Veteran Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad prays at the grave of his political rival Muhammad Ali Jinnah during a visit to Karachi in 1951.
He wrote the following about the Quaid-e-Azam in 1948:
“Mr Jinnah himself was an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity… But he felt aggrieved when the Congress formed governments in seven states and ignored the Muslim League. In 1940 he decided to pursue the partition demand to check Muslim political decline…
“Mr Jinnah has every right to his opinion about me, but I have no doubts about his intelligence. As a politician he has worked overtime to fortify Muslim communalism and the demand for Pakistan.”
Jinnah’s Pakistan finished in 1971 as 56% left Pakistan. Abul Kalam Azad seems the ultimate winner.
abul kalam azad’s “india wins freedom” is a masterpiece..it brings to light the dichotomy and infighting within congress leadership in the secular and extremist fringe elements that rejected the last hope for a united and confederal india as also mentioned by jaswant singh and other writers.
such was the paronai in congress against the option of complete autonomy to all states without delhi as the powerful center and in control, it eventually sowed the seeds of discontent in muslim leadership.
maulana azaad in his book is critical of sardar patel and nehru’s role of scuttling the cabinet mission plan agreed in 1946 which led to the irreconcilable differences between the muslim league leadership led by jinnah and the congress where moderates like azaad and gandhi and bacha khan who were sidelined during the crucial period leading to the partitioning of the subcontinent.
therefore ML is not entirely to blame for the eventual partition plan as congress played its dubious role and by the controversial role of lord mountbatten who hastened the independence plan from proposed 1948 to 1947 thus contributing to the bloody genocide and its consequences that the subcontinent suffers communalism and destruction till today