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Jinnah & Co. Nehru (if he can carry the Indian National Congress away from nonresisting Gandhi) represents only a large minority of Sir Stafford's problem. Another great minority Sir Stafford had to deal with was India's 80,000,000 Moslems.
His proposal for them : the opportunity to form a separate state. This proposal was not misliked by the Moslem League's President Ali Mohamed Jinnah, who fears' nothing so much as the establishment of a Hindu raj, hand-picked by Congress. But it was much misliked by Nehru and other Congress leaders: they feared Moslem secession, cried that Indian unity should not be destroyed.
Jinnah, the leader of the Moslems (in impeccable Savile Row clothes), knew that he was in a strong bargaining position. It seemed unlikely that he would compromise on the secession clause. At week's end Jinnah muezzined to the faithful: "A lot of propaganda has been going on in the press . . . Sir Stafford Cripps is a trained politician. . . . He has been holding press conferences giving explanations which are construed differently in different quarters and might prove harmful. I shall be compelled to explain the position to my people. . . ."
But, as Sir Stafford well knew, Jinnah is not the spokesman for India's Moslems; his League actually represents only a small fraction of them. In the 1937 election the League won only 104 of the 480 seats reserved for Moslems in the eleven Provincial Assemblies; of 7,000,000 Moslem voters, only 300,000 voted the League ticket. Jinnah's importance is that he epitomizes the Moslems' fear of the Hindus?and this religious civil strife is the chief obstacle to Sir Stafford's mission.
India is nothing if not selfconscious: Indians derive both humor and a satisfying sense of tragedy from their hopelessly internecine differences. As Sadhu Singh Dhami, a distinguished Sikh scholar, said last week: "The cow is sacred to the Hindus and pork repulsive to Moslems. . . . The Hindus are rather noisy in their ritual and greet an interesting variety of mute gods with a blare of conch shells and din of gongs, while the Moslems' worship of Allah is austere and silent and includes a bit of healthy physical exercise. The Moslem is circumcised, while the Hindu is not; the Moslem clips his mustache in a certain way, while the Hindu does not. The Hindu wears a wisp of long hair on the top of his head; if he is of high caste, he adorns himself with the 'sacred thread' and a mark on his head; the followers of the Prophet wisely dispense with these accretions."
Sir Stafford, tactfully, paid no attention to such differences, went on with his job.