But in the behavior of Gandhi ji there is one thing which could be said to be justifiable. Gandhi ji used to place his views before the public honestly. The people accepted his leadership after hearing him and therefore Gandhi ji cannot be blamed for mistakes committed if any. But after 1939-40 the things were rather different as he adopted a policy of hide and seek’ when he placed his views before the public relating to Hindus Muslim problems. The day on which the Muslim League demanded the division of the country in 1940, the people felt that their leaders should adopt a seems and stern attitude towards the anti-national demands of the Muslims, Gandhi did see that the people were determined vehemently against conceding to the Muslims any demand leading to the vivisection of the country. Gandhi ji then adopted the dubious policy of saying one thing to the public while he thought just the other way in his mind, He had declared that his body may be out in pieces put he would not allow the country to be divided, and People relied on him as he had pledged himself in this manner. But actually he gave his consent to the vivisection of the country and the creation of Pakistan, Not only that but in order that the Pakistan may not be in financial difficulties and may have firm footing he brought pressure on the Government for the payment of RS.55 crores disregarding the public feeling. His conduct towards the public did not remain as before and the Hindus in general suffered greatly owing to his dubious policy activities which, he claimed, were based on ‘Truth and non- violence’, As will be shown later on, in this statement he himself often acted contrary to his professed ideals particularly if it was for supporting Muslims.
13, Truth and Non-violence, excellent as ideals, admirable as guidance in action are after au relative terms. But Gandhi ji while he has, as will be shown later on committed the most pernicious and glaring breaches of that much wanted ideal, would hot admit that wholesome limitation.
14… The three parts in which Gandhi ji’s political activities can be divided are:
(i) The period between 1915 to 1939.
(11) The period between 1939 to 8rd June 1947, when the leaders of the Indian National Congress surrendered to Mr. Jinnah and accepted Pakistan under the Leadership of the Mahatma, without’ reference to the people to ascertain their opinion
(iii) The period between the date of partition to the day of his last fast into death resulting in the payment of Ra 65 crores to the Pakistan and his eventual death little after the shots were fired at him by me was this latter action which with the accumulating provocation of 32 years at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi ji in this world should be Mr Gandhi very good work in South Africa to uphold the rights and self-respect of the Indian community there. But on coming back to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone must be accepted, as the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the Congress wanted his leadership it had to accept the infallibility; if it did not he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on in his own way.. Against such an attitude there can be no half way out either the Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing the second fiddle to his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him “He alone was the judge of everyone and everything; he was the master-brain guiding the Civil Disobedience Movement nobody else knew the technic of that movement; he alone could know it The movement may succeed or may fail; it may bring untold disasters and polities reverses, including ghastly failures, but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. A satyagrahis can never fail and nobody except himself knew what satyagrahi was. Thus the Mahatma became the judge and the counsel in his own case. These kinds ‘of childish inanities and obstinacies i coupled with ceaseless work made Gandhi ji formidable and irresistible. Many people thought political were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the congress or to place their intelligence at his feet to do what he liked with it. In such a position Gandhi ji was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster. No one single political victory can be claimed % to-his credit during 33 years of his political predominance has been shown earlier in another part of my statement. For the present I will only mention seriatim but in brief the following series of blunders committed by him,
(1) Ardent championship of the Khilafat movement after it has been abolished in Turkey itself. ‘This was a foolish and gratuitous incursion of a theological element in our political affairs which has proved a tragic and expensive calamity.
(2) With the failure of that movement followed innumerable attacks on the Hindus all over the country in all these outbursts of violence the victims were Hindus.
(3) Malabar, Punjab, Bengal and Frontier Provinces were _ the scene of repeated outrages on the Hindus. Gandhi never uttered a cline word of reproach against the aggressors nor did he call upon ways and means to prevent in future similar outrages on the Hindus. On the contrary the Mahatma falsely denied the numerous facts of forcible conversions of Hindus except one and as if the atrocities committed by the Moplahs were not enough started a fund for their relief.
(4) When the Khilafat movement failed the Ali Brothers who had become the leaders of the Muslim Community that campaign against the British thought of other ways.
Gandhi had poured his affection on them and gave them unstinted support. Maulana Mohammad Ali intrigued with the Amir of Afghanistan and invited him India. Gandhi ji both directly and indirectly supported that invitation.
