Arthur Moore and Indo-Pak peace

Moore died in the hope for "real peace between India and Pakistan". That remains the flickering faith of the millions who wished Abhinandan a speedy release

Every Indian’s thoughts must be with Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian pilot whom Pakistan’s prime minister has released from captivity. Every Indian’s prayer must be that Imran Khan’s willingness and ability to keep his generous promise means not that the Indian air force wing commander lives to fight another day but that the days of fighting are over. 

But looking beyond the happy release, it would be unrealistic not to recognise that such situations may occur again and again until an amicable solution is found to the Kashmir dispute. As Arthur Moore, editor of The Statesman, wrote, “Pakistan canal disputes, boundary disputes, displaced persons disputes — all these may be solved; trade between the two countries may be developed; but there will never be satisfactory relations between India and Pakistan till the Kashmir issue is amicably settled.” That was in A Study of Nehru that Rafiq Zakaria edited and published in 1960 long after the British government had ensured Moore was sacked for his radical views. But he was still deeply involved in India, and called his article on Nehru “My Friend’s Son” because he related to Motilal Nehru with whom he had become friendly when he represented the Bengal European constituency in the Legislative Assembly from 1927 to 1933. 

In his unmarked pauper’s grave outside London, Moore must suffer agonies as India and Pakistan pirouette on the brink of war and as a Pakistani listener to Mr Khan’s speech laments “it is now our second nature to live in the well of hell”. Moore thought of the federal plan associated with Nehru as the only way of saving South Asia from further conflict. There was no Kashmir problem then but the principle of uniting peoples and countries already appealed to Moore who was much taken with the ideas of an American journalist, Clarence Streit, who published Union Now, a book calling for an international federation of democracies in which the sovereignty and jurisdiction of national states might decline, but the individual’s status would improve. 

Applying that idealistic notion to the British empire, Moore published an article, “A Federal British Commonwealth”, in the Manchester Guardian in October 1938 and reproduced this thinly-veiled plea for dominion status for India in The Statesman. Urging the federation of transport and communications under a single command, he warned “we must federate or perish”. India was to blaze a global trail. “We are a large part of the world and can contribute much to a world order if we can produce a united India”, declared his first editorial in 1939. He returned to the theme at the Indian Institute of International Affairs which he addressed on the “The Necessity for a British League of Nations”. Underlying it was the hope that if war broke out, a united front by India in support of Britain might persuade London to concede political reforms.

Moore put these proposals to a startled Subhas Chandra Bose who feared the British government wouldn’t play along but promised to discuss them with Gandhi and Nehru. If they agreed, Jinnah and the British could be approached. The All India Congress Committee’s demand for “a world federation of free nations” for “the future peace, security and ordered progress of the world” and to prevent aggression and exploitation so closely mirrored the political and economic federalism Moore propagated in his “This Our War” series of articles that people suspected him of being a closet Congressman. 

Moore saw a subcontinental federation as the only way of containing the Kashmir problem. In 1948, he spoke to Gandhi about his plan for Kashmir to “be treated as an equal third party” in “a federated commonwealth state, with common foreign affairs, common defence, and such finance as concerned these subjects, but all three to be separate self-governing States”. Gandhi who “was much interested” asked him to get Nehru’s opinion. Moore was about to do so when Gandhi was killed. When he could discuss it with Nehru, the answer was not “No” but that “the time is not yet”. Later, Nehru confided in Selig Harrison of The Washington Post “confederation remains our ultimate goal”. 

Nehru’s response sent Moore to his death fortified with the hope “that at last there could be real peace between India and Pakistan and that the worst evils of partition would be forever wiped out”. That still remains the flickering faith of the millions who are desperate like that Pakistani to get out of the “well of hell” and who wish Wing Commander Varthaman a speedy recovery from his ordeal.