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PAKISTAN : EPILOGUE
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produced different reactions in the minds of different people. Some were glad, others were sorry. But as both had been, just previous to the talks, worsted by their opponents in their struggle for supremacy, Gandhi by the British and Jinnah by the Unionist Party in the Punjab, and had lost a good deal of their credit the majority of people expected that they would put forth some constructive effort to bring about a solution. The failure may have been due to the defects of personalities. But it must however be said that failure was inevitable having regard to certain fundamental faults in the C. R. Formula. In the first place, it tied up the communal question with the political question in an indissoluble knot. No political settlement, no communal settlement, is the strategy on which the formula proceeds. The formula did not offer a solution. It invited Mr. Jinnah to enter into a deal. It was a bargain— “If you help us in getting independence, we shall be glad to consider your proposal for Pakistan.” I don’t know from where Mr. Rajagopalachariar got the idea that this was the best means of getting independence. It is possible that he borrowed it from the old Hindu kings of India who built up alliance for protecting their independence against foreign enemies by giving their daughters to neighbouring princes. Mr. Rajagopalachariar forgot that such alliances brought neither a good husband nor a permanent ally. To make communal settlement depend upon help rendered in winning freedom is a very unwise way of proceeding in a matter of this kind. It is a way of one party drawing another party into its net by offering communal privileges as a bait. The C. R. Formula made communal settlement an article for sale.
The second fault in the C. R. Formula relates to the machinery for giving effect to any agreement that may be arrived at. The agency suggested in the C. R. Formula is the Provisional Government. In suggesting this Mr. Rajagopalachariar obviously overlooked two difficulties. The first thing he overlooked is that once the Provisional Government was established, the promises of the contracting parties, to use legal phraseology, did not remain concurrent promises. The case became one of the executed promise against an executory promise. By consenting to the establishment of a Provisional Government, the League would have