War I Jinnah was a conspicuous worker for Moslem-Hindu unity, persuaded the Congress Party and Moslem League to hold joint sessions, used as his slogan “a free and federated India.” In 1917 he could still attack the idea which later became his obsession. “This [fear of Hindu domination] is a bogey,” he told League members, “. . . to scare you away from the cooperation with the Hindus which is essential for the establishment of self-government.”
Man of Discord. The solemn dedication to the “larger national cause” began to waver after the war. The shrewd, suave Moslem saw a shrewd, complexly simple Hindu, Mohandas Gandhi, step into the leadership of the nationalist Congress
Party. When Gandhi began to turn the party, once the sounding board for polite talk about independence among a few cautious Indian leaders, into a powerful mass movement, Jinnah drifted out of the fold. Some Hindus think he lost his nationalist ardor when he lost his beautiful Parsi wife (he was 42, she 18, when they were married) after their only child, a daughter, was born. His wife had been a zealous worker for independence.
Since then he has shared his Malabar Hill and New Delhi homes with his sister, Fatima. He lives austerely, has no close friends. He disowned his daughter for marrying a rich Christian.
Even Poetess Naidu found little warmth in Jinnah: “Somewhat formal and fastidious and a little aloof and imperious of manner. . . . Tall and stately, but thin to the point of emaciation, languid and luxurious of habit, Jinnah’s attenuated form is the deceptive sheath of a spirit of exceptional vitality and endurance.”
Man of Threats. That vitality and cold intelligence were turned more & more to the Moslem cause during the late ’30s. After the sweeping Congress Party victories in the 1936-37 provincial elections, Moslems charged that Hindus were trying to monopolize the government.
At a crucial meeting in March 1940 Jinnah first publicly plumped for Pakistan.* A hundred thousand followers thronged into the shade of a huge pandal (big tent) in Lahore, where the League was meeting, overflowed into the scorching heat outside, heard Jinnah proclaim over the loudspeaker: “. . . The only course open to us all is to allow the major nations [of India] to separate to their homelands.” He warned that any democratic government in a unified India which gave Moslems a permanent minority “must lead to civil war and the raising of private armies.” An enthusiastic woman follower tore off her veil, came from behind the purdah screen, mounted the speakers’ platform. But Moslem revolutionary ardor was not ready to break with tradition; she was quietly escorted back to purdah by a uniformed guard.
When Gandhi led Congress into civil disobedience after the failure of the Cripps mission in 1942, Jinnah ordered his Moslems to take no part, promised a “state of benevolent neutrality” that would not hamper the British in fighting the Japanese. He boasted that if his followers joined Gandhi’s pacifist program, the British would have 500 times more trouble “because we have 500 times more guts than the Hindus.” He recalled past glories of the Mogul Emperor Baber (“The Tiger”) and other Moslem warriors: “The Moslems have been slaves for only 200 years but the Hindus have been slaves for a thousand.”
A historic meeting with Gandhi on Malabar Hill in 1944 ended in an impasse. Even Gandhi’s healer, Dinshaw Mehta, who massaged Jinnah for two hours daily during the meetings, could not rub out the wrinkles of obstinacy that made the skinny Moslem uncompromisingly demand Pakistan, made the skinny Hindu as uncompromisingly demand a unified India, with the Pakistan issue postponed until after independence.
Man of Pomp. Today Jinnah revels in his one-man show. Nobody in all his Moslem League can be called a No. 2 man, or even No. 8. He delights in the princely processions staged by his followers when he tours the Moslem cities of northern India. His buglers herald his arrival at railway stations. Bands play God Save the King because “that’s the only tune they know.” Victory arches go up, rose petals flutter down from the rooftops, richly bedizened elephants, camels, mounted guards of honor accompany the Hollywood float in which Jinnah rides. Today Jinnah, and not the hated Hindu Gandhi, is prima donna on India’s stage.
The gulf between Moslem and Hindu had always been real, but Jinnah dug it deeper. Last Christmas Day, Jinnah’s 69th birthday, he summed up his demand for two nations. “I want to eat the cow the Hindu worships. . . . The Moslem has nothing in common with the Hindu except his slavery to the British.”
Economic differences aggravate the irritation. Enterprising Hindus and Parsis almost monopolize banking, insurance, big business. Moslems, slower to welcome Western education, complain bitterly that Hindu factory owners rarely employ a Moslem clerk or foreman even when most workmen are Moslem. Moslems have a real fear that, in a unified India, Hindus would freeze them out of important posts in government and industry.
The British, in the years when they still hoped to hold India, gave the religious difference official standing by decreeing, in 1909, that Hindus and Moslems should vote separately. H. N. Brailsford, a sympathetic British student of India, has said: “We labeled them Hindus and Moslems till they forgot they were men.” The British policy of “divide and rule” has been turned by Jinnah to the Pakistan demand “divide and quit.”
The Poorest State. The British Raj had given India a unified defense and a unified region of internal free trade. Jinnah would destroy both. His Pakistan, in northwest and northeast India, would be an agricultural state, poor in resources and industry, unless, improbably, the Hindus agreed to turn Hindu Calcutta over to Pakistan. Between mighty Russia to the north and the main body of India to the south, Pakistan would dangle like two withered arms. Only half the population of the area claimed for Pakistan is Moslem. None could claim that to split India in twain would solve the minority problem—in Hindustan there would still be islands of Moslems, in Pakistan large Hindu minorities. Jinnah has not concealed that behind Pakistan lies the ancient Asiatic practice of taking hostages; a Hindu minority in Pakistan could, “by reprisals, be made to answer Tor persecution of Moslems in Hindu India.
