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- Jammu & Kashmir tests Hindu resolve – 1
- Radha Rajan
- Muslims had made their intentions abundantly clear from as early as 1905 when Bengal was partitioned, that they were working to return Islamic rule over India; failing which they were ready to use violence to create an Islamic state from the body of the Hindu nation. As demonstrated in the writer’s book Eclipse of the Hindu Nation, Gandhi’s INC set political freedom as its goal only in 1942. Even after 1942, Gandhi’s INC wanted political freedom only from British rule; rather than mobilizing the Hindus against Muslim intention to vivisect the nation, Gandhi’s bizarre sense of nationhood and his criminal unilateralism in deciding the fate of the Hindu nation drove him to consent to the return of Muslim rule over India if that would avert partition.
- - The greatest coercion is British coercion. And the Congress is impatient to get out of that coercion. My hope in desiring a Constituent Assembly is that whether the Muslims are represented by the Muslim League mentality or any other, the representatives when they are face to face with the reality will not think of cutting up India according to religions but will regard India as an indivisible whole and discover a national, i.e. Indian solution of even specially Muslim questions. But if the hope is frustrated, the Congress cannot forcibly resist the express will of the Muslims of India. Needless to say the Congress can never seek the assistance of British forces to resist the vivisection. It is the Muslims who will impose their will by force singly or with British assistance on an unresisting India. If I can carry the Congress with me, I would not put the Muslims to the trouble of using force. I would be ruled by them for it would still be Indian rule. In other words, the Congress will have only a non-violent approach to every question and difficulty arising. (March 17, 1940, CWMG Vol. 78, page 66)
- Sheikh Abdullah began to utilize the critical years after 1942 to realize his own manic ambitions. Sheikh Abdullah was another Jinnah already in the making, but typically, neither Gandhi nor Nehru or even Patel read the danger signals emanating from J&K in 1946. “Even as the INC was in the midst of the make or break negotiations with the Cabinet Delegation, trouble erupted in Jammu and Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah, a commoner from the Valley saw a great opportunity in the generally troubled times, to realize his own towering Muslim ambitions in the turbulent years preceding 1947. Playing out the drama for civil liberties and ‘freedom’ that the INC had staged in Rajkot, Jaipur and other Hindu kingdoms, Sheikh Abdullah launched in May 1946, the ‘Quit Kashmir’ campaign. Abdullah was promptly arrested and incarcerated. Nehru, playing the Great Democrat to the hilt, attempted to enter Kashmir and was also speedily detained by Ramachandra Kak, the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Gandhi jumped into the fray and in a passionate letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, pleaded with Nehru to return to Delhi with the promise that the Congress would make Nehru’s cause in Kashmir its own cause, and Nehru’s honour, its honour. The draft reply, drafted by Gandhi contained the ill-concealed threat to the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir that Nehru would return to retrieve his honour and fulfill his mission, a threat which however does not find mention in the official Congress Resolution.
- Gandhi’s unilateralism gifted Nehru with J&K on a platter to do with it as he pleased.
- The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com
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