Is Mahatma to blame for India's Partition.


Mahatma Gandhi is one man who tried everything in his power to stop partition from happening but could only go that far. By the time the drama of Indian partition was being enacted MG was a helpless old man with all the right intentions, massive public appeal but no temporal authority.
               Having no choice left but to quit, British who were masters of the 'Divide and Rule' game, wanted India to be troubled with communal riots so that in the prevailing confusion and chaos the Indian leadership is coerced into asking them for help, in terms of staying on to establish order. They eventually partially succeeded in their mission. Although they could not hang on in India much longer but they did succeed in dividing the nation before they left.                   
                                      Mahatma Gandhi, a farsighted but gentle person, wanted to save India from all this. As is well known to all that Jinnah Sahib was bent upon creating a Muslim state and often threatened with direct action, which meant an open call to Indian Muslims to rebel against the Union with violent repercussions for both Hindu and Muslim communities. Gandhi tried to influence him time and again to find a way and suggested a formula whereby India remains unpartitioned. He even succeeded in prevailing upon him to accept the presidency of undivided India to which Jinnah agreed but Nehru didn't agree, tas he was not willing to function as India’s first PM with Jinnah being it's first president, a war of personalities and shallow ambition of course.
                        In these circumstances and the British being bent upon dividing the colony before they left, for reasons of wielding better influence over the region, even after their physical departure, the partition of India became a reality against the wishes of Mahatma Gandhi and other nationalists. For partition of India the blame has to lie with Jinnah, Nehru and of course the British who knew that India must be divided to keep it weak. Gandhi is to blame if at all for his soft corner for Nehru, because of which Patel was sidelined many a times from taking up bigger national political roles which could have ended up in his pursuing much bigger and nobler national goals. Had Sirdar been in charge of India instead of Nehru the picture could have been different but this 'COULD' is a huge one. 
        There is also a view that if India was to stay united INC or Indian National Congress as the single largest or the only organization with which British negotiated had four choices, firstly to coerce Muslim-majority provinces into united India, secondly to accept permanent tutelage of British amounting to shedding the demand for freedom,  thirdly to somehow  convince British to hand over India’s reins to INC and letting it manage the mess as it may have or fourthly to win over the Muslims by winning over their chief representative body the ‘Muslim League’. Options one and two were out of question where as options three and four failed in spite of everything.  Ironically and tragically the last scenes of this gory drama were neither enacted by the British nor by the Jinnah’s, the Nehru’s or the Gandhi’s of Indian politics but by ruthless, bloodthirsty and inhuman killers in both communities.The bloodshed that resulted totaled a sacrifice of more than three million innocent human lives. 
………. Poet Balwant Gurunay

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