India After Independence: 1947-2000 (14 page)

At the very outset the people and the government faced the gravest of crises. The great danger was that the atmosphere and the mentality generated by the Partition and the riots might persist and strengthen communal tendencies in Indian politics. But Indian nationalism was able to withstand the test. Despite the fierce pressure of communal sentiment, which affected even some of the important Congress leaders, both at the Centre and in the states, it is to the credit of the national leadership and the people that they managed to maintain India’s secular polity. This was no easy task and Nehru, particular, had to use the full force of his personality, including threats of resignation, to make this possible.

The situation was brought under control within a few months through decisive political and administrative measures. For example, during August-September, the back of communal violence in Delhi was broken by bringing the army on the streets and ordering the police to shoot at
communal mobs indulging in looting and killing. In fact, in spite of many errors and weaknesses, the Government of India’s record, and in particular Nehru’s personal record, in dealing with the post-Partition riots was exemplary. The government also succeeded in protecting the Muslim minority in the country, so that in the end forty-five million Muslims chose to remain in India.

Communalism was thereby contained and weakened but not eliminated, for conditions were still favourable for its growth. For communalism to be eclipsed a consistent struggle against it would be needed for a prolonged period. More than anyone else, Nehru was aware of this. And so he never tired of stressing that communalism was a fundamental issue of India politics and that it posed the main threat to India’s integrity. ‘If allowed free play’, he wrote in 1951, ‘communalism would break up India.’
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Portraying communalism as ‘the Indian version of fascism’, he said in October 1947: ‘The wave of fascism which is gripping India now is the direct outcome of hatred for the non-Muslims which the Muslim League preached among its followers for years. The League accepted the ideology of fascism from the Nazis of Germany . . . The ideas and methods of fascist organization are now gaining popularity among the Hindus also and the demand for the establishment of a Hindu State is its clear manifestation.’
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Nehru carried on a massive campaign against communalism to instil a sense of security in the minorities, through public speeches, radio broadcasts, speeches in parliament, private letters and epistles to chief ministers. He repeatedly declared: ‘No State can be civilized except a secular State.’
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On Gandhiji’s birthday in 1951, he told a Delhi audience: ‘If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both as the head of the government and from outside.’
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Democratic though he was, he even advocated a ban on political organizations based on religion and got the Constitution amended to enable the government to impose ‘reasonable restrictions’ on the right to free speech and expression in order to curb communal speeches and writings. In his struggle against communalism, Nehru got the full cooperation of his colleagues like Sardar Patel and C. Rajagopalachari. Patel, for example, declared at the Jaipur session of the Congress in December 1948 that the Congress and the government were determined ‘to make India a truly secular state.’ In February 1949 he described the talk of ‘Hindu Raj’ as ‘that mad idea.’
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And he told his audience in 1950: ‘Ours is a secular state . . . Here every Muslim should feel that he is an Indian citizen and has equal rights as an Indian citizen. If we cannot make him feel like this, we shall not be worthy of our heritage and of our country.’
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A major setback to the communal forces occurred with Gandhiji’s martyrdom. The tragedy of the communal riots preceding and accompanying independence deeply affected Gandhiji. When the entire nation was
rejoicing in August 1947, the man who had led the struggle of freedom since 1919, the man who had given the message of non-violence and love and courage to the Indian people, the man who had represented the best in Indian culture and politics, was touring the hate-torn lands of Bengal and Bihar, trying to douse the communal fire and bring comfort to people who were paying through senseless slaughter the price of freedom. In reply to a message of birthday congratulations in 1947, Gandhiji said that he no longer wished to live long and that he would ‘invoke the aid of the all-embracing Power to take me away from this “vale of tears” rather than make me a helpless witness of the butchery by man become savage, whether he dares to call himself a Muslim or a Hindu or what not.’
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The celebrations of independence had hardly died down when on 30 January 1948, a Hindu communal fanatic, Nathuram Godse, assassinated Gandhiji or the Father of the Nation. The whole nation was shocked and stricken with grief and communalism retreated from the minds of men and women. Expressing the nation’s sorrow, Nehru spoke over the All India Radio:

Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere . . . The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light . . . that light represented something more than the immediate present; it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this-ancient country to freedom.
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Realizing the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS)’s adherence to the ideology of communalism and violence and the hatred that it had been spreading against Gandhi and secularism were the real forces behind the assassination—the RSS men had even celebrated it in many places—the government immediately banned the RSS and arrested most of its leaders and functionaries. Nehru, of course, had for some time been characterizing the RSS as a fascist organization. In December 1947 he stated: ‘We have a great deal of evidence to show that the RSS is an organization which is in the nature of a private army and which is definitely proceeding on the strictest Nazi lines, even following the technique of organization.’
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The government, however, had regard for civil liberties, even in the case of organizations like the RSS. Nehru, for example, had written to Patel on 29 June 1949: ‘in existing circumstances the less we have of these bans and detentions, the better.’
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The ban on the RSS was lifted in July 1949 after it had accepted the conditions laid down by Patel as the Home Minister. These conditions were: The RSS would adopt a written and published constitution, restrict itself to cultural activities and not meddle with politics, renounce violence and secrecy, profess loyalty to India’s flag and Constitution and organize itself along democratic lines.

The government had to stretch itself to the maximum to give relief to and resettle and rehabilitate the nearly six million refugees from Pakistan who had lost their all there and whose world had been turned upside down. The task took some time but it was accomplished. By 1951, the problem of the rehabilitation of the refugees from West Pakistan had been fully tackled.

