IN RESPONSE TO PRASENJIT GHOSH'S QUESTION AS TO WHY MAHATMA GANDHI ALLOWED PARTITION DESPITE HAVING HAD THE POWER TO STOP IT
Around the time of independence Gandhi had lost control of things and was but a helpless spectator then. Nehru had assumed control in connivance with the British and Jinnah, and the trio partitioned the motherland to mutual advantage. Gandhi was totally sidelined by Nehru, even blackmailed by him into nominating him Prime Minister of partitioned India ahead of the duly elected Patel by the Working Committee of Congress where Nehru's name had not even featured in any form. Gandhi relented to avoid the split in the Congress as Nehru would have walked away with a sizeable chunk of it that comprised his ardent followers.
A like probability had arisen in 1939 when Bose could have split up Congress by doing the same but he nobly sacrificed his personal interest to preserve national interest and himself resigned his duly elected Presidency at Tripuri. But things were different now with the hawk-like Nehru eyeing his prize of the Prime Minister's portfolio as his legitimate share of the booty bought by the blood of the martyrs to freedom. Gandhi was now powerless to prevent the perfidious course of things as he lacked the political machinery to back him in his campaign to effectively contain these malefic elements within the Congress top brass.
The Mahatma had castigated Bose for invoking violent politics within the Congress when the latter in his Presidential speech at Haripura had called for Congress having a disciplined army of non-violent cadres who would provide the human machinery for forcing the British to leave India and installing order in the alternative scene of Indian political ascendancy. Such a proposed programme at the ideological level had so alarmed the Mahatma that he had Bose expelled from Congress and in effect incapacitated in India as an effective participant in the political discourse which eventually forced his escape into alien territory to seek foreign help for freedom.
This completely transformed the dynamics of the freedom movement and allowed the real rise of radical Islamism within the polity that led to Partition. Gandhi had the desire to avert the dismemberment of the motherland but not the machinery now to stop it, aged and isolated as he gradually became as the forties rolled on. The avaricious Nehru used him and cast him aside just when Gandhi needed his protege the most as his able lieutenant.
But lieutenant had turned British accomplice in truncating the subcontinent for strategic reasons of the future decades and won his commission as premier of the partitioned land that was allotted to the Hindus. History took its own course as communal carnage raged, sending tens of millions to despair and death, but the strings were sharply and maliciously pulled by the triumvirate in treachery, the British, Nehru and Jinnah, with Gandhi remaining a passive onlooker, helpless and remorsefully reckoning that things would have been so much different had he pinned his fortunes on the right horse at the right time and had backed Subhas.
Written by Sugata Bose
Around the time of independence Gandhi had lost control of things and was but a helpless spectator then. Nehru had assumed control in connivance with the British and Jinnah, and the trio partitioned the motherland to mutual advantage. Gandhi was totally sidelined by Nehru, even blackmailed by him into nominating him Prime Minister of partitioned India ahead of the duly elected Patel by the Working Committee of Congress where Nehru's name had not even featured in any form. Gandhi relented to avoid the split in the Congress as Nehru would have walked away with a sizeable chunk of it that comprised his ardent followers.
A like probability had arisen in 1939 when Bose could have split up Congress by doing the same but he nobly sacrificed his personal interest to preserve national interest and himself resigned his duly elected Presidency at Tripuri. But things were different now with the hawk-like Nehru eyeing his prize of the Prime Minister's portfolio as his legitimate share of the booty bought by the blood of the martyrs to freedom. Gandhi was now powerless to prevent the perfidious course of things as he lacked the political machinery to back him in his campaign to effectively contain these malefic elements within the Congress top brass.
The Mahatma had castigated Bose for invoking violent politics within the Congress when the latter in his Presidential speech at Haripura had called for Congress having a disciplined army of non-violent cadres who would provide the human machinery for forcing the British to leave India and installing order in the alternative scene of Indian political ascendancy. Such a proposed programme at the ideological level had so alarmed the Mahatma that he had Bose expelled from Congress and in effect incapacitated in India as an effective participant in the political discourse which eventually forced his escape into alien territory to seek foreign help for freedom.
This completely transformed the dynamics of the freedom movement and allowed the real rise of radical Islamism within the polity that led to Partition. Gandhi had the desire to avert the dismemberment of the motherland but not the machinery now to stop it, aged and isolated as he gradually became as the forties rolled on. The avaricious Nehru used him and cast him aside just when Gandhi needed his protege the most as his able lieutenant.
But lieutenant had turned British accomplice in truncating the subcontinent for strategic reasons of the future decades and won his commission as premier of the partitioned land that was allotted to the Hindus. History took its own course as communal carnage raged, sending tens of millions to despair and death, but the strings were sharply and maliciously pulled by the triumvirate in treachery, the British, Nehru and Jinnah, with Gandhi remaining a passive onlooker, helpless and remorsefully reckoning that things would have been so much different had he pinned his fortunes on the right horse at the right time and had backed Subhas.
Written by Sugata Bose
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