Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

by Rajnikant Puranik

the Muslim League Council met at Bombay during 27–30 July 1946. Jinnah took the extreme step: he got the Muslim League to revoke its acceptance of the ‘May 16 Plan’, and gave a sinister call for the launch of “direct action to achieve Pakistan”. Asking the qaum to observe 16 August 1946 as Direct Action Day, Jinnah said on 30 July 1946: “Today we bid goodbye to constitutional methods. Throughout, the British and the Congress held a pistol in their hand, the one of authority and arms and the other of mass struggle and non-cooperation. Today we have also forged a pistol and are in a position to use it… We will have either a divided India, or a destroyed India.”{BK/250} The date 16 August 1946 was cleverly chosen. It was a Friday in the month of Ramzan, on which the Muslims were likely to gather in large numbers in mosques. Handbills exhorted: “Let Muslims brave the rains and all difficulties and make the Direct Action Day meeting a historic mass mobilization of the Millat.” “Muslims must remember that it was in Ramazan that the Quran was revealed. It was in Ramazan that the permission for jihad was granted by Allah.”{PF/253}