Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: December 19, 2003
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/19arvind.htm
Three rituals are performed every
year in India on November 14 -- the birthday of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's
first prime minister who passed away in 1964. Ritual number one is that
our morning newspapers that day publicise it as 'Children's Day' -- so
labelled because Nehru had great affection for children who called him
'Chacha Nehru.'
The second ritual of the day ---
publicised with a photograph the next day --- is some member of the Nehru
dynasty paying homage to Nehru's so-called samadhi at Shantivan in New
Delhi. At least some Congress acolytes in attendance complete this ritual.
The third ritual is that on or around
Nehru's birth anniversary some loyal Congressman or the other writes a
newspaper article singing hosannas to Nehru's role in today's India.
This year, November 14 conformed
to the scripture's rigour. The newspapers did their duty towards children.
Sonia Gandhi did hers along with Sheila Dixit in tow. And the job of singing
a paean was done by veteran journalist H Y Sharada Prasad, who had long
ago edited selected speeches of Nehru to the latter's satisfaction, and
who was information adviser not only to Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi,
throughout her entire reign as PM, but also to Nehru's grandson, Rajiv
Gandhi, when the latter was PM.
Prasad performed his part through
an edit-page article in The Asian Age titled 'Inventor of India.' Therein
he first very briefly reviewed a recent biography titled Nehru -- The Invention
of India by Shashi Tharoor, whose theme lies in the two sentences that
Prasad quoted: 'Creating Indians is what the nationalist movement did.
And Nehru it was, above all else, who wielded that India into a plausible
nation --- the man who through his writings, his speeches, his life, his
leadership, can be credited with the invention of the India we know today.'
Now Tharoor hasn't either read the
late Janardan Thakur's last book named Prime Ministers -- Nehru to Vajpayee
(Eshwar, 1999) or chosen to ignore that veteran political journalist's
scathing criticism of Nehru in that book.
Civil liberty severely curbed as
in an emerging police State; creation, in the name of democracy, of oligarchic
pockets to safeguard his despotism called the Republic of India, vagueness
and fuzziness about political colours such as socialism; an administrative
record that was nothing to write home about; over-involvement in the world
of words and dreams leading to often superficial knowledge of many affairs
of the State; harbouring dozens of shady characters, fools and corrupt
men among fawning courtiers; creation of linguistic states that led to
fissiparous tendencies; leaving villages to stagnate. That report card
of his on Nehru made Thakur conclude in his book that 'Most of the evils
that have corroded India in the last fifty years had their beginnings during
the Nehru Raj.'
If Tharoor nevertheless chooses
to dub Nehru as the Inventor of India, Prasad excused him from proving
his appellation by saying that Tharoor does not claim his biography to
be a scholarly work. Quickly, Prasad himself proceeds to invest Nehru with
a milestone achievement that few, if at all, have ever recorded.
That achievement of Nehru, Prasad
wants us to believe, is that 'he prevented the creation of 500 Indias.'
Prasad would have us believe that during the tortuous negotiations for
transfer of power, the one last trump card which the British had kept up
their sleeve was the question of paramountcy over the states. He says that
when the British viceroy hinted at the idea of transfer of paramountcy
to the princes, it was Nehru's 'fury' and 'uncompromising stand' that scotched
the idea. Without this stand, Prasad wants us to believe, Sardar Patel's
glorious achievement of eventually integrating the princely states into
an India governed one Constitution would not have been possible.
In order to assess that stunning
viewpoint of Prasad, it is vital to understand the relevant background
of the British rule over India. As stated by Anthony Read and David Fisher
in their 565-page book titled The Proudest Day -- India's Long Road to
Independence (Pimlico, 1998), that scenario of India was briefly ---
1. 'Two fifths of the land area
and 100 million of its 400 million inhabitants were ruled by the princes
-- Maharajas, Nawabs, Rajas and so on. These were medieval monarchs, complete
autocrats... They had wrecked the central government provision of the 1935
Act by refusing to enter a federation, and now they threatened the successful
conclusion of the transfer of power.' (Page 476)
2. 'In all there were 562 princely
states in India, ranging from Hyderabad and Kashmir, each as big as mainland
Britain, to mere dots on the map.' (Page 476)
3. 'The states were not directly
ruled by Britain, but were looked after by her for defence, foreign policy
and communications in return for which they each acknowledged British 'paramountcy'
through individual treaties.' (Page 477)
If complete political freedom to
British India (comprising provinces and constituting 60 per cent of the
land area) also meant full independence to the 562 princely states, what
was in store for India was fragmentation and chaos. In store was untold
damage to India's fragile infrastructure because the British had welded
the states and provinces into an administrative whole, enabling railways,
postal and telegraph services to cross boundaries without any problems.
Food and agriculture policy too was conducted on a national basis, as was
the control of narcotics, arms and ammunition, the extradition of criminals
etc.
It was that fragmentation and chaos
which, Prasad wants us to believe, Nehru prevented.
