Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar

First published in pragyata online magazine as a seven-part series. Links provided at the end.

PART 1

One scholar writes that our history has been distorted in many places:

1. Distortion of ancient history by the postulation of Aryans and Dravidians
2. Distortion of mediaeval history by whitewashing the Islamic record
3. Distortion of Freedom Struggle by showing only a few members in a positive light while obliterating many dissenting voices.

A few generations of Indians after independence grew up with a specific story of our freedom from the British. The general story that most have internalised is that Gandhiji, Nehruji, and the Congress gave us independence while Pakistan was because of the British ‘divide and rule’ policy. The villain of the partition was Jinnah, of course. Apart from all that, it was the Quit India movement and the non-violence struggle initiated by Gandhiji that drove out the British. There may be some truths in the story, but the freedom struggle was far more complex.

There were many personalities such as Sri Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and Subash Bose, to name a few, along with other movements like the Revolutionary movements both here and abroad, which were an intricate part of the freedom struggle. The freedom story had many other factors: the second world war; the Indian National Army and Netaji Bose; the economic condition of Britain after the war; the new world order led by the USA post-war; and the installation of a Labour government replacing Churchill. These were generally glossed over in our history textbooks.

Secularism and History Writing

Secularism was a poor solution to achieve ‘communal harmony’ in India, but it became a consistent policy after independence. The leftist-Marxists achieved, through political machinations, complete control over historical narratives and added further to the damage. Germany traded peace with its past when Nazi history became a part of its textbooks. The philosophy of secularism allowed the Islamic invaders to become benign and benevolent when all the invasions were brutal, inflicting great physical, cultural, and intellectual damage on India.

Sadly, the solutions for preventing ‘communal strife,’ not offending minorities, and encouraging ‘national integration’ were to dilute Hindu history and glorify or whitewash Islamic history. To please or protect, our thinkers in all relevant fields inappropriately associated the present-day Muslims with past Islamic invaders, when it was quite unnecessary. The textbooks went against a huge body of contemporary descriptions of the invasions by chroniclers and historians.

Our thinkers could have set a narrative by detaching the present Muslims from the crimes of the past Islamic invaders. With this far better method, there would have been no need to falsify our history and, at the same time, carry the country forward with better harmony. The dishonest approach caused immense damage to both Indian Hindus and Muslims. Muslim intellectuals, especially the Aligarh school of historians, played a key role in this exercise. India had an Islamic scholar as an education minister for ten long years after independence. This unique event in the history of any country would have certainly helped the implementation of these policies. Inappropriate ideas of secularism could not have the maturity to deal with the problem between two communities whose frictions date back centuries.

The Story of Freedom Struggle

The victors write history. In the case of independence, the Congress were the victors who gave us a specific narrative of the movement. Gandhiji, Nehruji, and the Congress were the great heroes. Sardar Patel, as an individual, was too important to ignore. Subash Bose grudgingly became a hero, but the stress was always on his taking help from fascist Germany and Japan. European countries had complex power struggles that sucked other countries into their wars.

Hitler initially had good relations with Stalinist Russia and England. Later, he turned to attack Russia, and the second world war polarised countries with the Axis powers on one side and the Allied powers on the other. The fluctuating relations between countries were also reflected in the volte-faces in India. The Communists, for example, fought the British initially; later, they became friends with the British as Germany invaded Russia. England was an ally of Russia, and thus a friend of a friend became a friend too.

In another manifestation of the victors writing history and colonized minds, the losers (specifically Hitler) became extremely bad. The Nazi rule under Hitler was cruel and brutal. The Nazi regime murdered six million Jews and more than five million non-Jews (Gipsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay people, blacks, the physically and mentally disabled, political opponents, Slavics, dissenting artists, the resisting clergy, and so on). Hitler was undoubtedly bad; however, Winston Churchill and the British were equally cruel and brutal. But our colonised minds exonerate the latter.

To gain perspective, there were 31 famines in the 120 years of British rule. In just 10 years (1891–1900), 19 million people died in India due to famines alone. The famines, the biggest colonial holocausts, are at the top of some of the most severe inhumanities in modern times. Under the British Raj, India suffered countless famines. The first of these was in 1770 (10 million deaths). The later ones were in 1783, 1866, 1873, 1892, 1897, and lastly, 1943–44.

The regular Bengal famines were the result of careless planning, Malthusian ideas, and highly racist leaders sitting in England looking the other way. Churchill hated the Indians and thought that they bred like animals. He also wondered why Gandhi did not die in the famine. In the Bengal Holocaust during the second world war, the British starved to death up to 3 million Indians for strategic reasons with Australian complicity. There were approximately 62,000 and 87,000 Indian soldiers who died during the first and second world wars without any stake or honour, except for the fact that we were a colony of the British.

Subhash Bose had an equal role, arguably even more than Gandhi, in gaining our independence through the Indian National Army, the INA trials, and the subsequent Naval Mutinies. He was a great patriot and was playing Chanakya Neeti in the art of warfare by approaching the ‘enemy of the enemy’ to gain what he desired from the core of his heart—the independence of India. It is possible that Bose, in seeking Nazi support, was expressing our experience of colonialism; as colonial subjects, there was no difference between the British and Nazis in terms of their cruelties.

The Tragedy of Independent India

History writing in India took a peculiar form in the name of secularism, and it is indeed unfortunate that a few generations grew up absorbing a distorted form of history. We lost pride in our own culture, and many Indians became acutely deracinated. Generating pride would perhaps be a greater step, but we failed in the sense that many grew up being ashamed of their history, heritage, and culture. This was the biggest problem with the education system of post-independent India, but were the choices of the ministers coherent with the idea of building a new India?

All of them were great people, undoubtedly, but the first Prime Minister, Nehru, was disconnected from traditional India. The first Law Minister (on the insistence of Gandhi in the “forgive-and-forget” mode of his staunchest critic), Dr. Ambedkar, had strong antithetical views on Hindus and especially the Brahmins. Finally, the first education minister (for ten long years in fact) was an Islamic scholar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. It would be naïve to believe that they did not carry their intellectual moorings while doing their job.

We had all the materials for the renaissance and rejuvenation of the country in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and Ananda Coomaraswamy. But they committed the cardinal sin of criticising the Kings. Completely obliterated from our school texts and historical narratives, we grew up with stories of social, cultural, and scientific India as the colonials understood them. The result is that today, very few are even aware of the names of Aurobindo or Coomaraswamy. We had all the blueprints for a golden future. Sadly, the academic, political, and intellectual world of New India ignored them.

At no point, did we turn back to question whether colonial narratives could be false too. The English were devastatingly brutal to India, and this is a non-negotiable stand. Yet the apologists, even today, make the case for the importance of British rule in India. If we believe books such as Freedom at Midnight, the only hero worth remembering for the independence of India was Lord Mountbatten. Winston Churchill was pure evil, and he stands right up at the top along with the likes of Hitler. Madhusree Mukherjee’s book on Churchill makes this abundantly clear.

Biases in Historical Narratives- the Examples of Gandhiji and Pakistan

Gandhiji had many contradictory strands, causing disruptions to the movements whenever they peaked. As George Orwell says,

“The British were making use of him. Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence, which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever, he could be regarded as ‘our man’.”

The Quit India movement was a colossal failure, and it collapsed within a few months after initiation. Gandhiji had become irrelevant after the Quit India movement collapsed in 1942, and the five years around 1942 saw a very important world war that changed many dynamics, culminating in our independence from colonial rule.

Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, in their book The South African Gandhi, deal with the life of Gandhiji before he came back to India in 1915. His period in South Africa was one of inconsistencies and contradictions, and there were hardly any wins for Gandhi when it came to the dealings of the South African government with the Indians. In India, his non-cooperation movement in 1920 ended suddenly with the Chauri-Chaura incident; his Civil Disobedience movement in 1930 dissolved in just under four years; his 1940 Civil disobedience movement dissolved in a few months; and finally, the famous 1942 Quit India movement collapsed within no time. It was only the activity of the revolutionaries that gave the 1942 movement some prominence.

Gandhiji was undoubtedly a great man, and he could mobilise the masses and stir the conscience of the nation like no other could. He was proud of his Hindu status and his major crusades against untouchability, his mobilisation of masses, and his almost divine status, prevented the nefarious communists from gaining a major foothold in India. The communists considered him the foremost public enemy. This prevention of communists from entering India was arguably his greatest contribution. Regarding untouchability, people like Sri Aurobindo spoke vehemently against it, while Savarkar carried out major campaigns against the practice. Our history books, however, will not reveal that.

But, he had a woolly romanticism while dealing with the Muslims and the British. Sri Aurobindo was critical of Gandhian ahimsa. It is a powerful tool for inner spiritual transformation, but it cannot be the ideal of a nation facing many troubles, Sri Aurobindo said. Ahimsa could not have any relevance in the hard world outside while dealing with politicians and the Muslim League. This was all too evident in the failure of Gandhiji at the second-round table conference in London.

Gandhi’s repeated fasts mostly against his own followers but never against the Muslim League; support of Ali Brothers; support of Khilafat movement; support to the Amir of Afghanistan when the latter was contemplating to attack British India; asking Hindu refugees to go back to Pakistan even at the risk of death; attempting to appease Jinnah by excessive concessions; allowing Sindh and North-West Frontier Province to split away from Mumbai Presidency in 1925; befriending Suhrawardy, who as a Chief Minister of Bengal remained inactive on the Direct Action Day (August 16, 1946); the opposition to Arya Samaj and his silence on the killing of Swami Shraddhananda; forcing the Indian government to pay 550 million rupees to Pakistan, who in turn, in all probabilities, used it to attack India; stopping Vande Mataram singing because it displeased Muslims; avoiding references to Shivaji; getting a green stripe instead of pure saffron in the Indian flag; and a continuing retreat to the extent of proposing a 100% Muslim cabinet were all hard-core Muslim appeasement politics.

Similarly, a letter to Hitler as a ‘friend’ in a naïve bid to change his heart and asking Jews to peacefully accept killing as an example of supreme non-violence were dents in his image of peace. Koenraad Elst says that Gandhi made a grave mistake in thinking that one can make the enemy disarm by first disarming oneself. The most mysterious move by Gandhi was perhaps asking Patel to step down in favour of Nehru as the leader and future PM of the country. Nehru did not have a single vote in his favour. It was only the Hindus who always supported him and were the object of his blackmailing fasts. Ironically again, Hindus and Hindu thought became objects of ridicule and to charges of ‘fundamentalism’ after his death. It made permanent villains out of any platform related to the Hindu cause.

Did the Congress and Gandhi, with his Satyagraha, give independence to India? It may have generated mass awareness, but the actual independence was mainly due to the events that happened after the 1942 Quit India movement, and this primarily meant the dynamics of the Second World War and Bose. Our independence had a lot more reasons equally important, if not more, than mere non-violence: Subhash Bose, the INA trials in Delhi, the Naval mutinies, World War 2, the Labour Government in England, and the post-war economic hardships of England. The British wanted an honourable exit, perhaps, and they got it in ample measure. Clement Atlee once said that the contribution of Gandhiji to their decision to grant independence was ‘minimal.’

Pakistan Creation- Complex Story

For Indians, Jinnah is undoubtedly the villain of Pakistan’s creation, but as Mazumdar shows, it was almost an evil necessity, and many Congress leaders accepted it much before the actual split. The Communists of India were only second to the Muslim League in helping create Pakistan. Venkat Dhulipala deals with this elegantly in his book, Creating a New Medina. The Muslims and Muslim League were clear in their aims and objectives. The Congress was in a state of denial and romanticism regarding the actual relations between the two distinct segments of the Indian population. Venkat Dhulipala and Saumya Dey (The Seedbed of Pakistan) show this with clarity.

One of the prime reasons for Hindu consolidation was the excessive appeasement of the Muslims, despite a hard stance from their side. In the crucial elections before independence, which were almost a referendum for Pakistan, the Muslim League won with a thumping majority. The Aligarh Muslim University faculty and students played a crucial role in gathering support for the Muslim League, even sacrificing their regular studies. The majority of Muslims in the United Provinces (despite being aware that they will likely stay back in India) and Muslim intellectuals and poets (including a few like Majrooh Sultanpuri who stayed back to carry a different agenda in the garb of Marxism), rooted strongly for Pakistan.

But the most duplicitous must be the Communists. They shifted positions as their masters in Russia told them to do so. They were initially against the British. When Hitler invaded Russia and the latter became an ally of England, the Communists, on orders from their Russian masters, became friends and allies of the British. They started working against their Congress colleagues. EMS Namboodaripad stated that ‘the CPI would wholeheartedly support ML candidates in the forthcoming elections and put up communist candidates in general constituencies against the Congress.’ Communist intellectuals blueprinted the case for Pakistan with academic arguments.

History of the Freedom Movement in India by RC Mazumdar

The three-volume History of the Freedom Movement in India by RC Mazumdar, the first of which was published in 1962, is an intellectual tour de force giving a far clearer version of our independence struggle. The books open to us a far different version of the freedom struggle, while the mainstream story comes into question. The histories we have internalised are half-truths, and for a better understanding, we must read the works of RC Mazumdar. The three-volume history is the full version; there is an abbreviated version, which is the 11^th volume of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series on the entire history of India. For those who are shortest on time, the best is the chapter on freedom struggle in the comprehensive resource, An Advanced History of India.

Mazumdar was clear in placing Bengal as the epicentre of the freedom movement; was harsh on Gandhi despite being respectful to him; and consistently exposed the fallacies of the Congress policies in dealing with both the British and the Muslims. This was the main reason for rejecting RC Mazumdar’s history as the official version, as it was plainly uncomfortable. Jinnah was the obvious villain for splitting the country in our textbooks, but the seeds of Pakistan started immediately after the 1857 mutiny, and it was Syed Ahmed Khan in the latter part of the nineteenth century who laid the foundations of a separate country. It was doubtful whether the Muslims, who always saw themselves as different from the Hindus, were ever fighting for independence from the British. Their sense of identity was always separate from the Hindus. Their sole fight was the creation of a nation for themselves based on a religious identity. The Hindu leaders, according to Mazumdar, never realised this and soaked themselves in denial.

The rest of this series is a summary and paraphrasing from mainly the 11^th Volume of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series by RC Mazumdar. A very important disclaimer: The essays are taken directly from the book without indication as such in all cases. The first-person component of the essays also belongs to Mazumdar. There are no extra elements or comments added to the text of Mazumdar except for some editing and slight additions to give clarity to the background context and to give a smoother flow to the topic under discussion. The aim is to give an overview of the freedom struggle from a different perspective. It is by no means exhaustive and complete, and there are many other uncovered topics, like the Ghadar movement. It is a humble effort on the part of the author to bring the main aspects of Mazumdar’s history to the fore and mainly stimulate the interested reader to go for the whole book.

