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In sharp contrast to the top Gandhians, who were treated very well in jails, the condition of Indian political prisoners, including revolutionaries, in jails was terrible: their uniforms were not washed for several days; rats and cockroaches roamed their kitchen area; reading and writing materials were not provided to them.
Talking of suffering and sacrifices, many were tortured and whipped in British jails—but, never the top Gandhian Congress leaders. Nehru himself describes in his book of severe whipping of other imprisoned freedom-fighters in jails. For most Gandhiites, especially the top ones, the jails were, relatively speaking, comfortable. While ruthlessly persecuting the other freedom fighters, the British kid gloved Gandhi-Nehru & Co, and incarcerated them under comfortable conditions. When arrested in 1930, the British took due care to provide all provisions for the health and comfort of Gandhi. That
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The routine of the leaders in Ahmednagar jail, that included Azad, Nehru, Patel, etc., used to be generally: breakfast at 7am, lunch at 1pm, bridge from 1pm to 3pm, rest from 3pm to 5pm followed by tea (alternately, writing or reading work between lunch and tea), games from 6pm to 7pm, dinner from 7pm to 8.30pm followed by coffee, then retire.
Gandhi was “imprisoned” between 1942 and 1944 in the grand Aga Khan Palace in Pune.
Nehru had access to newspapers, magazines and books in Naini and other jails. He also had ample supply of reading and writing materials. He wrote ‘Glimpses of World History’ in Naini jail between 1930 and 1933; ‘An Autobiography’ during 1934-35 in Bareilly and Dehra Du...
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Jails were almost a holiday vacation for the top Gandhians. Wrote Asaf Ali: Nehru almost had a bungalow to himself in his so-called jail with curtains of his choicest colour—blue. He could do gardening at leisure and write his books. When his wife was si...
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Sadly, the top Gandhian leaders like Gandhi, Nehru did nothing to ensure revolutionaries and other freedom fighters got just treatment equivalent to them as freedom fighters. No non-cooperation, no andolan, no civil disobedience, no fast to support them or get them justice. In sharp contrast, Lokmanya Tilak had done all he could to support other freedom fighters, including revolutionaries. This when the revolutionaries had whole-heartedly supported Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920-22.
Savarkar and other prisoners in Kaalapani (a precursor to Gulag Archipelago and Guantanamo Bay prisons of our times) were subjected to brutal inhuman treatment. Prisoners were manacled; gruel to eat was riddled with worms; inmates, formed in groups, were chained like bullocks and hauled to oil mills, grinding mustard seed for endless hours. Prisoners were flogged.{URL70}
Had even 5% of the above treatment been meted out to the likes of Nehru and other top Gandhians, they might have given up the fight for freedom. However, the sacrifices of Savarkar and others were not recognised. What is most noteworthy is that while many who suffered in the fight for freedom remained faceless and unacknowledged, Nehrus enjoyed all the fruits of their ‘sacrifice’—and many, many times more. It was the most profitable investment they made, with returns thousands of times more, and through the decades, for the whole dynasty and descendants!
The lack of support by Nehru (Blunder#3,4) and the Congress to the British war efforts in WW-II made the British anti-Hindus and anti-Congress, and made them favourably disposed towards the Muslims and the AIML.
driven by the several major strategic considerations, Britain developed a vested interest in the creation of Pakistan: (1)The UK and the West wanted to secure ‘Oil and the Middle East’, and for that they felt a Muslim Pakistan as a border state would be critical. (2)The leadership of the proposed Muslim Pakistan was willing to be their accomplice in the cold war. (3)The proposed Muslim Pakistan was willing to provide military bases to the UK and the West. (4)Nehru, with his leftist, pro-Russia and pro-Socialist-Communist leanings was not likely to be an ally of the UK and the West in the cold
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Since the First World War India’s primary usefulness to Britain was less as a market for commercial exploitation and more in the field of war and defence, and in maintaining and securing its Empire.
It could ill-afford to altogether give up its two-century old Empire, without having a firm foothold at least in part of India. That’s when it cooked up the idea of Pakistan.
Once the British realised India would deny them military cooperation after independence, they settled in favour of Pakistan, which was willing to cooperate with them, be their lackey, and help them in securing the Middle East and the Indian Ocean area. Yet another reason the British army and bureaucracy was favourable towards Pakistan was that they were being offered positions and employment in Pakistan.