To warnings that a separate Pakistan would be poor and backward, Jinnah answers: “Why are the Hindus worrying so much about us? Let us stew in our own juice if we are willing. . . . [The Hindus] would be getting rid of the poorest parts of India, so they ought to be glad. The economy would take care of itself in time.”
The Plainest Answer. The Congress Party’s position on Pakistan was just as firm as Jinnah’s. The party’s official head, goateed Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a Moslem who looks like a caricature of a Kentucky colonel, paced up & down in his Delhi quarters last week, smoking a big cigar. “Eighty percent of the Indian people live in villages where Hindus and Moslems get along well together—the only trouble is among the twenty percent living in the cities. This is basically an economic conflict, not religious.” Jawaharlal Nehru made the plainest answer: “Nothing on earth, including the United Nations, is going to bring about the Pakistan of Jinnah’s conception.” The Congress Party might compromise on some plan for a limited Pakistan within a federated India. Jinnah might change his mind—as he has so often before. But if neither gave way, the British Cabinet Mission would probably impose a constitution on India despite the threats of civil war. When a British official in Delhi last week said, “This is the most important British diplomatic effort of the century,” he had in mind the danger that a failure to settle the Indian problem would keep the whole East in turmoil and disturb international relations throughout the world by presenting Rus sia with an opportunity to increase her influence among Asia’s people.
Even if settlement of the constitutional issue resulted in an independent, unified India, the future was none too bright.
Famine was tightening its grip on the subcontinent. Sir A. Ramaswami Mudaliar warned of “ten million dead on the streets of India” unless he could buy four million tons of grain this year in the U.S.* Independence alone would not answer the food problem, which would recur until India had more irrigation, more fertilizer, better agricultural methods and more industry. Many Indian leaders looked to the U.S. for machinery and technical advice. The most practical immediate step would be a U.S. loan to Britain, which would permit London to pay off much of its wartime debt to India and to give India the dollars she needs for imports from the U.S.
Where Akbar Failed. If India, with its diverse tongues, its anachronistic princes and princelings, its millennium of dependence on the rule of outsiders, could become a nation in the Western sense, the achievement would be one of the greatest triumphs of history. In E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, a Moslem character, Dr. Aziz, recalled that the great Mogul Emperor Akbar had worked with tolerance and wisdom to unite India, had even attempted to devise a new unifying faith. But, says Dr. Aziz: “Nothing embraces the whole of India—nothing, nothing, and that was Akbar’s mistake.”
This people without a common denominator are at the same time the most bound and the most free in the world. They are bound by poverty, by caste, by religious practices that often descend to the crassest animism, by political ignorance and by disease. Yet they have been free enough to produce great contemporary leaders and thinkers. Nobody, not even the British Raj in the days of its strength, has regimented the Indians, who wear a thousand local costumes, speak 225 languages, and follow highly individual patterns of behavior. An Indian is free to sleep on the sidewalks of Madras when he feels tired, or to declare himself a saint and sit waiting for disciples by the burning ghats of Benares; or to send out a seven-year-old child with a dead baby dangling from its hand to beg in Calcutta’s Howrah railroad station.
No one who looked at India’s anarchic scene last week could believe that Jinnah had created all the obstacles to India’s freedom, but in the present crisis he had come to symbolize them. The Indian sun cast Jinnah’s long thin shadow not only across the negotiations in Delhi but over India’s future.
* At 67 plump Madame Naidu is still a member of the Congress Party’s Working Committee, is considered India’s topmost orator. She paints her toenails bright red.
* Pakistan, a dream of Moslem students before it became a political issue, was originally concocted from P for Punjab, A for the Afghans of the North-West Frontier, K for Kashmir, S for Sind, “pure” in Tan from Urdu, with “stan” Baluchistan. means “Pak” also “Land of the means Pure.” Last week the League convention defined it to embrace Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, North-West Frontier Province (all in northwestern In dia), Assam and most of Bengal (in the north east). Jinnah has even advocated a thousand-mile corridor across Hindustan to connect the two parts.
* In 1943′s Bengal famine 1.5 million starved.
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: Hindus, India, Jinnah, Pakistan
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“As Durga Das wrote … the way Congress acted created precedent for horse trading in South Asian politics.”
Please take a look at what Akbar has to say about it (reproduced above). One doesn’t have to believe anybody, but there are contrasting viewpoints on ’37 elections and how Congress and ML acted in its aftermath.
Majumdar//Jinnah sahib was far ahead of the times ( a century perhaps???) as far as the Indic Muslim world was concerned//
Whilst I agree that Jinnah was a born leader, I dont agree with this ‘Far ahead’ thesis. There were many in the muslim world who were really good. Even to this date there are thousands who ARE really good. The question is do they have the GUTS to face the illiterate Mullah brigade who are under the wahabbi /salafi concepts hell bent on taking the entire community back to caves. Who is going to stop them? to that extent I would assume Jinnah was a towering figure single handedly capable of fixing these issues. I guess nearest today would be Salman Rushdie…but he has been silenced perpetually by bigoted influences
It is intriguing to note that Islam doesnot recognise regional background…For instance Jinnah a Gujarati created Pakistan an alien land for him…His nearest could have been his dear Bombay…or Delhi may be…but karachi??/Quetta?? Peshawar?? But he did it and in the process must have deeply regretted during his last days..craving for his dear Bombay…THESE THINGS NEVER WORK
What he did on the basis of Religious ideology is equivalent to Devegowda fighting for Baluchistani Hindus (I am just referring them since around 25 families have filed for Indian residentship)…and then going to Quetta for taking over as President!! I think this is a Long take…how will someone forego his favourite Mudde?? ( local cuisine that he likes which he carried all the way to Delhi when he was PM)…this is the paradox of Jinnah. He should have NEVER broken the subcontinent on religious lines. What he should have done and I am sure He would have got is to deftly negotiate with Gandhi. MKG ( egotist himself) and Jinnah could have negotiated something worthwhile…
Partition brought no smiles on any of the leaders at the centrestage…be it MAJ, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel et al….Beyond independence, just mundane job of furthering a nascent nation were carried forward…
HAYYER:: As regards to RP being President, My mistake, I should have referred Chakravarty Rajagopalachari….Please read MAJ as Gov Gen, Nehru as PM and so on….I am sure many from Muslim League would have played stellar role in forming the initial policies which were to govern India….