PART 2

The Book: Genesis, Politics, and the Baring of Facts in the Introduction and Appendix

The rest of this series is a summary and paraphrasing of the works of RC Mazumdar. The essays are directly from the book, without indication as such in all cases. The first-person component of the essays also belongs to Mazumdar. There are no extra elements or comments added to the text of Mazumdar except for some editing and slight additions to give clarity to the background context and to give a smoother flow to the topic under discussion. The aim is to give an overview of the freedom struggle from a different perspective.

It was not an easy book for Mazumdar. In the introduction to his book, Mazumdar begins by saying,

“It may appear somewhat strange that having devoted myself for more than forty years exclusively to the study of ancient Indian history, I should have undertaken, at the fag-end of my life, to write the history of the freedom movement in India.”

He then proceeds to explain the genesis of the book.

He first proposed the project of writing the history of the freedom struggle and started off as the official historian of the project. The government of his day approved this project. Due to many factors, which he elaborates on in the introduction and appendix of the book, the government took him off the project and entrusted the work to Dr. Tara Chand, who in turn brought the official version in 1961. This, according to Mazumdar, gave an altogether different version of the history.

Two specific things in the official history book are jarring to Mazumdar. The first is the claim by Dr. Tara Chand in the preface that the idea of writing a history of the freedom movement emanated from the late Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Minister of Education of independent India.
The second is in the claim made by Humayun Kabir, Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs, in the foreword of the book. The second contradicts the first claim.
Humayun Kabir says,

“At the very first meeting of the Indian Historical Records Commission held after India became free, a resolution was passed for preparing an authentic and comprehensive history of the different phases of the Indian struggle for independence. This recommendation found an immediate response from the late Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.”

Humayun Kabir describes how the government proceeded with the project over a period of four years before finally setting up a Board of Editors in 1953.

Both Tara Chand and Humayun were inaccurate and misleading, according to Mazumdar. To set the record straight, Mazumdar brings together all the relevant facts in the appendix to his first of the three-volume series. He presents evidence that shows that it was Mazumdar himself who initiated the proposal first. He shows that he even produced a first draft of the first volume, which had an unceremonious rejection by the Government of India.

The government then decided to publish an official version under the authorship of Dr. Tara Chand. Mazumdar believed clearly that this would be a highly sanitised version. He then resolved to draft his own book. Mazumdar lost access to the materials compiled by the Board but fortunately most had been published by the different state governments, which originally supplied them as books and articles. However, it was mostly a one-man venture.

When Should History Begin?  

There is no confusion for Mazumdar about the question, “Where should the history of the freedom struggle for India begin?”  To him, India lost its independence with Islamic imperialism, and later, the colonials simply took over. But this book was about the achievement of independence and throwing off the British yoke. Mazumdar clarifies that it was not a history of British rule in India but only of the movement to put an end to it.

He writes,

“It is an ominous sign of the time that Indian history is being viewed in official circles in the perspective of recent politics. The official history of the freedom movement starts with the premises that India lost independence only in the eighteenth century and had thus an experience of subjection to a foreign power for only two centuries. Real history, on the other hand, teaches us that the major part of India lost independence about five centuries before, and merely changed masters in the eighteenth century.”

The Phases of Independence

Mazumdar places the struggle for independence into four distinct phases:

1. The first (1763–1863) was that of an impotent rage, on the part of certain classes and communities, against the imposition of British authority, which gained momentum gradually. The sporadic attempts and armed resistance culminated in the great outbreak of 1857. This, along with the rebellion of the Wahabis to restore Muslim supremacy (1850–1863), ended the first phase of the struggle. The drastic end made armed revolts against British authority impractical.
2. The second phase (1860–1905) was the growth of patriotic and national sentiments, chiefly due to English education and the contact with Western culture brought about by it. Hindu society, religion, literature, and politics underwent a major transformation. The ideal of the British democratic system of government and faith in the benevolence of the British replaced anger with devotion and loyalty to the British throne. Political organisation and constitutional agitation visualised a united India as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire.
3. The third phase (1905–1920) was the transformation of Indian political ideas from the second phase by the impact of nationalist ideas. The political goal was now Swaraj, or Self Rule, and the focus shifted to reliance on own efforts instead of fruitless appeals to the British. This began with the Swadeshi movement in Bengal in 1905 and ended with the death of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the emergence of Gandhi as the leader of the unarmed national revolt (1920).
4. Gandhi dominated the final phase wholly. This was the phase of Gandhi (1920–1947). The exception was during the last five years, when he lost leadership. Its principal characteristic was the new technique of Satyagraha struggle. Though previously known, it came with a wider application.

Mazumdar acknowledges that there was a possibility of subjectiveness being strongly associated with the last two phases. Yet he also has the advantage of first-hand knowledge and a deeper perspective on important events.
He writes,

“I have therefore tried to place before the reader all the relevant facts, leaving them to form their own conclusions.”

The Politics of the Book- The Jaipur Session of IHRC in 1948

In the appendix to the three-volume history, Mazumdar explains the backstory of the book itself in a glaring indictment of the education minister of that time, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. He writes that the idea of authoring a book on independence had possessed him since August 15, 1947, when the records were all available and memories were fresh. He moved a resolution in the Jaipur Session of the Indian Historical Records Commission held in February 1948.

The Jaipur session in 1948 observed that Mahatma Gandhi was the foremost leader of the movement, and it was essential that all his papers should be placed in the custody of the National Archives of India. The National Archives of Washington had already begun a march by acquiring photographic copies of Mahatmaji’s writings and a record of his voice. There was also a request to the Government of India and the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Committee to transfer all the original writings of Mahatma Gandhi and records relating to him to the custody of the National Archives of India for preservation. There was a tardy response both from the government and the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Committee.

Mazumdar requests that an attempt be made to compile a list of important records, both published and unpublished, bearing upon the national struggle for freedom. Mazumdar proposed a scheme in an article entitled ‘History of India’s Struggle’ that New Democrat, a weekly journal of the Institute of Political Science, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Bombay, published in its May 7, 1948, issue.

Hence, categorically, with all evidence, Mazumdar shows that the idea came from him as early as 1948. Mazumdar writes,

“…the task of writing a proper history of the struggle is so great that it is not possible for any private individual to undertake it. It is the duty of the State to launch a scheme which would ensure the preservation and full utilization of all the materials.’’

The Prime Minister received a copy of the Jaipur Resolution and forwarded it to his secretary, who in turn advised Mazumdar to contact the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Mazumdar then wrote to the Secretary of the Ministry of I and B on June 15, 1948, to consider the proposal. There was no reply. Mazumdar then wrote a letter to an old acquaintance, Dr. Rajendra Prasad (the President of India). The President, in a long reply, dated Camp Pilani, Jaipur, August 26, 1948, wholeheartedly approved the proposal. He wanted a scheme for this that he could push forward. On this encouragement, Mazumdar promptly sends his scheme.

On December 4, 1948, Mazumdar met N. B. Maiti, a minister, in a private party and impressed upon him the importance of publishing an authentic history of the national movement in Bengal. Maiti asks Mazumdar to submit a proposal to the Minister of Education. Mazumdar does send a letter to the Minister of Education but fails to get a response again. Continued efforts to influence Maiti also failed for Mazumdar. The inertia of the Ministry of Education would have probably continued, but fortunately, Dr. Rajendra Prasad intervened, says Mazumdar.

