Jawaharlal Nehru declined to support Britain in WW-II, consequently British-occupiers turned hostile towards Congress and leaned on Muslim League for support. Nehru’s myopic refusal sowed seeds of vested interest of Britain in creation of Pakistan as Britain was convinced, they could later extract favours like military bases in Pakistan while Nehru being a diehard Communist, would not ally Congress with them and other western countries in their cold-war with USSR. Even MK Gandhi didn’t have guts and grit to prevail upon Nehru, self-proclaimed ‘Internationalist / foreign affairs expert’. If somehow Nehru had garnered British confidence in foreign policy issues, there might not have been any partition at all, nor the festering wound of J&K. Nehru under his so-called political mentor MK Gandhi was as much juvenile in dealing with outgoing British-occupiers as was Rajiv Gandhi in dealing with LTTE and Sri Lankans as Prime Minister decades later. Sardar Patel would have handled them tactfully by fooling them of his intentions while extracting the pound of flesh in interest of the nation successfully. ‘Great Freedom-Fighters’ of Congress were too frail to overpower their own arrogance, inconsistency, snobbery and narcissism. In fact British were toying with the idea of appealing to all Kingdoms to declare their own independence and some of them were quite ambivalent on the issue. If Sardar Patel had not intervened wisely, Bharata would have been irretrievably fragmented enabling Britain to negotiate for military bases in larger Kingdoms.
Bharata-Pakistan Partition-1947 was one of the most tragic events in recorded history of humanity. Millions of Hindu-s were brutalised, slaughtered, displaced and properties lost worth hundreds of crores. No methodical exercise was carried out to find out exact numbers as it was not in interest of either Nehru, Jinnah or even British-occupiers instrumental to the monumental tragedy. Winston Churchill, a British politician imbued with anti-Hindu poison, brazenly held Mountbatten responsible for the monumental tragedy after plundering the nation for almost two centuries. Managing human displacement on such a monumental scale demanded a very high order of maturity, sagacity, patience, arbitration skill, vision and what not. Those diminutive liliputians had absolutely no idea what human displacement meant, dire implications and long-term consequences. Even terrible blood-bath of ‘Direct Action Day’ in August 1946 of Calcutta, Noakhali in East Bengal, Moplah riots of Malabar etc. failed to stimulate them into introspection and advance preparations. What they did was, they just pushed millions of people into raging Fires Of Hell just because two of them were desperate to be sworn in to office come what may. There was no sense of planning, security of life and property of natives under displacement, compensation, rehabilitation at all. The crime of mis-handling massive displacement itself is enough for JL Nehru to be awarded severest punishment of all. But the man died in office striving to earn Nobel Peace Prize for himself and go down in history consecrated, deified and immortalised. British-occupiers led by Mountbatten were in a desperate hurry to exit the country and they were under no obligation to secure life and property of millions under displacement as well as there was no basis to expect that from them when so many of our own people in Congress have been persistently back-stabbing the nation at every vulnerable moment. If Hindu-s and Muslims were busy killing and brutalising among themselves, so be that for British-occupiers who didn’t care a damn about it !! In fact it went to their credit and to the prophecy of Winston Churchill who had so predicted about Congressmen !! Outburst of Sardar Patel to Mounbatten was indeed so bitter, “The British had little difficulty when it was a question of putting down Indian freedom movements.”
Dr. Ambedkar had advised Congress and Muslim League to sign a comprehensive agreement for a well-conceived protocol for smooth transfer of population and assets in his book ‘Pakistan Or The Partition Of India’. In case they were unable to formulate that, partition could have been postponed as there was hardly any tearing hurry to divide the nation. There have been similar displacements in history too viz. exchange of some 3 million Bulgarians and Turks under Turko-Bulgarian Convention-1913 and Treaty Of Lausanne-1923 for exchange of some 1.6 million Muslims and Christians between Turkey and Greece. Muslim League had in fact demanded exchange of population and no less that eight leaders of Muslim League, Jinnah, Feroze Khan Noon, Nawab of Mamdot, Pir Ilahi Bux, Mohammad Ismail, Chundrigar, Shaukat Hayat Khan and Ghaznafar Ali Khan demanded an exchange of population.” Dawn quoted Khan Iftikhar Hussein of Mamdot on Dec. 3, 1946 that exchange of population offered a ‘very practical solution’ for ‘problems of Muslims’. Pir Ilahi Bux of Sindh also supported the demand for ‘safety of minorities’ as it may end all communal disturbances. So also proclaimed earlier by Pakistani Prime Minister Feroze Khan in 1946 to the effect that murder-orgies of Changez Khan and Halaqu Khan would be re-enacted if population exchange was resisted by non-Muslims !! Exchange of population was very much an integral component of the partition plan. By not allowing Muslims to emigrate to Dar-ul-Islam of Pakistan, Gandhi-Nehru duo wrought upon non-Muslims on both sides of the border enormous brutalities, agonies, miseries and still continuing.
