Moving away from analysing the independence of India and Pakistan from the lens of what caused Partition or who was to blame, this paper seeks to capture the minutiae of the time through the reading of an English-language newspaper in 1947, to throw some light on the nexus between newspapers, politics and the public in general and on the representation of Gandhi in the press in particular.1 Newspapers have traditionally been an underutilized and undervalued primary source to gain insights into the immediacy or context of social and political happenings but have increasingly been recognized as shaping ‘political, economic, social and cultural dynamics’.2 With time, the research using newspapers as a source material has grown as has the discourse based on this research.3
The newspaper in focus in this chapter is the Dawn, founded by Mohammed Ali Jinnah on 26 October 1941, as a weekly from New Delhi, with financial help from the Calcutta industrialist M.A.H Ispahani and the Raja of Mahmudabad under the supervision of Liaquat Ali Khan, General Secretary of the All India Muslim League (League) who served as Managing Director.4 One of Jinnah’s early biographers, Bolitho, indicated that Jinnah and the media were not natural allies. He wrote, ‘It was strange that a man who had never employed a press agent and who spurned the favours of journalists, should own, and direct the policy of a newspaper’.5 On the contrary, Jinnah’s correspondence with Ispahani and Liaquat Ali Khan on the conversion of the Dawn from a weekly to a daily shows his deep involvement in the process of first establishing the Dawn as a weekly and then its conversion into a daily. Jinnah’s wanted ‘to see the paper become a really first class English daily which will be a genuine, real and true voice of Muslim India. It is a thing which Muslim India never had and if we are able to achieve what we desire, this may give a lead to other Provinces as the reading public is now growing and is very anxious to know the news and views of Muslim India’.6 The category of ‘Muslim India’ was an ‘imagined community’ of Anderson’s description, confined to parts of Bengal, Punjab and the United Provinces, where the League exercised influence.7 The Dawn weekly had a circulation above 4000 copies in June 1942 and was distributed all over the country. The daily newspaper was expected to do much better.8 The first editor of the daily Dawn newspaper Pothan Joseph was earlier the editor of the Ispahani-owned Star of India published from Calcutta. Joseph, however, parted ways with the Dawn in 1945 and was replaced by Altaf Hussain, who remained editor until 1965. Hussain reminisced that Jinnah ‘never issued any directive … In fact, he told me to … write fearlessly what I thought—“no matter even if Qaid-i-Azam was offended thereby”’.9
Before moving further, it may be useful to briefly contextualize the Dawn within the Indian media landscape. Newspapers in India emerged first in Calcutta in 1780 followed by Madras and Bombay and were initially confined to the British. Early newspapers seemed driven by personal agendas of ex-employees of the East India Company focused on attacking people and practices in the Company. Some newspapers were also published under the patronage of the Government. Newspapers that incurred the wrath of the Company faced fines and deportation of owners or editors while those that pledged loyalty were helped with concessions in postal rates and even machinery.10 The Company’s need to control information about its doings reaching England more than Indian readers led to the introduction of censorship, first in Madras (1795), followed by Calcutta (1799). Press regulations underwent revision and expansion through the nineteenth century with some Governor Generals like John Adam and Wellesley enacting harsh regulations with others being somewhat lenient. Over the next century, the various press Acts prescribed the need to have a licence, to publish the details of proprietors, editors, printers and place of publication in each paper or pamphlet and imposition of fines, imprisonment on those who printed information deemed sensitive to the Company and the requirement of a security deposit which could be forfeited in the event of any misdemeanour.
The emergence of newspapers in Indian languages in 1816 was partly responsible for the stringent Adam regulations in 1823, since the deportation rule didn’t apply to Indians.11 Natarajan speculates that such restrictions may have resulted in Indian-language papers focusing on social issues and reforms.12 Reformist newspapers were opposed by those professing orthodoxy, leading to heated debates. Newspapers in different parts of the country sometimes articulated similar views giving a campaign an all-India character as happened with the issue of raising the age of marriage.13 Notwithstanding the regulations and financial costs of sustaining newspapers with small circulation figures, new publications continued to emerge (while others ceased publication) and India witnessed the emergence of a print-culture, a public discourse, the evolving of a standardized usage in regional languages and the emergence of ‘imagined communities’.14 Communities, based on all of the ethnic markers of region, language, religion, caste alone or in combination, came to be articulated in the press as did competing views such as those against caste. The resultant imaginaries jostled for recognition, acceptance and, if possible, dominance at different levels of Indian society—local, regional and national.
