The Longest August (19 page)

The Day After

On October 30 Pakistan said that since Kashmir's accession to India was based on “fraud and violence,” it could not be recognized. That day Jinnah met Mountbatten in Lahore. They failed to agree on the modalities of the plebiscite on the state's future. In his broadcast to the nation on November 2, Nehru reiterated his promise to hold a plebiscite in the state under international auspices after law and order had been established. Two days later Ali Khan responded in a broadcast from Lahore, describing Kashmir's accession as immoral and illegal.

Once Shaikh Abdullah—popularly called Sher-i-Kashmir (Urdu: Lion of Kashmir)—formed an interim administration as its chief administrator, on October 30, his party activists greeted the incoming Indian soldiers with slogans such as
Hamlavar Khabardar, Hum Kashmiri Hai Tayar
(Urdu: Invaders beware, we Kashmiris are ready), and
Sher-i-Kashmir Ka Kya Irshad, Hindu Muslim Sikh Ittihad
(Urdu: What's Lion of Kashmir's guidance—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs are united).

On October 31 the vanguard of Azad Kashmir's army reached the outskirts of Srinagar and engaged Indian troops. They fared badly. Once the Indian force had retaken Baramulla on November 8 and cut off the supply lines of the enemy forces, their opponents withdrew.

The recaptured Baramulla, now a deserted town of a thousand people, was opened to local and foreign journalists. “The once lovely town . . . was heaped with rubble and blackened with fire,” wrote Margaret Bourke-White, a reporter-photographer for
Life
magazine, in her book
Halfway to Freedom
, published in 1949. “The deserted [St. Joseph's] Convent on the hill was badly defaced and littered. . . . We made our way into the ravaged Chapel, wading through the mass of torn hymnbooks and broken sacred statuary. The altar was deep in rubble.” She described what happened when the town was raided by the armed tribesmen:

The nuns, their hospital patients, and a few stray townspeople who had taken refuge at the Mission were herded into a single dormitory and kept under rifle guard. On one of these days, after an air attack from the Indian Army had left the tribesmen in a particularly excited and nervous mood, six of the nuns were brought out and lined up to be shot. [But] one of their chiefs arrived; he had enough vision to realize that shooting nuns was not the thing to do, even in an invasion, and the nuns were saved.
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On November 11 the Indian soldiers recaptured Uri, and the raiders withdrew from the nearby towns of Gulmarg and Tanmarg. On the other side, Azad Kashmir forces intensified their campaign and captured Mirupr on November 26.

That day the Joint Defense Council of India and Pakistan meeting in Delhi decided to maintain the council, despite London's decision to close down the Joint Supreme Command (JSC) of the British forces in India and Pakistan on November 30.

On December 8, Mountbatten and Nehru attended the meeting of the Joint Defense Council in Lahore. Nehru argued that letting the tribal raiders use Pakistani territory to attack India was tantamount to an act of war by Pakistan, and that it should call on the raiders to return home. Ali Khan contended that such an appeal by him would lead to the fall of his government. Mountbatten then suggested that the United Nations may be invited to mediate between India and Pakistan. His idea merited serious consideration. And Nehru would later accept it.

As foreign minister Nehru had pursued a policy of nonalignment by sending his sister Vijay Lakshmi Pandit as ambassador to the Soviet Union on the eve of independence to balance the appointment of cabinet minister Asaf Ali as the Indian ambassador to Washington six months earlier. He was therefore confident of not falling afoul of the United States or the Soviet Union at the UN Security Council.

Nehru referred the turmoil in Kashmir to the UN Security Council on January 1, 1948, in the form of a complaint against Pakistan under Chapter VI of the UN Charter (Pacific Settlement of Disputes), Article 35. Along with the preceding article, this one authorizes the Security Council to investigate any dispute in order to determine if it was “likely to endanger international peace and security.”
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Pakistan had armed and abetted the tribal men from its territory to attack Kashmir, and that should vacate the gains of its aggression, argued India's representative to the United Nations.