For the Partition-1947 to be so reckless as being denied even a semblance of planning and vision while indescribable orgies that followed, how can veterans of partition be absolved of the terrible felony ? Did we ever demand compensation from the malevolent British Crown for being largely responsible for the genocide ? Answer to all these is just one word ‘No’, loud and dazzling as a lightening thunder. Had trains carrying people under displacement been well-guarded by Army, Para-military forces and politically supported by ‘Congress freedom-fighters’, not a single human life would have been lost, not a single woman would have been brutalised and not a single property burnt to ashes. As Mountbatten had decided to withdraw British troops in a huff, ‘great freedom-fighters’ of Congress now in power, did nothing, absolutely nothing to expand forces, recruit armed volunteers or even mobilise public opinion. INA soldiers were readily available but could not be recruited owing to Nehru’s pathological hatred for anything even remotely connected with Netaji Bose. Nation was left high and dry screaming in agony, languishing in miseries while Prime Minister Nehru merely paid a ‘courtesy’ visit to the border after the mayhem was almost over and remarked like Pope on the eve of Xmas Day peeping out of the ‘Window Of Enlightenment’, “I think people have gone mad.” !! Who had in reality gone mad, defenceless people being brutally killed or Mounbatten’s successor Nehru who had declared like lunatic, “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 then, not a single village ever burned whenever he blissfully consorted Edwina Mountbatten !!
It was in 1915 that British-occupiers ‘transferred’ MK Gandhi to Bharata from South Africa to carry out the ‘historic drama’ of freedom struggle by leading Indian National Congress founded by again, a Britisher AO Hume only to confound and ruin the freedom struggle. While leading the ‘freedom-struggle’ or the sham of it for 32 long years from 1915 to 1947, great leaders of Congress (as they are claimed to be) never cared to cerebrate over all vital national issues, action plans, goals to be realised and expected pitfalls etc. to be pursued post-independence. They did not even prepare a draft of Constitution to be circulated as widely as possible, invite suggestions from people at large. Drafting comprehensive policy papers on foreign policy, economy, agriculture, education, culture, language, law and justice, defence policy, internal security etc. were issues of complete ‘policy-paralysis’ for those great Congress-souls. They did not care to study how Americans had become prosperous and how to customise their success story for our nation. In British-Indian Jails, they had plenty of time to contemplate, discuss and thrash out all those details. Top Congress leaders Patel, Nehru, Azad, Kripalani, Pant, Sitaramayya, Narendra Deva, Asaf Ali, Shanka Deo, PC Ghosh, HK Mehtab and Mahmud were incarcerated in Ahmednagar Jail for three years i.e. 1942-45 as VIP prisoners. They were completely exempted from hard labour, torture and provided with study material too. Even in that long undisturbed period, no vision was spelt out for post-Independence Bharata. Worst culprit of this monumental ‘didn’t care a damn’ attitude was MK Gandhi who wasted these years in his ludicrous obsessions like naturopathy, enema, fasting and all sorts of charade inconsequential for the country so vulnerable. Literature that he produced, venerated even today in the name of Gandhi-Darshan was shallow as that hardly contributed to burning issues of the day snarling before the nation. Such a cerebrum-storming was not possible for him outside Jail as that was the time he was busy in spinning, fasting unto death etc. Even Nehru’s literature did not spell out his vision in preparation of impending independence of the nation. They had sown seeds of Policy-paralysis that became national sobriquet during 2004-14 under a Government illegitimately run by the Italian Antonio Maino through unconstitutional National Advisory Council. Policy-paralysis has been thus, institutionalised by so-called great freedom-fighters of Indian National Congress themselves decades ago. Enough number of talented people were available and industrialists like Tata, Birla eager to finance such studies. However, 32 precious years were frittered away to ultimately find Nehru begging before Viceroy Mountbatten to take-over as Governor General Mountbatten as Nehru just didn’t know how to go about corridors of power but knew very well how to hang around Edwina Mountbatten !! It was only after independence was attained that Constitution Drafting Committee was constituted and Constitution could be adopted in 1950, three years after freedom was attained.
Ghastly consequences of lack of accurate vision, policies and action-plan have been for all to observe. On all fronts, on all parameters of governance Nehru had been a calamitous disaster. I am unaware whether he succeeded in discovering correct India in his ‘Discovery Of India’. If he had seriously attempted discovering Bharata instead of India, probably governance might have been better by a few brownie-points. His decisions, policies were so absurd, so ludicrous that he raised serious questions where exactly his loyalties lay. Budget after budget nation was struggling hard to remain in the lowest order of Human Development Index internationally. Absence of well-crafted policies allowed Nehru a free hand at his destruction spree. It was only Sardara Patel who could restrain him for a few years so long as he was alive. Author Nirad Chaudhuri assessed him so accurately, “…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 qualified to put forward any positive idea because none of them had any worthwhile knowledge of Indian history, life, and culture…”
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