I have no hesitation in saying that I am an Udupi Hindu…I have problems in adjusting myself in Hindus if I am in Jammu….Likewise, Gujarati Muslim will have an issue with adjusting himself with Bengali Muslim/Punjabi Muslim and vice versa…there is something called culture which these Salafists are trying to eliminate…In reality it backfires big time…
A keralite Muslim WILL prefer a Keralite hindu than a Pashtun Muslim for company……
When this is damn common sense, I marvel at Jinnah for having partitioned India on religious lines…Subcontinent today is World’s most dangerous place due to these blunders…
About Bengali Hindus (I don’t know how the Sikhs felt), there were opinion polls taken by Amrita Bazar Patrika. More than 98% of Bengali Hindus opted for the partition of Bengal along religious lines. If the whole of Bengal became part of Pakistan, it can be safely assumed that the Hindus would have migrated en masse to India.
One must not forget one of the first signs of Hindu Muslim non-coexistence happened when the Calcutta Hindus refused to support the Sepoy Mutiny. They asked for the immediate arrest of the Sepoys on charges of sedition. If the Bengali Hindus supported it, that could have been the end of British rule, because Audh and Delhi had already fallen and there were about a few thousand Europeans in Calcutta holding fort. But Hindus feared the return of Muslim Nawab rule all over again. That is one part of Bengali history one cannot be proud of.
The Sepoys killed many Bengali Hindus (as well as the British) who were posted at that time throughout North India in various official capaciaties.
no-communal:
I could have drafted it differently-however, we’ve been having this discussion on another thread over an article by AA Khalid concerning blasphemy. In my view you cannot create a modern secular liberal state through a religion based political discourse.
Gandhi was trying precisely that, over Jinnah’s opposition, and he failed miserably. Some believe that the only way to counter Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan is to show that a secular liberalism is compatible with Islam, ( which it may be, I don’t know enough to have an opinion) and not only compatible but advantageous for Pakistan. I dispute that view; Gandhi being the primary example of its failure. What was it Gandhi said about politics and religion, not understanding one or the other if you don’t take them together, or some such thing-a fine principle if you can make it work. Gandhi couldn’t and neither can anyone else.
@BI
BI Sb.,
I agree with you. Congress should have behaved more sensitively towards ML. There is no question about it. As I think BCIV mentioned long ago, right political symbolism to ML and especially Jinnah was the need of the hour.
One of the reasons we Indians comment on partition and TNT is that we know in our guts that staying together would have worked. No matter what Indians in favor of TNT such as Kaalket may say, India does have this live and let live element in it. Hayyer Sb., Gorki, have all talked about it. Staying together would have worked for the Muslims politically too. Just take a look the current political map of the entire north India. Congress has been decimated from the entire cow belt as well as West BEngal. The main reason for this is that the Muslims deserted it. A major factor that Trinamul Congress, a regional party, is coming to power in WB is the Muslims, finally, are not going to vote for CPIM. One main reason Nitish Kumar won in Bihar hands down was that the Muslims, who have so far been voting for Lalu, this time voted for Nitish. In the parliament, too, the minority parties are just too important. The flagship project of the current UPA govt. was a massive infrastruatural boost ( worth 1 trillion dollar). It’s stalled for the last two years because a land acquisition bill could not be passed. Trinamul Congress for their political compulsions is holding it up. Strength of TMC in India’s over 500 strong parliament: 19.
So we do feel that staying together would have worked. It could have worked beautifully. We had great leaders at that time. But our leaders, all of them, could have shown more maturity towards each other. Please don’t take it as a repudiation of Pakistan. I will not shy away from saluting Pakistan’s flag if ever that need arises.
NC //The main reason for this is that the Muslims deserted it.//
You are being Naive here and completely misjudging Voters. Congress failed because IT DID NOT HAVE A VIABLE LEADERSHIP in place.Look at Karnataka….Congress will fail since it has a no namer as President of Party.It should have given all the powers to Siddaramaiah instead it has given the same to an unknown guy called Parameshwar. Likewise in Maharashtra it is surving only because of Sharad Pawar. Recently Oligarch Sonia Gandhi deputed Prithviraj Chawan as CM of Maharashtra. There is no way in hell they will win M’rashtra next time around with such weak leadership. Bihar misfired not due to Muslims but due to super leadership of Nitish
PLEASE DONT POLARISE WITH IMAGINARY HINDU MUSLIM VOTE DIVIDE. PEOPLE VOTE FOR DEVELOPMENT AND DEVELOPMENT ALONE…POLITICS DEVOID OF STRONG LEADERSHIP IS DOOMED TO FAIL AND HENCE CONGRESS WILL FAIL IN UP, MP, BENGAL, MP, CHATTISGARH, MAHARASHTRA, KARNATAKA &&&&&&…this is due to Oligarchs M/s Sonia & Co taking over all mantle and stifling democracy to flower…Next Govt at the centre will be NDA…again not because of muslims…but because of development which muslims approve in large nos
Prasad,
You are misunderstanding my point. I am not saying the Muslims vote on communal lines. Far from it. They also vote for development. But they tend to tilt the balance. In WB, one main reason the CPIM was so long in the power is that they got the Muslim vote. There is nothing communal about that, because CPIM doesn’t believe in religion. Right now, before the state elections, both TMC and CPIM are desperate to get and retain the Muslim support. In Bihar too, the Muslim vote was crucial. Again, the vote was for development, because both Lalu and Nitish are Hindu. In UP, people say Congress was doomed for ever because of the Babri demolition. There it’s a contest between Mulayam, who gets the Muslim vote, and Mayavati, who gets the dalit vote. Of course, these are broad brush statements, and in some case, may be oversimplifications.
