(Written on request for the Mumbai daily DNA, sent in on 17 Feb. 2018, heard nothing about it after that.)
On 30 January 1948, after Mahatma Gandhi’s murder, India’s
political landscape changed dramatically. In the preceding year, the Hindu
Nationalist movement had received a strong boost due to Congress’s confused
stand on Partition. But then, Nathuram Godse’s bullets squandered its
newly-gained political capital in one go. It would need decades to recover.
Prelude to Partition
Until the end of 1945, Partition had seemed to be a mirage
existing only in the minds of some Muslim League diehards. With the British,
the Congress and even, as per the 1937 elections, most Muslim voters lined up
against the Muslim League’s plan, India’s unity seemed assured. But the League
understood the essence of politics: “making the inevitable possible”. By fully
using the possibilities created by the British need for friends during World
War 2, it changed the power equation. The elections of that winter threw up an
unexpectedly large majority in favour of the creation of Pakistan among the
Muslim electorate. Now, Partition became the central question of Indian
politics.
The British began to waver in their resolve to keep India
united. Contrary to the Congress propaganda that most Indians swallow till
today, the British had not imposed the Partition on India, on the contrary:
they wanted to keep their empire in one piece even if they had to abandon it. But
like Congress, they were sensitive to changing circumstances. The dawning Cold
War made them see the advantages of a divided Subcontinent, with one part joining
the Western camp. And after the Great Calcutta Killing in August 1946, they
understood that opposing the Muslim League would come at a cost for which they
did not have the stomach anymore. When Louis Mountbatten became Viceroy in
March 1947, it was with the single purpose of transferring power to a
bifurcated India.
Fortunately for the Hindus in West Panjab, Sindh and East
Bengal, there was at least the Indian National Congress you could count on; or
so they thought. But one after another, top Congress leaders were crossing the
floor to a hesitating acceptance of Partition. Yet even then, Mahatma Gandhi
stood firm. Had he not promised that India would only be vivisected over his
dead body? And with his record of fasts unto death, was this not a solid
assurance?
Karmic price
However, by June 1947, the Mahatma too gave up. He justified
this broken promise with a weasel explanation: if one of the shareholders
withdraws from the joint account that is India, no Mahatma could coerce him to
do otherwise. Pray, what had all his other fasts been but successful attempts
to coerce the other party into doing what it would otherwise have
refused to do? Now that numerous lives were at stake, he refused to stake his
own because his tender conscience suddenly had discovered how evil it is to pressurize
people.
With that, Gandhi conceded defeat to Mohammed Ali Jinnah. It
was a karmic come-uppance: in 1920, he had humiliated Jinnah on the dais of a
Congress meeting where the still-moderate Muslim leader had opposed the plan to
involve Congress in the Khilafat movement. Jinnah had pleaded against mass
politics and especially against mixing religion with politics, warning that
this would bring disaster. Gandhi’s cheering crowds had sent him packing, and
when he returned to politics years later, he had learned his lesson.
Mind you, the Partition plan could have been reasonable, as
in the version thought up by Dr. BR Ambedkar immediately after the Muslim
League’s Pakistan resolution of 1940. He had worked out a peaceful exchange of
population, with all Muslims resettling in Pakistan and all non-Muslims in
India. That lucid scheme would have avoided the massacres of 1947 and also
those of 1971 and of all the smaller-scale communal riots. But some
decision-makers seem to prefer bloodbaths clothed in high principles to this
modest and pragmatic accommodation of the inevitable.
Godse’s achievements
There had been lots of criticism of Gandhi during his
lifetime, now obscured and tabooed by his halo of martyrdom. For a single
example, it was clear to all that he himself became the killer of Gandhism as a
political vision when he dictatorially foisted Jawaharlal Nehru on the Congress,
and therefore as national leader, as if he didn’t know what this “last Viceroy”
stood for. The democratic alternative would have been to nominate Sardar Patel,
Congress’s own preference. Later developments confirmed that Gandhi’s choice
had been a Himalayan blunder, giving India the Kashmir problem and the
proverbial poverty resulting from Nehru’s option for socialism.
When you read Godse’s speech delivered during his trial, you
will notice that many of his criticisms were widely shared. In many respects he
had been a Gandhian himself, such as activism against untouchability. In
others, he simply agreed with many observers, e.g. in frowning on Gandhi’s
irrationality. He was an extremist not because of his views, but because he
tied the consequence of murder to his views.
That act was indeed unforgivable. Perhaps Godse could not
have been dissuaded by its inherent moral evil. But at least he could have
retreated before its formidable strategic foolishness. It spectacularly smashed
the windows of his own movement for decades to come. But it also achieved
something else he would not have wanted: it turned a fallible politician into
an immortal saint elevated above normal human judgment.
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