The above-cited book of Read and
Fisher tells a very different story as follows ---
4. 'On 8 April (1947), Nehru told
Mountbatten that he thought all provinces, including partitioned ones,
'should have the right to decide whether to join a Hindustan Group, a Pakistan
Group, or possibly to remain completely independent.' Mountbatten seized
on Nehru's suggestion and asked Ismay (Mountbatten's chief of staff) to
begin drawing a new plan based on it -- though he omitted to mention Nehru's
insistence on a strong centre. For the next few days, Ismay beavered away
at producing...what everyone referred to as 'Plan Balkan.' (page 435)
5. 'When Nehru read Plan Balkan,
he raised only comparatively minor points -- much of it, after all, followed
his own suggestions.' (Page 441)
6. 'The official version of the
approved plan was cabled from London on Sunday, 10 May (1947), and Mountbatten
joyfully announced to the press that he would officially present it to
Nehru, Jinnah, Patel, Liaqat and Baldev Singh at a conference on 17 May.
But as the day wore on, he began to have doubts. The amendments made to
the plan (sent by Mountbatten) in London could be seen as fundamental changes...
Before bed that night, Mountbatten invited Nehru to his study... took out
the revised plan from his safe, and gave it to him to read.' (Page 446)
7. 'On the morning of 11 May, Mountbatten
found disaster staring at him... in the shape of a letter... which he described
as "Nehru's bombshell." In it, Nehru denounced the entire plan.' (Page
447)
8. 'What Nehru most objected to
in the revised plan (received from London) was that it encouraged the Balkanisation
of the country by allowing individual provinces such as Bengal and NWFP
to break away as independent sovereign states... Atlee (the then British
PM) had struck at the very roots of Congress by removing from the plan
(sent to it by Mountbatten) any recognition that the provinces... represented
the Union of India, the successor state to British India... As for the
princes, the revised plan was a direct invitation to them to remain independent
kingdoms...' (Pages 446-447)
9. 'Mountbatten sent a stream of
cables to Ismay in London, telling him to hold everything, that the draft
plan was cancelled, that he was to stand by for a revised plan.' (Page
448)
Thus it was that the Partition Plan
was finally accepted, creating the two Dominions of India and Pakistan
based on Hindu/Muslim majority areas of British India, and stipulating
that political arrangements between the princely states and the British
Crown will simultaneously be ended, with the void being filled by 'States
entering into a federal relationship with the successor or Governments
in British India, or failing this, entering into particular political arrangements
with it or them.' (Page 65, of Dr A S Anand's book The Constitution of
Jammu & Kashmir --- Its Development & Comments (Universal Law Book
Publishing Co Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, third edition, 1998).
It is Nehru's bombshell letter above
that probably made Prasad believe the target of Nehru's 'fury and uncompromising
stand' was the fate charted for the 562 princely states.
That it wasn't so is reflected by
Nehru's approval on April 8, 1947 of even provinces choosing to remain
independent. (See 4 above). Moreover, Nehru's reaction of 'fury' was not
on the basis of the Viceroy's 'hint,' as Prasad says, but against the official
plan sent by the British government from London on May 10, 1947. To further
disprove Prasad's contention, read on from Read and Fisher's book.
10. 'At a meeting of party leaders
called by Mountbatten on 13 June (1947) to discuss the problem of the States...
Nehru approached the situation as an emotional politician rather than a
punctilious constitutional lawyer... he argued that in order prevent the
spread of anarchy within the sub-continent, the existing British political
and administrative machinery for the States must be preserved until it
could be taken over in toto by the new government.' (Page 479, emphasis
provided.)
11. 'The old Political Department,
under Sir Conrad Corfield, believed that the longer the princes held out,
the stronger their bargaining position would be; indeed, it would be best
for them if they could hold out until after partition when they could,
he believed, name their own terms... Corfield had been diligently working
to sabotage the efforts of Mountbatten and the party leaders to persuade
them to accede quickly to one or other of the new dominions.' (Page 479)
12. '(Sardar) Patel was blunt: Mountbatten
could offer them what he liked as long as Patel got his 'full basket of
apples'. In other words, all the rulers must sign their instruments of
accession and abandon their claims to independence, before the transfer
of power.' (Page 481, emphasis provided.)
It is thus invention of history
to believe that Nehru stymied the creation of '500 Indias.' What he had
opposed was only a draft plan received from London on May 10, 1947 that
Mountbatten showed him a week before he was to discuss it with other Indian
leaders. Gandhi and other Congress leaders were sure to throw it out in
any case because they had always opposed a loose federation of states and
demanded, instead, a strong central government. On the other hand, if the
princely states had been allowed to hold out under the prevailing arrangement
till after Partition (as Nehru wanted, see 10) and as provided for in the
Balkan Plan approved by Nehru, then there might well have been, who knows,
half a dozen cousins of Kashmir causing agony to Mother India today.
As it transpired, Patel got the
Instrument of Accession ready by July 31, 1947 and, by August 14, 1947,
his basket was almost filled with 'apples.' Of the 548 states in or adjacent
to India, only three were missing: Hyderabad, Jammu & Kashmir and Junagadh.
The likes of Sharada Prasad and
Tharoor are welcome to hail Nehru all they want. But please let them not
play the inventors of history.