Progress on the Jaipur Recommendations

In August 1949, Mazumdar received an intimation that the government had decided to appoint a committee to collect material for the preparation of a history of the freedom movement. The opening paragraph of the government note (Note On The Progress Made In The Compilation Of The History Of Freedom Movement In India) placed before the I. H. R. C. Session at Nagpur in December 1950 plainly admits this. It reads:

“The scheme for writing an authentic and comprehensive history of the different phases of the struggle which culminated in the freedom of India in 1947, was originally recommended by the Indian Historical Records Commission at its Jaipur Session in 1948 ; and when the Hon’ble Dr. Rajendra Prasad invited the attention of the Government of India to the urgency of this work, the Ministry of Education was entrusted with the planning and execution of the project.” (Proceedings, p. 95)

This would make it amply clear whether the credit for launching the scheme belongs to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, as stated by Humayun Kabir, or to Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Mazumdar writes that he had to explain in detail to counter the official propaganda. Humayun Kabir and Dr. Tara Chand, the author of the official history, credited the planning of the history of the freedom movement in India to the late Abul Kalam Azad. It was unlikely that Kabir and Tarachand would be ignorant since they had clear access to the facts of the case.

Thus, Mazumdar says that the real credit for initiating the scheme for a history of the freedom movement belongs to Dr. Rajendra Prasad and nobody else. Dr. Rajendra Prasad initiated two important national schemes—one for writing a comprehensive history of India (in twenty volumes) and the other for compiling an authentic history of the freedom movement in India.

The Ministry of Education: Attempt to Outsource the Project

The government, however, altered the facts. It mentions in a note that an expert committee of seven members, first meeting on January 5, 1950, was appointed with Dr. Tara Chand as Chairman. The official note talks about several recommendations. One was that the projected history should be confined to the period 1870 A.D. to August 15, 1947, and that the movements prior to 1870 may be treated in an introductory chapter. It also wanted a central organisation with regional offices that could collect and collate all the material from authentic and original sources, both official and non-official.

The note continues that the Ministry of Education, however, felt unable to accept these recommendations due to many issues, primarily financial. Thus, this work should progress through the voluntary efforts of scholars and learned societies. Mazumdar says that the Ministry might have had good reasons to outsource the project but certainly does not substantiate Humayun Kabir’s remark that the recommendation of the I. H. R. C. made at the Jaipur session in February 1948 “found an immediate response from the late Moulana Abul Kalam Azad, who directed that steps should forthwith be taken to give effect to it.”

In its meeting held on September 18, 1951, the Chairman, Dr. Tara Chand, suggested that instead of the Ministry of Education undertaking the entire work itself, it might be entrusted to an academic body such as the Indian History Congress or a university. The committee concluded that Delhi University would be the most suitable agency for this project. Mazumdar did not attend this meeting, and apparently only two historians were present there: Dr. Tara Chand and Dr. Bisheshwar Prasad.

Mazumdar later discovers a prolonged negotiation between the Ministry of Education and the University of Delhi, but there is finally an abandonment of the project. More than a year later, after the Experts Committee recommendation on September 18, 1951, the Ministry of Education suddenly showed enthusiasm for rekindling the project. Mazumdar again sees the hand of Dr. Rajendra Prasad in this.

The Setting Up of the Board

On December 30, 1952, the Ministry of Education finally set up a Board of Editors for the compilation of the History of the Freedom Movement in India, consisting of nine members. Dr. R.C. Mazumdar was one of them, which also included Prof. M. Habib and Prof. Nilakantha Sastry. In its meeting on April 26, 1953, the Board appointed RC Mazumdar as the Director to organise the work of sifting and collecting materials and preparing the draft of the history. Mazumdar had major difficulties in the job. The executive powers of the Board were in the hands of a small committee consisting of the chairman, secretary, and senior official of the Government of India. None of them had any knowledge of history. The secretary exercised most of the powers. Mazumdar was assisted research workers, some of whom were appointed without his knowledge.

The Ministry dissolved the Board, however, at the end of 1955. The Board was a hindrance rather than help, writes Mazumdar, and it would have been better with a small body of two or three competent historians. In the two and a half years between the establishment and dissolution, local committees were set up in different states for collecting material. The Board was to complete its work within a period of three years: the first two years to be used for collecting materials and preparing drafts on different phases of the struggle, and the third year for the final text for publication.

Mazumdar prepared the first rough draft of Volume I before the end of 1954. A stencilled copy of it was circulated to all the members of the Board. The Board held a meeting in Ahmedabad between December 31, 1954, and January 2, 1955, to discuss this first draft. After a prolonged discussion, the Board generally approved its layout but suggested that each member return to the director the stencilled copy of the draft with marginal notes embodying his views regarding its final revision. No member cared to do this. The Board also recommended that the contents be kept strictly confidential. This also did not happen in a big way.

Confidentiality Broken

Mazumdar suspected the confidentiality was broken when the Minister for Education, Abul Kalam Azad, told Mazumdar that the draft appeared satisfactory but that he had received complaints about the exaggerated role of Bengal in the freedom movement. Since both Mazumdar and Kalam hail from Bengal, the book might evoke mischief, Azad told Mazumdar. Soon, a meeting of the Board of Editors happened on March 28, 1955. Humayun Kabir, Secretary, Ministry of Education, and Dr. Tara Chand, a former Secretary, attended the meeting by special invitation. In that meeting, Mazumdar reiterated that the history of the Freedom Movement was a general term with two connotations: (i) Freedom denotes freedom from the British yoke, and (ii) it refers to political freedom only.

Mazumdar however quotes a letter from the Government of India of 1950 that envisaged that the history should cover the period from 1870 to 1947 (15 August). He also quotes another letter from the Secretary in 1953 to trace the beginning to 1857. Mazumdar makes it clear that in the meeting of the Board of Editors held in January 1953, a draft outline had been unanimously approved. A detailed plan with division into chapters was circulated in 1954. The Board had approved it in January 1955 at the Ahmadabad meeting. Hence, Mazumdar felt that the plan should stay intact. Majumdar emphasised that the movement for political freedom should be treated as the central theme and that other factors contributing to it should be merely ancillary to it.

However, Dr. Tara Chand prepared and circulated, before the meeting itself, a note on the preparation of the history of the Freedom Movement. In Mazumdar’s view, Tara Chand’s note had some non-relevant points and was more of a general review of the political, cultural, and social history of India. The note had an entirely new approach to the subject. It began with the settlement of different primitive races in India and the evolution of cultures ‘from palaeolithic to modern Western’. Dr. Tara Chand also makes the startling claim that Mazumdar’s draft was not a historical text at all.

Surprisingly, some members assured Dr. Tara Chand that the approach in the note was in accordance with the plan of the work of the Board of Editors. A resolution agreed mysteriously to Tara Chand’s claim. Mazumdar was stumped as to why, at such a late stage, the Board invited Tara Chand to put forward his plan, completely sidelining the approved draft of Mazumdar. It was also strange that the Board approved an entirely different approach by saying that it was “according to the plan.” There was no directive to modify the draft volume of Mazumdar.

Finally, the Board, in turn, asks the Ministry of Education whether the Board of Editors is expected to present the Freedom Movement in its final form, ready for publication, or whether the Ministry contemplated appointing people to write the history in its final form based on the materials collected and collated by the Board. In the case of the former, it proposed a revised timetable where Volumes 1, 2, and 3 would be published by March 1956, March 1957, and March 1958, respectively. If, however, the Board is merely to collect and collate materials for the three volumes, the work would be completed by March 1957.

