Why Pakistan ought to remember Mahatma Gandhi

“Who was the first Hindu who sacrificed his life for Pakistan?” I asked a prominent businessman in Lahore when I visited Pakistan a couple of years ago. He is a proud Pakistani and also passionate about peace and friendship between our two countries estranged since birth in 1947. He did not know the answer, and was startled when I said, “It was Mahatma Gandhi.”

Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist, on January 30, 1948. The place was Birla House in New Delhi, where the Mahatma (which means “a great soul”) held all-religion prayer meetings every day. The British had left barely six months earlier, ending their colonial rule of nearly 200 years and dividing the ancient land into two independent and sovereign nations. The reason for Partition (that “Muslims and Hindus are two separate nations”), and the manner in which it took place, had produced a horrendous communal bloodbath and the largest cross-border migration in human history.

Delhi at the time was teeming with Hindu-Sikh refugees from West Pakistan, just as Muslim refugees were pouring into Lahore, Karachi and other places. The atmosphere in India’s capital was charged with not only anti-Pakistan but also anti-Muslim anger. In one of the manifestations of this anger, many Hindus and Sikhs strongly objected to the Holy Quran being recited, along with hymns from scriptures of other religions, at the Mahatma’s prayer meetings. An anguished Gandhi had undertaken an indefinite fast for the protection of Muslims. It was to be the last of numerous fasts he had undertaken in his life.

Among the conditions he put for ending his fast were:

(a) All the mosques in Delhi converted into homes and temples should be restored to their original use;

(b) Muslims should be allowed to move freely in the city, and also to travel without danger in trains;

(c) No economic boycott of Muslims.

He ended the fast after six days, and only after the leaders of Hindu and Sikh communities accepted his conditions. A peace pledge signed by nearly 200,000 people read: “We the Hindu, Sikh, Christian and other citizens of Delhi declare solemnly our conviction that Muslim citizens of the Indian Union should be as free as the rest of us to live in Delhi in peace and security and with self-respect and to work for the good and well-being of the Indian Union.” Earlier, on August 15, 1947, when India was born as a free nation (Pakistan had come into existence the previous day), Gandhi was not in Delhi to participate in the celebrations. He was in Calcutta in a bid to extinguish the flames of deadly communal violence. His comrade in this successful endeavor was Muslim League leader Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, who later became Pakistan’s Prime Minister.

In a city where Hindu and Muslim mobs were previously attacking each other, many of the same people jointly took out peace marches in its streets and by-lanes, shouting “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai”. Nearly 7,00,000 people attended his prayer meeting on August 21 held at Park Circus Maidan, Calcutta. Here is an unbelievable fact: At the Mahatma’s urging, the flags of both India and Pakistan were flown side by side by the Congress and the League volunteers at the meeting. Before his peace mission in Calcutta, he had gone to Noakhali (now in Bangladesh), which had become another cauldron of communal killings.

For many weeks, he travelled barefoot from village to village, preaching the message of peace and harmony. The sombre song that he and his small band of followers sang was ‘Ekla Chalo Re’ (Walk Alone), by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. “If no-one heeds your call — then walk alone. If no-one looks back towards your unpredictable path, then with thorn-pricked and bloodied feet, walk alone.” About this epic effort, Lord Mountbatten, Britain’s last viceroy (he briefly continued as India’s first Governor-General) wrote to Gandhi on August 26, 1947: “In the Punjab, we have 55,000 soldiers and large-scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man and there is no rioting. As a serving officer, as well as an administrator, may I be allowed to pay my tribute to the One Man Boundary Force, not forgetting his second in command, Mr Suhrawardy?”

To this, Gandhi replied: “Am I right in gathering from your letter that you would like me to try the same thing for Punjab?” On the last day of his life, he received a Sindhi delegation and said to its members, “Tell Khuhro (Mohammed Ayub Khuhro, Chief Minister of Sindh at the time of Partition) I want to visit Sindh to re-establish peace. Let him consult Jinnah and inform me telegraphically.” Alas, he died before he could go to Karachi and meet Jinnah. But not every Hindu was happy about Gandhi’s call for HinduMuslim unity and India-Pakistan amity. Militant Hindu groups had never accepted his philosophy of Satya (truth), Ahimsa (non-violence) and communal harmony, and had even accused him of being pro-Muslim and pro-Pakistan. In a statement before the court (‘Why I Killed Gandhi’), Godse flayed what he called “Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims”.

What he said further explains why I regard Mahatma Gandhi as the first Hindu who laid down his life for Pakistan. “Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless,” said Godse. Godse was hanged for his crime on November 15, 1949.

Why Pakistanis have misunderstood Gandhi?