Following the rebellion of 1857, the Governance of India moved from the East India Company to the Crown. Despite there being no proof of press involvement in the uprising, an Act was introduced to regulate the establishment of printing presses and the circulation of books. The distrust of the Indian-language press and its power to misrepresent the Government in the minds of an ignorant populace led to the passing of the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which for the first time segregated the English-language press from that in Indian languages.15 It was repealed in 1882 following a change of Government in Britain and Viceroy in India.16 Almost simultaneously arose another legislation that divided the press not only in India but also in Britain. This was the Ilbert Bill seeking to modify the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code to allow Indian members of the Civil Service at the district level to have legal jurisdiction on British persons in India.17 The publication of the Bill in 1883 led to a violent reaction among the British community in India and heated debates in the press in Britain.18 The Bill was finally watered down to maintain a British majority in all juries. The protests by the British in India, however, brought home to the Indian public the privileged position of the British in India and their reluctance towards any kind of equality with native Indians and the need for an organized response to this and similar issues.
Almost ironically, however, some members of the European community came together with various Indian organizations to form the Indian National Congress in 1885, as an all-India organization. Many of the members were also editors or owners of leading newspapers, thus linking press and politics. The first decades of the twentieth century saw a rise in political articulation and activity and a widening gap between the British and the Indians. The partition of Bengal and the deportation of Lajpat Rai and Tilak for seditious writing, a rise in activities termed extremist and the division of the Congress between the extremists and the moderates all resulted in an increasingly politicised press.19 Fresh attempts to control the press through repressive legislations in 1908 and 1910 led to the closure of many newspapers due to forfeiture of security.20 By 1914, to quote Israel, ‘virtually all of the major themes that reflected the intermingling of press and political history in India were evident’.21
Into this scenario Gandhi returned to India in 1915—a social and political outsider in a sense.22 Among the welcome functions in Bombay was one by the Gujarati community where the main address was by M.A. Jinnah, perhaps, says Guha, the most influential Gujarati at the time.23 Indian politics entered the phase of national-level civil disobedience movements and protests and also witnessed a generational change. While this is not the place to discuss the various events that unfolded, it will suffice to say that various legislations and actions like the Jallianwala massacre eroded trust between the Indian public and the British administrators, the latter viewing every utterance or activity as a threat. Gandhi, ever careful of his message, in the words of Natarajan, ‘marked his entry into active politics’ with acquiring two publications one each in English and Gujarati.24 He also permitted free reproduction of his articles in other newspapers, a provision which was freely utilised.25
The English-language press, which is the focus of the current discussion, played the role of the all-India media. The point has been made that in ‘significant measure, the ideal of an All-India nation state that emerged out of the Indian nationalist struggle was imagined in English print’.26 In a multilingual country, English was ‘essential for any national role and the establishment or control of an English-language paper often signalled a politician’s desire to move on to the All-India stage’ and communicate across regions.27 The success of the English-language newspaper was also the result of other technical and economic factors that had emerged such as the availability of telegraph signals only in the Roman script and the preference of advertisers and a growing reading public.28 There emerged a distinction between the Anglo-Indian Press and English papers owned by Indians and edited by either Indian or European editors. English-language papers in each region developed reputations and readership beyond their immediate hinterland. In some parts of the country, there were also Indian-language papers that ‘functioned as associates’ of the Indian-owned English newspapers.29
Another round of Press Ordinances coinciding with the launch of the civil disobedience movement and the salt march in 1930 resulted in newspapers being asked to deposit securities. The enactment of the Government of India Act of 1935 was followed by elections based on communal representation. Congress refused to coordinate with the Muslim League to form a Government in any province. The Muslim League also passed in 1940 what came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, though the word Pakistan was not used in it.30 The Congress was steadily losing its imagined role as the sole voice of all India and Indians. The press and politics were further suppressed due to the world war to which India and Indians were committed by the Viceroy without consultation. Control was exercised on news that could be published and on newsprint.
