Cripps offer during World War II was acceptable to people like Aurobindo Ghosh and M.N Roy

PROFESSOR BHIKU PARIKH has written three books on Gandhi. The most important of these is on colonialisation and reform, analysing Gandhi’s political discourse. In the context of Gandhi, this should include important political events which shaped the destiny of the country. Prof Parikh does not take these into account and analyse them. He does not refer to the Subhash Chandra Bose incident, or to Gandhi’s ban resolution against Bose. What would have been the position of the Congress if Bose had been allowed to form the Working Committee and function as the President? Prof Parikh does not refer to the Swarajists’ defiance at the Ahmedabad AICC session. He does not analyse a number of other incidents of national importance.

Among these is the Cripps offer during World War II. This was acceptable to people like Aurobindo Ghosh and M.N Roy. Why did the Congress and its supermen reject it? Perhaps Prof Parikh’s analysis would lead one to conclude that if the Cripps offer had been accepted, India would not have been partitioned, and the post-partition holocaust view would have been avoided. What of negotiations with Mohammad Ali Jinnah? What was it in Jinnah’s demands that the Congress found difficult to accept? How would independent India have suffered if these had been accepted? If they had been accepted, India would not have been partitioned. I refer to these in the hope that Prof Parikh may deal with them in a future edition of his popular book...The author is a former editor of The Radical Humanist and erstwhile President, PUCL-Delhi; he edits the PUCL Bulletin. Source by mainstreamweekly.net at 10:58 PM