This year (October 2) marks Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. I do not know whether this anniversary has any significance for the people or the government of Pakistan. Unfortunately, both India and Pakistan have followed a troublesome trajectory since 1947 in which the people of one country hardly pay tribute to great personalities from the other. Nevertheless, Pakistanis who care for an objective understanding of their own history cannot be indifferent to the life, legacy and teachings of one whose name is inseparable from the making of Pakistan. My guess is that just as Quaid-iAzam Mohammed Ali Jinnah is misrepresented – indeed, he is villainised – in the Indian narrative of the freedom struggle, Gandhi too is largely falsified in Pakistan. Barring those who have studied his life to a reasonable extent, popular misunderstanding about him owes largely to two factors. First, he is seen as a Hindu leader who was the supreme guide to a party (Congress) that was, in the eyes of those who campaigned for Pakistan, a “Hindu party” that wanted to establish “Hindu Raj” after the British left. The fact that he looked and behaved like a Hindu ascetic, and sometimes used Hindu religious idioms (“Rama Rajya” to connote his idea of an Ideal State), was held against him by pro-Pakistan campaigners. Sadly, it is largely ignored that his Hinduism was diametrically opposed to that professed by the likes of Godse. He was uncompromisingly against the claim made by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, whose political affiliate BJP is now ruling India) that India is a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ (Hindu Nation). His allowing recitation of the Holy Quran in his daily prayer meetings, despite threats from Hindu fanatics, is just one of the many proofs that his Hinduism was tolerant, inclusive, liberal, and respectful towards all other faiths. Indeed, in the history of our subcontinent – rather, in the history of the entire world – no leader made inter-religious harmony as central an agenda in his or her political struggle as Gandhi did.

What did Gandhi think about Islam?

Pakistanis – indeed, Muslims around the world – should listen to his following words. “Islam enjoins an admiration for the Creator of the World and His works. As the West was in a dreadful darkness, the dazzling star of Islam shining in the East brought light, peace and relief to the suffering world. The Islamic religion is not a mendacious religion. When the Hindus study this religion with due respect, they, too, will feel the same sympathy as I do for Islam. I have read the books telling about the lifestyle of the Prophet of Islam and of those who were close to him.

These books generated profound interest in me, so much so that when I finished reading them, I regretted there being no more of them. I have arrived at the conclusion that Islam’s spreading rapidly was not by the sword. On the contrary, it was primarily owing to its simplicity, logicality, its Prophet’s great modesty, his trueness to his promises and his unlimited faithfulness towards every Muslim that many people willingly accepted Islam.” Gandhi and Jinnah claimed both India and Pakistan as their own In his insightful book Jinnah vs. Gandhi, Roderick Matthews writes: “Jinnah and Gandhi have each been acclaimed as the ‘father’ of a modern state, but parenthood has not been kind to either of them.” Today’s Pakistan is a far cry from what Jinnah had envisioned. Similarly, Gandhi would have been deeply concerned at the prevailing socio-political and economic realities of India. Narendra Modi’s ruling party has even got a person who praised Godse as a “patriot” elected to Parliament. Yet, any hope of ‘aman’ and amity between India and Pakistan can be realised only if the people and ruling establishments in our two countries rediscover the core principles and visions of Gandhi and Jinnah. They were both leaders of immense courage, and both were driven by lofty ideals of humanism. A few days before his assassination, Gandhi had the audacity to declare at his prayer meetings: “Both India and Pakistan are my country. I am not going to take out a passport to go to Pakistan…Though geographically and politically India is divided in two, at heart, we shall be friends and brothers helping and respecting one another and be one for the outside world.”

Similarly, Jinnah was far from being an “anti-Hindu” and “anti-India” leader he is prejudicially made out to be in India. During his 1948 visit to Dacca, the capital of then East Pakistan, he had assured the Hindu community: “Do not be afraid, do not leave Pakistan because Pakistan will be a democratic state and the Hindus will have the same rights as the Muslims.” More astonishingly, in his address to the All India Muslim League Council meeting in Karachi in December 1947, he stated: “I tell you that I still consider myself to be an Indian. For the moment, I have accepted the Governor-Generalship of Pakistan. But I am looking forward to a time when I would return to India and take my place as a citizen of my country.” It is well documented that he wished to return to Bombay and live in the beautiful mansion (‘Jinnah House’) he had built for himself. “You do not know how I love Bombay,” he had told Sri Prakasa, India’s first high commissioner to Pakistan. (I would like to reiterate here my longstanding demand before the Government of India. It should hand over ‘Jinnah House’ to the Government of Pakistan, so that the latter can establish its consulate in that historical building. The building should also house an India-Pakistan Friendship Centre.) Gandhi was in favour of an innovative solution to the Kashmir dispute by making it belong to both India and Pakistan.

On his part, Jinnah wanted India-Pakistan ties to be as close and cooperative as those between USA and Canada. “Nothing was nearer to his heart” than friendly relations with India, the Quaid-i-Azam told Paul Alling, the first US ambassador to Pakistan, on 26 February 1948. He also informed the ambassador that he had told Nehru, Gandhi and others that “Pakistan desired defensive understanding with India on a military level…with no time limit, similar perhaps to the (US) arrangements with Canada.” Surely, we Indians and Pakistanis owe it to our common past to revisit the lives of these two great men – both, coincidentally, Gujaratis – who, despite differences, dreamt of a harmonious future for our two countries, claiming, moreover, both to be their own.

Lest I be misunderstood, I would like to state categorically that what is proposed is not ‘Akhand Bharat’, a merger of India and Pakistan. Partition cannot be undone. Pakistan is, and will remain, a separate, independent and sovereign nation. Indians must not only accept this reality but also sincerely wish Pakistan to remain united and become more stable, cohesive, democratic and prosperous. But must we, Indians and Pakistanis, not learn the right lessons from history and begin to live as good neighbours, remaining true to the dreams of Gandhi and Jinnah, and never forgetting that there is, and will always be, a good lot of Pakistan in India and India in Pakistan? (Extract from an article, first published in Dawn, reproduced with permission of the author)