Islamabad: Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, told Lord Mountbatten in 1947 that he would be 'delighted' if the proposal to create a separate, sovereign Bengal were accepted, a new book has said.
When Mountbatten asked Jinnah what he thought of eminent Muslim League leader H S Suhrawardy's proposal, he said: "I should be delighted. What is the use of Bengal without Calcutta; they had much better remain united and independent; I am sure they would be on friendly terms with us," US historian Stanley Wolpert says in his book on the Partition of India.
When Mountbatten asked Suhrawardy if he would wish Bengal to remain within the British Commonwealth, Jinnah replied: "Of course, just as I indicated to you that Pakistan would wish to remain within the Commonwealth."
"Had Mountbatten followed the advice of Gandhi, Jinnah or Suhrawardy, instead of listening only to Nehru, Punjab and Bengal might have been spared the deadly horrors, and a richly united Bengal, with its capital in Calcutta, would have emerged instead of the fragmented, impoverished Bangladesh born from its eastern half a quarter of a century later," Daily Times quoted Wolpert as saying in his book.
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