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| Sensational revelation from American historian | | India's first envoy in Pak for Kashmir to Pakistan | |
B L KAK
NEW DELHI, NOV. 13
Sri Prakasa, India's first High Commissioner in Pakistan, had recommended that the "best thing" India could do for the sake of "peace all around" was to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan. This sensational disclosure is contained in American historian, Stanley Wolpert's new book on the partition of India.
And if Wolpert were to be believed, Sri Prakasa had told Lord Mountbatten that "for the sake of peace all around", the "best thing" India could do was to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan. According to American historian, when Jawaharlal Nehru was informed of what his High Commissioner in Karachi had proposed, he (Nehru) expresed amazement.
Stanley Wolpert's book says that in a sharp letter to Sri Prakasa, Jawaharlal Nehru srote: "I was amazed that you hinted at Kashmir being handed over to Pakistan... If we did anything of the kind our government would not last many days and there would be no peace...It would lead to war with Pakistan because of publicf opinion here of war-like elements coming in control of our policy. We cannot and will not leave Kashmir to its fate...The fact is that Kashmir is of the most vital significance to India... Here lies the rub...We have to see through to the end... Kashmir is going to be a drain on our resources, but it is going to be a greater drain on Pakistan".
Wolpert writes that if Nehru had accepted Mahatma Gandhi's offer of mediating the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, history would have taken a different course. He writes: "If Nehru had only listened to Gandhi, inviting him to arbitrate the Kashmir conflict with Jinnah, India and Pakistan might have been spared three wars and the tragic loss of countless lives, at least 50,000 of whom were Kashmiri".
According to Wolpert, "Mountbatten's frenzied plans had blinded him (Nehru) to the wretched realities of partition's monstrous problems, the cause of so many deaths, and sixty more years at least of fighting and hatred."
The American historian says that Nehru wrote to his friend, the Nawab of Bhopal, on 9 July 1948: "It has been our misfortune ... the misfortune of India and Pakistan, that evil impulses triumphed ... Can you imagine the sorrow that confronts me when I see after more than thirty years of incessant effort the failure of much that I longed for passionately? ... Partition came and we accepted it because we thought that perhaps that way, however painful it was, we might have some peace ... Perhaps we acted wrongly. It is difficult to judge now. And, yet, the consequences of that partition have been so terrible that one is inclined to think that anything would have been preferable ... Perhaps these conflicts are due to the folly or littleness of those in authority in India and Pakistan ... Ultimately, I have no doubt that India and Pakistan will come close together ... some kind of federal link ... There is no other way to peace. The alternative is ... war."
Wolpert writes: "The sheer waste of it all now shocked and truly staggered Nehru as he looked back and realised how much better off India would have been had he warmly embraced Cripps's 1942 offer or that of the later Cabinet Mission." "The Pakistan Jinnah envisioned was neither a narrow-minded theocracy nor a feudal tyranny or martial dictatorship, but a democratic polity governed by law and equal opportunities for all," writes Stanley Wolpert in his new book - Shameful Flight.
Wolpert, quoting Mohamed Ali Jinnah's famous Constituent Assembly speech about all Pakistani citizens being equal under the law, no matter what their religion, writes: "Jinnah meant every word of it, but tragically, he was mortally ill and could barely continue to work. He could do little more than to articulate his secular and liberal ideals to his Muslim followers, many of whom found them impossible to comprehend. For most of his last pain-filled year, Governor General Jinnah lacked the strength to help Pakistan create and securely establish the vital democratic institutions it so desperately needed. He was so frail during his last months that he remained bed-ridden in Balochistan's hill station Ziarat".
Wolpert, author of several books of Indian history and biographer of Jinnah and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also writes about an intelligence report by the chief of Punjab police, Gerald Savage, which said that Master Tara Singh planned to have Jinnah "killed" during his swearing-in ceremonies at Karachi as Governor General of Pakistan. Jinnah was informed of the threat but, writes Wolpert, "Jinnah, who had faced down several previous assassination attempts, was unperturbed by learning of this latest 'threat' to his life, which never occurred".
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