“Field Marshal Lord Montgomery argued that it would be a tremendous asset if ‘Pakistan, particularly the North-West’, remained within the Commonwealth. The bases, airfields and ports in ‘North West India’ would be invaluable…”{DG/16-17}
What did India gain out of Nehru’s socialism and pro-Soviet tilt? Nothing. India’s economy went to dogs, and no one took India seriously in foreign affairs. It was Nehru’s fads of socialism and pro-Soviet bend that led to Britain and Western nations, including USA, going against India, and resulting in the tragedy of partition, and the problem of Kashmir.
a wise Indian leadership that was adequately enlightened on the international affairs, and the vested interests of Britain and the West, and their Oil and Cold-war strategy, they would have been careful and tactful enough to have reassured Britain, the US, and the West on their cooperation (but, in practice, actually done what was in the best national interest of India, after independence).
in any case, being pro market-economy, and pro-West, compared to being socialistic and pro-Russia (as Nehru was), was far more beneficial for India. But, when, despite being political leaders, you spend precious years in jail and outside hand-spinning yarn, experimenting with nutrition and indigenous medicines, and with truth, fasting, and non-violence, rather that deliberating on the crucial post-independence issues of economy, poverty and prosperity, internal and external security, and foreign policy, what can be expected?
“But the Indian leaders remained plagued by the Indians’ age-old weakness such as arrogance, inconsistency, often poor political judgement and disinterest in foreign affairs and questions of defence.”{Sar/405}
“By the end of 1946, they [Indian leaders] had been manoeuvred into such a corner that if Sardar Patel had not stepped forward ‘to have a limb amputated’, as he put it, and satisfy Britain, there was
a danger of India’s fragmentation, as Britain searched for military bases in the bigger princely states by supporting their attempts to declare independence.”{Sar/406}
Partition caused sudden displacement of about 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, loss of their properties; and murder and slaughter of an estimated one to three million: there are no definite figures—an exercise for a proper count was never carried out!
Trains carrying refugees from either side were looted, and passengers were slaughtered. There was mass dishonouring, brutality and rapes.
Winston Churchill had accused Mountbatten of killing two million Indians!{AA/12} Mountbatten’s critic Andrew Roberts had commented: “Mountbatten deserved to be court-martialled on his return to London.”{Tunz/252}
For such a hugely major operation like partition of a country, and creation of a new country, no blue print was prepared, no planning was done either to ensure security and safety of people and their property, or to provide for their rehabilitation. It was just hurriedly and haphazardly put through, exposing millions to grave risk.
The bitter, unfortunate truth was that having decided to quit India, the Raj didn’t really care. They had already decided to withdraw British troops from active service and repatriate them before the transfer of power. The British were too much in a hurry to get out. If they could be here for about two centuries to exploit and oppress, why not a few months more to secure Indians, as a compensation?
Having decided to leave, the Raj didn’t wish to risk British lives. If Hindus and Muslims indulged in killing, looting and raping each other, so be it! Would demonstrate all the more how things would degenerate without them! British colonialism was a hugely cruel, greedy, selfish project. Why the British who had managed law and order covering millions for many, many decades in India failed at this critical juncture?
That terrible things were bound to happen should have been very well known to them after what happened
on the ‘Direct Action Day’ in Calcutta in August 1946, in Noakhali in East Bengal, and in Bihar, and in scores of other places down the decades, including the most horrible Moplah Rebellion of 1920s in Malabar, Kerala, where Muslims butchered Hindus!
Expectedly, our clueless, non-violent Gandhian leaders had done absolutely nothing to keep people safe. They could have heeded Dr BR Ambedkar’s wise and elaborate plan in his book “Pakistan or the Partition of India”{Amb3} given several years back on peaceful transfer of population. But, with “Mahatma” and “scientifically-minded, rational” Nehru as leaders, who would listen to the genuinely wise persons like Dr Ambedkar.
There were precedents to this proposal of population transfer: Muslim Bulgarians were resettled in Turkey, and in exchange many Turks were transferred to Bulgaria in pursuance of the Turko-Bulgarian Convention of 1913—about two and a half million people were thus resettled.{PG3} Another Muslim-Christian exchange of population case was that under the Treaty of Lausanne signed on 30 January 1923 between Turkey and Greece involving about 1.6 million people.{URL74}
It was implicit in these statements that the League objective was to undertake ethnic cleansing soon after partition. That this was not mere conjecture was proved by the fact that almost all Hindus were driven out from West Pakistan in a matter of two to three years. Evidently, the League leadership had fears that ethnic cleansing on their side would invite a similar action in Hindustan, causing untold miseries to their Muslim brethren. In any case, the Dar-ul-Islam that they were pursuing was for all Muslims of the subcontinent. Why should those, who happened to be in Hindustan, be condemned
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Gandhi and Nehru would have done a genuine favour to the Muslims if they had facilitated their emigration to Dar-ul-Islam (Pakistan), rather than condemning them to Dar-ul-Harb (India)—for their religion commanded so, and because many poor Muslims did not have the means to emigrate. Sadly, Gandhi and Nehru did not really understand Islam or the Muslim psychology—and, in their hubris, chose to impose their immature, unrealistic ideas, creating indescribable problems both for the Muslims in India and for the non-Muslims in Pakistan.
