From Roses in December by M. C. Chagla : Partition of India

From Roses in December by M. C. Chagla

On the mistakes that occurred on the side of Gandhi, Nehru and Congress

"Of course, we on our side made many mistakes. I do not know whether we were in a hurry to take power, or whether we were genuinely convinced that it was impossible to work with the Muslim League in governing a free country. I do not think Jinnah really expected that Congress would ever concede Pakistan. To him it was more of a bargaining counter, and we had bargained properly, he would have given up the idea of Pakistan and accepted a united India. As a practical man, he realized the utter impracticability of a country, whose two wings were divided by 1,000 miles of Indian Territory, and a country, the major half of whose population in the east was of a different culture and spoke an utterly different language. We must not forget that Jinnah had no foothold in Punjab at all, while in Bengal, Suhrawardy was not happy to go along with him and continued to drag his feet for a long time.
We gave the Punjab province to him on a platter because of our wrong policy. In the Northwest frontier province also Jinnah had a formidable opponent in the form of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, better known as Frontier Gandhi.

The Last Straw

"To my mind, one of the potent causes which ultimately led to the creation of Pakistan was what happened in Uttar Pradesh. If Nehru had agreed to a coalition ministry and not insisted on the representative of the Muslim League on signing the Congress pledge, perhaps Pakistan would not have come about. Uttar Pradesh was the cultural home of the Muslims. Although they were in minority in that state, if Uttar Pradesh had not gone over to the cause of separation, Pakistan would never have become a reality."

On Secularism
"Secularism is an attitude of the mind and a quality of the heart. It is a matter of temperament, of outlook, even of feeling. A man with a secular outlook looks upon all persons as human beings pure and simple, equally estimable and precious, not only in the eye of law, but in the eye of God. You refuse to classify people according to the religious labels which you attach to them. You do not think of a man as a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian, but merely as a human being and you deal with him as a human being."

Partition of India : The Mistakes 3

From Roses in December by M, C, Chagla

On the mistakes that occurred on the side of Gandhi, Nehru and Congress

"Of course, we on our side made many mistakes. I do not know whether we were in a hurry to take power, or whether we were genuinely convinced that it was impossible to work with the Muslim League in governing a free country. I do not think Jinnah really expected that Congress would ever concede Pakistan. To him it was more of a bargaining counter, and if  we had bargained properly, he would have given up the idea of Pakistan and accepted a united India. As a practical man, he realised the utter impracticability of a country, whose two wings were divided by 1,000 miles of Indian territory, and a country, the major half of whose population in the east was of a different culture and spoke an utterly different language. We must not forget that Jinnah had no foothold in Punjab at all, while in Bengal, Suhrawardy was not happy to go along with him and continued to drag his feet for a long time.
We gave the Punjab province to him on a platter because of our wrong policy. In the Northwest frontier province also Jinnah had a formidable opponent in the form of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, better known as Frontier Gandhi.

The Last Straw

"To my mind, one of the potent causes which ultimately led to the creation of Pakistan was what happened in Uttar Pradesh. If Nehru had agreed to a coalition ministry and not insisted on the representative of the Muslim League on signing the Congress pledge, perhaps Pakistan would not have come about. Uttar Pradesh was the cultural home of the Muslims. Although they were in minority in that state, if Uttar Pradesh had not gone over to the cause of separation, Pakistan would never have become a reality."

On Secularism
"Secularism is an attitude of the mind and a quality of the heart. It is a matter of temperament, of outlook, even of feeling. A man with a secular outlook looks upon all persons as human beings pure and simple, equally estimable and precious, not only in the eye of law, but in the eye of God. You refuse to classify people according to the religious labels which you attach to them. You do not think of a man as a Hindu, a Muslim  or a Christian, but merely as a human being and you deal with him as a human being."