The resolution showed that some influence was at work to undo what Mazumdar had already done. There was also a new arrangement for writing the history. Already, only about a week ago, questions and answers were being raised in Parliament regarding the project. The resolution resulted in a complete change in the attitude of the government. It dissolved the Board of Editors by the end of 1955. Mazumdar cut off his connection in October itself. For more than a year after the dissolution, the government did not take any steps to compile the history. Subsequently, Dr. Tara Chand was entrusted with the work. The first volume of the officially mandated history was published on January 26, 1961.

Misinformation In the Preface and The Foreword of The Official Book: The Trigger for Mazumdar

In his preface to the official history, Dr. Tara Chand does not make even a casual reference to the Board and its work. He simply states that the idea of writing a history of the freedom movement emanated from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who asked Dr. Tara Chand to take up the work. This was a gross distortion of truth, says Mazumdar. Humayun Kabir’s foreword conveys the idea that the Board’s activities were confined to the mere collection of materials.

Even the reasons given by Humayun Kabir for the dissolution of the Board and the appointment of Dr. Tara Chand are curious. The reason given was that the Board, though rendering useful service in collecting material on an ad hoc and temporary basis, was not adequately qualified to prepare a unified history. Since both academic historians and active politicians with different approaches were involved in the project, the decision was to transfer further work on data collection to the National Archives. The interpretation and narration of history would be the task of one single scholar of distinction.

Thus, Dr. Tara Chand, Chairman of the Planning Committee at an earlier stage, having a special competence as a historian, came to be appointed as the editor of the book. Mazumdar writes that he (Mazumdar) related to the Board from its inception almost up to the end. There was never any serious difference among the members of the Board regarding the collection of material or the interpretation of material that had already been collected. There was general approval of the draft of the first volume too. The government never even remotely alluded to any such grounds for dissolving the Board.

Mazumdar signs by saying,

“It is a great pity that almost every statement made in the foreword and the preface regarding the history of preparing the History of Freedom Movement in India should be either half-truths or untruths, though the writers of both should have had a full knowledge of all the facts and at least had ample opportunity of knowing them.”

One of the reasons the government was against the draft prepared by Mazumdar was that he credits Bengal as the epicentre of the freedom movement. Mazumdar believes this to be true, as the ideas of nationalism, patriotism, and political organisation on Western lines were first developed in Bengal and then spread to the rest of India. He was critical of the Muslims and Gandhiji too. The political correctness of those times, the ideas of secularism, and a Muslim as an education minister perhaps would have been majorly responsible for rejecting Mazumdar’s efforts in depicting the true history of the freedom movement. Mazumdar finally embarks on authoring his own book in three volumes, giving a better version of the freedom movement.

PART 3

The Muslim Politics

The point Mazumdar repeatedly makes in his book is that the Muslim leaders were extremely clear on what they wanted. The Hindu leaders remained clouded and romantic, dreaming of a unity not simply existing in the minds and hearts of their Islamic counterparts.
The central idea of all the proposed alternatives was that the treatment of Muslims should not be as a minority community in Hindu India but as a separate nation with a distinct culture.
During this great metamorphosis of Muslim politics in India, neither the Congress nor the Hindu public men gave it the serious attention it deserved. They angrily opposed the idea of vivisection of India in any form and took their stand on the twin ideas of Indian nationality and Indian unity—the ideas that the Muslims rejected in almost one voice.
The Hindu leadership never belonged to the Hindus, and the Muslim leadership was devoted to nothing except Muslims and Islam.

Mazumdar makes it clear that a united, single voice has existed among the Muslims since the beginning of the 20^th century. The politics of appeasement by the Congress started officially in 1911. Mazumdar also demonstrates in his dealings with Muslim politics and politicians that the idea of victimhood and persecution superseded any nationalistic feelings or a desire for harmony. The separation of a ‘majority’ from the ‘minority’ was consistently clear to most Muslims.

There were indeed few Muslim supporters of the Congress, but in the majority of Muslim leaders, the idea of Muslim and Hindu identities as distinctly separate was vivid. It was only the woolly romanticism of the Hindu leaders, especially Gandhi, who could not see reality objectively. The next sections on Muslim politics are directly from Mazumdar’s books, slightly modified and edited in a few places. There are a few added background explanations for a clearer understanding.

On Hindu-Muslim Relations

Mazumdar uses the writings of Hindu leaders, Muslim leaders like Syed Ahmed, and Britishers like W. S. Blunt to give a first-hand account of the feelings of Hindus and Muslims towards each other. Only the statements of important contemporary personalities can address the passions and prejudices of those times. This was an important topic in the history of India’s struggle for freedom, but the official versions ignore it. Mazumdar says that one can rationally explain the creation of Pakistan only by carefully studying the relations between the two communities in the nineteenth century.

He writes,

“The extent of general ignorance on the subject may be gathered from the fact that today the Indians regard M. A. Jinnah as the father of the two-nation theory, oblivious of the fact that it was propounded and repeated times without number by Syed Ahmad and his followers more than half a century before… Similarly, Blunt’s diary gives an idea of the Hindu-Muslim feelings towards each other before the Aligarh Movement.”

On the revolt of 1857, Mazumdar disagrees with the official Centenary Volume of the Mutiny. He contradicts the view that it was the first national war of independence. It was neither ‘first’, nor ‘national,’ nor a ‘war of independence’. Its role was unduly exaggerated, even as the role of the Wahabi movement in the struggle for freedom was unduly minimised. (Note: Sayyid Ahmad (1786–1831) founded the Wahabi Movement, a socioreligious movement, in Rae Bareli, India, around 1820. This Sunni Islamic revivalist movement sought to preserve the spirit of Islam by shielding it from the influence of the British in Bengal and the Sikhs in Punjab. First targeting the Sikhs of Punjab, it turned on the British after the British annexed Punjab in 1849. The Wahabis had a major role to play in the 1857 revolt, but the British forces brutally crushed it.)

Mazumdar writes,

“Political exigencies gave rise to the slogan of Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai. An impression was sought to be deliberately created that the Hindus and Muslims had already shed so much of their individual characteristics, and there was such a complete transformation of both and a fusion of their cultures that there was no essential difference between the two. Though every true Indian must ever devoutly wish for such a consummation, it was, unfortunately, never a historical fact.”

Sir Syed Ahmad (1817–1898), Jinnah, and other Muslim leaders never believed in it but had more realistic views in this respect than either Gandhi or Nehru. The unity was eminently desirable but was not yet achieved. Ignoring this patent fact was a grave political blunder by the Hindu leaders with tragic consequences. They refused to recognise the fundamental differences between the Hindus and Muslims, which made them two distinct religious, social, and political units, writes Mazumdar. Hindu leaders never made a serious effort to make it possible for two such distinct units to live together as members of one state.

Mazumdar warns,

“Even today, the Indian leaders would not face the historical truth; their failure to recognize which has cost them dear. They still live in the realm of a fancied fraternity and are as sensitive to any expression that jars against the slogan of Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai as they were at the beginning of this century.”

Out of goodwill towards both communities, Mazumdar says that the solid structure of mutual amity and understanding cannot be built on the quick sands of false history and political expediency. Real understanding can only be achieved through a frank recognition of the facts of history. Such a discussion also becomes indispensable for a rational explanation of the birth of Pakistan.

