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Book Review-I
The
Nation’s Voice: Achieving the Goal
(Volume VI of
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah)
Edited by Dr Waheed
Ahmad, Quaid-i-Azam Academy,
Karachi, 2002.
Pages: 732. Price: Rs
800.00
The present volume, just off the
press, is the sixth in a series of seven volumes which cover
nearly all of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad
Ali Jinnah’s spoken and written words from 1935 onwards. Mr Jinnah never
kept a diary and has left no notes. His thoughts, policies and strategies
have to be deduced from his statements, interviews, correspondence,
messages and the advice he tendered to his followers and lieutenants.
Volume VI covers the short but crucial period from March to August 1947.
By March 1947, the goal of the All-India Muslim League–freedom for India
and its partition––had been decided. But a date for the transfer of power
was yet to be set and a mechanism and machinery for implementing the plan
were yet to be created. Consequently, it was a time of hectic diplomacy,
moves and countermoves by the protagonists.
Dr Waheed Ahmad has painstakingly collected and
annotated all the available documented evidence from three countries–Great
Britain, India and Pakistan. His sources comprise newspapers, collected
works, and the private diaries of the protagonists; records of the
political parties involved; biographies and autobiographies; and works on
the history and politics of the subcontinent. A glance at the list of
contents will show that the work is indeed a labour of love.
Lord Listowel, the last Secretary of State for
India, has contributed a Foreword to this volume. Assessing Jinnah’s role,
he writes that all the other actors in the political arena, including the
viceroy, could have been replaced without there being any radical change
in the final denouncement, but, “it a barely conceivable . . . that a new
nation state of Pakistan would have been created but for the personality
and leadership of one man, Mr Jinnah.”
Dr Waheed Ahmad’s extensive and penetrating
introduction pieces together the varying materials, giving them coherence
and meaning. His analysis of the roles played by the protagonists is both
scholarly and objective. He reveals that Nehru laid the foundations of the
Indian National Congress (INC)–Labour Party entente during his visit to
England in 1938. The documents collected in the book show that Jinnah and
Mountbatten operated on different wavelengths from the very beginning.
Mountbatten pressed Jinnah to resurrect the Cabinet Mission Plan but
Jinnah flatly refused and insisted that a “surgical operation” was the
only way out of the impasse created by the INC. Mountbatten advanced the
date of partition by ten months, from June 1948 to August 1947, with
calamitous consequences. The documents are silent about the reasons for
this haste but, interestingly, no party raised an objection. However, the
complexity of the problems led all concerned to agree on 31 March 1948 as
the date for the completion of the process of Partition.
The documents collected here show how deeply
the INC leaders and their trusted Hindu bureaucrats, notably V. P. Menon,
had penetrated decision-making circles both in London and Delhi. The AIML
point of view on all issues was, not surprisingly, given an unsympathetic
and even hostile reception.
In an obituary on V. P. Menon, Mountbatten
wrote, “It did not take me five minutes conversation with him to decide
that here was the adviser I needed. From that moment he became a trusted
and well-beloved member of my small inner circle of advisers.” George
Abell, Private Secretary to Mounbatten, wrote, “V. P., like all
intelligent Hindus, was dead against Pakistan”, his every effort directed
“to [making] Pakistan unworkable and the Muslims powerless. At this
critical time, the existence of an additional and privileged channel
between the Congress and Mountbatten was the cause of bedevilment of
relations between India and Pakistan.” Dr Ahmad rightly dubs V. P. the
Chanakya of Mountbatten.
The sixteen appendices in the book throw light
on many a dark corner of pertinent issues such as the Punjab Boundary
Award; the future of the princely states, notably Kashmir and Hyderabad;
Mountbatten’s proposal for joint Governor-Generalship of India and
Pakistan; the referendum in the North-west Frontier Province; the
division of assets, etc.
From the outset, Pandit Nehru was determined to
make Kashmir part of India and was never short of excuses to rationalize
this ambition. In mid-June 1947, he wrote to Mountbatten that both the
Maharaja and the National Conference wanted the State to accede to India.
His claim was refuted by the Muslim Conference, which had the largest
elected representation in the State Legislative Assembly. On 19 July 1947,
the Muslim Conference passed a Resolution, advocating the accession of the
State of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan. Maharaja Hari Singh talked of
holding a plebiscite to decide whether the State should join India or
Pakistan, if the Boundary Commission gave him a land connection with India
(i.e., Gurdaspur). This accounts for the changes made in the Punjab
Boundary Award.
It seems there was a well-co-ordinated plan
between the Maharaja, Nehru and Mountbatten to gift Kashmir to India. The
report of the Quaid-i-Azam’s personal secretary, K. H. Khurshid, to Jinnah
from Srinagar on 12 October 1947 (before the tribal intrusion) clearly
shows that the Maharaja was all set to accede to India. He had created a
new post, that of Deputy Prime Minister, and nominated Sardar Patel for
the position. He had also dismissed all Muslims from the State’s Armed
Forces. These papers make it abundantly clear that Nehru never intended to
stand by his commitment of holding a plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of
the people of Kashmir. In a tape-recorded interview with H. V. Hodson,
Menon admitted: “As for plebiscite in Kashmir, we were absolutely,
absolutely dishonest. We then held back Pakistan’s share of assets of Rs
550 million to bargain over Kashmir.”
This volume, like the five earlier ones in the
series, is a rich source of vital information on the Pakistan movement.
The production values are excellent. A comprehensive personality index
with biographical notes at the end, followed by a subject index, make it
easy for the reader to locate the desired information in the text and add
to the value of the work.
Rais Ahmed Khan
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