Thread by @dhavalkulkarni

#Hindutva zealots like #SambhajiBhide claim that #MahatmaGandhi's last fast in January 1948 was meant to force India to pay #Rs55crore to #Pakistan. It is also claimed that Gandhi indulged in #Muslim appeasement, but what is the reality?
#thread #history #Gandhi #NathuramGodse

The fast was a moral form of protest to ensure communal amity and cessation of hostilities between Hindus and Muslims in India. Gandhi also wanted to ensure the safety of the Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan.

Gandhi planned to ensure that the Hindu and Sikh refugees in India went back to their homes in Pakistan, just as he wanted India’s Muslims to stay back in this country.

As per the Partition Council’s decision, out of the Rs 375 crore total cash balances, Rs 20 crore was paid to Pakistan on the day of the transfer of power.

This allocation was provisional and subject to readjustment when the balance to be paid to Pakistan was finally determined. The amount was subsequently fixed at Rs 55 crore after meetings between the representatives of the two countries in the last week of November 1947.

Kashmir was invaded by tribal raiders from Pakistan and there were many other issues, some of them involving financial adjustment between India and Pakistan with the balance heavily in India’s favor, over which Pakistan was dilly-dallying.

During the negotiations, the Indian government said it would not treat the settlement as final unless all outstanding issues were settled.

No payments would be made until the question of Kashmir was also resolved. However, the stance of Pakistan on Kashmir stiffened, and India deferred the payment.

For Gandhi, the question of paying Rs 55 crore was a moral one. On 6 January, he sought the opinion of Governor General Louis Mountbatten. Mountbatten said this withholding of the cash balance would be the “first dishonourable act” by the Government of India.

On 11 January, some nationalist Maulanas from Delhi met Gandhi. They had refused to leave India but were upset with the repeated insults and threats that they had to endure.

A member of the delegation said while they could not go to Pakistan, whose formation they had opposed, the Hindus did not allow them to live in Delhi. He sarcastically asked Gandhi why they were not being sent 2 England, if their safety could not be guaranteed.The barb hit Gandhi

On 12 January, without consulting any of his close associates, Gandhi announced in his prayer meeting that he would fast from the next day. This fast aimed at quelling the communal disturbances in Delhi and restore peace.

Gandhi acknowledged that his fast was on behalf of the Muslim minorities in India and the Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan. He also seemed to be upset at the Rs 55 crore being withheld from Pakistan.

His prime concern was communal amity. Gandhi wanted to go to Pakistan after ensuring the safety of Muslims in India, and ensure that the Hindus and Sikhs in Sindh and West Punjab felt secure there.

Gandhi spoke for the safety of the minorities in Pakistan during the fast, Gandhi referred to the pogroms against Hindus & Sikhs at Karachi: “How long can I bank upon the patience of the Hindus and Sikhs in spite of my fast? Pakistan has to put a stop to this state of affairs"

Contrary to the well-entrenched narrative, Gandhi was equally critical of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism and extremism.

Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal says that since the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946, Gandhi had been telling Muslims that if they continued to sit on the fence instead of denouncing the excesses of their fellow Muslims and failed to align themselves with the victims,

or if they harbored secret sympathy with the perpetrators of those excesses, it would bring down upon them the wrath of those (Hindus) with whom they had to live.

“But his warning had largely fallen upon unheeding ears with the unfortunate result that the Indian Muslims, having allowed the proverbial wind to be sown, were now faced with the prospect of having to reap the whirlwind,” he mentions.

Pyarelal said Gandhi told a group of Maulanas, who came to request him to reverse his decision to fast, that if happenings like the recent massacre of the Hindu and Sikh refugees continued, not to speak of himself, “even ten Gandhis” would not be able to save the Indian Muslims.

On 15 January, which was the third day of the fast, the Nehru cabinet decided to pay the Rs 55 crore to Pakistan. But, an already frail and weakened Gandhi refused to break his fast.

Gandhi wanted peace to return to Delhi—a “union of hearts” in the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs of Delhi and for the conflagrations to stop. This underlines the real motive of Gandhi’s fast—restoring communal peace in Delhi and not the payment of cash balances to Pakistan.

This is corroborated by Nehru’s statement on 15 January after the decision was taken: “We earnestly trust also that this will go a long way towards producing a situation which will induce Gandhiji to break his fast.

That fast, of course, had nothing to do with this particular matter and we have thought of it because of our desire to help in every way in easing the present situation.”

Though the Hindu right-wing was upset at the decision to release Rs 55 crore to Pakistan, the Hindu Mahasabha's Syama Prasad Mukherjee was party to it
as a minister. Mukherjee later founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the #BJP.

Gandhi broke his fast only after the refugees signed a declaration that they would allow the Muslims to return to their original homes. The Delhi administration announced that in a week, every non-Muslim in the city would be provided with shelter.

A central peace committee, consisting of 130 members across communities, was formed under Congress president Rajendra Prasad.

On 18 January morning, this committee, which also included representatives of the right-wing Hindu groups, accepted Gandhi’s conditions and signed on a peace pledge.

In his speech before breaking his fast on 18 January 1948, Gandhi said that a Muslim friend had presented him with a book by an eminent Muslim.

“The book says: “God ordains that a kafir —and a Hindu is a kafir—is worse than a poisonous creature. He should be exterminated. It is one’s duty to be treacherous to him. If Muslims still harbouring such thoughts assure Hindus about their good behaviour,

they will only be deceiving Hindus. If you betray one you betray all. If I truly worship a stone image, I deceive no one. For me God resides in that stone image.

I feel that if the hearts of both Hindus and Muslims are full of deceit and treachery, why need I continue to live?, he asked.

Gandhi's fast for his fellow Muslims softened Jinnah, his long-standing political rival. On the day that the fast ended, Jinnah agreed to welcome Gandhi to Pakistan. Gandhi wanted to walk to Pakistan like his Dandi march and preach his creed of non-violence there.

Perhaps events might have shaped up differently had #NathuramGodse not fired those three fatal shots at Gandhi on 30 January 1948.

Pyarelal has also written about how Gandhi had lost his cool with the Muslim League Premier of Bengal, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the man who launched a pogrom of Hindus in Calcutta in 1946. Eventually, this violence would singe even the Muslims.

In their first meeting, Gandhi had asked Suhrawardy: “How is it Shaheed Saheb, everybody calls you the chief of the goondas? Nobody seems to have a good word to say about you!”

Suhrawardy replied: “Mahatmaji, don’t people say things about you, too, behind your back?” “That may be,” replied Gandhi, “Still there are at least some who call me Mahatma. But I have not heard a single person calling you, Shaheed Suhrawardy, a Mahatma!”

In a rare public outburst “evoked by the politics of gross untruth,” Gandhi lost his temper when Suhrawardy evaded a murder charge against his govt. Gandhi said: “Yes, you are responsible not only for that murder but for every life lost in Bengal, whether Hindu or Muslim.”