(5) Gandhi ji invented and shouted absurd slogans to please the Mohammadans. He promised “blank cheque” to them. He welcomed the Nizam as the future “Emperor 5a India”, He almost invited Mr. Jinnah to be the “first Premier of Free India” and entered into a rivalry with our British rulers to placate, appease, and please the Muslims in every way.
(6) By the year 1928 the Congress had surrendered to the Muslims by agreeing to the separation of Sind from the Province of Bombay and by the creation of a separate Province in the North West Frontier, thus throwing the Hindus of Sind to the communal wolf, This concession was immediately followed by terrible attacks Bar he SHENG in Sind and the N.W.F.P., especially at Sukkur, Karachi Peshawar Holy-mardan and other places.
(7) Every concession that Gandhi ji’ made was only FN a demand for further concessions on the part of Mr. Jinnah, The concessions were demanded, conceded and is a accepted by the Muslim League without enlisting themselves on the side of the oneness to fight for the freedom of India, And yet at the Lahore session of the Congress when the resolution for the Independence of India was passed the Muslims stood sternly aloof,
(8) Gandhi ji was so much intent on securing the support of the Muslims on his side that he went to increasingly absurd lengths to please them by all sorts of wiles and guiles. One thing that he did in particular was to, praise Islam without any occasion and quite gratuitously called upon the Hindus not to believe that Islam -was false religion. This exhortation was wholly mischievous.
(9) The separation of Sind did not satisfy the Muslims. Raney continued to be opposed to the Congress and the Hindus without any excuse whatsoever and their aggressiveness A the Hindus as a community continued to increase. Gandhi ji kept rats the Hindus were the aggrieved party. He admitted that he was flattering the Musalman and tried to please them in order to earn their confidence and to achieve this object he often resorted to the well-known practice of suppression .
(10) Gandhi ji initiated the anti-Salt net in 1930 with a view on the 0 e hand to relieving the masses of India from the unjust burden of that tax and on the other hand to showing the displeasure of the Indian people against the British rule. In the name of freedom nearly 75,000 men and women of aid ages crowded breaches of the Salt Act. But the whole thing came to as Gandhi ji compromised with, Lord Irwin on the 5th of March 1931 withdrawing the campaign.
(11) After the declaration of independence by the congress at Lahore in 1929 the British government invited all interests in India to be present at the Round Table :
Conference in London for solving the political problem but the Congress boycotted the Conference of 1930 at’ the instance of Gandhi ji.
(12) Gandhi ji attended the second session of the round Table Conference in London as the sole delegate for the’ Congress and’ was entirely responsible for the total failure of that session, It was here that he requested. Mr. McDonald to give what is called the Communal the precursor of Pakistan.
(13) The third and the last Round Table Conference went on without the presence of the Congress representatives and the decisions were most reactionary.
(14) In 1932 on the question the so-called minority representation Gandhiji staged another pace in Poona and declared his resolve to fight the statutory recognition of untouchability with his life, A compromise was ultimately reached whereby the depressed classes were to get larger separate representation than the award had given them, Gandhiji forgot to fight untouchability with life and the untouchability remained duly recognized by statute.
(15) The Government of India Act of 1935 conceded separate franchise, communal electorates and weight tage for the so-called Muslim minority; thereby the act prevented the formation of political parties on economic due political grounds and deliberately perpetuated the disintegration of Indian democracy. It created a communal wall between and Hindus and the Muslims and placed them in opposite camps with no opportunity to convert each other to their respective opinions this increased the number of riots, in which out of 100 cases Hindus were the sufferers in almost all.
(16) Although the theory of the Congress under the yard ship of Gandhiji denounced communal franchise and communal electorate advised the Congress to submit to them by calling upon the country “neither to accept nor to reject a phrase which has no meaning except of surrendering nationalism at the feet of communalism and yet the Congress into the trap and consequences of which will be related hereafter.
(17) In the beginning the Congress would not hear of accepting office. This was entirely due to Gandhiji, The result was that in the formation of, Governments in Sind, Punjab, N.W.F.P. and Bengal and Assam there ‘was no representative of the Congress party in the cabinet and in these five Provinces the democratic rights of the Hindus were throughout victimized and sacrificed.
(18) While on the one hand the Congress acquiesced in the communal parts of the Government ‘of India Act of 1935, and thereby recognized the candidates of the Muslim League as legitimate representatives of Muslim opinion, in: the formation of the cabinet, they refused to take any member of the Muslim League. This attitude was illogical and exposed the Congress to just criticism.