Into this landscape of a politicized and influential English press which ‘identified … and also warred with each other’, the Dawn was launched, in 1941 to further its cause.31 The Muslim League also owned an Urdu weekly Manshoor which they had tried unsuccessfully to convert into a daily newspaper.32 By 1947 the Dawn had established itself as a paper to be reckoned with in New Delhi, so much so that ‘carrying it was a statement in itself and it was used, especially by students and young people, to announce to others that they supported the demand for Pakistan’.33 The paper published news on all kinds of activities but never lost focus in making a case for Pakistan. The main message simply put was that India comprised two autonomous independent nations which could not co-exist; Muslims in India could only get a raw deal at the hands of the untrustworthy Congress party.
How then did this newspaper that led to what could only be described as a successful campaign for the creation of the nation state of Pakistan report Gandhi in this most crucial year? It could well have chosen to ignore Gandhi for he did not hold any official position within the Congress or in the Interim Government and Gandhi was clearly not someone the League trusted. Despite Gandhi’s public aura, it isn’t as though every newspaper in India covered all of his activities on a daily basis. Each paper picked aspects of news that fitted in with their general editorial policy, political leaning or reader interest in the region of circulation. The Dawn was no different in this regard. In terms of content, the pieces in the Dawn, like in other English newspapers, were generally from agency sources—the main ones being the Reuter-owned Associated Press of India (API) and occasionally the Globe from London. In the Dawn, in addition some pieces are attributed to unnamed ‘Dawn’ special representatives, the Orient Press of India and the news agency Associated Press of America (APA) which had entered India in the war years.34 A comparison of papers reporting the same news reveals almost identical reportage with the news agency output edited for length and paragraphs shuffled to suit the needs of each newspaper. Sometimes the only difference between the same item in one paper and the next is the reference to Gandhi as Mr Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi or Gandhiji. Headlines of course often reflected the slant the paper wanted to give to a story.
The relationship between Gandhi and the Dawn is complex and layered and draws directly on the positioning of both Jinnah and Gandhi in the public domain and their interpersonal relationship. As Long says, it was the strategy of the Dawn to ‘elevate Jinnah to the same stature as Gandhi’ and firmly establish him as the Quaid-i-Azam or the ‘Great Leader’.35 Just as ‘Congressites paid pilgrimage to Gandhi in his ashram so too Dawn recorded all of the visits made to Jinnah by figures great and small’.36 By 1947, Gandhi had a sizeable public reputation in India and abroad and was often covered by foreign media. Jinnah as the permanent president of the Muslim League had also gained tremendous clout in the previous decade as the sole spokesman for the Muslim community. Gandhi of course kept the press busy by being on the move all the time and also being very vocal in both speech and writing. Gandhi was therefore covered in many sections of the Dawn—news columns, editorials, letters to the editor or cartoons. What he didn’t get was photographic or visual coverage, which was reserved largely for images of Jinnah. And, while the Dawn referred to Jinnah as Qaed-e-Azam, it addressed Gandhi only as Mr. Gandhi, reserving the appellation Mahatma for when it wanted to pass comment on connotations of the word ‘mahatma’.
Gandhi made his entry in the Dawn on New Year’s day 1947, both in a news item and in a cartoon.37 The cartoon, which apparently offended Nehru, depicted a collapsed figure of the Congress on the floor represented it seems by Patel.38 The Dawn cartoonist in 1947 was Ajmal Husain, none other than the 21-year-old son of the editor Altaf Husain. Ajmal had just graduated from Scottish Church College in Calcutta and was headed studying documentary films when Liaquat Ali Khan called him to Delhi and asked him to join the Dawn as cartoonist.39 He apparently took a few weeks training in composition and perspective of cartooning and learnt the rest on the job.40 Gandhi appeared in many more unflattering cartoons through the year including twice more in January itself.