Similarly, had proper planning been done, and had a bigger and stronger military, para-military, police or armed volunteer force deployed well in advance, with political leaders, social workers and volunteers to assist them, most of the other tragedies could also have been avoided. Instead of doing the above, Mountbatten and his British staff had done the opposite—they had ensured that all the British troops were withdrawn before the partition. This is what Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins, the last governor of the Punjab, had advised Mountbatten (who too was of similar opinion): “I think it will be
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the British and the Congress (especially Nehru) bias against anything remotely related to Netaji Subhas and his INA came in the way!
Rather than ensuring sufficiency of troops to control possible trouble, Nehru had grandly and irresponsibly declared: “I would rather have every village in India go up in flames than keep a single British soldier in India a moment longer than necessary.” But, if Nehru was happy having the highest post of the Governor General (till June 1948), and the highest posts in the Army with the British after independence, why not the soldiers to save poor citizens?
a much greater weakness of the Freedom Movement was the failure of the Congress to formulate well thought-out policies on economy, finance, taxation, agriculture, industries, education, science and technology, culture, language, administration, law and justice, internal security, external security, foreign policies, and so on, well in advance of the freedom in 1947.
Twelve top Congress leaders—Vallabhbhai Patel, Nehru, Maulana Azad, Kriplani, GB Pant, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Narendra Dev, Asaf Ali, Shankarrao Deo, PC Ghosh, Syed Mahmud, and Hare Krushna Mahtab—were in Ahmednagar Fort jail for about three years from 1942 to 1945 as VIP-prisoners. But that overlong period of three years generated no short or detailed plans or policies or expert-studies on anything of relevance to the immediate or mid-term or long-term future of India, or even on the burning problem of the day: way forward towards freedom!
Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and other top Congress leaders spent a number of years in the British jails where (unlike the revolutionaries and others who were whipped or tortured, and were deprived of the basic facilities) free from any compulsory labour or torture or hardship, they had the facilities of reading and writing and discussions. Yet, they hardly produced a work which could be considered of worthwhile practical use and implementation after independence.
In jail, Gandhi indulged in his fads of naturopathy, nutrition, fasting, enema, and medicinal quackery; and in flood of words through innumerable letters and articles that didn’t really contribute much to what really mattered. When not in jail, Gandhi enjoyed playing dictator in his ashrams making life difficult for the inmates...
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It was as if they had no interest in ascertaining how to make India prosperous after independence.
It was as if the study of economics and how to manage a modern state was irrelevant for them.
As became obvious during Nehru’s post-independence era, despite “Glimpses of World History” India miserably failed in foreign affairs, defence and external security, and despite “Discovery of India” India failed to discover its forte, and became a basket case. Other leaders didn’t help much either in defining well before independence what India’s future policies should be. That gave Nehru a free ride; and he royally blundered unchecked. Of course, Patel was able to limit Nehru’s blunders as long as he was alive.
[Given Gandhian methods, independence was always a distant dream—and when it finally came, it was NOT thanks to Gandhi-Nehru-Congress:
So, we never prepared, studied or made arrangements for running governments in the proper way.”{Rust/216}
“…In the Indian nationalist movement there was not only a total absence of positive and constructive ideas, but even of thinking. These shortcomings were to have their disastrous consequence in 1947… The intellectual poverty of the nationalist movement gradually became intellectual bankruptcy, but nobody perceived that because the hatred of the British rule left no room for rational ideas… Over the whole period with which I am dealing [1921-52] none of them [Gandhi, Nehru…] put forth a single idea about what was to follow British rule… What was even more astonishing, none of these leaders were
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God only knows why India chose to appoint Mountbatten, a British, as the Governor General (GG) of India after independence! Jinnah didn’t do that blunder—he himself became the GG of Pakistan. Mountbatten as GG managed what the Raj desired—to the detriment of India. It was thanks to Nehru that Mountbatten became the GG.
Nehru had adopted Mountbatten as his guru and guide. Reflects much both on Nehru’s colonial mindset, and his judgement of people. Where Nehru was not readily amenable to what the Raj/Mountbatten wanted, Mountbatten reportedly used his wife Edwina to get Nehru around. Maulana Azad, a pro-Nehru person, expressed bewilderment in his autobiography as to how a person like Jawaharlal was won over by Lord Mountbatten; mentions Nehru’s weakness of being impulsive and amenable to personal influences, and wonders if the Lady Mountbatten factor was responsible for certain [improper] decisions.{Azad/198}
India and Pakistan also had British army chiefs. In case the Indian leaders felt that having a British GG, and a British C-in-C, did help in some way, they should have accounted for the fact that it could also be counter-productive
productive in many cases—and it did prove to be so.
