Page 112 - GANDHI A Biography for Children and Beginners

GANDHI – A Biography for children and beginners

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Gandhi was in Bihar when a new Viceroy Lord Mountbatten took over at Delhi.

He had been sent to India with a specific mandate to find a solution and

implement it before the end of June 1948. The Muslim League had decided to
boycott the Constituent Assembly. The new Viceroy wanted to seek Gandhi's

advice before he came to his own assessment. Gandhi told him that the best

course would be to ask Jinnah to take over as Prime Minister and run the affairs
of the country. If Jinnah declined, the Congress should be asked to shoulder the

responsibility. Gandhi thought that his proposal would ensure the survival of a

United India, and there would be no partition. The Viceroy was baffled, Jinnah

said it was too good to be true. The Congress was wary about the Mahatma's
proposal.

Mountbatten came to the conclusion that there was no alternative to the

partition of the country, and on the same grounds dividing or partitioning the
Muslim majority states in the North-West and North-East to keep the areas with

Hindu majority in India. He was able to convince the Congress that this was the

only solution to save the country from Civil War, and to protect the rest of
India from fratricide. It is difficult to say what argument clinched the issue with

the leaders of the Congress, — saving the rest of the country; fear of civil war,

desire for the immediate end of British rule and independence; the sheer

impossibility of working with the representatives of the Muslim League or fear
of continued paralysis if they were to work with the representatives of the

League.

Gandhi was firmly against partition. He did not see any good coming out of it.
Rivers of blood would flow. There would be carnage. Millions would be

uprooted. It would mean the surrender of all that he and the Congress had

stood for and struggled for, — the unity of India, the belief in pluralism and
tolerance on which, Indian society was based, the belief in secular nationalism

that refused to make religion the basis of nationhood.

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