Word: hindustan
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...reject, once & for all, Britain's 1946 plan for India-a loose federation of states. If they rejected it (and Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the Moslem leader, almost certainly would), then Mountbatten would suggest an alternative. Under it, each province could decide for itself whether 1) to join Hindustan, 2) to join Pakistan, 3) to set itself up as an independent nation...
...minimum friction. In recent communal riots local police proved ineffective, while the Army's Hindu and Moslem troops obeyed orders, often succeeded in checking disturbances. But a purely Moslem army could not be expected to protect Hindu minorities in Pakistan, nor a Hindu army to protect Moslems in Hindustan. That did not bother Jinnah. Last week he pontificated: "All the armed forces must be divided...
Jinnah could not stop the centrifugal spin even if he wanted to. His Moslem followers had been whipped into an irreversible crusade for Pakistan. Their motives ran all the way from deep religious fervor to that of one Moslem politician who said: "In Hindustan I would be nothing, but in Pakistan I could be Secretary of State...
...closest friend is probably Ghanshyam Das Birla, jute and cotton magnate, who boycotts his own textile mills by wearing khadi (homespun).* Though Birla dotes on Gandhi, he dreams of an industrialized India. (Birla has contracts with Britain's Nuffield for an India-assembled automobile called the Hindustan Ten.) India's liberals and leftists are stridently suspicious of Patel's friendship with Birla and the other big industrialists, but Birla insists that he seeks no Government favors. Says he: "I already have all the money I need...
...attempt to put the finger of blame on any one or any thing for this predicament is either impossible or difficult. You might find fault with Hindustan climatology, and carefully show the effects of the monsoon rain on the caloric intake of the Bengali peasant; there is some relation. Or you might find the Hindu religion, totalling 65 percent of the population, a hindrance to progress in its rigid caste definitions. Then, there are always the British, for it was through their policy of laissez-faire that little or no social advancement was achieved in India...