In the first quarter of 1947 coverage on Gandhi focused largely on his village to village walking tour in Noakhali district, East Bengal, following riots in October 1946.41 Gandhi reached this Muslim League-governed province in November to reiterate his message of non-violence among both the Hindu victims and Muslim perpetrators. Dawn portrayed Gandhi not as a messiah of peace but as someone playing politics. A report on 3 January echoed the mistrust between the League and Gandhi with the charge that Gandhi’s day-to-day activities were occupied with something other than the ‘Mission of Peace and Love’, the reference being to him having advised Assam and the Sikhs on the Grouping Plan in the Constituent Assembly.42 The paper accused Gandhi of ‘carrying on anti-Pakistan propaganda in the name of peace and love’ as part of the pre-arranged plan to hold Noakhali in prominence to overshadow Bihar where a reverse massacre had occurred in November 1946.43
The tour was portrayed as a failure and the paper carried statements from the Premier of Bengal and others challenging Gandhi to instead visit Bihar and see for himself the brutality done by Hindus to Muslims. An editorial piece titled ‘Tour-A Flop’ captured some of these sentiments.44 It contended that Gandhi had lost much of his glamour, quoting his own words at a prayer meeting that with the numbers dwindling, one day he would be left without anyone to listen to him at all. The editorial responded:
we do not know why Hindus should show apathy for prayer meetings … conducted by no less a man than Mr. Gandhi himself whose image decorates many Hindu Temples … What does, then, this apathy … flow from? … it arises from the dictum that sweet words butter no parsnip. They are getting not merely the butter but also bread with it free of cost from the Bengal League Ministry … Muslims attending the prayer left the meeting … they could not remain in a prayer meeting where un-Islamic songs are sung. Mr. Gandhi should not feel sore about it. It does not mean any disrespect to Ram. Besides this, Mr. Gandhi’s prayer meetings are as much intended for propaganda purposes calculated to jeopardize Muslim interests. We are glad that the unsophisticated Muslim rural folk have now fully understood Mr. Gandhi’s game in their village.45
This passage captures many of the themes, tensions and anxieties that prevailed at the time from a Muslim League perspective. Gandhi conducting a mass contact programme in the heart of Muslim League-ruled Bengal needed to be countered. The first message that needed to be put out was that Gandhi was drawing no audience, either Hindu or Muslim, because the public was content with the government. Designating the tour a ‘flop’ right at the start set the tone on how the paper would portray it. This being a state with a League Ministry, some comment on League governance was in order and the mouthpiece newspaper was the ideal medium to put out the message that the Provincial government cared for the welfare of both Hindus and Muslims.
The Muslim boycott of the meetings, not because they objected to the recitation of the Quran but to the recitation of Hindu prayers, was consistent with the League message of Hindus and Muslims being two disparate nations. Such reportage illustrated ordinary Muslim village folk demonstrating this reality of incompatible religious worlds. As regards the Hindus not turning up, the explanation was either that most had lost their homes and hadn’t returned for fear of more violence despite Gandhi or they had no time for Gandhi.
More telling is the comment on what the Dawn claimed was the real purpose of Gandhi’s meetings. Gandhi in the heart of Bengal had the ability to ‘jeopardize Muslim interests’ or carry on ‘anti-Pakistan propaganda’ because of his connect with the masses and the clarity of his message. Gandhi was literally walking the talk on the possibility of Hindu-Muslim unity and co-existence and, if possible, a change of heart. He was doing so in territory the League considered part of a potential though undefined, Pakistan, and he was preaching to the weakest link in the League political organization, namely, the populace at the base.46 The League’s nervousness was justified, since Pakistan was still an idea and someone like Gandhi staying on the ground and working to mend the hatred between the two communities could dilute the message of the League that Hindus and Muslims were two nations that couldn’t coexist. The country was watching to see if Gandhi would succeed.
The barrage of criticism against Gandhi carried well into February with headlines declaring ‘Remove Gandhi from Noakhali; Demonstrations in Calcutta’ and ‘Bihar Eclipses Noakhali, But I Wont Go—Gandhi’; ‘Gandhi’s Presence in Noakhali Resented’ and ‘Gandhi: Bengal Stay Wholly Meaningless’.47 The Premier of Bengal, H.S. Suhrawardy of the Muslim League party, termed the Bihar events the ‘great Bihar Massacre’ to counter the popular usage ‘great Calcutta Killings’ to describe the Calcutta riots of August 1946.48 The thrust of the campaign was to pressurise Gandhi to go to Bihar or else it seemed that he cared only about Hindu suffering.
In the midst of this, bigger events stole the main headlines, with the announcement in London on 20 February, of British intent to leave India by June 1948. With the future uncertain, it became more important now for all actors and parties to consolidate and ensure that they were well placed when the end game began. The Dawn carried a cartoon of Gandhi studying the British statement with a magnifying glass.49 It also reported Gandhi sending a ‘top Secret’ communication to Nehru, with documents being carried back and forth by an emissary who travelled by air.
