Gokhale, Jinnah and gandhi

Mr Madani it would be wise to read a little bit more about the circumstances Mr Gandhi faced when he turned up in India in 1916. It is true that he had prejudice as you can see in the patronising remark he made on seeing Jinnah: that he was glad to see a muslim taking such an active part in India’s politics and public life.

But you have to also understand the situation of the congress which was hardly an effective tool for obtaining independence or even self governance Mr Gandhi made into a mass organisation, he was a politician and understood the importance of symbolism but his agenda was not to divide or force muslims to adopt hindu ways or to consider hindu culture and nationalism to be indian nationlism. he said muslim lives by the thousands and may be millions by his personal intervention. he was inded a great leader. a man has to be understood as a product of his times and his social circumstances.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah was a great man until the late thirties, but his problem was that he belonged to a minority and was totally secular/westernised the hindus didnt vote for him, because in the subcontinent votes go by religion, ethnicity and caste and the muslims didnt consider him their own. They also, like minority’s every where were eager to safeguard their identity and interests and moreover since they were lead by a middle clas and rich feudal class whose culture and identity was very different from the bulk of the poor muslims who were so to speak only nominally islamised and were basically local half converts. on top of this was their bourgeoise concerns of safe guarding govt. jobs and adequate political representation which with the aid of some british prodding some of their leaders foolishly thought would be safer in seperate electorates. jinnah understood the pernicious effect of seperate electorates he understood they would encourage sepratism and had increased the chasm between muslim and hindu and he also understood that he would have absolutely no hope if he evr had one of being considered an indian leader if the electorates were not joined. It was his secular constituency which would be most strenghthened by a joint electorate so he tried hard for it. he tried to convince the ML and told them that he would bargain/negotiate a good deal for them with more substantive reservations in other more practical concerns of identity and economics in return for this and more representation in minority provinces like UP. This would have been ideal i.e. some seats being reserved for muslims but electorates being joint like seats are reserved today for schedule/low castes in india. this would have encouraged the development of cross community appeals in politicians both hindu and muslim because compulsions of political arith metic would have forced that. but some resistance within the congres and specifically the very negative atitude of the mahasabha led to the deal following through despite motilal agreeing to it in initial negotiations with jinah, this is the real decisive moment in the inevitable sequence of events to Partition.

By the way Gokhale admired gandhi’s work in South Africa but was also wary of gandhi and his role in India he said so in a letter he wrote, so its down in writing. he like Motilal and later Jawahar also had a low opinion of tilak, bipin chandra pal and lala lajpat rai all of whom were extremists and chauvinists/communalists. It is interesting that Jinnah though intelectually and morally aligned with the moderates had also a good working relationship with tilak this shows that though he didnt have mass appeal he understood the compulsions of politics at an early age.