Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00For Gandhi the talks were a disaster. For Jinnah, they were an inspiration.
00:13He was now touring India, building the Muslim League as a mass movement.
00:18Whenever he visited the Punjabi capital, Lahore, he would stay among the students of Islamia College.
00:24Ishlal Zaidi was one.
00:27Once I remember, somebody from us asked a rather naive question.
00:32He said, Qaid, everybody is saying that Mr. Gandhi travels by third class train,
00:38but you travel by first class and you live in these huge houses and he lives very simply.
00:44He became thoughtful, but he said, look, the two things.
00:50One is, a leader should show himself what he is.
00:54And the people must accept him what he is.
00:58I do not live in double life. There has to be transparency.
01:04With Gandhi and Jinnah at loggerheads, the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, who believed independence was now inevitable,
01:11called a conference at the Hill Resort of Simla to discuss membership of a transitional government.
01:17Jinnah insisted that all Muslims in any such government had to be members of his Muslim League,
01:22cutting out Muslims who belonged to Congress and other parties.
01:26The talks collapsed.
01:29The political significance of it was that he wanted that whatever constitutional arrangement that Britain arrives at,
01:37it has to be, it has to have his approval and he would not give the approval
01:42unless he was recognised on the same level, on par with Gandhi.
01:48That was the whole trouble with him.
01:51That is why he ridiculed the Congress Muslims like me,
01:55he ridiculed all those people who disagreed with him.
01:59Gandhi was not half as dictatorial as Jinnah was.
02:03Gandhi believed in carrying people with him. Jinnah sort of dictated.
02:08At last Labour is in power in Britain and here are some members of the new government,
02:14the Prime Minister and Sir Stafford Cripps.
02:17The new Labour government in London promised independence for India.
02:22It decided to call elections, the first since 1937,
02:26to assess the strengths of Congress and the Muslim League.
02:30We decided to go to the villages and small towns
02:35and gave them the message of the Muslim League,
02:38that why did we want a separate homeland for the Muslims?
02:41The impact was electric, absolutely.
02:45League support was growing all the time, but Congress was blind to it.
02:50Its leaders, like Nehru, had spent the last three years of the war in prison
02:55and completely underestimated Jinnah's mass appeal.
02:59Nehru got frightfully angry and I can see him now standing by his fireplace
03:06and he started yelling at me and he almost hit me.
03:10He said, no, you're absolutely wrong, that's a myth,
03:12they're nothing at all, they're just the imagination of the British.
03:16I said, I think you'll find they're not and I talked to him for four hours
03:20and at the end he calmed down and he said,
03:22well, maybe we will have to do something about the Muslim League.
03:25So he was just beginning to see the light.
03:27But, you see, he'd been away in jail so often and he hadn't realised
03:31the enormous pressures that had been building up,
03:33the resentment against the high-handed methods of Congress.
03:43In Karachi he always came to stay with us because he was very friendly with my father
03:47and my father adored him.
03:50Then on the polling day he asked us how the voting went
03:55and I was very excited and I turned around to him and I said,
03:59it went very, very well.
04:02The main factor is, you know, I even put in a couple of fake votes
04:06and he said to me, suddenly the conversation ended, stony silence
04:12and I said, yes, I changed burqas, you know, everybody wears burqas.
04:17I said, I mean, change burqas three times to go in and give,
04:20and the polling agents were all very pro us.
04:23At which he turned around and he said, I'm very sorry you did that
04:27because I have no intention of getting Pakistan on those in that way.
04:33I want it to be a fair election and I'm sorry you've done that
04:37and I would like you to go back and remove those three votes
04:41from the voters list because you have no right to do it.
04:46The League won almost 90% of the Muslim vote in the elections.
04:50It was now clearly the authentic voice of Muslim nationalism.
04:55Its victory sharpened religious differences throughout North India.
04:59With a rising tension, the British government wanted to get out of India
05:04as soon as possible.
05:06Cripps returned with two other cabinet ministers
05:09to negotiate with the Indian leaders.
05:13It was known and we were able to report it back to London
05:17but I'd got on very well with Jinnah and the Muslim League
05:20and so my specific role began as being the liaison with Jinnah
05:25because Cripps couldn't bear to be in the same room as him.
