Author: Jaswant Singh
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 669
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788129113788
Description
The Partition of India, 1947, some call it vivisection as Gandhi had, has without doubt been the most wounding trauma of the twentieth century. It has seared the psyche of four plus generations of this subcontinent. Why did this partition take place at all? Who was/is responsible – Jinnah? The Congress Party? Or the British? Jaswant Singh attempts to find an answer, his answer, for there can perhaps not be a definitive answer, yet the author searches. Jinnah’s political journey began as ‘an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity’ (Gopal Krishna Gokhale), yet ended with his becoming the ‘sole spokesman’ of Muslims in India; the creator of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam: How and why did transformation take place.
No Indian or Pakistani politician/Member of Parliament has ventured an analytical, political biography of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, about whom views necessarily get divided as being either hagiographical or additional demonology. The book attempts an objective evaluation. Jaswant Singh’s experience as a minister responsible for the conduct of India’s foreign policy, managing the country’s defence(concurrently), had been uniformly challenging (Lahore Peace Process; betrayed at Kargil; Kandahar; the Agra Peace Summit; the attack on Jammu & Kashmir Assembly and the Indian Parliament; coercive diplomacy of 2002; the pace overtures reinitiated in April 2003).
He asks where and when did this questionable thesis of ‘Muslims as a separate nation’ first originate and lead the Indian sub-continent to? And where did it drag Pakistan to? Whey then a Bangladesh? And what now of Pakistan? Where is headed? This book is special; it stands apart, for it is authored by a practitioner of policy, an innovator of policies in search of definitive answers. Those burning whys of the last sixty-two years, which bedevil us still. Jaswant Singh believes that for the return of lasting peace in South Asia there is no alternative but to first understand what made it abandon us in the first place. Until we do that, a minimum, a must, we will never be able to persuade peace to return.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION: A Complex Opening
1 India and Islam
2 Jenabhai to Jinnah: The Journey
3 The Turbulent Twenties
4 Sharpening Focus – Narrowing Options
5 A Short Decade – A Long End Came
6 Sunset of the Empire – ‘Post-dated Cheque on a Collapsing Bank’
7 A War of Succession – Diverging Paths
8 Stymied Negotiations?
9 Mountbatten Viceroyalty: The End of the Raj
10 Pakistan: Birth – Independence -: The Quaid-e-Azam’s Last Journey
11 In Retrospect
APPENDICES
Appendix to Chapter I
Appendix I
The Simla Delegation and the Formation of the Muslim League
Appendices to Chapter 2
Appendix I
Minto-Morley Reforms (1909)
Appendix II
The official British opinion on the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms
Appendix III
Lucknow Pact
Appendix to Chapter 5
Appendix I
The Elections of 1937
Appendices to Chapter 6
Appendix I
The Cripps Mission Plan, 1942
Appendix II
The C.R. Formula, 1943
Appendix III
Gandhi’s offer as Revealed in his letter to Jinnah, 24 September 1944
Appendix IV
The Desai Formula
Appendix V
Wavell on Gandhi-Jinnah talks 30 September 1944
Appendices to Chapter 8
Appendix I
The Wavell Plan, 1945
Appendix II
The Muslim Legislators’ Convention, 1946
Appendix III
Muslim League’s Memorandum to the Cabinet Mission
Appendix IV
Congress Proposals to the Cabinet Mission
Appendix V
The Cabinet Mission Plan, 1946
Appendix VI
The 3 June 1947 Statement
Appendix VII
Wavell-Gandhi-Nehru-27 September 1946 Post Calcutta killings
Appendix VIII
Wavell – The Vicreoy’s Journal Ed. By Penderel Moon
Appendix IX
Note by Field Marshal Sir C. Auchinleck
Appendix X
The Long-Term Plan
Appendix XI
The Congress submitted panel of 15 names for the proposed Executive Council
Appendix XII
Appendix to Chapter 10
Appendix I
Quaid-i-Azam’s Message to Hindustan 7 August 1947
Appendices to Chapter II
Appendix I
Mr. Jinnah’s Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan
Appendix II
Speech Delivered by Maulana Azad at Jama Masjid of Delhi on 23-10-1947
Appendix III
Dialogue between the Author, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, Professors of Political Science Emeritus, University of Chicago
Endnotes
Index