• Capt. Praveen Davar

This day, eighty years ago, began the Gandhi - Jinnah talks to discuss primarily 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 at Mumbai two years earlier. Though 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. However, Rajaji though famed as ‘Gandhi’s conscience keeper” 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 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 Muslim League. The salient features of what came to be known as Rajaji Formula were: a) 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. b) Soon after the war ends, a commission will demarcate contiguous districts in the North West and East where the Muslim population is in absolute 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 decision will be honoured.

c) In the event of separation, mutual agreements shall be entered into for safeguarding defence, commerce and communications and for 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, he showed him his formula and told him it had the consent of Gandhi, but Jinnah was not impressed. He was not interested in “a maimed, mutilated and moth eaten Pakistan” which the Rajaji formula envisaged. The Muslim League wanted whole of Punjab and Bengal, and not only districts with an absolute Muslim majority. However, in correspondence with CR later he told him that if Gandhi dealt with him directly, he would take up his 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 September 9, 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 September 27. 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 and others also thought that Gandhiji walking to Jinnah’s residence resulted in raising of Jinnah’s prestige. It added to his already huge following among the Muslims. But Gandhiji would go to any extent to prevent 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, realised his wish.

Each day of Gandhi - Jinnah conversations was recorded and, alongwith 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 described what he could concede: ‘ 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 Baluchistan, Sind, the NWFP and that part of the Punjab where they are in absolute majority over all 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 Ji even offered a post -independence Pakistan along the lines suggested in Rajaji formula. But Jinnah would settle for nothing but a pre - independence Pakistan, and that too including whole of Punjab and whole of Bengal. So the talks failed.

However, Gandhiji 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 skills 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 half way.’

Ultimately, the Pakistan Jinnah got three years later was the same what the Mahatma and Rajaji offered. Had he accepted the offer made by Gandhiji in September 1944, the separation from India would have been entirely peaceful and friendly, and the killings and migrations of millions on both sides of the border avoided. Alas it was not to be. Jinnah committed an epic blunder by trusting the British bureaucracy, and not the Congress leadership.

(The writer, an ex-Army officer, is a columnist, editor of a bimonthly and author of Freedom Struggle and Beyond)