Jaswant Singh has said :

Nehru believed in a highly centralized polity. That`s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn`t. consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India."

So according to his statements, only Nehru believed in centralized govt., whereas Gandhi was still rational in suggesting Federal Govt for appeasing the Muslims. Is this true? From what I have read, Gandhi and Nehru both were in favour of a highly centralized polity.

Well, if we take Nehru and Gandhi both as the mouthpiece of All India National Congress, then one can easily say that they both were in favour of a unitary system because it was the AING's official policy. Hindus were in majority and a unitary system was more fruitful for the Congress because they could easily gain majority in the Central Legislature then, while All India Muslim League supported federalism in which the federating units enjoy full autonomy. It was because in some provinces there was a muslim majority, so, the Muslims could have some discretion/initiative in those very provinces independent of the Hindu interference. But if we talk about Gandhi as an individual then he might have suggested a federal setting (but this is not something that has a categorical representation in history) because he had tried in some cases to abridge the Hindu-Muslim differences. Regards

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