From Roses in December: Change in Jinnah 2

From 'Roses in December' by M. C. Chagla
On the Change in Jinnah
"So long as Jinnah remained a nationalist and the Muslim League continued its secular policy, I remained with Jinnah and with the League....
Why did Jinnah change? There could be many possible explanations  to this. JInnah's besetting fault was his obsessive egoism. He had to be a leader, and the prime mover in whatever cause he worked. With the emergence of Gandhiji in Indian politics, Jinnah felt his importance would gradually diminish. Jinnah was the complete antithesis of Gandhiji. While Gandhiji believed in religion, in abstract moral values, in non-violence, Jinnah only believed in hard practical politics. Even sartorially it was impossible for Jinnah to subscribe to Gandhi's views.
Unfotunately, Jinnah was also antipathetic to Jawaharlal Nehru. These two were never on the same wave-length. Jawaharlal disliked Jinnah as a man because he thoooought he was all arrogance and pomposity. He also despised Jinnah as someone essentially uncultured, almost illiterate. He thought Jinnah's reading never extended beyond the daily newspaper and that he had never a single intelligent or enlightened idea in his head. Jinnah on the other handlooked upon Jawaharlal as an impracticable visionary who had no conception of what politics meant.
After he was dropped from the Third Round Table Conference, Jinnah became convinced that if he had to have a place under the sun, he would have to stand on a communal platform. Jinnah's transformation really began when he saw that he was beginning to be considered as a man of little consequence--so much so that he could not even find a plae in the Third Round Table Conference. Once he adopted the communal platform he drifted rapidly and came to a stop only when he reached the pinnacle to become the leader of the communal party that the Muslim League ultimately became. Jinnah's dominant characteristic was his tenacity. It is the measure of the man that he succeeded in creating a new country,--Pakistan, with very little following, with no string press to back him, and with little financial assistance. Most of his colleagues in the League were men of poor calibre and it was practically his own personality, will-power and self-confidence that made it impossible for his colleagues to differ from him and mad the partition inevitable. Of course, in the end, he could count on mass-communal fervour, while part of the British bureaucracy also threw in its weight consciously or unconsciously on his side.
I have always taken the view that partition was a tragedy and a calamity, and I also hold the view that it was not unavoidable. Partition has solved no problems; on the contrary it has created many problems and very serious ones too. It is absurd to think of a home for Muslims when as many as 60 million of them were left behind in India. I remember once asking Jinnah: "You are fighting for Pakistan  mainly for the Muslim majority states. But what happens to the Muslims in the states where they are in a small minority?" I will never forget the answer he gave me. He looked at me for awhile and said: "They will look after themselves. I am not interested in their fate. " 

On Partition of India: Excerpts from Roses in December 1

From 'Roses in December' by M. C. Chagla

On Tilak and Jinnah
Many years later my first visit to High Court was with the intention of catching a possible glimpse of Tilak. I had read in a newspaper that judgement was going to be delivered in an appeal which had been filed against the conviction  of Tilak, and that the judgement would be given by Mr. Justice Bachelor and Mr. Justice Shah who had heard the appeal. The appeal on behalf of Tilak had been argued by Jinnah. I remember, I went to the court rather early, in order to find a seat in a particular row in which judgement was to be delivered. I sat in the third row and a little later, I found Tilak enter and take his seat in the second row. After a while, Jinnah came and sat in the first row reserved for counsel. Judgement was delivered and and the conviction to everyone's relief was set aside. Jinnah then turned round and warmly shook Tilak by the hand. I believe this was the first time that I had seen Jinnah. I might mention here that during my long association with him, I found that Jinnah always showed the highest respect and regard for Tilak. Even when he was in the process of changing his political stand and becoming more and more communal, I never remember his ever saying anything that was derogatory of Tilak. Two persons in public life for whom Jinnah showed the greatest respect were Gokhale and Tilak. He had hard and harsh things to say about Gandhiji, Nehru and others; but as far as Gokhale and Tilak were concerned,  Jinnah had the most profound admiration and respect for them and for their views.

The Masters--speaking on 'The Sacred Light'

The Keepers of the sacred Light:

From Probation and Chelaship: Letter No. 28
From Master K.H. to A. O. Hume: Written towards the final break-off between the Masters and Hume

"You may call it a weakness, but we believe in ever recurrent cycles and hope to quicken the resurrection of what is past and gone. We could not impede it even if we would. The "new civilization" will be but the child of the old one, and we have only to leave the eternal law to take its own course to have our dead ones come out of their graves; yet, we are certainly anxious to hasten the welcome event. Fear not; although we do "cling superstitiously to the relics of the Past" our knowledge will not pass away from the sight of man. It is the "gift of the gods" and the most precious relic of all. The keepers of the sacred Light did not safely cross so many ages but to find themselves wrecked on the rocks of modern scepticism. Our pilots are too experienced sailors to allow us to fear any such disaster. We will always find volunteers to replace the tired sentries, and the world, bad as it is in its present state of transitory period, can yet furnish us with a few men now and then."

The Masters Who Guided Helena Blavatsky 18. On Solar Energy

From letter no. 23 B: ‘Philosophical and Theoretical Teachings : Received at Simla Oct. 1882

On Solar Energy:

With us it is an established fact that it is the Earth’s magnetism that produces winds storms and rains….Earth’s magnetic attraction of meteoric dust, and the direct influence of the latter on the sudden changes in temperature, especially in the matter of heat and cold, is not a settled question, to the present day, I believe. (Dr. Phipson in 1867 and Cowper Ranyard in 1879 both urged the theory but it was rejected then.) It was doubted whether the fact of our earth passing through a region of space in which there are more or less meteoric masses and has any bearing on the height of our atmosphere being increased or decreased, or even upon the state of weather. But we think we can easily prove it; and since they accept the fact that the relative proportion and distribution of land and water on our globe may be due to the great accumulation upon it of meteoric dust, snow—especially in our northern regions—being full of meteoric iron and magnetic particles, and deposits of the latter being found even at the bottom of sea and oceans, I wonder how science has not hitherto understood that every atmospheric change and disturbance was due to the combined magnetism of the two great masses between which our atmosphere is compressed! I call this meteoric dust a “mass” for it is really one. High above our earth’s surface the air is impregnated and space filled with magnetic, or meteoric dust, which does not belong to our solar system. Science having luckily discovered that, as our earth with all the other planets is carried along through space, it receives a greater proportion of that dust matter on its northern than on its southern hemisphere, knows that to this are due the preponderant number of the continents in the former hemisphere, and the greater abundance of snow and moisture. Millions of such meteors and even of the tiniest particles reach us yearly and daily, and all our temple knives are made of this “heavenly” iron which reaches us without having undergone any change—the magnetism of the earth keeping them in cohesion. Gaseous matter is continually added to our atmosphere from the never ceasing fall of the meteoric strongly magnetic matter, and yet it still seems with them still an open question whether magnetic conditions have anything to do with the precipitation of rain or not! I do not know of any “set of motions established by pressures, expansions etc., and due in the first instance to solar energy”. Science makes too much or too little at the same time of “solar energy”, and even of the Sun itself; and the Sun has nothing to do whatever with rain and very little with heat. I was under the impression that the glacial periods as well as those periods when temperature is “like that of the carboniferous age “, are due to the decrease or increase or rather to the expansion of our atmosphere, which expansion is itself due to the same meteoric presence? At any rate we all know that the heat the earth receives by radiation from the sun is at the utmost one third if not less of the amount receive by her directly from the meteors.     

The Masters who Guided Helena Blavatsky17. "Atlantis"

The Masters who Guided Helena Blavatsky

On ‘Atlantis’

From ‘Philosophical and Theoretical Teachings’

Letter No. 23B1

“Both geology and paleontology bear witness to much we have to say. Of course your science is right in many of her generalities, but her premises are wrong, or at any rate, very faulty. For instance she is right in saying that while the New America was forming the ancient Atlantis was sinking, and gradually washing away; but she is neither right in her given epochs nor in the calculations of the duration of that sinking. The latter is the future fate of your British Islands, the first of the list of victims that have to be destroyed by fire (submarine volcanos) and water; France and othe lands will follow suit. When they reappear again, the last seventh sub-race of the sixth Root race of present mankind will be flourishing on “ Lemuria” and “Atlantis” both of which will have reappeared also (their reappearance following immediately  the disappearance of the present isles and continents), and very few  seas and great waters will be found then on our globe, waters as well as land appearing and disappearing and shifting periodically and each in turn. “ ………

………..”When your race-the fifth-will have reached the zenith of physical intellectuality, and developed the highest civilization, (remember the difference we make between the material and spiritual civilizations), unable to go higher in its own cycle its progress towards absolute evil will be arrested (as it predecessors the Lemurians and Atlanteans were arrested in their progress towards the same) by such cataclysmic changes; its great civilization destroyed, and all the sub-races of that race will be found going down their respective cycles, after a short period of glory and learning………”

“…No mother Race, any more than her sub races and off-shoots, is allowed by the one Reigning Law to trespass upon the prerogatives of the Race or the Sub-race that will follow it; least of all to encroach upon the knowledge and power that is in store for its successor. “Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil of the tree that is growing for thy heirs”, we might say. This “tree is in our safe-keeping, entrusted to us by the Dhyan Chohans, the protectors of our Race and the Trustees for those that are coming. Try to understand the allegory, and to never lose sight of the hint given you in my letter upon the Planetaries. At the beginning of each Round when the humanity reappears under quite different conditions than those afforded for the birth of each new race and its sub-races, a “Planetary” has to mix with these primitive men, and to refresh their memories, and reveal to them the truths they knew during the preceding Round. But that appears only for the first Race. It is the duty of the latter to choose the fit recepients among its sons, who are “set apart” to use a Biblical phrase—as the vessels to contain “the whole stock of knowledge” to be divided among the future races and generations until the close of that Round. …..Every race had its adepts; and very new race, we are allowed to give them as much of our knowledge as the men of that race deserve. The last seventh Race will have its Buddha as every one of its predecessors had; but its adepts will be far higher than any of the present race, for among them will abide the future Planetary, the Dhyan Chohan whose duty it will be to instruct or “refresh the memory” of the first race of the fifth Round men after this planet’s future obscuration       

The Masters Who Guided Helena Blavatsky. 15.

The Masters who Guided Helena Blavatsky 15.

From letter no. 45(Probation and Chelaship)

c

Received in Feb. 1882 after a long break

If you hear seldom from me, never be disappointed, my Brother, but say—“It is ‘my’ fault”. Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magnetic sympathy, and, there is a mutual correlation between a star and a man; thought runs swifter than the electric fluid, and your thought will find me if projected by a pure impulse, as mine will find, has found, and often impressed your mind………

Like the light in the somber valley seen by the mountaineer from his peaks, every bright thought in your mind, my Brother, will sparkle and attract the attention of your distant friend and correspondent….

…….”Then why feel disappointed and unhappy? My good, my faithful friend, remember that hope deferred is not hope lost. “Conditions” may change for the better---for we too—spooklike need our conditions, and can hardly work without them; and then , the vague depression of Spirit, which is now settling down upon you like a heavy cloud on a landscape may be blown away at the first favorable breeze…”