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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Did Jinnah betray Congress to UK in ’46 riots?

SUDHI RANJAN SEN
Posted online: Monday, August 08, 2005 at 0344 hours IST
Updated: Monday, August 08, 2005 at 0921 hours IST

New Delhi, August 7: Was Winston Churchill in secret communication with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and was he tipped off about ‘‘Direct Action Day’’, August 16, 1946, which saw brutal killings by Muslim League activists in Kolkata?

Correspondence recently declassified by the British government indicates a close link between Jinnah and Churchill. The letters relate to the second half of 1946, when Churchill, having lost the 1945 election, was Leader of Opposition.

In the letters, Jinnah seems to warn Churchill about imminent violence. As riots broke out all over India and the Labour government—lead by Churchill’s rival Clement Atlee — sought to hurriedly transfer power, Churchill played counsellor to Jinnah, but privately. He advised Jinnah that they should not meet in public. Instead, correspondence was to be addressed to ‘‘Miss E.A. Gilliatt, 6 Westminster Gardens, London.’’ Gillaitt was Churchill’s private secretary.

The intriguing letters will figure in a documentary made by media firm News Watch Asia to be telecast by Zee News on August 14.

The letters reveal Jinnah saw Churchill as an ally against ‘‘caste Hindus’’. The Conservative wartime leader — hostile to the ‘‘liquidation of the British Empire’’ — was told by the Muslim League leader on July 6, 1946, that the Cripps Mission had ‘‘shaken the confidence of Muslim Indians and shattered their hopes for an honourable and peaceful settlement’’.

Jinnah wrote: ‘‘If power politics are going to be the deciding factor in total disregard for fair play and justice, we shall have no other course open to us except to forge our sanctions to meet the situation which, in that case, is bound to arise. Its consequence, I need not say, will be most disastrous and a peaceful settlement will then become impossible.’’ Less than six weeks later came the bloodbath of Direct Action.

Replying to Jinnah on August 5, Churchill <span style='color:red'>‘‘espoused the right of Moslems and the Depressed Classes to their fair share of life and power. I feel that it is most important that the British Army should not be used to dominate the Moslems, even though the caste Hindus might claim numerical majority in a constituent assembly’’. </span>

On August 22, Jinnah wrote again to Churchill, focusing his ire on Churchill’s domestic opponents, the Labour Party, which Jinnah felt was Congress-friendly. ‘‘You admit the tendencies in England to support the Congress are very strong in the Government Party,’’ Jinnah wrote, ‘‘we have had a bitter taste of it. The Muslim League was progressively betrayed by the Cabinet Delegation and the Viceroy and was being gradually steam-rolled. When the Secretary of State for India and his collegues and the Viceroy finally disclosed their hands, undoubtedly, there could be only one result and that is a general revolt against the British. For who else is responsible to force down and thrust upon 100 million Muslims of India terms which the Congress alone will be pleased to accept.’’

The argument on the British-Muslim relationship was an old one. On August 3, Churchill had written to Jinnah: ‘‘I was... surprised to read all the insulting things that were said about Britain at the Moslem Congress in Bombay, and how the Moslems of India were described as undergoing British slavery. All this is quite untrue and ungrateful.’’

But on December 12, a wary Churchill turned down a lunch invitation at the Claridges’s, advising that the two should not be ‘‘associated publicly”.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->