The Genesis and Evolution of All India Muslim League

After long negotiations, Muslim leaders finally established the All-India Muslim League on December 30, 1906, in Dhaka. The purpose was to provide scope for the participation of Muslim youths in politics and prevent them from joining the Indian National Congress. This would check the growth of the latter.

The aims and objects of the League were as follows:

(a) To promote, amongst the Musalmans of India, feelings of loyalty to the British Government and to remove any misconception that may arise as to the intentions of Government with regard to Indian measures.

(b) To protect and advance the political rights of the Musalmans of India and respectfully represent their needs and aspirations to the Government.

(c) To prevent the rise among the Musalmans of India of any feeling of hostility towards other communities without prejudice to the other previously mentioned objects of the League.

The Secretary of the League declared:

“We are not opposed to the social unity of the Hindus and the Musalmans. But the other type of unity (political) involves the working out of common political purposes. This sort of our unity with the Congress cannot be possible because we and the Congressmen do not have common political objectives. They indulge in acts calculated to weaken the British Government. They want representative Government which means death for Musalmans. They desire competitive examinations for employment in Government services and this would mean the deprivation of Musalmans of Government jobs. Therefore, we need not go near political unity (with the Hindus). It is the aim of the League to present Muslim demands through respectful request before the Government. They should not, like Congressmen, cry for boycott, deliver exciting speeches and write impertinent articles in newspapers and hold meetings to turn public feeling and attitude against their benign Government.”

Mazumdar then quotes a Frenchman, M. Ernest Piriou, a professor at the University of Paris, to comment on this relationship between the British and the attitude of Muslims:

“Who had foreseen that Indian nationalism would give birth to a Musalman nationalism, first sulky, then hostile and aggressive? …. At any rate, the most dangerous enemies of Indian politics are the Musalmans. And they have not stopped midway, they have thrown themselves into the arms of the English so warmly opened to receive them. These irreconcilable enemies of the day before, artificers and victims of the revolution of 1857, are now the bodyguards of the Viceroy… The Musalman opposition is a marvellous resource. The English, I beg of you to believe it, know how to draw fine effects out of it. If ever this misunderstanding, so skilfully nourished, happens to clear up, the English would be the most disconsolate. For this Islamic bloc is a force, and on this bloc, this solid point, revolves Anglo-Indian policy.”

The Muslim League

The only organised political party that showed some signs of new life between 1907 and 1914 was the Muslim League. The characteristic communal spirit battled to secure political and other advantages for the Muslims at the cost of the Hindus. There was an all-important conference at Allahabad held on January 1, 1911, attended by about 60 Hindus and 40 Muslims. Mazumdar quotes Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who “asked the conference to remember that Muslim fears of being dominated by the Hindu majority should not be lightly treated.” Gandhi’s utterances were similar in nature. He said, “As a man of truth I honestly believe that Hindus should yield up to the Mahomedans what the latter desire, and that they should rejoice in so doing.”

The Conference, despite its failure, is of great historical importance. For it marks the beginning of that policy of appeasement that the Congress has henceforth adopted towards the Muslim community. However laudable its object might be, in practice, it led to two undesirable consequences. Though it did not reconcile the Muslims, it irritated the Hindus and increased the importance of the Hindu Mahasabha, a counterpart of the Muslim League. Secondly, it encouraged—almost incited—the Muslims to always pitch their demands high.

Mazumdar makes his most severe indictment when he says,

“It clearly follows from what has been said above that the political interests of the Muslim world outside India counted far more with the Indian Muslims than the political progress of India. They did not hesitate to help the British in keeping India under subjection, but turned against them and joined the Hindus merely at the apprehension of similar danger to outside Muslim States. In other words, the Muslims of India were less concerned with the British domination of India than with the British attitude towards the Muslim States outside India.”

The British Supporting the Muslims as A Counter to Hindu Nationalism

Lord Olivier, shortly after he had ceased to be the Secretary of State for India (November 1924), commented on the communal riots in India:

“But there are other causes of the increasing faction fighting. No one with close acquaintance of Indian affairs will be prepared to deny that… there is a predominant bias in British officialism in India in favour of the Muslim community, partly on the ground of closer sympathy, but more largely as a makeweight against Hindu Nationalism.”

When challenged in the House of Lords, he explained his position:

“But what I did say—and it is based upon what I have heard from a great many Englishmen who have served in India… was that there is an official bias in favour of the Mahomedan community…. When the Hindu-Muslim pact was made it was a pact which strengthened the probability of an advance towards Swaraj policy in India. A very large number of persons… regard the self-governing Swaraj policy as a movement deleterious to British interests in India, and…when the Hindu-Muslim pact broke up there was a distinct satisfaction on the part of those persons both in this country and in India, who were opposed to the Nationalist  movement, that the pact had broken up and that there should be political dissensions among those affected.”

Mazumdar says that it would be difficult to think of more damaging evidence in support of the charge that the British favoured and enjoyed the Muslims against the Hindus for their own interests. The British government denies this charge vehemently, but statements by such officials tell a different story.

Mohammed Ali

Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878–1931) was the founding member of the All-India Muslim League, a member of the Indian National Congress, a leading figure of both the Khilafat Movement and the Aligarh Movement, and one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia. He became the President of the Indian National Congress Party in 1923, though it was only for a few months. He later became a strong critic of Gandhi, Nehru, and the Congress, accusing them of Hindu appeasement and isolating the Muslims. As the tenth president of the All-India Muslim League, he represented the party in the first round-table conference held in London in 1930.

He and his brother, Shaukat Ali, together called the Ali brothers, became leaders of the Khilafat Movement. In 1919, the Muslim League attempted to convince the British government to influence Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal not to depose the Sultan of Turkey (also known as the Caliph or leader of the Islamic world). The British rejected the demand. The Muslims formed the Khilafat committee, which directed Muslims all over India to protest and boycott the British government.

The Congress, on the insistence of Gandhi, gave support to this agitation. This support for a pan-Islamist cause was one of the greatest criticisms of Gandhi. However, there were widespread agitations in the country thanks to Gandhi’s call. However, this Civil Disobedience Movement against the British ended abruptly following the Chauri Chaura incident in 1922. Agitators burned a police station on provocation, which killed 22 police personnel. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress called off the movement. The Ali brothers and the Muslim League fumed at this move.

Mazumdar writes in the book that Muhammad Ali, who was the principal lieutenant of Gandhi in his first Satyagraha campaign in 1920, refused to join him in the second campaign in 1930. At a meeting of the All-India Muslim Conference at Bombay held in April 1930, attended by over 20,000 Muslims, he bluntly stated:

“We refuse to join Mr. (no longer Mahatma) Gandhi, because his movement is not a movement for the complete independence of India but for making the seventy millions of Indian Musalmans dependents of the Hindu Mahasabha.”

He made no secret of the fact that pan-Islamism guided the Muslims. In his address as Congress President in 1923, he reminded the audience that “extra-territorial sympathies are part of the quintessence of Islam.” Mazumdar writes that the ‘unkindest cut of all’ came when he declared at the Round Table Conference in 1930, “Make no mistake about the quarrels between Hindu and Mussalman; they are founded only on the fear of domination.” And he reminded the conference that Islam did not confine itself to India. “I belong to two circles of equal size but which are not concentric. One is India and the other is the Muslim world. We are not nationalists but supernationalists.”

