Why Quaid Left Congress

In 1913 the Quaid-i-Azam joined the All India Muslim League without abandoning the membership of the Congress of which he had been an active member for somewhat years. But this membership of the two organizations ended in December 1920. On the occasion of the special school term at Nagpur the Congress adopted a recent creed which permitted the use of unconstitutional means and trenchant to resort to non-violent non-co-operation for the attainment of self-government.The new policy and programme in essence envisaged withdrawal of the students from schools and colleges, boycott of law-courts by lawyers and litigants as well as the impending elections to the legislatures under the Government of India act 1919 either as voters or as candidates. 1 The new philosophy of the Congress had been shaped almost entirely under the work on of Gandhi who had, by then, emerged as a com partding figure in Congress politics. Although there were many spectacular Congressmen such as C. R.Das and L ala Lajpat Rai who did non subscribe to the programme of non-co-operation2, Jinnah was the only wiz in a convention of several(prenominal) thousand people who openly expressed serious disagreement. A constitutionalist by conviction he was unable to endorse, what he c in alled, a sterile programme that the Congress intended to pursue. He was non contrary to agitation or, charge putting stronger, pressure on the Government but he distrusted the destructive methods which did not take account of tender nature, and which might slip out of control at any prison term3.He was convert and he did not hesitate to tell Gandhi directly that your way is the wrong way exploit is the right way the constitutional way is the right way4. But his voice of practical statesmanship was not heeded and Jinnah walked away not only out of the Congress session but from the Congress ships company as well. Commenting on Jinnahs courage as the solitary opponent of the Boycott resolution Col. Wedgwo od, who was cave in in the Congress session as a fraternal delegate of the British Labour Party, spy that if India had only a few more men of Jinnahs convictions she would not suffer to wait for considerable for her independence. Jinnahs rupture with the Congress has been variously interpreted. Jawaharlal Nehru in his Autobiography is of the view that Temperamentally he did not fit in at all with the new Congress. He felt completely out of his broker in the Khadi-clad crowd demanding speeches in Hindustani. 6 In a later work he has reiterated that Jinnah odd the Congress because he could not adapt himself to the new and more advanced ideology and flat more so because he dislike the crowds of ill-dressed people talking in Hindustani, who filled the Congress7.This is barely a convincing account of Jinnahs breach with the Congress. During his fourteen year old8 association with the body he had freely mingled with the Khadi-clad and ill-dressed crowd at its meetings. This conn oisseurism, 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 course true that the wilderness of unconstitutionalism had no appeal for him. thither was nothing mealy-mouthed somewhat it. He was convinced that Gandhian methodology for the solution of political problems would do great harm than mature to India and especially the Muslims, as indeed it did. The Moplahs, the descendants of Arab sailors living along the Malabar Coast, rose in revolt against the British in August 1921 as partners in the non-co-operation movement and lost no less than 10,000 lives9.The Chauri-Chauri tragedy in the district of Gorakhpur, in February 1922, where twenty two policemen were overpowered and brutally burnt alive in the adjoining police station by a frenzied mob was also a sequel of Gandhis polite disobedi ence movement. Whether it was on account of excess such as these or some other undetermined factors, Gandhi realised his mistake at this stage calling it a Himalayan blunder he called pip the movement. Another Hindu writer would ware us intrust that Jinnah was a misfit in the Indian depicted object 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 within 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 with the forces of British Imperialism is manifestly ncorrect. Any one who has made a dispassionate study of Jinnah s political career and his public utterances inside as well as outside the Legislative Assembly would not fail to see that he was the bitterest critic of British rule throughout his public career. Immediately after the stormy session of the Congress at Nagpur, Jinnah explained the reasons for his dissociation from the Congress. Talking to a Hindu journalist he said I will receive 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 round the Congress into an instrument for the revival of Hinduism13. These delivery are neither a mere accusation nor a revelation. Gandhi, in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the inner-most depths of his being14.His oft-expressed desire to live for one hundred twenty-five years was an old Hindu aspiration which according to Hindu tradition was the full span of human life15. Even 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 therefore ventured to place before India the ancient law of self-sacrifice. For Satyagraha and its off-shoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new touchs for the law of suffering.The Rishis who discovered the law of non-violence in the midst of violence were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves greater warriors than hessian16. Despite his frequent professions that he was equally dedicated to all religions17, Gandhi left no one in doubt as to what his own religious beliefs were. In a language free from all equivocalness 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 pursual. In the words of Subhas Chandra Bose, when the Mahatma speaks, he does so in a languageof the Bhagvat Gita and the Ra whitethornana. When he talks to them about Swarajhe reminds them of the glories of Ramarajya (the demesne 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 masses hardly ever waned. The explanation of this curious phenomenon lies in the fact that he played cleverly on the religious superstitions of the ignorant and poor millions of India and got away with it20. It was this approach to politics which repelled Jinnah and hi s departure from the Congress may be regarded as the starting dapple of a long process of self-examination.He was therefore to look 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 equipped an interesting study in contrast. There was hardly anything in common between them which could hold them unneurotic on one political platform for any length of epoch. Gandhi had been active in politics since his commit from South Africa in 1915 and had consistently waged battles against the British Government on the question of political and constitutional proximo 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 Round Table Conference that he had never read the Government of India Act of 1919. 21 In 1942 he wrote to Viceroy Lord Linli thgow that he had been reading for the first time the Government of India Act of 1935 and added that if only he had studied it carefullythe course of Indian annals might well have been varied22.He was an enigma and a sort of mystic who seldom stave directly and mostly acted on lust 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 bonnie 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 sentence he spoke could be interpreted in at least two different ways.I would be happier were I convinced that he knew what he was scaning himself, 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 occasions 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 ordinary member of that Party.Jinnah, on the other hand was a down right political realist. true up to his legal profession he would prepare his brief 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 constantly 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 promise 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 t wo 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 wanted 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 continued to work in the Congress, in spite of Gandhis ascendancy with Hindu philosophy as the guiding star of his politics, appears highly unlikely.