Churchill, Jinnah letters: Churchill encouraged Hindu and Muslim divide

According to confidential letters provided to documentary makers in India, Winston Churchill was using Mohammad Ali Jinnah to create the "great divide" — the schism between Hindus and Muslims in India.

Two independent film-makers commissioned to make a docu-drama on Jinnah laid their hands on the confidential correspondence between the two leaders which smacks of Churchill’s bias against Hindus.

In a letter to Jinnah dated August 3, 1946, Churchill wrote: “I am very much opposed to the handing over of India to Hindu caste rule, as seems very largely to be intended…”

Historians have long been aware of a nexus of sorts between Jinnah and Churchill, but these letters, for the first time, bring the relationship into public domain.

The letters also reveal that Jinnah used the Direct Action Day on August 27 as a strategic move to upstage both the Congress and the British. In a missive dated July 7, 1946 to Churchill, Jinnah hinted that blood would flow on the streets — and it did. Nearly 6,000 people were killed in the bloodiest-ever communal riots in Calcutta over Jawaharlal Nehru’s rejection of the Cripps Commission report.