The task of rehabilitating and resettling refugees from East Bengal was made more difficult by the fact that the exodus of Hindus from East Bengal continued for years. While nearly all the Hindus and Sikhs from West Pakistan had migrated in one go in 1947, a large number of Hindus in East Bengal had stayed on there in the initial years of 1947 and 1948. But as communal riots broke out periodically in East Bengal, there was a steady stream of refugees from there year after year till 1971. Providing them with work and shelter and psychological assurance, therefore became a continuous and hence a difficult task. Unlike in Bengal, most of the refugees from West Punjab could occupy the large lands and property left by the Muslim migrants to Pakistan from Punjab, U.P. and Rajasthan and could therefore be resettled on land. This was not the case in West Bengal. Also because of linguistic affinity, it was easier for Punjabi and Sindhi refugees to settle in today’s Himachal Pradesh and Haryana and western U.P., Rajasthan and Delhi. The resettlement of the refugees from East Bengal could take place only in Bengal and to a lesser extent in Assam and Tripura. As a result ‘a very large number of people who had been engaged in agricultural occupations before their displacement were forced to seek survival in semi-urban and urban contexts as the underclass,’ and contributed to ‘the process of immiserisation’ of West Bengal.
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More intractable was the problem of dealing with Pakistan. Despite the Kashmir issue, Nehru and the Government of India adopted towards Pakistan a policy of non-rancour and fair dealing and of promoting conciliation and reducing mutual tensions. In January 1948, the Government of India, following a fast by Gandhiji, paid Pakistan Rs 550 million as part of the assets of Partition, even when it feared that the money might be used to finance military action in Kashmir. The governments of the two countries differed on issues raised by evacuee property, left behind by those who migrated from the two countries, but every effort was made to resolve them through negotiations.

Along with the Kashmir issue, an important source of constant tension between the two countries was the strong sense of insecurity among Hindus in East Bengal, fuelled primarily by the communal character of Pakistan’s political system. This led to the steady migration of the persecuted Hindus from East Bengal to West Bengal and retaliatory attacks on Muslims in West Bengal, leading to their migration. Many urged the
Government of India to intervene in East Bengal militarily to protect the minority there. But, though very concerned about the fate of Hindus in East Bengal and the rise of communal sentiment in India, Nehru and the Government of India refused to get provoked into retaliatory action. Regarding it as a human problem, government tried to solve it through persuasion and pressure, even while taking strong action against attacks on Muslims in West Bengal. Nehru urged Pakistan to put an end to communal attacks on Hindus and to provide them with security so that they stayed on in East Bengal. He repeatedly stressed the duty of each country to protect its minorities. He even thought of resigning from office and touring East Bengal as a private person to repeat Gandhiji’s approach in Noakhali.

On 8 April 1950, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan signed an agreement known as the Nehru-Liaqat Pact to resolve the issue of protection of the minorities. The Pact met with the strong disapproval of the Hindu communalists and the two Ministers from Bengal, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and K.C. Neogi, resigned from the Cabinet in protest. It was plain sailing for the Pact elsewhere in the country, given Sardar Patel’s support for it. The migration of Hindus from East Bengal, however, continued despite the Pact.

Notwithstanding continuous differences and acrimony, the two governments were also able to sign several agreements on trade and travel between the two countries. One of the most ticklish problems faced by the two countries was that of the distribution of canal water in Punjab. Showing a degree of generosity, the Government of India agreed to supply an undiminished quantity of water to Pakistan pending a long-term engineering solution to the problem based on mutual discussion under the World Bank’s auspices.

In general, the Government of India followed the policy of trying to improve relations with Pakistan and, above all, to prevent the emergence of a climate of hostility and hatred. Nehru, in particular, repeatedly assured the people of Pakistan that India did not think of Pakistan as an enemy. One of the reasons for this policy was the effort to preserve and strengthen the secular atmosphere within India, which was being endangered by the Hindu communalists. And, undoubtedly, it did serve that purpose in the long run, even though it failed to mollify Pakistan or convince it of India’s good intentions.

Nehru was voicing his own, his government’s and other secular Indians’ opinion when in 1950 he expressed the sentiment underlying his approach towards Pakistan:

Ultimately we cannot go against the currents of history. I am so sure of the desire of our people that I have arrived at this conclusion. Though we may have been partitioned and we may have been divorced from each other, our own historical, cultural and other contacts, geographic, economic and every other, are so fundamentally great, despite everything that happened, and despite
all that passion and prejudice, and in spite of even gross inhumanity and killing, that ultimately the basic principles will survive. These are the things that keep us together Unless, of course, India and Pakistan are terribly backward countries culturally.
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In the early post-independence period, the government was faced with another challenge; this time from the left. As we shall see in chapter 15, the Communist Party of India (CPI) proclaimed the beginning of a general revolution in India in February 1948, declaring the Nehru government of being an agent of imperialist and semi-feudal forces. It initiated militant mass movements in various areas, the most prominent being the attempt to organize a railway strike all over the country on 9 March 1949. It also continued the armed struggle in the Telengana area of the Hyderabad state begun earlier against the Nizam. This effort at revolution continued till the middle of 1951.

Nehru was appalled, but though he was highly critical of the policy and activities of the CPI, he resisted banning it till he felt that there was enough proof of its violent activities. Even then he permitted the banning of the CPI only in West Bengal and Madras where it was most active. Being in agreement with the basic socio-economic objectives of the Communists, he believed that the best way to combat their politics and violent activities was to remove the discontent of the people through economic and other reformist measures. Even so, as soon as the CPI gave up its programme of waging armed struggle, including in Telengana, and declared its intention to join the parliamentary democratic process, Nehru saw to it that the CPI was legalized everywhere and its leaders and cadres released. It was also allowed to participate in the general elections of 1951-52.