And Congress has not been in power in north India not only during Sonia Gandhi’s time. It’s not in power for a long time, from times when many Congress stalwarts were actually from north India.
NC,
“One must not forget one of the first signs of Hindu Muslim non-coexistence happened when the Calcutta Hindus refused to support the Sepoy Mutiny. They asked for the immediate arrest of the Sepoys on charges of sedition. If the Bengali Hindus supported it, that could have been the end of British rule, because Audh and Delhi had already fallen and there were about a few thousand Europeans in Calcutta holding fort.”
Not sure about this one. The revolt of 1857 was, in fact, a perfect example of the Hindu-Muslim coexistence to a level that seems totally foreign now. The sepoys of the Bengal Army who first revolted were mostly Hindus from the erstwhile state of Oudh that included much of eastern UP and western Bihar. It was this composition of the rebels that prompted the British to term the rebels as “Pandees” even if they were Muslims.
The slide in the Hindu Muslim relations started soon after as Muslims of the heartland received a disproportionate punishment from the British for the revolt. That was entirely expected due to the larger proportion of Muslim ruling elite. How this loss of power of the Muslim elite was transformed into angst of the Ummah is one of the greatest charade ever played.
“One of the reasons we Indians comment on partition and TNT is that we know in our guts that staying together would have worked.”
I recoil at the thought of being in the same boat as Kalket but I am not sure about this one. I highly doubt your thesis. Very few of us believe now that staying together would have worked. And, that is not just due to local factors but due to larger geopolitics.
“right political symbolism to ML and especially Jinnah was the need of the hour.”
That would have only stalled the inevitable. The course of history was set by then and it was beyond the hands of Jinnah or Congress. If the bloodletting of the Partition would have been avoided, things would have been much better between the two nations.
Many good people are missing the forest for the trees.
Partition of Indian land is still being discussed now because partition was not perfect. First truth to be faced is that Indic people identify their land with religion, spirituality, philosophy and civilization. India is an civilizational entity and Islam is an intruder and do not suit the temprament of the people or the land as mantioned /shown by the contradictions in Pakistani society. Any conclusion Ignoring the Islam factor in partition will be false . Kuffar’s experience of Islam , real or unreal cant be ignored and must be factored in every calculation , interaction with Musalman majority group. Second , overtime Islam became part of Indian spiritual life as it got considred as one of the legitimate path to spiritual experience. But there is no way isalm’s political aspects can be considred legtimate in the eyes of Indics. It will remain an alien religion as long as it demand to be applied politicaly. India enjoy good relation with Arab Muslim countries precisely because they are secured in their own civilizational identity and dont make political demands . Same with indonesia as they have kept themsleves rooted in their own soil and have minimum of convert’s syndrome as carried by the Pakistani people. All bets are off with demand and practice of alien , dogmatic political indulgence . Intellectual MAJ can be admired as an pre 40 Indian but as leader Musalmans and divider of India on the basis of religion , he has no relevance and earn no respect . In this light , Since the partition happend, The Complete Transfer of Population could have been done in peaceful manner . Both parties failed because of British gameplan and British succeeded becuase of pre existing fissures. MAJ, Gandhi, Nehru etc were just human beings with their own shortcomings. They are the symbols and not cause of the conflict. IMHO, peace can still happen easily with clearly marked boundaries and fences. Muslim population on one side in Pakistan and Indic population on other side in India. So far this balanced approach is not applied yet thus conflict continue in mind and battlefield. There are few solutions for future sake but that is entirely different matter as Indians are pretty confident to gain their own rightful place in civilized world and would not be burdend with solving non issues. Considering Pakistani as one of us will bring nothing but grief for India and indians. Wish them well and keep them as “others” along side their sympathizers in Bharat .
Hayyer Sb.,
To an extent I agree with you.
When I took part in an analogous discussion in PTH, I felt that both approaches were necessary. Keeping religion out of public sphere with an iron hand may work in a dictatorship, such as China. But in a democracy, such an approach, by itself, will not work. This will especially not work in the subcontinent. We need politicians and administrators who will keep pushing religion back to private life. However, we also need spiritual guidance from all religions to maintain a tolerant, well-adjusted, society.
Under various circumstances politics and religion are bound to mix even in secular democracies. Look at India, we had temple destruction as a major political issue. Look at even the United States. Oklahoma recently passed a bill by referendum which pre-emptively bans Islamic law. This when Oklahoma has virtually no Muslim population to speak of. The local senator spearheaded the effort to please the Christian conservatives. Even in Europe anti islamism is a political issue. Just like a strict religious state without an iron hand (like KSA) is a utopia, similarly strict secularism without an iron hand (like China) is also a utopia.
Gandhi did his best in his own way. That does have a calming influence, whether we realize or not, on at least 80% of the population. It’s so much better that we had Gandhi before we had Babu Bajrangi or Praveen Togadia, and not the other way round. Once the intolerant religious forces were already on the street, any subsequent uniting, calming, influence wouldn’t have worked.