05:29But he had compulsion rather than charm.
05:32I mean, he'd make you listen to him.
05:39Jinnah now showed, even at this late stage,
05:42that he was still far from committed to a total breakaway.
05:48On the 16th of May 1946, the mission published its plan.
05:52It proposed a system of government which would reassure Muslims
05:55by grouping the Muslim provinces into units
05:58with a large measure of autonomy
06:00but still remaining inside a united India.
06:03It was the last chance of avoiding partition.
06:06Everything now depended on Jinnah.
06:09Would he agree to such a plan
06:11when it meant going back on the Pakistan demand?
06:14This is, I think, one of the amazing things in history.
06:17Till May 1946, for the last six years,
06:21everybody was talking about a separate homeland and Pakistan.
06:25And then Haider Azam, in his wisdom,
06:29thought that, well, we can give another trial to
06:33a cabinet mission scheme because it was for a period of ten years
06:37and we'll see how it works,
06:39which means temporarily going back on Pakistan.
06:42There was going to be a centre.
06:44And when he announced,
06:46there was not one person who opposed this.
06:49They said, well, because Haider Azam has said it,
06:51so it must be the right thing to do.
06:53I was the president then of the Muslim League in Sindh.
06:56We accepted that situation and said that
07:00if there are the safeguards,
07:02we would give up the idea of Pakistan and wait.
07:06If the safeguards which Mr Jinnah had put forward were accepted,
07:10I think the masses would have accepted it.
07:14But the British offer was torpedoed,
07:17not by Jinnah, but by Congress's President Nehru,
07:20who rejected outright the scheme for the grouping of Muslim provinces.
07:26After Nehru's press conference in 1946,
07:31when he became the Congress president, replacing Azad,
07:35he said, we'll go in the Constituent Assembly unfettered.
07:39We will do what we want.
07:41And then Jinnah said, I can never trust these people.
07:44Even when they agree, they go back.
07:47And Sardar Patel described that on the part of Nehru
07:53as an act of emotional insanity.
07:57That was the most tragic moment in India's history.
08:091948-1951, New Delhi, India
08:21He never really wanted to break away.
08:26You know, he thought India, everybody could live together
08:30and come to terms with the Congress party or the Hindu government
08:35or whoever was going to be in charge.
08:38And as history tells us, it wasn't to be.
08:43Jinnah was finally pushed over the edge.
08:46It was the defining moment.
08:48He demanded a sovereign state of Pakistan
08:51and called a Muslim League Day of Action.
08:54In unleashing the power of the masses,
08:56he was for the first time turning his back on constitutional methods
09:00as well as a united India.
09:01In Calcutta, 5,000 people were killed.
09:13And I saw for the first time what riot does to people.
09:17I saw a man, you know, his throat cut.
09:20There was just this awful feeling of doom or of great disaster
09:27because people were being killed,
09:28which one had not thought would happen.
09:31And that was 1946.
09:33And that changed the whole of the complexion of the thing completely.
09:59He was concerned with the safety of the children,
10:03the safety of his clothes, and he went to the communities
10:06to see what we could do to address the children of India.
10:11There were very few Muslims there,
10:14and their children were the ones getting killed by them.
10:20He didn't like emotionalism,
10:22he didn't encourage emotionalism.
10:24That's why I don't think he encouraged rioting.
10:25encouraged rioting, because he did want, he did make a mob into a nation. He wanted to
10:31make a mob into a nation. He did succeed three quarters of it, but the mob sort of reverted
10:37and became a mob. And I think that was a matter of great sorrow to him.
10:43Reports of the massacres inspired Prime Minister Attlee to try one last time and get Congress
10:48and the League to agree to a settlement. But the time had passed when either Nehru or Jinnah
10:53would make concessions.
10:54I am on my mission, and I can tell you nothing about the prison. That's all I can say.
11:07After the London conference and a radio talk, Jinnah did say what he wanted very clearly.
