Autobiographical Notes

The Nehru-Liaquat Pact and After

Amal

I am writing to explain the indications I had given of my view that a change has taken place in the situation owing to the Nehru-Liaquat Pact making the position I took in the letter to Dilip¹ no longer quite valid and necessitating a halt for a reconsideration and decision of policy. I gather from what you have written that you are rather surprised by my view of things and think that there is no change in the situation; you seem to regard the Pact as a futile affair not likely to succeed or to make any change in the situation and foredoomed to speedy failure. I would like to know what are the grounds for this view if you really hold it. I am quite prepared to learn that the situation is quite different from what it seems to be but that must be based on facts and the facts published in the newspapers or claimed as true by the Congress leaders point in a different direction. There seems to be something, initially at least, like a radical change in the situation and I have to face it, look at the possible and probable consequences and decide what has to be done.

What was the situation when the Dilip letter was written and what is it today? At that time everything had been pushed to a point at which war still seemed inevitable. The tension between Pakistan and India had grown more and more intolerable in every aspect, the massacres in East Bengal still seemed to make war inevitable and the India Government had just before Nehru's attempt to patch up a compromise made ready to march its army over the East Bengal borders once a few preliminaries had been arranged and war in Kashmir would have inevitably followed. America and Britain would not have been able to support Pakistan and, if our information is correct, had already intimated their inability to prevent India Government from taking the only possible course open to it in face of the massacres. In the circumstances the end of Pakistan would have been the certain consequence of war. The object we

Page 522

had in view would have been within sight of achievement.

Now all this is changed. After the conclusion of the Pact, after its acceptance by the Congress Party and the Assembly and its initial success of organisation and implementation, its acceptance also in both Western and Eastern Pakistan, no outbreak of war can take place at least for some time to come and, unless the Pact fails, it may not take place. That may mean in certain contingencies the indefinite perpetuation of the existence of Pakistan and disappearance of the prospect of any unification of India. I regard the Pact as an exceedingly clever move of Liaquat Ali to fish his "nation" out of the desperate situation into which it had run itself and to secure its safe survival. I will not go elaborately into the reasons for my view and I am quite prepared for events breaking out which will alter the situation once more in an opposite sense. But I had to take things as they are or seem to be, weigh everything and estimate the position and make my decisions. I will not say more in this letter, though I may have much to say hereafter: you should be able to understand from what I have written why I have reversed my course. Our central object and the real policy of the paper stands, but what steps have to be taken or can be taken in the new circumstances can only be seen in the light of future developments.

Meanwhile I await your answer with regard to the question I have put you. Afterwards I shall write again especially about the stand to be taken by Mother India.

3.5.50