Mukul Kesavan argued somewhere that Gandhi, if enything, reduced the effects of religion on Indian freedom movement. Please look at the dominant Congress leadership just before Gandhi. Under Lal Bal Pal, Congress was decisively going towards a Hindu ideology. The earlier, more secular leaders were all sidelined. It was Gandhi, who, instead of using communal symbolism such as Ganesh or Shivaji, started using secular symbols such as charka or salt. The support to Khilafat, though in hindsight a mistake because it alienated Jinnah, was also to bring the Indian Muslims in the fold of resistance. And thus to give a unified, not just Hindu, texture to the resistance movement.
I just found the article by Kesavan in the Calcutta Telegraph, and I am reproducing below.
“Gandhi returned to Indian politics in 1915. While trying to understand his politics, we should bear in mind that he was forty-six years old and had been an NRI for nearly a quarter of a century. He had served his political apprenticeship in South Africa, not as a nationalist, but as a civil rights activist, fighting for civic and racial equality on behalf of South Africa?s Indian community.
When Gandhi arrived, he found a Congress riven by two readings of nationalism. Early Congress nationalism was one particular response to the challenge of organizing politically within the constraints of colonial rule. The strategy the early Congress favoured was pluralism powered by the rhetoric of economic grievance.
This pluralist style had been challenged by an Extremist faction that favoured popular mobilization in the name of a Mother India defined by a Hindu cultural nationalism. The Swadeshi movement was the first fruit of this Extremist style. By 1915, the Moderates were in some disarray, with many of them deserting the Congress to join the Indian Liberal Federation, while the great leader of the Extremists, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, was busy trying to establish a Home Rule League, to press the colonial state to grant Indians self-government.
On the face of it, Tilak should have been Gandhi?s mentor and model. They shared a willingness to deploy a Hindu idiom in political discourse; both wanted to invent a politics that transcended the polite, petitioning politics of the early Congress; both men tried to forge instruments for popular mobilization and pan-Indian agitation. Gandhi even used the Home Rule League networks created by Tilak to give structure to the Non-Cooperation movement. And yet Gandhi steadfastly maintained that his mentor in matters political was not Tilak but his great Moderate contemporary, Gopal Krishna Gokhale.
The fundamental difference between Tilak and Gandhi is this. Tilak wanted to confront the raj on behalf of a nation imagined in a broadly Hindu style. To this end, he was willing to use Shivaji and Ganesh symbolically to raise nationalist consciousness. Gandhi’s political ideas and anti-colonial strategies were designed to extend Congress pluralism to the new epoch of mass politics. Mass politics to Gandhi meant adapting the style of civil disobedience he had learned in South Africa to the vastness of India. This posed two challenges: one, creating a politics that overcame the urban alienation of Congress politics from the rural Indian hinterland. And two, consolidating the representative claims of Congress pluralism by drawing into its politics a substantial Muslim presence.
Gandhi’s homespun make-over, his populist folk-religious idiom, his assertion that he was a sanatani Hindu, obscures an essential difference between him and someone like Tilak. Unlike the Extremists, Gandhi, with one fatal exception, never mobilized around religious symbols or issues. His great mobilizations were centred on issues that were secular in an almost doctrinaire way: the suspension of civil liberties in the case of the Rowlatt satyagraha, the right to make untaxed salt later and a strictly civic micro-politics based on constructive work, sanitation and spinning. Gandhi, in his dhoti-wearing, ashram-centred avatar had learnt more from Tolstoy’s romantic identification with Russian peasant life and its traditions and Henry Thoreau’s Walden than he had from any specifically Hindu tradition.
Looking back, Gandhi’s South African apprenticeship seems a controlled experiment where he implemented and refined ideas of civil disobedience and passive resistance derived from his reading of Henry Thoreau’s essay, Resistance to Civil Government, written in 1849 and posthumously published in 1866 as ‘Civil Disobedience’. Similarly, after his arrival in India, Gandhi?s leadership initiatives in Champaran, Ahmedabad and Khera can be seen as five-fingers exercises, undertaken in preparation for the anti-colonial struggle ahead. The agitation he launches against the Rowlatt Bill, the first all-India satyagraha, seems, in retrospect, a dress rehearsal for the premiere of Gandhi’s first truly pan-Indian movement, the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation struggle.
The Khilafat-Non-Cooperation is generally regarded as the Part I of a trilogy, the Civil Disobedience movement and the Quit India movement being Parts II and III. What’s more, it has a special place in the history of Indian nationalism as the high-water mark of Hindu-Muslim cooperation in the course of the anti-colonial struggle. Parts II and III, as Gyanendra Pandey pointed out in a clever book, were notable for the relative meagreness of Muslim participation.
The problem with this perspective and this seductive sequence of roughly decennial agitations, is that the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation movement is a massive aberration in Gandhi’s political career, different from any movement he participated in, before or afterwards. The Khilafat-Non-Cooperation movement is singular because it is the only movement led by Gandhi that was centred on a religious issue: the preservation of the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph of all Muslims.
We can see its aberrant nature in the uneasy hyphenation of its name: Khilafat-Non-Cooperation. As a schoolboy, I used to think that the Khilafat part had to do with Muslims and the Non-Cooperation part with the Congress, till Francis Robinson, in his fine book, Separatism Amongst Indian Muslims, set us right. Both the agitation to save the Turkish Sultan on account of his claim to be the Muslim world’s Khalifah and the scheme of Non-Cooperation were initiatives of the Khilafat leadership, not Gandhi or the Congress. Gandhi made these two issues his own by presiding over the All India Khilafat Conference in Delhi in November 1919, well before the Congress had anything to do with the Khilafat issue. By September 1920, Gandhi in an extraordinary political coup, had gotten himself elected president of the All-India Home Rule League and steered a resolution in favour of Non-Cooperation to preserve the Khilafat and wrest swaraj in the Congress session in Calcutta.