Mohammed Iqbal

Mohammed Iqbal was a scholar, politician, and poet whose ‘Saare Jahaan Se Achcha Hindustan Hamaara’ we sing with patriotic fervour. Mazumdar, however, says that Iqbal leaves us in no doubt about his ideal. Iqbal says,

“I confess to be a Pan-Islamist. The mission for which Islam came into this world will ultimately be fulfilled, the world will be purged of infidelity and the worship of false gods, and the true soul of Islam will be triumphant… This is the kind of Pan-Islamism which I preach…Islam as a religion has no country.”

About the current Indian politics, Iqbal expressed his view as follows:

“The present struggle in India is sometimes described as India’s revolt against the West. I do not think it is a revolt against the West; for the people of India are demanding the very institutions which the West stands for…Educated urban India demands democracy. The minorities, feeling themselves as distinct cultural units and fearing that their very existence is at stake, demand safeguards, which the majority community, for obvious reasons, refuses to concede. The majority community pretends to believe in a nationalism…Thus, the real parties to the present struggle in India are not England and India, but the majority community and the minorities of India which can ill afford to accept the principle of Western democracy until it is properly modified to suit the actual conditions of life in India.”

Iqbal’s Presidential Address in the Allahabad session of the Muslim League (December 1930) deserves more than a passing notice, says Mazumdar, as it laid the foundation of Pakistan. Iqbal says,

“India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages, and professing different religions… Personally, I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.”

Rahmat Ali (1897-1951)

Choudhry Rahmat Ali (1897–1951), a lawyer educated in Cambridge, was one of the strongest proponents of Pakistan as a separate nation. As a law student at the University of Cambridge, he was one of the key signatories to a pamphlet known later as the “Pakistan Declaration.” Addressed to the British and Indian delegates at the Third Round Table Conference in London (1932), they did not gain traction with anyone terming them as ‘students’ ideas.’ However, by 1940, the Muslim League had accepted this proposal wholeheartedly.

Rahmat Ali conceived of a Muslim country consisting of Punjab, N.W.F.P. (also called Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan called “Pakistan.” The initials of the first four (P, A, Ki, and S) and the last part of the fifth (Tan) formed the word. Rahmat Ali’s basic theory, according to Mazumdar, was that the Hindus and Muslims were fundamentally distinct nations. To Rahmat Ali, the Hindu-Muslim clash was not due to religious or economic grounds. It was an international conflict between two national ambitions: Muslim for survival and Hindu for supremacy.

This is amply evident in the following statement of Rahmat Ali, says Mazumdar:

“Our religion, culture, history, tradition, literature, economic system, laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are fundamentally different from those of the Hindus. These differences are not confined to the broad basic principles. They extend to the minute details of our lives. We, Muslims, and Hindus, do not interdine; we do not intermarry. Our national customs and calendars, even our diet and dress are different.”

The point Mazumdar repeatedly makes in his book is that the Muslim leaders were extremely clear on what they wanted. The Hindu leaders remained clouded and romantic, dreaming of a unity not simply existing in the minds and hearts of their Islamic counterparts.

The Genesis of Pakistan

The cry for a homeland for Muslims first found a definite and forceful expression in the Presidential speech of Sir Muhammad Iqbal in the Allahabad session of the Muslim League in 1930. A group of young men led by Rahmat Ali propagated the idea ever since, because of which the Pakistan National Movement began in 1933. A four-page leaflet (Now or Never), privately circulated from Cambridge in January 1933, bore the signatures of Rahmat Ali and three others.

They protested the federal constitution favoured by the Round Table Conference and rejected the claim of the Indian Muslim Delegation to speak for their community. The pamphlet proclaimed, “There can be no peace and tranquillity in this land if we, the Muslims, are duped into a Hindu-dominated Federation where we cannot be the masters of our own destiny and captains of our own souls.” The Cambridge pamphlet attracted little serious notice at the time, for the scheme for Pakistan was not a practical proposal.

The delegates of the All-India Moslem Conference and the Muslim League appeared before the Joint Select Committee in August 1933. The Committee asked whether there was a proposal for a federation of Provinces under the name of Pakistan. The reply was that it was only a student’s scheme, and another member said that it was a ‘chimerical and impracticable’ proposition.

Rahmat Ali, claiming to be the ‘founder and President of the Pakistan National Movement’, circulated another four-page leaflet in July 1935. A statement published in England in 1940 summed it all up. There was repetition of the old arguments, but an added demand was that Bengal and Hyderabad should also separate from India and form two additional independent ‘nations’, forming a triple alliance with Pakistan. But though the project of one or more independent Muslim states, separated from India, did not yet make any appeal to any section of Muslims, the idea was gaining ground that the Muslims constituted a separate nation, and therefore the unitary federal form of government as contemplated by the Congress would not meet the requirements of the Muslims.

The central idea of all the other proposed alternatives was that the treatment of Muslims should not be as a minority community in Hindu India but as a separate nation with a distinct culture. The general tone of discussions also made it quite clear that the Muslims would resist by force any settlement of the political issue imposed upon them against their will, either by the Congress, by the British Government, or even jointly by both. It was inevitable that the growth of such a feeling would promote the unity of Muslims all over India and make the Muslim League their central organisation.

The Prime Ministers of Punjab, Bengal, and Assam, and the leaders of the Muslim minorities in the Congress Provinces, now rallied around the League and its permanent leader, Jinnah. There was hardly any doubt that Jinnah had become the most popular and powerful leader of the Muslims, who alone could speak with authority in the name of the Indian Muslims. The Muslim League finally chose the most extreme proposal, namely, a separate State for the Muslims.

The rapid growth of this idea was the most remarkable thing in contemporary Muslim politics, reiterates Mazumdar. In September 1939, the Working Committee of the League declared that Muslim India was “irrevocably opposed to any ‘federal objective’ which must necessarily result in a majority-community rule under the guise of democracy and a parliamentary system of government.” In February 1940, Mr. Jinnah declared that the constitutional settlement must be based on the understanding that India was not one nation but two and that the Muslims of India would not accept the arbitrament of any body, Indian or British, but would determine their destiny themselves.

The climax was in the session of the Muslim League held in Lahore in March 1940, attended by an estimated 100,000 members. It passed the resolution that no constitutional plan would be acceptable to the Moslems unless there is demarcation of geographically continuous units as ‘independent states’ where Moslems are in a majority. The demand was for autonomous and sovereign zones in the north-western and eastern zones of India.

Mazumdar writes that this was a definite demand for the partition of India on a communal basis. During this great metamorphosis of Muslim politics in India, neither the Congress nor the Hindu public men gave it the serious attention it deserved. They angrily opposed the idea of vivisection of India in any form and took their stand on the twin ideas of Indian nationality and Indian unity—the ideas that the Muslims rejected in almost one voice. The Congress consistently, without coming down from the high pedestal, adhered to the idea of a ‘Constituent Assembly’ as the only remedy for all political discord and discontent. Gandhi condemned the Lahore resolution in a long article in the Harijan, and the Hindu press attacked it with varying degrees of bitterness. But there was no constructive suggestion or attempt of a compromise, conciliation, or even mutual understanding until it was too late.

PART 4

The Ruthless English: Attitudes, Second World War, Churchill, and Mountbatten

Part 4 deals with the naked reality of the Raj in India – the avarice, the ruthlessness, and the cunning of the British in bleeding India dry; and ultimately their reluctance to exit or even to contain the spread of the wildfire that was religious hatred and crimes that ensued.