In early March Gandhi finally decided to go to Bihar which was a Congress-ruled Province. The first of the headlines read, ‘I Have Come To Shed Tears For Bihar’.50 The story said that the ‘burnt, charred, and devastated houses through which he passed this morning must have convinced him that his philosophy of non-violence was buried fathoms deep’.51 This discrediting of Gandhian non-violence, as unacceptable to both Hindus (Bihar) and Muslims (Noakhali), was consistent with the message of mistrust between the communities and the need for separate homelands. The Dawn Patna correspondent also alleged that Gandhi’s presence was an embarrassment to the Congress Government which had withheld information of the actual extent of the massacre from him. The writer also disapproved of Gandhi’s host in Patna, Dr Mahmud’s conduct in calling him Mahatma, claiming that it was ‘very much resented’.52
The paper covered Gandhi in Bihar in more detail than it had at Noakhali. Every meeting, every visit to affected villages, every comment was reported. Headlines read, ‘Gandhi Sees Ghastly Sites in Bihar’ and the report described Gandhi telling his audience that he had seen such horrible sights and his heart was so full that he might burst into tears.53 Gandhi met the public, members of the Bihar Government as well as from the League. He stayed longer than he intended to and by mid-March the headlines changed to ‘Light Dawns on Mr. Gandhi: Convinced of Atrocities on Muslims of Bihar’.54 The Dawn Patna correspondent wrote that Gandhi was convinced that the report of the Bihar Provincial Muslim League ‘was not only not exaggerated but did not contain even all the facts’.55 The report reiterated Gandhi’s pain at realizing that the Bihar Congress Ministry ‘deliberately remained out of touch from him’ and gave him an ‘absolutely wrong impression of the things’ in which event, he could have ‘rendered better service to people’.56 It is worth noting that while in Bengal the paper depicted the League Government as being in control and underplayed the violence and destruction, in Bihar, the Congress Government were implicated in the riots. Moreover, while Gandhi was portrayed in Bengal as without an audience, in Bihar, the paper seemed to have no problem with Muslim sufferers turning out in their thousands to meet Gandhi and tell him their woes.
But one fear remained. The paper campaigned for action against Congressmen involved in the riot and the appointment of Muslim League members on the Rehabilitation Committees. It feared that otherwise it may provide an opportunity ‘at Muslim mass contact through the back door method’.57 No matter what the paper said there was a consistent lurking fear that Gandhi’s charisma may lure Muslims to the nationalist side and away from the League. This anxiety was indicative of the fact that despite the Muslim League and the Dawn wanting to portray the Indian Muslim community as a homogenous group speaking and thinking in one voice, the reality was far from this truth. The community was as heterogeneous and regionally disparate as any other group in India and this was visible in their responses to various situations. Also there were many who were not committed to the League ideology and these fence sitters could easily be swayed by Gandhi as was evident by the numbers who came out to greet him wherever he went.
Gandhi was quoted admonishing Hindus for their lack of repentance and the newspaper that was sceptical of his motives endorsed his views by putting some parts in italics such as Gandhi ‘referred to the atrocities that had been committed by Hindus of Bihar, before which the happenings in Noakhali or Tipperah paled into insignificance’.58 To bolster its argument that the Hindus in Bihar were unrepentant and to embarrass Gandhi, the paper ran a piece titled, ‘Gandhi’s Call for Bihar Relief Fetches Rs. 25’.59 The story alleged that compared to Muslims in Noakhali, Hindus in Bihar were not contributing to the relief effort which was a sign of their unrepentance. Gandhi had apparently announced the opening of the Bihar Relief Fund and asked his audience to contribute liberally. ‘Audience kept quiet and the response was nil. Then his private secretary brought out two rings and wanted to auction them … in spite of his best efforts they failed to fetch more than Rs, 25’.60 Gandhi apparently said this response was discouraging whereas similar appeals in Noakhali had raised three lakhs of rupees. The item ended saying, ‘Karamchand Gandhi’ then quietly left the meeting’.61
A few days later, a rejoinder from Gandhi’s Bengali translator was published in the Letters to Editor column.62 Bose actually contradicted two news items. On the ring issue he clarified that the rings had been presented a day before the announcement of the Bihar Relief Fund but were meant for the Harijan Fund. No auction was actually made and only their approximate value was announced when Gandhi referred to his intention of auctioning them at a later date. Bose also clarified that no collections were made from the local community during the Noakhali tour and most of the three lakhs gathered for relief came from outside the state. The other item Bose refuted was an item published on 11 March under the misleading headline that proclaimed, ‘What Hindus Did Was ‘Purely from a Sense of Duty’.63 Bose clarified, as had the news item, that Gandhi was warned via telegram against condemning the Hindus in Bihar ‘for what they had done was purely from a sense of duty’. Bose referred to the printed piece to clarify that Gandhi had strongly condemned the opinion saying he ‘had no hesitation in saying that the writer did no good to India or to Hindustan by issuing the warning’.64
The arrival of Mountbatten in India at the end of March changed the focus to the forthcoming independence. Mountbatten’s invitation to Jinnah and Gandhi for talks resulted in both men heading to Delhi from Bombay and Patna respectively—the first time that they were going to be in the city together that year. The Dawn reported in detail the time that each of them spent in talks with Mountbatten so as to establish their equivalence. Hardly had the talks in Delhi begun (1 April), when Dawn reported that Gandhi was not allowed to include any recitations from the Quran in his prayer meeting. The paper reported that ‘While the verses from the Quran Sharif were being recited … an excited Hindu youth took exception to such recital, according to an “authorized version” of Mr. Gandhi’s prayer speech’.65 The authorized version of the prayer speech was used obviously to authenticate the source of the story and attribute it to Gandhi’s own record keepers.