Gandhi’s decision to choose the Khilafat movement as the occasion for his all-India debut, seems even odder given the Khilafat leadership. Maulana Abdul Bari was a conservative Barelvi alim. The Ali Brothers, Mohammad and Shaukat, were Young Turks from Aligarh, impatient with the loyalism of Sir Syed’s politics and openly admiring of the intransigence of Extremist politics during the Swadeshi movement. In fact the leaders of the Khilafat movement are best understood as the Extremist tendency in Muslim politics. Gandhi, Gokhale’s disciple, had chosen as his allies a pair of populist demagogues: the Lal-Bal-Pal of Muslim politics. The irony of this is sharpened by the fact that the greatest critic of the Khilafat movement and the Congress’s part in it was Jinnah, once Dadabhai Naoroji’s private secretary, and, at the time, the outstanding representative of the Moderate tendency in Muslim politics.
Why did Gandhi do it? For two reasons. One, he saw it as a quick, cheap way of getting the Muslims on board. What Gandhi was doing here was trying to repopulate the Muslim enclosure in the nationalist zoo by manipulating a Muslim version of Tilakite populism. When Gandhi described the Khilafat cause as the ‘Muslim cow’, that is, a sacred, sentimental cause, his analogy was off the mark. The Turkish Sultan was for the Ali Brothers what Shivaji was for Tilak: a lonely symbol of defiance in the face of a hostile empire. The Khilafat stirred them in the same way as the idea of Hindu Padpadshahi stirred the Extremist imagination.
Gandhi’s second reason for espousing this curious cause was that it allowed him to take over the Congress. By promising to deliver the Congress, he secured the support of the Khilafatists, and by promising to deliver the Muslims, he effectively took over the Congress without being a member or ever standing for election. In the short term, he succeeded brilliantly. In the long term, this adventurist coup did the anti-colonial movement incalculable damage.
The reason Gandhi’s alliance with the Khilafatists was a form of adventurism was not because he was trying to do a deal with a Muslim party. The Congress had always approached Muslims at one remove, as the Congress-League pact of 1916 so clearly demonstrated. No, the reason the Khilafat movement was aberrant was because the earlier deals had been based on rational political bargaining, whereas agitating for the Sultan was inflammatory posturing in a hopeless cause. That Gandhi acted in patronizing bad faith, is clear from the abruptness with which he called off the movement after the Chauri Chaura violence without even consulting his Muslim allies. If he had ever believed that Khilafat was the Muslim cow, he cut its throat pretty casually.
The passions he had helped rouse, which were now turned against him and the Congress, meant that the Congress haemorrhaged Muslims ever afterwards. Gandhi returned to the secular straight-and-narrow with the salt satyagraha ten years later and strove manfully to secure the Moderate aim of a pluralist nationalism in the age of mass politics, but opportunism of the Khilafat movement haunted the Congress and helped alienate the one constituency it prized above all others: India’s Muslims. In this season of Jinnah, no sensible account of the Khilafat movement can be written without acknowledging that on this issue at least, Jinnah was right and Gandhi, without question, was wrong.”
BM,
My mistake, I was talking strictly in the context of Bengal. It’s true that the sepoys were both Hindu and Muslim. But it’s also a fact that the Calcutta Hindus did not support the mutiny for fear of return of Nawab rule. Bengal was pretty insulated back then. One unfortunate holdover from this insulation is a still popular lullaby that talks of Marathi dacoits.
About whether co-existence would’ve worked, how do you think Hindus and Muslims are co-existing in India today. Suppose Kashmir and the terrorism factors were out (both results of partition), don’t you think whatever tensions still remain between Indian Hindus and Muslims would have been largely gone by now?
Non Communal confirm what i have stated . Muslamans of India wont be fighting against British because of Hindu Symbols used by the freedom fighters . This is called alien religion first and Country, land , soil second or third and it is beside the point that translation of Indian symbols as Hindu symbols is but natural and full of Indian essense. Shiva ji fought against benevolent, secular Auarangjeb yet was communal becuase his gunners were Muslims . Musalmans of past and present identify themselves with the political islam in conflict with Indian ethos as symbolized in Non Indian Sulatans and Invaders etc and yet people want to press their case for being Indians. This is sheer hypocracy and proof of true loyalty to non Indian elements. Full and complete Transfer of Population was and is the only solution to complete and full freedom for both countries and there respective people. Refrendum for population transfer in peaceful manner is in the best interest of both as it culminate the logical conclusion of TNT and its realty .
NC makes a great argument and I want to re-read it again at leisure before posting my own thoughts. I want to clarify one thing though that religion in politics or religion in public space is not the same thing as religion in the running of the state.
This issue was specifically addressed by both Gandhi and Nehru and they both seem to be in agreement on this.
Please note the following quotes:
” Religion and state will be separate. I swear by my religion, I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to with it. The state will look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern”. (Gandhi quoted in Madan, 1997,4 IJS).
And this is what Nehru has to say on the issue:
“What it means is that it is a state which honors all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; that as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion…In a country like India, no real nationalism can be built up except on the basis of secularity…narrow religious nationalisms are a relic of the past age and no longer relevant today.”
More later, time permitting.
Regards.
