While he is very critical of Patel here, he also opines that maybe Lady Mountbatten had a role in convincing Nehru. At the same time Lord Mountbatten became an advocate of partition as well. This apparently led Patel and later Nehru to give up on the possibility of working with the League. The interim government was a turbulent affair with the Muslim League holding the Finance portfolio and entered into constant bickering and stonewalling proposals. Mr Jinnah, already not too happy with the cabinet plan, promptly rejected the cabinet plan. He points to mistakes Nehru made on two occasions where he could not arrive at a power sharing in states (in 1937) with the Muslim league and later in 1946 mentioned in public that the cabinet plan will be improvised as needed. His reasoning here is spot on that rather than partition - constitutional safeguards, federal structure of states and strong leadership would have provided the safeguards and that is what he worked towards. Maulana Azad makes the point that there was apprehension among the Muslims on their status if the leadership was largely Hindu. Maulana Azad holds that this was a mistake and all prominent Congress leaders ended up in jail, while the Muslim League grew during that time and built up a case for partition. The Quit India movement is launched in 1942.
The second world war and whether Indians will participate is contentious, with most in the Congress wanting to tie to independence finds detailed discussion. Considerable part of the coverage is the period in the early 1940s when Maulana Azad was the President of the Indian National Congress. The book covers the period in the late 1930s and 40s leading up to the freedom of India. The main issue with the book though is that it has a “I know best” tone right through the entire book with blame laid on others –Patel, Jinnah, Nehru & Gandhiji.
The book is right on most aspects including the fact that partition was not progress towards peace. There is certainly material critical of other leaders (especially Sardar Patel towards the end of the book) though the treatment is fairly mature. I remember, many years back, when the complete version of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s book was released, it had aroused a lot of curiosity as there was new content which he had authorized for release only after 30 years.
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