As discussed earlier, Gandhi’s meetings had seen disruptions in Noakhali too, but this time, Dawn played up this matter for a few days running. An editorial titled ‘Quran and Mr Gandhi’ said:
For three days in succession the sacred name of the Quran has been profanely bandied about in the idol-house known as the Balmiki temple … Muslims have been watching this intolerable controversy over the Word of God, to … which … a section of Hindus has been objecting … Mr. Gandhi … has laid the Holy Book of Islam open to this affront.
Muslims have begged Mr. Gandhi … to desist from having verses from the Quran recited at his mass meetings under the garb of “prayer”. These meetings are … inevitably Hindu in character … Indeed, an even more unworthy motive has been discernible … namely to bring the Quran down to equality with idolatrous forms of prayer.66
Multiple messages were being conveyed here. The message of Hindu intolerance to Islamic prayers and by association to Muslims which would be repeated in other publications and travel far. Second, the contradictory Gandhi who took no note of peaceful Muslim protest to the recitation of Hindu prayers in Noakhali, but relented here because Hindu objectors threatened violence. Third, only Muslims could decide who could recite a prayer from their holy book. Quoting Gandhi as saying: ‘My non-violence dictates that even if a boy objects to my holding prayer meeting I will refrain from doing so’ the paper remarked, ‘Strange indeed is this Gandhian non-violence which covers such a multitude of contrarinesses! But we forget that while Muslims objectors … never threatened him with violence, the Hindu objectors … did’.67 The editorial ends with hope the Mr. Gandhi will not disregard their wise counsel to stop recitations from the Quran.
The resumption of Islamic prayers after Gandhi dismissed objections to their recitation led to another editorial, titled ‘This “Prayer” Business’. The paper said it had received a sheaf of letters from Muslim readers, one of which they printed. The paper justified its editorial saying it needed to address this issue since the letter represented a section which threatened some form of “direct action” to persuade Mr. Gandhi to abandon taking liberties with the Quran.68 Taking a leaf out of Gandhi’s book, the editorial preached non-violence. It said, ‘whatever may be the depth of feelings aroused by Mr. Gandhi’s practice, Muslims must on no account … contemplate any course of action similar to that suggested’ by the letter writer.69 It challenged Gandhi: ‘If he really possesses the greatness that is claimed for him or the sincerity that he himself claims’ he should respect Muslim sentiments. If not ‘he will stand convicted of political egoism’.70
Gandhi was back in the news a few days later, this time for leaking to the press his telegrams to Bengal Premier Suhrawardy. On 11 April, the Dawn ran a story titled ‘Gandhi’s Telegrams on Noakhali Responsible for Fresh Troubles in Calcutta-Suhrawardy’.71 They followed it up with an Editorial titled ‘Peacemaker or Inciter?’.72 Taking the position that Gandhi’s correspondence with the Bengal Premier should have been confidential, the Dawn accused him of taking ‘advantage of the license which he alone enjoys to say anything he likes in public’.73 Suhrawardy predictably responded that the situation in Noakhali was nowhere as bad as portrayed by Gandhi.74 This issue continued to feature for a few days.
