THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIAvengeance and he advised Nehru to stand firm. The Indian army defended
Kashmir against Pakistani aggression. Nehru appealed to the United
Nations for it to pass a resolution demanding that Pakistan ‘vacate the
aggression’. Instead, the United Nations tried to find a political solution
and emphasised the necessity of a referendum, as Nehru had promised at
the time of accession. Nehru was later to regret this promise and the
referendum was never held. It would have been the Indian Muslims’ first
opportunity to decide whether they preferred to live in India or in Pakistan.
No referendum had been held when Pakistan was established.
A referendum in Kashmir would have rejected either the principle on
which Pakistan was founded or the principle of the secular state which was
so essential for Indian unity. It would have been, in fact, a referendum for
or against the Two Nations Theory’. Although India was reconciled to the
existence of Pakistan, it could never accept the Two Nations Theory’
because more than one-third of the Muslims of India had remained in India
and had not gone to Pakistan. Even Jinnah was forced to revise his theory
in this respect. When he was leaving India for Pakistan he was asked by
Muslims who had decided to stay what he would advise them to do now:
he told them to be loyal citizens of India.
While Jinnah departed with such good advice Gandhi was trying hard
to stop the carnage which broke out after partition and to work for good
relations between India and Pakistan. When the violence in the Panjab
spilled over into India he rushed to Delhi from Bengal, where he had been
at the time of partition. With a great fast he attempted to bring his
countrymen to their senses. Then the Kashmir conflict led to an undeclared
war between India and Pakistan and at this very point it was debated how
and why the funds of the Indian treasury should be divided between India
and Pakistan. Many Hindus felt that Pakistan had forfeited its claim to a
share of these funds by attacking India in Kashmir, and that it would be
the height of folly to hand over such funds to finance an aggressor’s war
effort. Gandhi, however, pleaded for evenhanded justice. The Congress had
approved of partition and was in honour bound to divide the assets
equitably. To radical Hindus this advice amounted to high treason, and one
of them, a young Brahmin named Nathuram Godse, shot Gandhi on 30
January 1948.