Sardar Patel Crushed The Absurd Proposal for exclusive Muslim Pakistani Corridor between East-West Pakistan running across India. Sardar saved India from housing several Islamic Pakistans within itself making it conducive for Ghazwa-e-Hind.
Sardar Patel Crushed The Absurd Proposal for Corridor Between East-West Pakistan
Acceding to the demand of the Indian Muslim League which wanted partition of India based on religion, Pakistan was carved out as a theocratic Muslim state from India comprising areas where Muslims were in majority in Punjab and Bengal. East Pakistan and West Pakistan had no commonality between them except for “Islam” their cultures and language was very different. Muhammad Ali Jinnah sensed that maintaining West Pakistan, now Bangladesh after its liberation in 1971, within the Islamic Republic of Pakistan would be very difficult without a contiguous land link so he very ambitiously demanded an exclusive Islamic corridor between East and West Pakistan cutting across India from East to West on 21st May 1947 in an interview with Doon Campbell.
As mentioned in the final part of the series of article by AG Noorani titled “Chasing the Vision” which analyses the vision of Mohmmad Ali Jinnah for Pakistan, Jinnah wanted a rail corridor to be run through the corridor between the two wings of Pakistan. Jinnah wanted this corridor to be one of the vital terms of the treaty of partition. He even suggested that the corridor should be wide enough as the Suez Canal. Notably, the Suez Canal is governed by an international convention.
Jinnah’s insidious plan of having a corridor operated by the Muslim Pakistan right through India from East to West was a sinister design to further occupy Hindu majority areas in India by infiltrating many Muslims in the name of the corridor running from Karachi to Calcutta and further to Dhaka. Jinnah wanted to create many Pakistans within India by claiming Junagadh, Hyderabad and many Muslim dominated areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He wanted the corridor to usurp large swaths of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar into Pakistan and this corridor to be linked down to the Hyderabad State, the modern Anhdra Pradesh, with a willing jihadi Nizam governing it.
This interview of Jinnah to Campbell caused a lot of stir and Sardar Vallabhai Patel reacted in a written communication to the above demand of Jinnah as a “Fantastic nonsense not to be taken seriously at all”. Sardar Patel said that the 1500 long mile corridor demand by Jinnah discloses his lack of confidence in the Pakistan scheme. This was reported in the newspapers on May 26, 1947 which is displayed below: –
Jinnah wanted free access by sea to Junagadh, in Gujarat, again ruled by jihadi Nawab despite the majority of Hindus of Junagadh wanting to remain in India. Jinnah also wanted State of Hyderabad in the heart of South India to become part of Pakistan accommodating the Muslims of South India. He further wanted the East-West Pakistani corridor within India to pass through U.P. and Bihar through the Terai belt wide enough to consume within itself Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Chapra absorbing the Muslim population in these areas. He wanted this corridor to reach Hyderabad State as well which would give contiguity to Pakistan through the sea as well.
Jinnah tried to put pressure on India by writing to Winston Churchill on August 5, 1947 about his demand for the infamous Pakistani exclusive Muslim corridor within India which was also cited by AG Noorani in his aforementioned article in Frontline. Jinnah wrote:
“In the interest of humanity, it is essential that the intermigration should be started on scientific lines. Areas in both zones be acquired and developed to accommodate refugees. The boundaries to be so adjusted as not to leave the residual population in the same percentage or proportion on both sides.
In order to meet with the above, the boundaries of Bengal and Punjab to be kept as before, a corridor through U.P. [United Provinces] and Bihar be provided through [the] Tarai belt. It should be of sufficient depth. Lucknow and districts of Gorakhpur and Chapra be linked with the corridor to serve as strong points in the long link of communication. This corridor will absorb the Muslim population of U.P. and Bihar. A corridor will be provided for Hyderabad State as well. It will give contiguity to Pakistan through sea. The state will absorb the Muslim population of Madras and Bombay. The above could be accounted in section 9 of June 3 Plan under other factors’. The boundary on the above lines between Hindustan and Pakistan will prevent cramping which is bound to happen if the division is carried out on purely communal lines.”
Jinnah kept trying his best to wrest this wide Islamic belt from India by putting pressure on Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi. Jawaharlal Nehru was seriously considering giving up Hyderabad, when Sardar Patel with his fine negotiation skills and shrewd use of Indian army compelled the Nizam of Hyderabad to concede defeat and let Hyderabad State be absorbed by India. Sardar Patel also supported the massive protests by Hindu subjects of Junagadh to revolt against the Nawab forcing him to concede Junagadh to India. Both Junagadh and Hyderabad State merged with India in 1948.
Sardar Patel summarily dismissed these nefarious ideas of Jinnah trying to create huge swathes of exclusive Islamic belts within India thereby housing several Islamic Pakistans within India. Citizens of India, should forever be grateful to Sardar Patel for uniting the various Princely States and successfully merging them within India and refusing to bend to the desires of the Muslim League members and Muslim leaders who had ambitions of gradually Islamising the whole of India, through the exclusive Muslim corridor within India, and impose a Islamic rule on us to revive their barbaric idols’ rule over India like Timur Lung, Babur, Aurangzeb etc.
We should now strive to quell the Islamic pimples within India like Kairana, Malda, Murshidabad, 24 Paragana, Kishanganj, Barpeta, Naogaon from becoming a full-blown Jihadi cancer like Kashmir otherwise all the efforts of the great Sardar Vallabhai Patel to nix in bud the creation of many Pakistans within India would go in vain.
For Further reads please refer to: Chasing the vision – Frontline (thehindu.com)
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