Amit Shah’s ‘history’

The Sangh Parivar’s hatred of Jawaharlal Nehru is perfectly understandable. At the Partition of India he stood by Gandhi and bravely fought back the rising surge of hate fostered by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). The RSS supremo M.S. Golwalkar’s plans to exterminate Muslims were detected, as the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Rajeshwar Dayal, revealed in his memoirs, A Life in Our Time. Had he been arrested, as Dayal suggested, Gandhi’s life would have been spared. The BJP and the RSS still feel very uneasy about Gandhi. L.K. Advani got installed in the Hall of Parliament the portrait of one whom a judge of the Supreme Court, Justice J. L. Kapur, held guilty of being member of a conspiracy to kill Gandhi—V.D. Savarkar, author of the Parivar’s bible, Hindutva. Gandhi’s portrait there faces that of his assassin.

This writer gauged the depth of the BJP’s hatred of Nehru in 1989 when he met Jaswant Singh, a friend some of us thought was a liberal. He asked me for the word in Urdu for an idol breaker. It is butshikan. He proceeded to tell me, for the first time, that we must demolish three “idols”—planning and non-alignment. He did not mention the third. It was, obviously, secularism. In Mumbai, he lamented before a gathering of businessman that in India, three Gs are treated with scorn—Gai, Ganga and Gita. He had never stated this falsehood before.

Hatred of Nehru has been fuelled by falsehoods of history. But truth was never a Parivar virtue. To cite an instance, Advani brazenly contradicts himself on the Jana Sangh’s transformation into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in one and the same book, My Country, My Life (2008). On page 38 he writes that the Jana Sangh “later became the Bharatiya Janata Party” in 1980. But on page 311 he writes: “…while affirming our proud link with both the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and the Janata Party, connoted that we were now a new party with a new ‘identity’” (emphasis added, throughout).

This is a brazen falsehood. The BJP soon developed an item in its credo, “Gandhian socialism”. A.B. Vajpayee spoke the truth: “When did we leave the Jana Sangh?”

This earned it the wrath of the RSS, which wanted a revival of the Jana Sangh. Vajpayee and Advani knew that the Sangh’s name was mud in the country. It needed the destructive slogan of Ayodhya—which Rajiv Gandhi generously provided in 1986—for the BJP to rise from two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984 to 85 in 1989.

If these people could utter lies on a matter like this, one should not expect anything better on Nehru’s record. If Kashmir is a part of India, it is almost entirely because of Nehru. He had the foresight to forge an understanding with its tallest leader, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, in the 1930s. The BJP’s ancestor, the Jana Sangh, was interested only in Jammu. Its proxy the Praja Parishad. As far back as May 1947, he wrote a detailed memorandum to Viceroy Mountbatten staking a claim to Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the Partition of India.

On January 1, 1952, Nehru uttered a bitter truth which still rankles in the minds of the BJP. Its behaviour in recent months has vindicated Nehru. He said: “You can see that there can be no greater vindication than this of our secular policies, our Constitution, that we have drawn the people of Kashmir towards us. But just imagine what would have happened in Kashmir if the Jana Sangh or any other communal party had been at the helm of affairs. The people of Kashmir say that they are fed up with this communalism. Why should they live in a country where the Jana Sangh and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh are constantly beleaguering them? They will go elsewhere and they will not stay with us” (S. Gopal [Ed.], Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 17, page 78).

BJP’s main charges

Patel was also privy to the pledge on plebiscite, as, indeed, was his Cabinet colleague Syama Prasad Mookerjee. One does not expect the historical truth from a man like Narendra Modi and his Man Friday, Amit Shah. What Amit Shah, now Union Home Minister, said in a speech in the Lok Sabha on June 28, 2019, deserves note because it recites all the BJP’s main charges against Nehru. No Cabinet Minister is able to open his mouth on any subject without praising Modi to the skies. How long this political obscenity lasts remains to be seen.

1. Partition. Let us begin with this first charge. The entire Congress, Patel included, was privy to it. The Congress of 2019 is not the Congress of 1947 or 1944. The formula which Gandhi offered to Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1944 envisaged the partition of India after a plebiscite of “contiguous Muslim majority districts”.

But the greatest splitter was Mookerjee, the Jana Sangh’s founder: He was a collaborator with the British, teaching the Governor how to defeat the Quit India movement. Jinnah could not have spent three hours talking to him unless partition was a topic.

The Cabinet Mission’s Plan of May 16, 1946, was the last chance of preserving India’s unity. It envisaged a united federal India. Jinnah accepted it. The Congress did not. Mookerjee hated it; he wanted Partition. This is what he wrote to Patel on May 11, 1947: “I hope there is no possibility of the Muslim League accepting the Cabinet Mission Scheme at the last stage. If Mr. Jinnah is compelled to do so by the force of events, please do not allow the question of partition of Bengal to be dished. Even if a loose Centre as contemplated under the Cabinet Mission Scheme is established, we shall have no safety whatsoever in Bengal. We demand the creation of two provinces out of the present boundaries of Bengal—Pakistan or no Pakistan” (Durga Das [Ed.], Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. 4, page 40).