Gandhi and Nehru were both mistaken and living in unreal world . Islam makes claim not only on personal affairs but also on State , Government, land and soul of the succumbed civilization as seen in Persia and Egypt. India has just climbed out of the pit and both of them wanted to throw back the Indians again to the bottom. They were naive to assume that Islam and Kuffar can be considred equal or treated on even footing . Qaid was wise enought to realize that political Islam was not possible after British Raj and he opted out to be true to his faith and conscience . The temporary retreat was required to regroup or face of complete irrelevance in indian context because of the inherrent fear of Indic retaliation to amend historical wrongs like Spanish did . Bhakti movement gave the philosphical challenge and Gurus have already established the Khalsa to punish the dushts. Moghuls of late 17th century were nothing but naukars of Marathas . Must give credit to Qaid as he sensed the historical shift and did what any smart man will do. Pakistani should thank him and also share the fruits of Qaid’s hard work by inviting the Millions of Muslamans stranded in india so they can enjoy and share their fair portion of benefits . Why shut door on them so soon after retreat . Indians want no hostages to feed and clothe them.
no-communal:
We can at least agree from your quote of Kesavan’s article that Gandhi was a politician not a Mahatma.
Hayyer Sb.,
When he evicted Bose to pursue his own policy of passive resistance, he acted like a regular politician. When he fasted unto death to release Pakistan’s money (and drew Godse’s ire), he acted unlike a regular politician.
@Hayyer
and who says ‘mahatma’ cannot think politically. Is politics necessarily dirty?
Hayyer and NC finally agree and declare that Gandhi was not a mahatma but a mere politician. Go give each other Life Time Achievement award and invite ylh to hand it over to both of you…
@hayyer
Were Krishna and Mohammed apolitical?
To say Gandhi was a mere politician is giving extreme importance and venerate the political class which they dont deserve by any standards.
Gandhi was far beyond all these…He was the guiding force of India during 1940′s. Assuming he was a politician for a second, the standards that he set for the political class is something none have been able to climb and better. All are busy minting money. This applies to all politicians across the subcontinent
NC//In UP, people say Congress was doomed for ever because of the Babri demolition//
Babri doesnt dictate people’s lives. Mayawati came to power because she promised all classes better lifestyle. She got all classes represented in her party and this paid dividends. So long as she delivers basic needs of population, she will be in power ( could be next couple of terms) Congress is dead in UP since 1980′s…..again due to very weak leadership.
It is upto all to decide on following questions
1. Whether Oligarch Sonia is so naive not to find good leadership in many states for her party. Whether she is again surrounded by sycophants who are tirelessly giving this false comfort completely in variance from ground realities
2. Whether Oligarchs are busy minting irrespective of what will happen to their party.
3. Probably Oligarchs have minted so much that they are comfortable with not being in power for sometime.
@karun (December 31, 2010 at 1:38 pm)
“…..@hayyer…Were Krishna and Mohammed apolitical?…..”
Pardon me for intruding – but yes, Krishna and Muhammad were indeed apolitical. In my opinion, Krishna and Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be on both), were sent by God – by the same God, though perceived as different – as His messengers and both were apolitical. They had no political dimensions or ambitions.
I appreciate that your opinion would expectedly be different. However, I thought I might submit mine in response to a question that I found remarkably pertinent.
Regards.
Bin: I agree with you. we dont have any right to discuss and debate about either Krishna or Ram or Muhammed. They were stalwarts during their era. They showed us light and guidance. Treating Krishna as a politician is demeaning to say the least.People who have read Gita will not pass such disparaging remarks. I guess we should limit our discussions to MAJ and Gandhi in this forum of people with limited intelligence but who feign high intelligence
Thanks
anyone who plays leader/king/kingmaker, apart from being a spiritual light/guide is definitely political, at least thats my interpretation. anyways all of you dont get worked up..it was an off the cuff remark. nothing serious.
NC,
Gandhi tried his best to evict Punjabi Hanoods and Sikhs refugees from their shelter houses in Delhi belonging to Musalmans who safey migrated to Pakistan while he agitated for money to Pakistan. I dont know if he ever visited any of the relief camp set up in Punjab for refugees running out of Pakistan . Him and Nehru were not sympathetic to the Hindu/Sikh refugees. When true history comes out in future, Indians will know that he was Maulana Gandhi and not a Mahatama Gandhi.
“Men say I am a saint losing himself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to become a saint.” (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)
Dear Hayyer, NC:
Saint: /saynt noun 1 a person who is acknowledged as holy or virtuous and regarded in Christian faith as being in heaven after death. 2 a person of exalted virtue who is canonized by the Church after death and who may be the object of veneration and prayers for intercession. 3 (informal) a very virtuous person.
Though the above is a standard dictionary definition of a saint, we are still left somewhat dissatisfied with it for sainthood is not a preserve of the Catholics. Other Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists believe in saints too. Even the Pilgrims fathers of the Mayflower fame referred to themselves as “Saints” to distinguishing them from the other passengers; the “Strangers.”
So what is a saint?
According to John Coleman of the SJ Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, it is agreed that saints across various cultures have some of the following common attributes:
1. Extraordinary teacher;
2. Wonder worker or source of benevolent power;
3. Intercessor;
4. Selfless, ascetic behavior; and
5. Possessor of a special and revelatory relation to the holy.
While not everyone will agree, Gandhi’s admirers would argue that he had several of the above attributes.
(We must discard the last as something that is unverifiable in this or any other context.)
Many hold that indeed Gandhi was a great teacher who taught by example and inspired millions to a life of public service, to shun religious bigotry, untouchability and other social evils.