(19) The exclusion of the Muslim members of the Legislature from cabinet because they were representatives of the Muslim League gave Mr. Jinnah a tactical advantage which was utilized by him to the full and he made the most of it against the Congress and when in 1939 Congress resigned office it played into the hands of the British and the Muslim as all the Congress provinces were taken over by the Governors under section 93 of the Government of India Act, while the five Muslim provinces carried on their ministries from which the Congress was rightly excluded, The results of this very unwise step are too well known and will be stated at length hereafter.
(20) In the War of 1939 the Congress first of all refused to assist the War, then announced its neutrality and finally opposed it openly by the “Quit India Policy”. But the British Government were able to carry on without the Congress. The Muslim League offered no opposition.
(21) It may be stated that every Britishers in India was at heart a pro-Muslim, and it would not be exaggeration to say that Britishers in India were unofficial members of the Muslim League and Mr. Jinnah fully realized the value of this support and stood in the way of any constitutional advance.
(22) Mr. Jinnah went further in 1940 at Lahore session of the Muslim League in that year and Lord Linlithgow’s declaration in the same year or few months later completely supported the Muslim League in its policy of separation.
(23) The War was carried on in spite of the neutrality, opposition and obstructiveness of the Congress. The British were able to get all men, material and money which were needed and the Congress was impotent and was unable to prevent the Government from getting what they wanted.
(24) In 1942 came the Stafford Crip’s Mission when the Congress yielded to the principle of Pakistan after a very pretentious and high sounding resolution reiterating its support to democracy and nationalization. A few weeks later the All India Congress committee however wholly repudiated the Working Committee’s resolution and inspite of Mr. Raja- gopal chari the rejection of Pakistan was effected almost unanimously president of the communal and he interpreted the
(25) Maulana Azad who was at that time the Congress however was at heart resolution of April 1940 as of no effect and declared that the resolution of the Working Committee which was considered the principle of Pakistan was still in force.
(26) In 1942 came the “Quit India’ movement launched by the Congress under the inspiration of Gandhiji. It was considered to be the greatest national rebellion against foreign rule. But the Muslim League held aloof. Numerous acts of violence and lawlessness on the part of Congressmen in the name of national rebellion took place. But the Government was able to throttle the movement within three months, inspite of its pre-occupation with War. All that remained of the rebellion were piteous appeals from a hundred Congress platforms for the release of the leaders.
(27) thereafter Gandhiji staged a fast and the present Governor General of India under the garb of visiting on his death-bed muzgled his proposals for Pakistan in the sick man’s room with the result that Gandhiji in 1944 had a three weeks’ conference with Mr. Jinnah which, also failed. (28) At this conference in 1945 with the secret ‘i connivance and of Gandhi ji, Mr. bhulabhai “Desai was able to bring about a conference at Shimla under the president ship of Lord Wavell. Mr. Jinnah only attended on the footing that he should get equal a representation with the Congress and this was conceded so that the Muslim League and the Congress who aimed to have equal representative character on the same footing a further and a most Significant concession to communalism on the part of the so-called national Congress but this conference also failed,
(29) The cabinet mission visited India early in 1946. Again the Muslim League was given equal representation with the Congress; The Congress accepted the scheme entirely which was a triumph of British diplomacy.
(30) The formation of a so-called national Government in which the Congress and the League were again equally represented a most absurd cabinet divided against itself openly, violently and shamelessly. And yet this was called provisional National Government.
(31) 4t each stage the Congress was surrounding nationalism to the Muslims and the British imperialism and ultimately on the 8rd June 1947 it was announced that thé Congress had surrendered to Mr. Jinnah and accepted Pakistan.
(32) The country was in consternation. but Gandhi ji of exhorted the people to ‘support the Congress party although he declared himself detined Pakistan,
(33) The 15th of August 1947 saw the vivisection of India. It was a complete triumph But the oneness party also claimed its own triumph and declared that day they have won independence for India.
(34) What terrible atrocious calamities, outrages desolations, murders, rapes, fires followed is now a matter of history. All this was the direct result. of the partition of India which the Congress have called winning of independence,
(35) Again Gandhiji had not a word to say to the millions of Hindu and Sikh refugees, men, women and children by way of comfort or consolation, but quite brazen-facedly he became vocal and insisted on the undue generous treatment being shown to the Musalman
(36) Gandhiji undertook the fast of the 13th of January.
