by A. G. NOORANI
“Gandhi was very stiff about Kashmir”
Kingsley Martin and Dorothy Woodman met him shortly before his tragic assassination and recorded their discussion for the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library’s Oral History Project. Kingsley Martin said: “I got to Delhi in time to have an interview with Gandhi on Tuesday. Gandhi, I think, was killed on Friday if I remember rightly. I had an interview by Amrit Kaur. She sent his speech and took some notes, which I think I have still got, of our conversation. Gandhi was very stiff about Kashmir to my complete astonishment, and absolutely adamant about fighting it out, as if Kashmir belonged to India.
“B.R.Nanda: Gandhi said that?
“K. Martin: Yes. And he would not have anything to do with any kind of compromise about it. I said: ‘If you are going to fight for Gilgit, you will fight the wrong way – all of you. And you won’t get there. You are going to have Pakistan as a permanent enemy.’ He turned round to me, and he said: ‘You are only a journalist and you have no right to say this kind of thing when you have not even seen the documents or the history or anything about it.’ So I was rather abashed and then he said: ‘Well, perhaps I am rather brusque with you because you are not the only person; some very well-informed people indeed have been saying the very same thing to me in the last week.’… That night I was Nehru’s guest, but he put me off into the Government House. I had been staying with Nehru for a day or two and then he packed me in the Government House. So I was with Mountbatten. I said to Mountbatten: ‘Have you seen Gandhi lately?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw him last week and we parted “brass rags”.’ That was his phrase. I said: ‘Why was that?’ ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘you ought to divide Kashmir and come to an end of this situation.’… Then I found that Nehru was quite really unwilling to talk much about this. In all the years that have gone, I have tried to talk about Kashmir, not from the Pakistan point of view, but in order to try and see what compromise can be made. Nehru was very unwilling to talk about all this.” The only man who talked of peace was Rajaji. He proposed a settlement based on the partition of Kashmir.
As for Vallabhbhai Patel, Shone reported to Philip Noel-Baker, as Secretary of State for the Dominions, on November 1: “Patel has never made any secret of his anti-Muslim or pro-Sikh sentiments; he is also realistic and of course vigorously anti-communist; he would no doubt like to run the country and might be expected to do it ruthlessly, primarily in Hindu interests and in those of himself and his friends. Nehru may be too much of an idealist and too emotional but he is certainly more of a statesman in the wider sense, and he has a pliability which Patel does not possess. Nor should I expect him to stand on his pride to the same extent as Patel. Nehru no doubt still exercises far more popular appeal than Patel, but Patel is said to have strong backing in the Congress Working Committee.” One close friend was G.D. Birla, a companion on his walks “every morning”. On Patel, Lord Ismay remarked that “he had never known a man, unless it was Jinnah, who appeared to have less humanity in him”.
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