It will not be fair on my part not to address a few words to the top-ranking representatives of his Britainic Majesty especially when they have hazarded all the risks of taking a flight from india to New Delhi on the very heels of the British Parliamentary Delegation, on such a fatetul mission of granting independence to India.
The British Master is in a chastened mood, nobody would deny. Though his promises have to be heavily discounted on the bitter experience of memorable breaches, people have begun to feel the change in his professions about satisfying aspirations of Indian peoples. Whatever painful mental agonies the Ex. Rt. Hon’ble Mr. Winston Churchill might be experiencing at the dismal prospect of the liquidation of the British Empire, the Common Britain has decided to put an end to that monstrous injustice to one fifth of the whole human race. He is going to wash that stigma of imperialism from his face. What led the British to come to this decision of giving India to Indian peoples it is idle to investigate. We shall save time by eschewing this research. We take him for his words and repose trust in his bona fides. Yes, he is going to grant independence. To whom ? To India or to Indians? Had he decided to free India his task would have been immensely lightened—ie., just to pack up home and leave India to her fate, to the possible consequential disorder, civil war and who knows what. In that course there was no necessity of conference, delegation mission etc. Rightly or wrongly, he did not decide to free India but to free Indians, That decision is pregnant with big problems, In consequence he has got to adjudicate between the rival claims of different peoples, despite Sir Stafford Cripp’s assertion to the contrary.
You have been telling us all along and rightly too that India is the home of many peoples and Indian unity is a fiction in the face of striking sharp and deep divisions and differences, Your description of India being faithful and’ not distorted by personal motives was accepted as correct, But could you or would you make a volte-face and say you are a recent convert to the Gandhian doctrine of Indian unity. If you do not evolve a solution reconciling the contests of all the peoples you will be instrumental in making room for another imperialism viz. the Hindu hegemony. Again conceding Mr. Jinnah’s demand for a separate Muslim State without giving a political home to the Sikhs in the Punjab, would mean selling the owners and makers of the province to the Muslim tenant.
The Sikh nation whose culture, manliness. valour and industry you so often praised and admired, will suffer slow extinction unless granted political existence. Infect in asking for a Sikh State, we don’t make a new demand, We only ask for the return of our homeland, our holy land. The last power that fell to your predatory mission of the 19th century in India was our independent kingdom in the Punjab. It you have decided to unwire the black pages of Anglo-Indian history, why not begin with the return of the Punjab to the hands from which you snatched, not with superior might put with superior guile; to the hands who were not only its owners but also its shapers.
How are you going to return your gratitude for our blood spilt against the political gangsters of Europe as well as of Japan ? Certainly not by condemning us to political slavery of the Muslims. Is the complexity of the problem fatiguing ?
That will be a poor complaint to the wisdom of those who for ages have been experimenting with democracy.