Next, even if one disputes the impact of his political programs; the Salt March, Satyagraha, the Quit India movement etc. one has to concede that the douching of religious passions of Noakhali and later during the Partition were nothing short of miraculous or at least a ‘small wonder’ especially since similar attempts by others (including a combined power of the British administration and the appeals of other nationalist leaders) where such utter failures elsewhere, notably in Punjab.
Thus he certainly appeared to have worked wonders at times.
A word about intercession; I found the capacity for intercession a strange attribute for sainthood; perhaps Coleman means intercession with God on the behalf of others; well Gandhi interceded on the behalf of millions of his dispossessed countrymen with the greatest man made power of his day.
Then of course there is selflessness and asceticism, a more easily agreed upon behavior that qualifies one for sainthood and holiness especially in India. No one seriously questions Gandhi’s selflessness or his asceticism. Slowly at first, Gandhi experimented with the Indian concept of renunciation till by the time of his death he had not only renounced material possessions worldly renown.
Once freedom talks seriously got underway, Gandhi gradually left the negotiating and the limelight for others like Nehru, Azad and Patel while he himself slowly receded from the center stage. So much so that when formal freedom finally came, he was nowhere near any power center.
On the eve of Independence hardy press reporters tracked him down in a poor neighborhood in Bengal and asked for his interview. Gandhi; worn down by constant news of Hindu Muslim riots and fatigued by the mundane task of keeping peace in his own neighborhood; refused.
One reporter persisted, and insisted to see him but Gandhi still shunned all attention.
He sent him a message; ‘go tell the World that Gandhi has forgotten how to speak English’.
Hoping at least for a sound bite quote, the reporter asked for a message to the World.
“I have no message. My life is my message” Gandhi replied.
Upon Gandhi’s death, George Orwell wrote an essay in 1949 in which he remarked that:
‘In judging a man like Gandhi one seems instinctively to apply high standards, so that some of his virtues have passed almost unnoticed.’
One such virtue that gets taken for guaranteed and gets very little mention is his complete lack of interest in playing any official or semi official role once the freedom was attained.
In this he is alone among the many anti-colonial leaders of his day and stands tall as someone who never even attempted to exercise indirect power in the post colonial setup. His renunciation was absolute and final. Even when he felt the need to pressure the new Government on policy matters, he did it as a common citizen; resorting back to his fasting and use of moral force to make his former pupils do the right thing.
On the eve of August the 15th, when everybody who was anybody, especially in the Congress, was in the Central Hall of the parliament to witness history and to hear Nehru make one of the most important speeches ever made on the Indian Subcontinent, one man who was conspicuous by his absence was their former undisputed leader.
Gandhi, like the Indian Rishi-Munis of the epics, had taken leave of his former disciples once they were capable of wielding the power of office.
Finally, there is the issue of his death.
Even Noorani, who is not always an admirer of Gandhi, has called it as an act of conscious martyrdom.
Gandhi died for a principle that he had lived by; that is Justice (in this case for Pakistan) must always come before everything, even national interests.
Martyrdom is held in especially high regard by all cultures.
Ali and Teg Bahadur hold an especially exalted status among the Muslims and the Sikhs respectively due to this. Among the Christians many saints were beatified solely due to their martyrdom for a principle. For example father Kolbe, a Polish priest, was canonized by Pope John Paul II mainly because he died at the hands of the Nazis.
So in summary, using the above listed standards, both the Eastern and the Western, one can certainly make a case for sainthood for Gandhi.
Yet it is still not that simple.
In the same previously mentioned essay George Orwell states that ‘saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.’
In Gandhi’s case, he says that:
‘The questions on feels inclined to ask are: to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity – by the consciousness of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power – and to what extent did he compromise his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable from coercion and fraud?’
This is indeed a higher standard; a standard to which we hold almost no one; not only the minor Christian and non Christian saints but even the Greats; people like Jesus and Buddha, as to how much of their actions were motivated by the vanity of their own greatness compared to the others because there is no way to find out.
In Gandhi’s case too, it is hard to be certain; however like he said, his life was his message.
One must take one fresh look at his life. By doing so one will admit that it was certainly different than that of most ‘leaders’ in that not did he give advice but also led by his actions and did not let ego stand in his way. Among the various Indians leaders and saints of the preceding centuries, he alone stands apart by his readiness to bring his own self down to the level of the lowest of the low; so much so that of a latrine cleaner in an effort to impart a level of dignity to those who were and still remain largely invisible to the greater part of the Indian society.
Beyond that, everyone must judge for himself if Gandhi was a saint or not….
For his part, George Orwell concluded his essay this way:
‘One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi’s basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!’
Regards.
Karun:
Krishna is a mythic figure and Mohammad a shadowy one. One is considered a kind of god and the other God’s messenger. Even Gandhi’s most fervent admirers would hesitate to put them on the same level. I was in the company of a Delhi Congress politicians once as he extolled the virtues of Gandhi. “When you read Gandhi you find that he was greater than Nanak” opined the gent-which he may well have been if you knew both intimately enough and were in a position to make a rational comparison.
So, I am afraid I cannot answer your question. The article that no-communal quoted shows Gandhi as a crafty politician playing off Khilafatists against Congressmen to build himself up. As someone who may have imagined himself on a divine mission political behaviour is natural.
On the other hand India is full of Babas, Gurus and Peers who try to exert political power-charlatans all of them, or ‘fakirs of a type well known in the East’ as a prominent British leader put it. Taking Gandhi to be merely a politician is safer to his reputation than calling him a saint. He was neither a saintly politician nor a political saint.
@Hayyer (January 1, 2011 at 8:20 am)
“…..He was neither a saintly politician nor a political saint…..”
That was eloquently put.