Thus, even if there was no partition of India, Bengal must be partitioned on religious lines. Its impact on the nature of the federation and on the affected provinces, East Bengal, Sind, Punjab, North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan can well be imagined.

There always existed a section of Hindu politicians that preferred Partition. Lala Lajpat Rai said as much in 1924. Why did Mookerjee join a Cabinet in 1947 whose leaders had accepted the partition of India? He did so with the same ease with which he had joined Fazlul Haq’s Cabinet in Bengal. He wanted Jammu and Kashmir also to be partitioned on communal basis. He was a partitionist to the core. Yet, Amit Shah said: “Who has done the Partition? We did not do that. Who gave consent for Partition? Today also we tell that the nation should not be divided based on religion. It was a historical mistake. Its height is like the Himalaya and depth is like the ocean. But we did not do that mistake. Mistake was done by you, your party has done and you can’t run from that history” (the reader will please pardon any mistakes in translation from the Hindi text).

2. The Ceasefire in Kashmir. Amit Shah said: “Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister who called for ceasefire. That part is now in Pakistan. You are teaching us history, making allegations, and doing press conference, we are not taking this and that into confidence. Without taking into confidence the Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of the Nation, Jawaharlal Nehru took the decision; if taken into confidence, today Pakistan-occupied Kashmir would have been in India’s possession.”

This is utterly false. Volume 1 of Patel’s correspondence belies the charge that Patel was not taken into confidence. In that event he was man enough to resign from the Cabinet.

The record was set out in full by a professional military historian, S.N. Prasad, based on interviews and official records. He was Director, Historical Section of the Ministry of Defence. History of Operations in Jammu & Kashmir (1947-48) was published in 1987 by the History section of the Defence Ministry. Its analysis is set out here in extenso.

“The enemy had in December 1948 two infantry divisions of the regular Pakistan Army, and one infantry division of the so-called ‘Azad Kashmir Army’ fighting in the theatre. These comprised fourteen infantry brigades; or 23 infantry battalions of the Pakistan Army and 40 infantry battalions of ‘Azad Kashmir’, besides 19,000 Scouts and irregulars. Against this, the Indian Army had in J&K only two infantry divisions, comprising twelve infantry brigades; a total of some 50 infantry battalions of the regular army and the Indian States Forces, plus 12 battalions of the J&K Militia (some with only two companies) and 2 battalions of the East Punjab Militia.

“Even if the above statement of comparative strength is taken as approximately correct, it is clear that Indian forces were definitely outnumbered by the enemy in J&K, and only the superior valour and skill, and perhaps firepower, together with the invaluable help from the tiny Air Force, enabled the Indian Army to maintain its superiority on the battlefields. There can be no doubt, however, that any major offensive required more Indian troops in J&K….

“The position regarding further Indian reinforcements for J&K was none too comfortable. Infantry was the basic requirement in the mountainous terrain, and infantry units of the Indian Army were fairly fully occupied elsewhere. About the end of 1948, there were 127 infantry battalions of the Indian Army, including Parachute and Gorkha battalions and State Forces units serving with the Indian Army, but excluding garrison battalions and companies. Of these 127, some fifty battalions were already in J&K. Twenty-nine battalions were in East Punjab, guarding the vital sector of the Indo-Pakistan frontier. Nineteen battalions were stationed in the Hyderabad area, where the Razakars still posed a potential threat to law and order and the Military Governor required strong forces at hand to complete his task of pacifying the area. There were thus only twenty-nine battalions, available for internal security, to guard the thousands of kilometres of frontier, and to act as the general reserve.

“By scraping the barrel, more forces could certainly be despatched to J&K. But this would have accentuated the supply problem, as the entire force in J&K had to be maintained by a single rail-head, and a single road. This road was long and weak, and had numerous narrow bridges with which few liberties could be taken.

“While logistics put a definite limit to the size of the forces that India could maintain in J&K, Pakistan suffered from no such limitation. There were numerous roads from Pakistan bases to the J&K border, and from there the actual frontline was generally accessible by short tracks or roads. So, there was no maintenance problem for whatever reinforcements Pakistan could send to her forces in J&K to block any Indian advance.

“Indian forces, therefore, had to operate in J&K under a definite and severe handicap. The enemy could not be beaten decisively by local action within the boundaries of J&K. For decisive victory, it was necessary to bring Pakistan to battle on the broad plains of the Punjab itself; the battle of J&K, in the last analysis, had to be fought and won at Lahore and Sialkot, as events brought home in 1965. So, if the whole of J&K had to be liberated from the enemy, a general war against Pakistan was necessary. There can be hardly any doubt that Pakistan could be decisively defeated in a general war in 1948-49, although both the Indian and the Pakistan armies were in the throes of Partition and reorganisation then”..