Two weeks later Pakistan filed a countercomplaint. It alleged that India had persistently attempted to undo the partition scheme; launched a preplanned, wide-scale genocide of Muslims in East Punjab and Punjab's princely states; and secured Kashmir's accession by fraud and violence. It referred to Delhi's nonpayment of Pakistan's share of the cash balances.
24
Earlier, quite independently, in his report to Prime Minster Attlee on the eve of the closure of the JSC of the British forces in India and Pakistan, Auchinleck had said that he had “no hesitation in affirming that the present Indian Cabinet are implacably determined to do all in their power to prevent the establishment of the Dominion of Pakistan on a firm basis.”
25

Apostle of Nonviolence Felled by Gunshots

At Pakistan's inception,
26
India paid it Rs 200 million as the first installment of its share of the cash balance in Delhi. But before the remaining balance was due—Rs 550 million—war broke out in Kashmir. India held back this payment, arguing that Pakistan would use it in its ongoing armed conflict in Kashmir. Jinnah complained to India's governor-general, Lord Mountbatten. When he failed to convince Nehru and Patel to meet India's legal obligation, he turned to Gandhi. The Mahatma agreed with him.
27
In a prayer meeting speech in mid-December he publicly urged the Indian government to honor its moral and legal financial agreement with Pakistan.

On December 22 he referred to the shrine of the Sufi saint Khwaja Qutb-ud-din Chishti in the village of Mehrauli, twelve miles from central Delhi, which tens of thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims visited annually. It was “subjected to the wrath of Hindu mobs” in September, he regretfully informed his audience. As a result, the Muslims living in its vicinity for the past eight hundred years had fled. “Now though Muslims honor the shrine, no Muslim can be found anywhere near it,” he said. “It is the duty of Hindus, Sikhs and the officials of the government to open the shrine, and wash this stain off us. The same applies to other shrines and religious places of Muslims in and around Delhi.”
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When Gandhi's plea went unheeded, he began a fast on January 13, 1948. “I will terminate the fast only when peace has returned to Delhi,” he declared. “If peace is restored to Delhi it will have an effect not only on India but on Pakistan.” Later, he explained that his fast was “against the Hindus and Sikhs of India, and against the Muslims of Pakistan.”
29

Addressing a mammoth rally in Delhi in January 17, Maulana Abul Kalam Muhiyuddin Ahmed Azad explained that people of all faiths should be able to move around the capital without fear and that the Muslims who had been chased out of the city should be advised to return. The next day a collective of political and religious leaders issued a joint statement signed in Gandhi's presence:

We take the pledge that we should protect the life, property and faith of Muslims and [that] the incidents that have occurred in Delhi shall not happen again. We want to assure Gandhiji that the annual fair held at Khwaja Qutb-ud-din's shrine will be held this year as before. . . . The mosques which have been left by Muslims and are now in the possession of Hindus and Sikhs will be returned. We shall not object to the return to Delhi of Muslims who had migrated. All these things will be done by our personal effort and not with the help of the police and military.
30

While many community leaders were urging Gandhi to end his fast, militant Hindu demonstrators marched past Birla House, his base, shouting “Let Gandhi die!” They mocked him as “Muhammad Gandhi.” Their hatred of Gandhi intensified on January 15, when, heeding his appeal, the Indian government announced that it was transferring Rs 550 million (worth $1.6 billion today) due to Pakistan forthwith.
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At his prayer assembly on January 19, held in the garden of Birla House, Gandhi told his audience that an official of the communalist Hindu Mahasabha had repudiated his endorsement of the earlier Hindu-Muslim amity pledge. Hindu Mahasabha was a counterforce, albeit a weak one, to the League's communalism. It was allied with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu militia.

The next day, as he spoke at the prayer meeting, a handmade bomb, placed on the wall about seventy-five feet behind Gandhi's podium, exploded. It was ignited by Madan Lal Pahwa, a refugee from West Punjab, who had learned to make grenades as an employee of a fireworks factory in Bombay. A strong woman in the audience grappled with Pahwa until others rushed forward. He was part of a plot to create panic during which Gandhi was to be shot by two of the seven-strong assassination team that had traveled from Poona and Bombay to Delhi. By the time Pahwa led the police to the two hotels where the rest of the gang were staying, they had fled in a hurry. In a room at the Marina Hotel, they found a few clothes carrying the initials “NVG.” Gandhi, who had remained calm
during the episode, refused to restrict access to his daily prayer assembly as advised by the police.

