(After) the Shimla Conference broke up on July 16. within a fortnight Azad had ... worked out his last ditch attempt - a scheme of Hindu-Muslim compromise on the basis of power sharing - in order to avoid partition. He is supposed to have despatched a summary of his scheme to Gandhiji on August 2. Gandhiji replied advising him not to make any public statement even in his personal capacity and to only present his proposals before the Working Committee. The Working Committee was scheduled to meet on September 15, still about a month away, and Maulana Azad wanted to give the country a hint of his ideas to begin a discussion on the fundamental issues. He, therefore, produced a self-censored bowdlerized version of his scheme (without spelling out his specific suggestions) in the form of a 1500-word statement and issued it through the Associated Press of India from Kashmir where he was recovering from exhaustion and ill health.
The statement was published in full in almost all newspapers across the country and most nationalist papers wrote favourable editorials as well. However, none of the senior Congress leaders made any comment. The special correspondent of the Bombay based Times of India had a long interview with Azad before the meeting and the interview underlined how serious and persistent Azad still was, since issuing his statement, about his scheme. But the Working Committee meeting at Pune on September 15-16 took a very hard-line decision with regard to further negotiations with the Muslim League.
... Azad's plea for fresh appeal to the Muslims on the basis of a federal solution with autonomous units (with right of secession) and his warning that any attempt to form a unitary government will fail, were rejected in toto.
Maulana Azad had specially appealed to his Hindu friends "to have entirely to Muslims the question of their status in the future constitution of India. (This principle he had originally enunciated in his presidential address at the Ramgarh session in 1940). Azad was confident that if Muslims were satisfied, even at a late stage, that a decision was not being imposed upon them by a non-Muslim majority, they would drop the demand for partition and realize that their interests were best served "by a federated and united India" .. No records of the working committee proceedings have been found. It is, however, on record that Jagat Narain Lal, who had shot into prominence as the one who moved the resolution in the AICC at Allahabad in 1942, restricting the sense of the Working Committee statement on the question of self-determination made in response to the Cripps proposals, had participated in the committee meeting at Poona on special invitation. (He had been a leading member of the Hindu Mahasabha for many years during the Forties).
A few days later the AICC had its session at the historic Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay when the Working Committee resolutions were generally passed with some minority amendments. The resolution on the question of self-determination was not placed before the AICC, but on the main political resolution when Dr. K.M. Ashraf attempted to move an amendment on that subject he was shouted down. Mian Iftikhar-ud-Din, President of Punjab PCC, attempted a similar amendment to the effect that the elected representatives of the Constituent Assembly in areas where the Muslims are in a majority should be free to decide as to whether they should join the Indian Union or not. The Congress must awaken the Muslim masses and win them over to their side, he said. This speech called forth a riposte from Nehru who asserted that ... the Congress had done its best in the past to come to an understanding with the Muslim League, but it had now "come to the conclusion that it is in the best interests of the country to keep away from the Muslim League leaders hereafter." Winding up the debate, Sardar Patel took a similarly aggressive attitude towards the League. "There shall be no more offers to the League" ...
As is well-known ... in the elections to the Central and Provincial Assembly ... the Congress lost practically all the Muslim seats to the League.
A few weeks after the elections, however, the Aga Khan visited India for consultations with Muslim leaders. He too approached Sardar Patel and said that he found Jinnah in a more receptive mood and would therefore suggest direct talks by the Congress leaders with him. But the Congress did not respond to the suggestion.
At the penultimate stage of the freedom struggle, Azad's behaviour reflected democratic centralism and inner-party discipline. In spite of holding definite views which were diametrically opposed by the majority of his colleagues, he did not air his differences in public till the very end.
Even though no original copy of Azad's scheme and the covering letter to Gandhiji has so far been traced ... They had been intercepted by the British Government Intelligence and promptly transmitted to Whitehall ... Reproduced in the Transfer of Power, Vol. VI, doc. 68, pp.155-157 ...
... More than being worried about the problems the Muslims left behind in India would face Azad was more concerned with the spectre of the coming into existence of two hostile states in the subcontinent whose mutual enmity would very likely derail them from their most fundamental tasks of funneling all energy and resources for the development of their peoples. Possibly the Indian leadership had even expected that a poor, less developed and resourceless Pakistan would before long fall on its face and return to the Union, duly humbled. But that was counting without the ... forces of imperialism in world politics who would do everything not only to keep the seceding state afloat but also to use it as a military base to keep the parent state busy with ever-rising military programmes.
Azad rightly understood that to hold together in a loose confederal arrangement was likely to be far more successful than embarking on a confrontational course which would more likely lead to mutual ruination. (Source: The Hindu, 21 March; 1999)