Gandhi declared his work in Delhi over and returned to Patna to resume his peace efforts. After he left, news was released, on 15 April, of a joint peace appeal by both Gandhi and Jinnah, deploring ‘the recent acts of lawlessness and violence that have brought the utmost disgrace on the fair name of India’ and denouncing ‘for all time the use of force to achieve political ends’ and calling upon all communities to refrain from violence and disorder.75 It was at the ‘Viceroy’s initiative and at his specific request’ that the two leaders had signed the declaration and authorized its publication.76 Gandhi had signed the appeal a few days prior while Jinnah signed it the day it was released to the press. The news was on the front page next morning. It took a day longer for a pictorial copy of the appeal to be published. The short typed statement had the signature of Jinnah in English or the Roman script while Gandhi had chosen to sign first in Hindi or Devanagari script, then Urdu and below that he signed, ‘i.e. M.K. Gandhi in the Roman script’.77 The Dawn reprinted the image on 24 April on its editorial page with the title ‘Lest You Forget’.78 It made no comment on Gandhi sending out a message to both communities by signing in Urdu and Devanagari. Instead, the Dawn editorial titled ‘The Appeal’ played up the symbolism of Jinnah being invited to sign the appeal alongside Gandhi. It was seen by the paper as a high point for Jinnah and his mission. It even slipped up in using Gandhi’s appellation ‘Mahatma’ when referring to him. The editorial noted:
the very fact of the Viceroy having chosen the Qaed-e-Azam and Mr. Gandhi for the purpose of an appeal … is tantamount to a recognition that two voices and not one must speak in this context … Were India a united country … there would have been no need for a “joint appeal” … Again and again it has been impliedly recognized that the Muslims and the Hindus are two separate peoples and that the Muslim League represents the first and the Congress the second.79
The peace appeal was widely publicized, printed handbills were air-dropped over cities in Bengal and Punjab; publicity vans broadcast the appeal and it was shown in cinema halls. Various State legislatures endorsed the appeal and it stayed in the news for over a month.80 Was this the start of a new equation between the newspaper and Gandhi now that Jinnah had achieved equal status? The truce was broken just past the two-week mark in early May. Gandhi had returned to Delhi and almost immediately was quoted, during his prayer meeting, as having cast doubt on the wisdom of issuing the appeal. Referring to the ongoing violence in the frontier Province, the Punjab and other places, Gandhi had said ‘The purpose of the appeal seemed to have been entirely defeated in practice … it was not open to Jinnah Sahib to plead that his followers did not listen to his appeal’.81
This sense of betrayal carried into the editorial one day later when Gandhi was apparently nominated yet again for the Nobel Peace prize. The nomination seemed to put Gandhi onto a pedestal and clearly the paper felt obliged to take some of the sheen off this seeming honour. The editorial titled ‘Said Regretfully’ remarked, ‘Had there been a Nobel Talkers Prize the Mahatma would have won it long ago. It is a paradox that one whose “days of silence” are world famous should at the same time be the world’s most talkative man’. It also criticized Gandhi’s statement on the inability of Jinnah to get his followers to keep peace. Shoring up Jinnah’s stellar qualities it added, ‘it is a trifle too much, even for Mr. Gandhi, to go on criticising … the Qaed-e-Azam who suffers from the handicaps of dignity and propriety and … unable to answer back every spiteful charge … Mr. Gandhi knows his own advantage; and never had another man keener sense of exploitation of opportunity. And Mr. Gandhi oftener than not has eyes on audiences beyond the seas’.82 The comparison of the contrasting personalities of the two men is something that has been much written about. As Wolpert said, ‘they recognised one another as “natural enemies,” rivals for national power, popularity, and charismatic control of their audiences’.83 The Dawn’s comments highlight their distinct personality.
Gandhi and Jinnah came face to face on 6 May, one on one for nearly three hours at Jinnah’s home—the result of a chance encounter at the Viceroy’s House a few days earlier, where Gandhi suggested they meet. The meeting lasted longer than anyone expected. Gandhi even missed his prayer hour. They did not address the press for whom Jinnah released a statement saying they had discussed two matters which were:
the question of division of India into Pakistan and Hindustan … Mr. Gandhi does not accept the principle of division … in my opinion not only Pakistan is inevitable but this is the only practical solution of India’s political problem.
