Saturday, January 19, 2013

Wolpertisms, etc.

 In response to a question from Vishal in the comments:

1.  An account of the events around the Cabinet Mission Plan is here.  Scroll to the bottom of the page for the author of the site.  It is a collection of primary and secondary sources and some commentary.   Of course, the selection of source material quoted can be biased - but you can make up your own mind.  A summary take is here.

2.  Wolpert has a habit of dramatizing history to make it more interesting, and in that he creates fiction, in my opinion.   Here are some examples, you can judge for yourself:

a. Gandhi-Jinnah 1915
b. Gandhi-Mountbatten-Nehru 1947 -1
    Gandhi-Mountbatten-Nehru 1947 - 2
c. Gandhi's nervous breakdown, 1915
d. Gandhi and All-Parties Conference, 1928

This might seem minor.  But Wolpert constructs out of them things he makes out to be fundamental to the characters he describes:
Nehru was shocked to learn that his Mahatma was quite ready to replace him as premier with the Quaid-i-Azam......But Nehru had tasted the cup of power too long to offer its nectar to anyone else - last of all to that "mediocre lawyer", the "reactionary-Muslim Baron of Malabar Hill" as so many good Congress leaders thought of Jinnah.
Or for instance, the supposed snub Gandhi delivered to Jinnah in 1915.  Taking Wolpert seriously at that point would obscure the real Gandhi-Jinnah difference.  Gandhi was for mass participation in politics.  Jinnah was republican in the sense of many of the American founding fathers, namely the affairs of the nation and politics were to be run by a wealthy, educated class only.


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I found another place where Wolpert ascribed emotions and thoughts to Jinnah which were unsupported by primary material.

This was a speech by Jinnah in Karachi 1938 or 1939 arguing that Muslims would be better off ruled over by British civil servants in preference to Hindu civil servants. His argument was on the lines of lack of proper training, the religious difference, etc of future Hindu civil servants. But in his book on Jinnah, while quoting Jinnah on this occasion, Wolpert ascribed to Jinnah some kind of upper class disdain for Hindus and desire for association with the high class British(paraphrasing). But I couldn't find any basis for this Wolpert ascribed emotion in the verbatim transcript of Jinnah's speech.
Corr: I found another place where Wolpert ascribed emotions and thoughts to Jinnah [in this case] which were unsupported by primary material.
Thomas Pindelski's avatar

Thomas Pindelski · 636 weeks ago

Which is the definitive biography of Gandhi?
2 replies · active 636 weeks ago
Definitive biography? I do not know.
I have not read this one, but the reviews are good, http://yalepress.yale.edu/reviews.asp?isbn=978030...
Thomas Pindelski's avatar

Thomas Pindelski · 636 weeks ago

Thank you.

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