PERFIDIOUS PAKISTAN ... 2

Was the Partition of India necessary? Was it absolutely an imperative? Could Gandhiji not have undertaken a fast unto death to stop it? Let us say, he would have failed. But ought he to have not attempted it to put emotional pressure on his errant countrymen to bring them to the correct path? For so many lesser reasons he had fasted on so many occasions. Now, on this momentous occasion when the history of the country was about to change for good for the worse, when the motherland was on the verge of being mutilated which would cause the displacement and devastation of millions, did he not think it to be his moral duty to put up his protest before the world in his characteristic way which earlier had reaped such lively dividends? Or, was he sure that this time it was a lost cause and Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten would prefer to make common cause over his wasted body to go ahead with their perfidious programme of political opportunism? Whatever it may have been, whatever thoughts may have flipped through the Mahatma's mind then, it was morally wrong of him to submit to Partition with just his verbal disapproval and his resignation of the country's fate to Nehru's will. He should have strenuously resisted in his own inimitable way for he knew no other that was either acceptable to him or was his forte. Whither the Mahatma's morality when it mattered the most? How could he relinquish the reins in Nehru's hands who was in a hurry to become Prime Minister of independent India even if it meant entering into damaging contract with the British Government and the Muslim League over the territorial sovereignty of India, even if it meant mutilation of the motherland? The people of India had trusted him and he belied them in their implicit faith in him. Woe unto the masses who had vowed their all for the Mahatma and he let them down in their perilous hour! Shame on such weakness masquerading as non-violence and passive resistance when it fails to fulfil programmes it undertakes whenever the going goes tough! The Mahatma did in fact fast in September 1947 and in January 1948 but these were directed to bringing about Hindu-Muslim amity post-Partition. The fact remains that he did not fast to prevent Partition.

What resulted from the Mahatma's failure that day and all his earlier pretensions to ethical politics was the permanent wound of Partition in the motherland's body, the secession of the Indus plain on one side, the Gangetic delta on the other, the creation of the enemy State of Pakistan and the carnage of countless innocent victims of sectarianism in the wake of the Partition. And more. Since that day tens of thousands of Indian soldiers have paid the price of the Mahatma's experiments in truth-force (satyagraha). This much for Jinnah's children's reverence for our beloved leader. And rightly so. For they are groomed by a different philosophy that seeks to eliminate the enemy, not love him to transformation of his heart. The Pakistanis follow Islam's militant ideology in a decadent way much to their peril but this has caused us tremendous harm on this side of the border. Their cross-border terrorism, their duplicity in diplomacy and dialogue, their mischievous, malicious intent of destabilising India by fomenting trouble in Kashmir, all these have their genesis in the weak political philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi who generated a tradition of passive soldiers of the soul who were no match in countering the cunning of a malicious State machinery intent on the surreptitious destruction of India. Gandhiji, by his avowed anti-military stance, broke the backbone of martial India, and the armed forces in India, despite their stupendous patriotism and redoubtable valour, still suffer from inadequate preparedness in terms of technological development, defence equipment and support from the civilian government at crucial hours to go ahead and strike the decisive blow that will teach the enemy the warranted lesson. So often in combat, Pakistan has been laid low by the Indian military at a terrible cost to it, only to be let off by the civilian government of India under the pretext of diplomacy and bilateral relations which have proved fruitless. Any serious thinker will be able to trace the roots of such overall weakness of approach to the Mahatma's refusal to organise the Congress on a militant basis as was suggested by Subhas Chandra Bose in his Presidential address at the Haripura Congress of 1938, his subsequent sacrilegious ouster of Bose from the national political scene on this count and his overbearing debilitating influence in matters of statecraft on the young brigade of Nehru and the like who would shape independent India's defence programme, for the Mahatma was only interested in winning independence and not, thereafter, in keeping it. He had no action plan for the governance of free India which to him seemed too worldly a pursuit for his saintly system to accommodate. 

The rest is history. Pakistan remains the bugbear for India for all the Mahatma's love for it. Jinnah seems to be victorious for the while in a vicious way but the saint's ways are mysterious and will be vindicated at last. But for that India will have to follow the footsteps of Netaji and arm herself to the teeth to meet the foe on the frontier, be it perfidious Pakistan or the deceitful dragon. Till then India suffers, for sufferance seems to be her lot and sufferance she seems to enjoy submitting to in her present decadent state where she has lost her spiritual moorings of Kshatriya valour and fierce national pride which was her dharma for countless aeons from historic and prehistoric times.