The second matter … was a letter which we both have signed jointly appealing to the people to maintain peace and we both have come to the conclusion that we must do our best in our respective spheres to see that that appeal of ours is carried out and we will make every effort for this purpose.84
The Dawn reproduced the entire statement capitalized and in bold script. It was also probably the first time in the year that Gandhi had his photograph published in the paper, even though only a small passport-sized one. Gandhi referred to this meeting the next day during his post-prayer speech, alluding to the fact that some people did not approve of his meeting Jinnah but that ‘he believed such personal discussions would lead to mutual understanding and appreciation of their respective points of view. He would therefore call on Mr. Jinnah not once but as many times as he could’.85 He also clarified his opposition to a division of India though ‘it appeared to him that the Congress leaders had seemed to have almost decided on the partition of the country as well as of the provinces of the Punjab and Bengal’.86
Prophetic words indeed. In a month’s time, even as the Gandhi-Jinnah peace message was still being broadcast and distributed widely, the partition plan was accepted by both the Congress and the Muslim League. The violence never quite subsided. Gandhi and Jinnah did not meet again one on one. As Dawn was celebrating the creation of Pakistan in the busy weeks preceding Independence and Partition Gandhi astounded everyone by declaring on 8 August in Lahore, that he would spend the rest of his days in Pakistan—either in East or West Bengal or in West Punjab or in the North West Frontier Province. This flummoxed the League and resulted in yet another editorial titled ‘A Quixotic Decision’:
Strange are Mr. Gandhi’s ways. These are beyond the comprehension of the average normal man … Is it not strange that the man who has bitterly opposed the creation of Pakistan for ten years with the frenzy of a crusader, should prefer to live the rest of his life in the benighted Dominion of his haunted imagination?
… Not that this great Hindu leader is unwelcome in Pakistan. What more, he will, we feel sure, be treated with the Islamic code of hospitality and courtesy … But Mr. Gandhi ought to know that … he owes certain obligations to his host, he must comport himself with decency and not abuse the hospitality by playing the role of meddlesome busybody or interloper. Unfortunately, on his own showing, Mr. Gandhi wants to settle in Pakistan not with the object of starting an ashram to indulge in his favourite pastime of seeking light, but for the purpose of putting his heart into (some) panicky Hindus in the Dominion.87
This declaration was not part of the script of partition and the new nation of Pakistan. Was it a calculated political move or was it wishful thinking on Gandhi’s part? Gandhi in trying to make sense of partition had gone on record to say that both countries could surely undo the division at a later date—a theme repeated in many of the nationalist papers in the days leading up to partition. For reunification to happen people must live in harmony and mutual trust. Gandhi, deeply disturbed by the extent of violence unleashed in various parts of the country over the past few months, still hoped to bring about sanity, mutual respect and peaceful co-existence among Hindus and Muslims. He had changed hearts in Noakhali and Bihar and probably thought he could safeguard the minorities in Pakistan and India. These were also weeks when no one on either side of the divide had any anticipation of the bloodshed to follow nor of a national boundary that could not quite be crossed at will.
Events moved at a bewildering pace in the next few weeks even for Gandhi. I will end with one last juxtaposition of Jinnah and Gandhi. This time, reference to Gandhi in absentia, helping the newly established Pakistan Constituent Assembly pass one of their first resolutions to the effect that Jinnah would be addressed as Qaed-e-Azam in all official acts, documents, correspondence and so on. The members of the Opposition objected to this decision on grounds that conferment of titles was against socialist principles. The Dawn editorial defending the resolution, accused the Opposition of not appreciating the sentiment of the decision. It said the appellation was more a term of endearment than a title and Jinnah had been known by it for nearly ten years. ‘If Mr. Gandhi could be called Mahatma Gandhi, why should exceptions be made in the case of Mr. Jinnah?’ it said quoting JN Mandal, temporary Chairman of the Constituent Assembly.88
The Dawn moved with Jinnah to Karachi but Jinnah’s hopes of having the paper publish from both Delhi and Karachi were soon dashed, when the Delhi office of the Dawn was burnt down in September. The masthead, however, continued to declare the dual status of the paper for a month or so after the paper had no presence in Delhi but the Dawn ultimately became a Pakistani newspaper. In the next few months, the reality of the complete separation that partition meant hit home to both sides. Both governments were caught unawares and were left coping with refugee rehabilitation and also fought their first war. The media discourse that came to define how both countries reported each other came to be established as these events unfolded. Its main features include an obsession with the other, a focus on establishing difference rather than similarity and not missing the chance to score points.