11:14Hindu India and Muslim India must be separated, because the two nations are entirely distinct
11:21and different, and in some matters antagonistic to each other. Let me tell you some of the
11:30differences. History, culture, language, architecture, music, laws, jurisprudence, calendar, and
11:42our entire social fabric and code of life. One India is impossible realization. It will
11:50inevitably mean that the Muslim will be transferred from the domination of the British to the
11:56caste Hindu rule. But freedom must mean freedom both from the British exploitation and Hindu
12:06domination. Hundreds of millions of Muslims will never agree, merely to a change of masters.
12:18A lawyer to the core, Jinnah had become the advocate of the Muslim cause. He now seemed
12:24on the point of winning his greatest case. But what really motivated him?
12:32Well he had an obviously genuine love of Muslims and his people. That was without any doubt.
12:41And I'll tell you another thing that motivated him. He was a lawyer brought up in England.
12:48And lawyers in England have a curious habit of believing in justice. So he didn't want
12:56injustice done to his people, and he was going to fight for it.
13:02Jinnah's concept of Pakistan included an undivided Punjab and Bengal. But Muslims there were only
13:08a small majority. He now had to get the best he could in the empire endgame. In February
13:151947, Prime Minister Atlee announced the British would leave India by June the following year.
13:22With the end of British rule in sight, the Muslim League in Punjab stepped up its civil
13:27disobedience campaign. Sikhs and Hindus fought back.
13:33And the violence was then started about March 1947. So it was really the entire Muslim population.
13:42Every day they would just come out on the streets, were beaten up, they were tear gassing.
13:46But the government realized that every day the gathering and the numbers were bigger
13:51than before. Starting from Lahore they went to the other places like Amritsar to Rawalpindi
13:56to Jalandhar, all the other towns.
13:57There was a danger of a complete collapse of the central authority. This was the danger
14:02of the situation. And the talk about there having been a scuttle and a rush at the end
14:09is simply the reverse of the truth. The truth is that it had gone on far too long. The whole
14:14discussion, the transfer of power had been under discussion with the same leaders for
14:21nearly five years.
14:27In March 1947, the last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, descended on India. The British
14:34and Congress had grudgingly accepted that India would have to be divided.
14:38I think under the terms of reference that Mountbatten had, partition was inevitable.
14:43We were officially required to try and revive the cabinet mission plan. But the cabinet
14:49mission plan was a plan that involved a weak central government. And a weak central government
14:57was not going to be able to govern.
15:01If Jinnah was to have his Pakistan, Mountbatten, whose sympathies lay with Nehru, was determined
15:06it should be as small as possible. Only those districts of Bengal and Punjab where the Muslims
15:13were in a majority would be included.
15:16Mountbatten feared that Jinnah would reject his plan for a truncated Pakistan. But time
15:21was not on Jinnah's side. He was now 70 and not in good health. One evening after the
15:26talks, Mountbatten's Chief of Staff, Lord Ismay, reported that Jinnah seemed ready to
15:30take whatever he could get.
15:34Towards the end of the dinner, someone asked the question, how did the talks go? And Ismay
15:39said...
15:40For Gandhi, the talks were a disaster. For Jinnah, they were an inspiration.
15:47He was now touring India, building the Muslim League as a mass movement. Whenever he visited
15:57the Punjabi capital, Lahore, he would stay among the students of Islamia College. Islal
16:03Zaidi was one.
16:06Once I remember, somebody from us asked a rather naive question. He said, Qaid, everybody's
16:12saying that Mr. Gandhi travels by a third class train, but you travel by first class
16:18and you live in these huge houses and he lives very simply. He became thoughtful. But he
16:26said, look, the two things. One is, a leader should show himself what he is and the people
16:34must accept him what he is. I do not live in double life. There has to be a transparency
16:42here.
16:44With Gandhi and Jinnah at loggerheads, the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, who believed independence
16:48was now inevitable, called a conference at the Hill Resort of Simla to discuss membership
16:54of a transitional government. Jinnah insisted that all Muslims in any such government had
17:00to be members of his Muslim League, cutting out Muslims who belonged to Congress and other
17:05parties. The talks collapsed.