Once the police heat was off, NVG—Nathuram Vinayak Godse—a sturdy man of medium height with owlish eyes and a jowly face, carried out repeated reconnaissance of the Birla House and its environs.

Meanwhile, Gandhi was troubled by reports of increased tensions between Nehru and Patel, who among other things had disapproved of Nehru's complaint about Kashmir to the UN Security Council, which in turn had led to Pakistan filing an unwieldy countercomplaint. Gandhi decided to mediate. On January 30 he addressed a letter to Nehru to bridge his differences with Patel. That day at four
pm
Gandhi had a meeting with Patel on the same subject. Their talk went on beyond the scheduled hour.

Among those who had gathered in the front row of the congregation for the prayers was Godse. Gandhi emerged from the building. He passed through the garden, leaning, as usual, on the shoulders of Abha Gandhi, his granddaughter-in-law, and Manu Gandhi, his grandniece. As he ascended the four steps leading to the prayer marquee, Godse, wearing a loose jacket over his cotton shirt and pajamas, approached him. Standing about six feet from Gandhi, he pressed his palms together in reverence. Gandhi returned his salutation. “You are late today for the prayer,” remarked Godse as he bowed to touch the Mahatma's feet as a further sign of respect. “Yes, I am,” Gandhi replied. Godse pulled out his six-chamber Beretta M 1934 semiautomatic pistol from his jacket pocket. He fired three shots near Gandhi's heart. It was 5:12
pm
. Gandhi collapsed, but his consorts held him up. He was taken to his room, where he died fifteen minutes later.
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Godse was seized by those around him and beaten. When the police arrested him, he described himself as editor of the Poona-based
Hindu Rashtra
(Marathi: Hindu Nation), a weekly journal of the Hindu Mahasabha. He was a former member of the RSS, spawned by the Mahasabha, which believed in Hindu supremacy.
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At his trial he would say that he killed Gandhi for “weakening India” by insisting on payments to Pakistan.

Heartbroken, Nehru wept openly; he had established a son-father relationship with Gandhi. Patel felt guilty for having failed to provide adequate security to the Mahatma and for the ineptitude of the Intelligence Bureau in unearthing the assassination plan in the making. He banned the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, whose members he had described three weeks earlier as “patriots who love their country.”
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The searing
tragedy brought the leading Congress officials together and strengthened the Nehru-led secular wing in the party.

An emotional tide washed over the Indian nation while condolences poured in from around the globe. Among them was one from Jinnah, who ordered the closure of all government offices in Pakistan the following day. Describing him as “one of the greatest men produced by the Hindu community, and a leader who commanded their universal confidence and respect,” he sincerely sympathized with “the great Hindu community and his family in their bereavement at this momentous, historical and critical juncture.” (This was payback for Gandhi's remark in 1915 of finding a Muslim like Jinnah as head of the multi-religious Gurjar Sabha in Bombay.
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) It was only the last sentence—“The loss to the Dominion of India is irreparable”—that did not tie Gandhi to the Hindu community.
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Reversing his earlier rejection of the advice of his military aide-de-camp, General Muhammad Akbar Khan, Jinnah quietly ordered that the low compound wall of the Government House, his base in Karachi, be raised, ostensibly to make him and his office safe from a bomb thrower.

A far more important reversal from Jinnah was his stance on the future constitution of Pakistan, which he had expressed publicly almost a week earlier. His change of position was caused by recent developments in the subcontinent and elsewhere. In Delhi Patel had resorted to demanding that India's Muslim leaders should vociferously support the government's military intervention in Kashmir, thereby raising communal tension. And the Indian move in Kashmir had weakened the position of the Hindus in Pakistan, with the Muslim majority there viewing them as unpatriotic. Lastly, Washington's decision in December to award $10 million in financial assistance to Pakistan gave Jinnah a badly needed economic boost, which, in turn, encouraged him to harden his ideological position.

“I cannot understand the logic of those who have been deliberately and mischievously propagating that the Constitution of Pakistan will not be based on Islamic Sharia.” Jinnah said in his address to the Sindh Bar Association in Karachi on January 25. “Islamic principles today are as much applicable to life as they were 1300 years ago.” He added that Pakistan's constitution would be based on the Sharia canon to make it “a truly great Islamic state.”
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