Wednesday 15 December 2021

Adeel Hussain & Tripuraman Singh's Nehruvian debates

 Did any 'debates' shape India? Sure. But those debates occurred at Westminster. British M.Ps knew little or nothing about a far off country whose languages and religions were wholly alien to them. Indeed, we only debate things we know little about or which matter little to us. School boys debate. Grown ups negotiate. 

In 1947, the Brits handed power to the Muslim League in Pakistan and the INC in India. Like Burma, both countries enacted Constitutions but, like the Burmese Constitution, the thing was practically meaningless. It is foolish to pretend otherwise. 

Two cretins, Adeel Hussain and Tripuraman Singh, have written a book titled 'Nehru: The Debates that Defined India'. It is utter bollocks. They say that Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sardar Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee  'debated' Nehru and that 'these exchanges came to shape India as we know it today.' However, the historical record shows that there was no debate, nor even much of a negotiation, between any of these people and Nehru. True, Mookerjee and Nehru had some small interchange during the course of a Parliamentary session. But they did not debate with each other. Nehru soon showed he was the boss. Mookerjee died in Kashmir and, a little later, Sheikh Abdullah was jailed. What debate can there be where there is a great inequality of power or an irreconcilable difference of allegiance?

Nehru and Iqbal shared certain traits and both considered themselves to be Socialists of some wooly sort. But Iqbal was concerned with things like the Qadiani question (It seems his father had been influenced by them and so he wanted the Government to declare them non-Muslim). The old fool had also got it into his head that Lenin was half a Muslim because he said 'there is no God.' Nehru couldn't be a Socialist because he wasn't Muslim. With this type of Punjabi logic there can be no debate. 

One reason why the Hindus wanted democracy and secularism was because they were divided into innumerable sects and 'jatis' which wouldn't inter-dine or intermarry and which viewed each other with dark suspicion. But this also meant they wanted a strong center because their own 'jatis' and sects crossed linguistic and other borders. Had Muslims recognized that they too were members of an economically backward 'segmentary' society, as opposed to some mystical 'Simurgh' that could take flight to the stars like Iqbal's shahin, then there could have been a debate rather than a dialogue of the deaf.

If Nehru had some affinity with Iqbal, in the case of Jinnah, the plain fact is that Nehru considered him a mediocrity at best and a lunatic at worst. A.G Noorani quotes Asaf Ali on Nehru's 'volcanic' hatred for the older man but not its cause- viz. Jinnah had gone back on his earlier faith in a rapid evolution to joint electorates. Indeed, in Nehru's eyes, Jinnah had also lost his former hatred of the British. He was a turncoat- a Benedict Arnold, shit in a Saville Row suit. 

Noorani writes- 'Nehru wrote to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on 27 September 1931: “How wonderful you are to argue and argue and yet again argue with this motley crowd. I wonder if any purgatory would be more dreadful for me than to carry on in this way. If I had to listen to my dear friend Mohammad Ali Jinnah talking the most unmitigated nonsense about his 14 points for any length of time, I would have to consider the desirability of retiring to the South Sea Islands, where there would be some hope of meeting with some people who were intelligent enough or ignorant enough not to talk of the 14 points.”

Those 14 points would have given the whole of Punjab and Bengal to Muslim administrations with a weak center where Muslims would have one third of the seats. No Hindu leader could concede this. As History has confirmed, non-Muslims soon have to run away from Muslim rule in the sub-continent. True, under Nehru, some Muslims had to flee non-Muslim majority areas while those who remained lost any type of special concession or affirmative action. 

It is remarkable to compare what Nehru was saying to Jinnah in 1938 and what actually happened when he took power ten years later. Hindi in Devanagari became the official language. Urdu script was off the table. Cow protection became a Directive Principle and some Congress administrations in the Provinces banned beef. Reservations and affirmative action of any type was withdrawn from Muslims. Refugees who had crossed the border in panic were denied re-entry and citizenship. 

Was this inevitable? Yes. Why? Muslim voted overwhelmingly for the Muslim League in 1946. Partition was the result. Hindus gained because only a small minority of them lived in Muslim dominated areas. Their power had been consolidated. However, Muslims like Jinnah and Liaqat and Mahmudabad lost because most of their property and kinfolk were on the wrong side of the border. Ismailis, under the Aga Khan, too, paid a price as did those Dalit or Christian politicians who supported Jinnah. But it was the Hanafi, Indian, majority of Muslims who voted to slit their own throats in 1946. Against Stupidity, the Gods themselves are powerless. 

With great, but endearing, stupidity, Noorani writes-  Jinnah’s famous 14 Points, published in 1929, envisaged a united federal India. 

Nope. It envisaged a weak federation where Muslims would have had more power than their numbers warranted. Since Indian Muslims wanted stupid shit- at least in the opinion of non-Muslim Indians- there was simply no way they'd have gotten what they wanted save by armed force. 

Belated conventional wisdom in India has it that it should have been accepted.

Indians may be conventional. They may also be unwise. But no non-Muslim thinks a country is likely to be better ruled if Muslims have a larger share of power. On the other hand, non-Muslims will flock to a well-run Sheikhdom. Still, they'd be wise to get citizenship somewhere White and Christian.

It would have averted the partition of India.

But not the partition of Pakistan- right? Noorani still doesn't get that Jinnah was a cretin. His descendants have prospered but on the other side of the border and not as Muslims. Meanwhile Nehru's descendants could rule the country- unless, like Rahul, they are utterly cretinous and gun-shy. 

Noorani is right about one thing. Nehru's 'Mass Contact' movement failed. But, to be frank, the Hindus in U.P, Bihar, etc didn't really want it to succeed. Nehru was a good leader for them precisely because he couldn't organize shit. Still, Nehru understood that Jinnah was fucked in the head. His instincts weren't always very good but this is one case where he was absolutely in the right. Pakistan is a hostis humani generis- unless, of course, like Xi, you wish to follow Mao and Stalin into Gehenna. 

Nehru's implacable enmity towards Jinnah, like Indira's hatred of Pakistan's genocidal Generals, made him a good leader for India which, as Rahul now says, belongs to Hindus, if not Hindutvadis. Non-Hindus may have very good reasons- including religious reasons- for not wanting to live in such a country. But emigration is the remedy because any attempt at genocide may backfire. 

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