Why Quaid Left Congress

In 1913 the Quaid-i-Azam joined the All India Muslim League with erupt abandoning the rank of the congress of which he had been an roundive member for some years. But this social station of the two organizations give the sacked in December 1920. On the occasion of the particular(a) session at Nagpur the copulation adopted a impudent belief which permitted the use of unconstitutional means and decided to resort to non-violent non-co-operation for the attainment of self-government.The youthful policy and semi governmental program in essence envisaged withdrawal of the students from schools and colleges, boycott of law-courts by lawyers and litigants as headspring as the impending elections to the legislatures under the Government of India act 1919 either as voters or as candidates. 1 The newborn philosophy of the relation back had been shaped almost entirely under the influence of Gandhi who had, by then, emerged as a commanding figure in sexual congress politics. Altho ugh there were many prominent Congressmen such as C. R.Das and Lala Lajpat Rai who did non subscribe to the programme of non-co-operation2, Jinnah was the only unmatched in a crowd of some(prenominal) gram people who openly expressed serious disagreement. A constitutionalist by disapprobation he was unable to endorse, what he c everyed, a sterile programme that the Congress intended to pursue. He was not opposed to agitation or, even displace strengtheneder, pressure on the Government scarce he distrusted the destructive methods which did not take account of human nature, and which index slip out of authorisation at any time3.He was convinced and he did not flutter to tell Gandhi directly that your demeanor is the wrong way mine is the obligation way the constitutional way is the just way4. But his percentage of practical statesmanship was not heeded and Jinnah walked external not only out of the Congress session but from the Congress Party as well. Commenting on Jinnahs courage as the solitary opponent of the Boycott resolve Col. Wedgwood, who was present in the Congress session as a brotherlike delegate of the British Labour Party, observed that if India had only a fewer more men of Jinnahs convictions she would not take a crap to wait for longsighted for her independence. Jinnahs rupture with the Congress has been variously interpreted. Jawaharlal Nehru in his Autobiography is of the billet that Temperamentally he did not fit in at all with the new Congress. He felt completely out of his element in the Khadi-clad crowd demanding speeches in Hindustani. 6 In a later work he has reiterated that Jinnah left the Congress because he could not line up himself to the new and more advanced ideology and even more so because he dislike the crowds of ill-dressed people talking in Hindustani, who filled the Congress7.This is hardly a convincing explanation of Jinnahs breach with the Congress. During his xiv year old8 association with the bod y he had unloosenly mingled with the Khadi-clad and ill-dressed crowd at its meetings. This criticism, moreover, does not appear to reckon with the fact that the people whom Jinnah led in later years the Muslims were even poorer and less educated than Hindus who swelled the Congress gatherings and felt completely at home among them.It is of cross true that the state of nature of unconstitutionalism had no appeal for him. There was nothing mealy-mouthed about it. He was convinced that Gandhian methodology for the solution of political problems would do abundant harm than good to India and especially the Muslims, as indeed it did. The Moplahs, the descendants of Arab sailors hold along the Malabar Coast, rose in revolt against the British in exalted 1921 as partners in the non-co-operation movement and lost no less than 10,000 lives9.The Chauri-Chauri calamity in the district of Gorakhpur, in February 1922, where twenty two policemen were overpowered and brutally burn down a live in the adjoining police station by a frenzied mob was in like manner a sequel of Gandhis civilian disobedience movement. Whether it was on account of excess such as these or some other unexplained factors, Gandhi realised his mistake at this compass point calling it a Himalayan blunder he called off the movement. other Hindu writer would have us believe that Jinnah was a misfit in the Indian National Congress after its assumption of a new complexion of agitation against the British Government. 0 Writing in defence of the Nagpur Resolution, a British biographer of Gandhi has likewise suggested that the Congress demand for Swaraj at bottom the British Empire if possible or outside it if necessary was the clause which killed the alliance with Jinnah and the Muslim League. In his opinion the suggestion that India might quit the Empire was too much for him having talked himself into total inefficacy he deserted Congress for ever11. The proposition that Jinnah was in league wi th the forces of British Imperialism is manifestly ncorrect. Any one who has made a dispassionate think over of Jinnahs political career and his public utterances inside as well as outside the Legislative Assembly would not fail to observe that he was the bitterest critic of British rule throughout his public career. directly after the stormy session of the Congress at Nagpur, Jinnah explained the reasons for his dissociation from the Congress. talk of the town to a Hindu journalist he verbalise I go away have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach to politics.I part company with the Congress and Gandhi. I do not believe in working up mob hysteria. Politics is a gentlemens game12. Speaking several years later, he charged Gandhi with destroying the ideal with which the Congress was started. He was the one man responsible for turning the Congress into an instrument for the revival of Hinduism13. These speech are neither a mere accusation nor a revelation. Gandhi, in the boys of Jawaharlal Nehru was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the