Was Bloodshed of Partition Avoidable With the Gandhi–Jinnah Talks 80 Years Ago?

This day, 80 years, ago began the Gandhi-Jinnah talks to discuss a formula put forward by C Rajagopalachari.

Gandhi and Jinnah.

(File Photo)

This day, 80 years ago, began the Gandhi-Jinnah talks to primarily discuss a formula put forward by C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji/CR) who had opposed the Quit India Resolution when it was passed by the All India Congress Committee in Mumbai two years earlier.

Rajaji's daughter Lakshmi had married Gandhiji's youngest son Devdas a decade earlier, thus making Gandhi and CR tied to each other by matrimony. Rajaji was famed as 'Gandhi's conscience keeper' but he had a mind of his own and often differed with the Mahatma and his other colleagues on various political and economic issues.

While Gandhi and other stalwarts of the Congress party were in jail following the Quit India Movement, Rajaji, who didn't support the last Gandhi-led battle against the empire, was not arrested. He worked out his own formula to resolve the differences between the Congress and the Muslim League. The salient features of what came to be known as the Rajaji Formula were:

• The Muslim League must endorse the demand for India's independence and cooperate with the Indian National Congress in the formation of a provisional government during the war.

• Soon after the war (World War II) ends, a commission will demarcate contiguous districts in the North, the West and, the East where the Muslim population is in majority. In these demarcated districts, a plebiscite of all the inhabitants shall ultimately decide the separation from India. If the majority (all communities) decide in favour of forming a separate sovereign state, such a decision will be honoured.

• In the event of separation, mutual agreements shall be entered into for safeguarding defence, commerce, communications and other essential purposes.

CR discussed this formula with the Mahatma while the latter was in jail and got his assent to discuss it with Jinnah. When he met Jinnah in Delhi, the latte was not impressed. He was not interested in "a maimed, mutilated and moth-eaten Pakistan" which the Rajaji formula envisaged.

The Muslim League wanted the whole of Punjab and Bengal, and not only those districts with an absolute Muslim majority. However, in later correspondence, he told Rajaji that if Gandhi dealt with him directly, he would take up the formula with his senior colleagues in the League.

Reacting to a press report that Jinnah was willing to meet him, Gandhi wrote a letter to him on 17 July suggesting a meeting and added "Do not consider me as an enemy of Islam or of Indian Muslims." Jinnah agreed to the meeting.

Thus began the historic Gandhi-Jinnah talks on 9 September 1944, at Jinnah's residence at 10 Mount Pleasant Road, Bombay (now Mumbai). Gandhi was also staying on the same road at Birla House. The talks lasted till 27 September.

In these 18 days, Gandhi walked to Jinnah's residence fourteen times. Congress leaders in jail expressed their displeasure when they came to know from the newspapers that Gandhiji was going to Bombay to meet Jinnah.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and Maulana Azad, who were together lodged in Ahmednagar jail, reacted adversely. Azad, who was then the Congress president recalled later, "When I read the report that Gandhiji was going to Bombay to meet Mr Jinnah, I told my colleagues that Gandhiji was making a great mistake...later events proved that my apprehensions were correct."

The Congress leaders also thought that Gandhiji walking to Jinnah's residence raised Jinnah's prestige and added to his already huge following among the Muslims. But Gandhiji would go to any extent to prevent the vivisection of the country, even if he had to pay for it with his life.

He had intended to meet Jinnah before launching the Quit India Movement. He then tried to contact him when he was behind bars and finally, after his release, got what he wanted.

Each day of the Gandhi-Jinnah conversations was recorded, along with the many letters they exchanged (the total number of words of their exchange exceeded 15,000).

In a letter (24. 4. 44) to Jinnah sent during the talks, the Mahatma wrote, "I proceed on the assumption that India is not to be regarded as two or more nations but as one family consisting of many members of whom the Muslims living in the north-west zones, i.e. Baluchistan, Sind, North- West Frontier Province and that part of the Punjab where they are in absolute majority over all the other elements and in parts of Bengal and Assam where they are in absolute majority, desire to live in separation from the rest of India."

Gandhi even offered a post-independence Pakistan along the lines suggested in the Rajaji formula. But Jinnah would settle for nothing but a pre-independence Pakistan, and that too including the whole of Punjab and the whole of Bengal. So, the talks failed.

Gandhiji, however, was not discouraged. “We have parted as friends, these days have not been wasted. I am convinced Mr Jinnah is a good man. I hope we shall meet again. I am a man of prayer and shall pray for understanding, “said the Mahatma after the breakdown of the talks.

His grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi in his biography of his maternal grandfather, The Rajaji Story (1937 - 1972), writes, "He (Mahatma) had to draw on his faith, patience and skill as seldom before- and had failed to budge the formidable Jinnah. However, it would be hard now for anyone - the British, neutral Muslims, someone like CR or future historians- to say that he had not tried to meet Jinnah halfway."

Ultimately, the Pakistan Jinnah got three years later was the one that Gandhi and Rajaji had offered. Had he accepted the offer made by Gandhiji in September 1944, perhaps the killings and migrations of millions on both sides of the border could have been avoided.

Alas, it was not to be. Jinnah committed the epic blunder of trusting the British bureaucracy and not the Congress leadership.

(Praveen Davar is the ex-secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), ex-Army officer, a columnist and the author of Freedom Struggle and Beyond. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)