Who took advantage of being close to Gandhiji?

It's increasingly getting clearer to me that Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru definitely had a plan in their mind, when they saw India getting closer and closer to independence. The plan was to take the most possible advantage of the humungous influence that Gandhiji carried upon the people of India. After the Salt Satyagraha of 1930, his image grew bigger and bigger. Most Indians started believing that it was only through him, that India would achieve independence from the British Raj. He was everywhere - in the newspapers, on the radio, in public discussions. By mid 1930s he had already gained the status of a cult figure, of an undisputed unanimous leader of India. That image still gained furthermore stature when he declared that he has no desire to rule the country as a Prime Minister and that he would be happy to serve it rather than rule it. After that, that tag of "Mahatma" got attached to his name permanently, as people started believing him truly as a great soul (महान + आत्मा). But being a great man and being a leader who takes the right decisions are two very different things. Gandhiji took atleast 5 decisions that have harmed/been harming India for a long time. We will discuss that later on. 

Right now, let me return to the point I was telling you. Those who were closely related to Gandhiji, undoubtedly took maximum advantage of being in his proximity, for achieving personal gains. The first among them was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. This guy from the small city of Junagadh in the present day Gujarat was able to convince Gandhiji that in the event that India stood undivided between the Hindus and the Muslims, it was he, and not Jawaharlal Nehru, who was worthy to become the first Prime Minister. But that was before the birth of his party, "the Muslim League." After Muslim League was created, the Britishers saw the advantages they would carry back home, with their age-old and highly successful "divide & rule policy" were they forced to leave India. So they implanted the seeds of temptations for power in the mind of Jinnah by slowly convincing him that a two state solution to the Indian independence issue was an ideal one for him, wherein he gets all his muslim brethren in a separate country called Pakistan! The power hungry guy, Jinnah was so pleased to listen to that. Immediately he approached Gandhiji and demanded for the division of India into two different countries - India & Pakistan. 

The Ooher leaders - Nehru, Patel, even Maulana Aazad were shocked by this disastrous demand from Jinnah, because they knew that this would mean a lot of bloodshed during partition. So they vehemently protested Jinnah's demand. But Jinnah stood firm on his ground. He knew that Gandhiji did have a soft corner for the Muslim community, despite he himself being a Hindu. He knew that with gradual and constant pressure for a separate state, Gandhiji will succumb to his demand once. That did happen after a few months. With a continuous demand on his head, Gandhiji finally nodded "yes" for a separate country called Pakistan. This was one of the biggest mistakes of his life. His affection for the Muslim community allowed him to divide India into 2 fragments! 

Had he stood firm, neither Jinnah nor his Muslim League was strong enough to divide India even then. After all, Jinnah was asking for a substantial 23% portion of the total area of India, to be separated from India, nothing less. I am very sure, had a concrete leader like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel been there in Gandhiji's place, he would have said a big NO, once and for all. That would have silenced Jinnah and his party, either immediately or gradually. India would have remained unbroken and intact. 

But here was the Mahatma, at the centre stage, a guy whose weakness of being merciful was not a secret to many. Jinaah was a shrewd politician and he could take the best advantage of Gandhiji's merciful nature. Like a fox, he could grab a huge chunk of India and put it inside his pocket, whilst others stood around him helplessly. 

This unwanted merciful nature of Gandhiji or one can say his soft corner for the Muslims, has costed India and its Hindu community so much. Demographically too, the Hindus ended up on the losing side in this Gandhi-Jinnah deal that gave birth to Pakistan. At the time of independence, the total population of India was 32+ crore. 10% of them were muslims. That means around 3.2 crore or 32 million muslims were living inside the Indian subcontinent in 1947. According to the deal all of those 32 million should have gone to Pakistan. But that did not happen. Around 10 million (1 crore) of them chose to stay in India. Why? Again the same answer - Gandhiji's merciful nature. He allowed all the muslims who wanted to stay back in India to do so, whilst the rather merciless Jinnah saw to it that almost all Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and every non-muslim living inside the new country of Pakistan, should leave that country at the earliest. The result was that those 1 crore muslims who had stayed back in India, kept on reproducing continuously and within 78 years of Independence they have grown from 1 crore to 24 crores, comprising 14% of India's total population. 

Whereas the Hindu population in Pakistan has not grown. It has shrunk hugely. It was around 1 crore at the time when Pakistan was created. Right now it stands at just around 3 lacs! Muslims over there have forced most of the Hindus, Sikhs and Christians to either get converted to muslims or to flee to India. These minorities of Pakistan are living extremely bad lives in terms of standard of life. They are not only very poor economically but also get exploited everywhere they go. Their religious shrines have mostly been destroyed by conservative muslims. Compared to that the living standard of the muslims, who are actually a minority community in India, is much better, comparatively. They are not poor. They get all the facilities at par with the Hindu community viz. education, healthcare, finance provision, homes, food, clothing etc. So one can see that just by a single nod of Gandhiji, it is India and its majority community, the Hindus, who have been suffering. 

After Jinnah, the 2nd person who could take the maximum advantage of being near to the Mahatma was Jawaharlal Motilal Nehru. Everyone knew what a massive figure Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was. He was a man of steel, the one who could carve a niche for himself, standing on his own feet in Indian politics. He was very famous throughout the length and breadth of India, especially amongst the Hindus. India was and still is mostly populated by Hindus. At the time of partition, Hindus constituted around 85% of the population. As of today still Hindus form 80% of India's total population. So whose opinion should matter? Undoubtedly, Hindu's opinion should matter. (By the way, this country should be declared a "हींदु राष्ट्र" and there is absolutely no communal harm in doing so. But that's a different topic of discussion, which we will undergo later on.) But instead it was the muslims whose opinion matters once again! 

Jawahar drew himself closer to Gandhiji, the then chief deciding authority of India and somehow convinced him that it was he, and not Sardar Patel, who was the right person to occupy the throne of being the first Prime Minister of India. Though Sardar was a more deserving candidate in every aspect, especially the one with a solid Hindu support, he lost to Nehru! This was again one more mistake of the Mahatma. He melted like a candle 🕯️ before Nehru and chose that Kashmiri pundit Nehru (actually Nehru is a Muslim himself) ahead of Sardar from his own state of Gujarat. Nehru rules over India for a gigantic period of 17 long years. In the last 3 years of his rule, he committed very big mistakes. India is still suffering from the consequences of those Nehruvian mistakes. 

Being closely linked with the Muslims, Nehru asked his education ministry to prepare such History text books that would glorify the rule of the Muslim kings of the Mughal Empire (Akbar, Jahangir, Babar, Aurangzeb) and the Delhi Sultanate (Razia Sultana) to the extreme. Whereas he saw to it that the more deserving Hindu Rajas and Maharajas like Maharana Pratap, Prithviraj Chauhan, the great king Ashoka got sidelined in the chapters of History books. Consequent to that, all what we have been learning in the school is such a history that makes us feel as if we are living inside an Islamic country and not a Hindu nation! All thanks to the preplanned educational syllabus prepared by the education ministries that worked under the leadership of Prime Minister Nehru.