inner-most depths of his being14.His oft-expressed zest to live for 125 years was an old Hindu aspiration which accord to Hindu tradition was the full span of human sprightliness15. up to now the political terminology he coined and the weapons he used to fight his political battles were characteristically Hindu. In an article, entitled, The Doctrine of the Sword, written in 1920, he proudly proclaimed I have thus ventured to place beforehand India the ancient law of self-sacrifice. For Satyagraha and its off-shoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering.The Rishis who discovered the law of non- force out in the midst of violence were corkinger geniuses than Newton. They were themselves greater warriors than Wellington16. Despite his frequent professions that he was equally dedicated to all religions17, Gandhi left no one in disbelieve as to what his own religious beliefs were. In a lecture free from all ambiguity he said that he was Sanatani Hindu because I believe in the Vedas, the Upanishadas, the Purana and all that goes by the name of the Hindu scriptures, and therefore in avatars and rebirth18.It was his religion and not politics which appealed to his Hindu followers. In the words of Subhas Chandra Bose, when the Mahatma speaks, he does so in a languageof the Bhagvat Gita and the Ramayana. When he negotiation to them about Swarajhe reminds them of the glories of Ramarajya (the Kingdom of King Rama of old) and they understand. And when he talks of conquering through love and ahinsa (non-violence) they are reminded of Buddha and Mahavira and they accept him,19.In spite of Himalayan miscalculations that he made and the obvious political blunders that he committed his popularity among the mint hardly ever waned. The explanation of this curious phenomenon lies in the fact that he played cleverly on the religious supersti tions of the ignorant and poverty-stricken millions of India and got away with it20. It was this approach to politics which repelled Jinnah and his departure from the Congress may be regarded as the starting point of a long process of self-examination.He was therefore to project more and more to the needs of his own community. It may be mentioned in the passing that Gandhi and Jinnah were each others antithesis in beliefs and ways of life and furnished an interesting study in contrast. There was hardly anything in common surrounded by them which could hold them together on one political platform for any length of time. Gandhi had been active in politics since his take from South Africa in 1915 and had consistently waged battles against the British Government on the incredulity of political and constitutional future of India.But an accurate knowledge of facts and their details was not one of his otherwise numerous accomplishments. He himself admitted to Chimanlal Setalvad during the second session of the refresh Table Conference that he had never read the Government of India put to work of 1919. 21 In 1942 he wrote to Viceroy Lord Linlithgow that he had been study for the first time the Government of India Act of 1935 and added that if only he had canvass it carefullythe course of Indian history might well have been different22.He was an enigma and a sort of mystic who seldom r directly and mostly acted on impulse which he conveniently descried as his inner voice. Even his closest associates like Nehru found him to be a very difficult person to understand because sometimes his language was almost incomprehensible to an average modern23. Lord Wavell at the end of one meeting with him complained that he spoke to me for half an hour, and I am still not sure what he meant to tell me. Every denounce he spoke could be interpreted in at least(prenominal)(prenominal) two different ways.I would be happier were I convinced that he knew what he was saying hims elf, but I cannot even be sure of that24. He was quite capable of interpreting and reinterpreting his own statements and was perfectly prepared to go back at any time on anything he had said earlier25. He could assume that role of a dictator in the Congress Party when it suited him while on other make when he believed that Hindu interests could be better served by his silence he would withdraw and innocently plead that he was not even an mine run member of that Party.Jinnah, on the other hand was a down right political realist. True to his legal profession he would prepare his apprise only after he was sure of his facts. There was a great deal of political idealism in him which was to grow with years but it was always based on the stark realities of the situation. He honoured his pledged word and as Lord Pethick Lawrence said, a man of very firm resolution, a man who when made a promise always kept it and if he felt any body else with whom he was negotiating failed to keep his pr omise he reacted very strongly26.To say that the two-nation theory was the only wall between Gandhi and Jinnah27 is to oversimplify their mutual differences. It was a clash of two strong personalities, two distinct value systems and two irreconcilable ideologies and it were these differences what were to dictate the course of the pen that wrote the history of India28. Gandhi was a strong man and he precious complete submission not only from his followers but also from his co-workers. To expect Jinnah to offer unconditional acquiescence to any one and least of all to person like Gandhi was to hope for the impossible.This was completely alien to his way of thinking. The surprising thing is not that Jinnah left the Congress in 1920 but that he did not quit it earlier? It is therefore not a far-fetched assumption that Jinnah would have given up the Congress even if he had not voted for non-co-operation at Nagpur. It may have come about a little later but to expect that he would have go on to work in the Congress, in spite of Gandhis ascendancy with Hindu philosophy as the guiding star of his politics, appears highly unlikely.