17:09The political significance of it was that he wanted that whatever constitutional arrangement
17:14that Britain arrives at, it has to be, it has to have his approval and he would not
17:20give the approval unless he was recognized on the same level, on par with Gandhi. That
17:29was the whole trouble with him. That is why he ridiculed the Congress Muslims like me.
17:35He ridiculed all those people who disagreed with him. Gandhi was not half as dictatorial
17:41as Jinnah was. Gandhi believed in carrying people with him. Jinnah sort of dictated.
17:46At last, Labour is in power in Britain and here are some members of the new government,
17:53the Prime Minister and Sir Stafford Cripps.
17:57The new Labour government in London promised independence for India. It decided to call
18:02elections, the first since 1937, to assess the strengths of Congress and the Muslim League.
18:09We decided to go to the villages and small towns and gave them the message of Muslim
18:16League, that why did we want a separate homeland for the Muslims? The impact was electric,
18:23absolutely.
18:25League support was growing all the time, but Congress was blind to it. Its leaders, like
18:31Jairo, had spent the last three years of the war in prison and completely underestimated
18:35Jinnah's mass appeal.
18:37Jairo got frightfully angry and I can see him now standing by his fireplace and he started
18:46yelling at me and he almost hit me. He said, no, you're absolutely wrong. They're just
18:51a myth. They're nothing at all. They're just the imagination of the British. I said, I
18:55think you'll find they're not. And I talked to him for four hours. At the end he calmed
19:00down. He said, well, maybe we will have to do something about the Muslim League. So he
19:04was just beginning to see the light. But, you see, he'd been away in jail so often and
19:08he hadn't realized the enormous pressures that had been building up, the resentment
19:12against the high-handed methods of Congress.
19:22In Karachi he always came to stay with us because he was very friendly with my father.
19:27My father adored him. Then on the polling day he asked us how the voting went. And I
19:35was very excited and I turned around to him and I said, it went very, very well. The main
19:41factor is, you know, I even put in a couple of fake votes. And he said to me, suddenly
19:48conversation ended, stony silence. And I said, yes, I changed burqas, you know, everybody
19:55wears burqas. I said, I mean, change burqas three times to go in and give. And the polling
20:00agents were all very pro us. In which he turned around and he said, I'm very sorry you did
20:05that because I have no intention of getting Pakistan on those, in that way. I want it
20:13to be a fair election. And I'm sorry you've done that. And I would like you to go back
20:17and remove those three votes from the voters list because you have no right to do it.
20:25The League won almost 90% of the Muslim vote in the elections. It was now clearly the authentic
20:31voice of Muslim nationalism. Its victory sharpened religious differences throughout North India.
20:40With a rising tension, the British government wanted to get out of India as soon as possible.
20:45Cripps returned with two other cabinet ministers to negotiate with the Indian leaders.
20:51It was known, the way it was reported back to London, but I'd got on very well with
20:57Jinnah and the Muslim League. And so my specific role began as being a liaison with Jinnah
21:05because Cripps couldn't bear to be in the same room as him. Well, he had compulsion
21:10rather than charm. I mean, he'd make you listen to him.
21:17Jinnah now showed, even at this late stage, that he was still far from committed to a
21:23total breakaway. On the 16th of May 1946, the Mission published its plan. It proposed
21:33a system of government which would reassure Muslims by grouping the Muslim provinces into
21:37units with a large measure of autonomy, but still remaining inside a united India. It
21:43was the last chance of avoiding partition. Everything now depended on Jinnah. Would he
21:49agree to such a plan when it meant going back on the Pakistan demand?
21:53This is, I think, one of the amazing things in history. Till May 1946, for the last six
22:00years everybody was talking about a separate homeland and Pakistan. And then Quaid-e-Azam,
22:07in his wisdom, thought that, well, we can give another trial to a cabinet mission scheme
22:14because it was for a period of ten years and we'll see how it works, which means temporarily
22:19going back on Pakistan. There was going to be a centre. And when he announced, there
22:26was not one person who opposed. They said, well, because Quaid-e-Azam has said it, so
22:30it must be the right thing to do.
22:32I was the president then of the Muslim League in Sindh. We accepted that situation and said
22:39that if there are the safeguards...