Montford Reforms

Initially, the Congress had two major groups. The Nationalists or Extremists (represented by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, and Sri Aurobindo) and the Moderates (represented by Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Dadabhai Naoroji) had differing views on gaining independence. The Nationalists were not happy with the ‘prayers, pleas, and petitions’ mode of fighting the British. They were more into direct action and formulated the Swaraj policy, crystallised clearly in the writings of Sri Aurobindo. This was a decade before Gandhi launched his movement. The Nationalists (or the Extremists) broke away from the Moderates in the 1907 Surat session of the Congress.

The colonial government introduced the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms (Montford in brief) in 1918 to gradually introduce self-governing institutions in British India. Montagu was the Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1922, and Lord Chelmsford was the Viceroy of India between 1916 and 1921. These constitutional reforms formed the basis of the Government of India Act of 1919. This was the outcome of one of the promises to India for gradual independence for the help rendered during the First World War. Many saw this as a move by the British to defuse militant nationalism and allow the moderates to come to the fore.

The important features of this act were that the Imperial Legislative Council was now to consist of two houses: the Central Legislative Assembly and the Council of State. The provinces were to follow the Dual Government System, or dyarchy. The provincial governments were divided into two parts: reserved subjects (under the direct control of the British government) and transferred subjects (under the control of Indian ministers). The reserved subjects included matters like defence, foreign affairs, and finance, while the transferred subjects included education, health, and local government.

However, most posts were by appointment, and only a small percentage of the population was eligible to vote or stand for elections. The most contentious point was the system of separate electorates for different religious communities, along with special provisions to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. This was a further communalization of politics. The Governor-General of each province, an appointee by the India Office, had the right to veto or validate any bill against the wishes of the partially elected council. Similarly, the Viceroy could override votes made by the Legislative Assembly. The Congress rejected it for the limited scope of self-rule and the communal electorate system, while the Muslim League supported it.

With the Montagu report of 1918, there was further division in Congress. The schism led to the even more moderate leaders forming the “Indian National Liberal Federation” in 1919. Surendra Nath Banerjee was the founder of this Federation, and its prominent leaders were Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, and M. R. Jayakar. Mazumdar says that Surendranath Banerji, the president, offered a weak justification for holding a separate Moderate Conference. Surendranath explains the difference between the Moderates and the other Congress leaders by saying,

“Our guiding principle is to cooperate when we can and criticise when we must. It is not ‘criticise when we can; cooperate when we must’.”

Mazumdar writes that this was a distorted view of Congress leaders like Tilak, who always upheld the principle of “Responsive Cooperation.”

The newly started Moderate organisation in Bengal held a Conference of the Bengal Moderates on August 30. Mazumdar writes that it is reasonable to hold that some of the Moderate leaders had given to Montagu the idea of organising a separate party to continue propaganda in favour of his proposals. Though this seems ungenerous, many facts point towards this view. The proof that Montagu regarded such a secession as an essential part of his scheme is in his own writings.

The conclusion, therefore, seems almost irresistible that the Moderate leaders seceded from the Congress at the suggestion, if not at the bidding, of Montagu, who regarded it as sine qua non for successfully launching the reforms. Mazumdar writes,

“The expulsion of the Extremists from the Congress in the 1907 Surat session and the secession of the Moderates from the Congress in 1918 were both due to the British policy of rallying the Moderates as against the Extremists, the strings pulled by Morley in one case and Montagu in the other.”

The Terror of The Gurkhas

Indians tend to be unaware that the Gurkhas formed a formidable fighting force in service of the British to keep Indians in fear. Sri Aurobindo mentions the violence of the Gurkhas against hapless Indians in his writings. Mazumdar mentions in one place the serious Gurkha outrage in Chittagong (Bengal). On October 20, 1921, the Court sentenced Congress leader J. M. Sen Gupta and seventeen others to rigorous imprisonment. Many people gathered at the railway station that very evening as news came that the transport would be by train. A big public procession proceeded there.

There was no disturbance of any kind, but suddenly a band of Gurkhas began to “assault the people right and left indiscriminately, mainly with the butt-end of the rifle.” As the people fled on all sides, the Gurkhas chased them all along and struck them all the way. The Gurkhas also attacked several carriages and struck severe blows upon their occupants, including a Zamindar who was also an Honorary Magistrate. One Gurkha party also fell upon the processionists and struck them. Together, they wounded more than one hundred people, some severely.

Birkenhead’s Speech In 1925 Which Clearly Defined the British Policy

Lord Birkenhead was the Secretary of State for India from 1924 to 1928. As a historical landmark of British policy towards India, even as late as 1925, Birkenhead’s speech is of great importance. Mazumdar cites a few extracts to give an idea of the mentality of British leaders:

“Of the 440 millions of British citizens, who constitute the British Empire, 320 million are Indian. The loss of India would mean a shrinkage in the Empire from 13,250,000 to less than 11,500,000 square miles. The fiduciary obligations which we undertook, in relation to the complex peoples of India, embracing as they do a population of 320 million, practising nine great religions and speaking 130 different speeches, have not been unfaithfully discharged. To talk of India as an entity is as absurd as to talk of Europe as an entity, yet the nationalist spirit which has created most of our difficulties in the last few years is based upon the aspirations and claims of a Nationalist India. There never has been such a nation. Whether there ever will be such a nation, the future alone can show…. If we withdraw from India tomorrow, the immediate consequences would be a struggle…between the Moslems and the Hindu population.”

This British policy towards India in 1925 continued for the next fifteen years. There was no vital difference between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in this respect. Lord Oliver wholeheartedly endorsed the views of Birkenhead and felt sure that Birkenhead’s speech “would be a message of encouragement and sympathy to India for which the community would be grateful to him.”

Mazumdar writes that Churchill dinned into the ears of the British public that India maintained one out of every five in Britain and that England could maintain her position of supremacy only if she could control the resources of India to her benefit. So, there was a deadly struggle in the British mind between the abstract love of liberty and the instinct of self-preservation, writes Mazumdar. He continues,

“It was the pitting of the two most powerful forces in human nature against each other, and the result was a grim tragedy. However, the hammer blows of Hitler forced Britain to relax her grip on India.”

The British Period of The Early 20^th Century in India Summed Up

Mazumdar writes that, like autocracies in every age and in every part of the world, the Government of India continued a system of ruthless oppression in the name of law and order. Between 1908 and 1947, India’s governance was governed by a set of lawless laws. The bureaucracy resisted every demand in legislatures for the repeal of repressive laws, saying that it was the only way to maintain law and order. This only pointed to a failure of administration.

The Bengal Ordinance was a criminal law ordinance implemented to suppress revolutionary nationalism by the Jugantar group against the Raj in Bengal after 1922. Following the collapse of the nonviolent movement, the remnants of the Anushilan Samiti regathered under the leadership of Surya Sen and carried out a string of revolutionary attacks. The ordinance extended the extraordinary powers of the Regulation of 1818. It removed the rights of Habeas corpus, reintroduced indefinite and arbitrary detentions, and trial by tribunal without jury and without right of appeal. The ordinance was in force for five years, which saw the arrest of almost one hundred and fifty people, including Subhas Chandra Bose.

Sir Sankaran Nair, an ex-member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, sums up the iniquitous methods of the Government of India lucidly and unbiasedly. It was unbiased because if he had any, it would be in favour of the government, as he openly criticised Gandhiji. Mazumdar produces an extract from one of his articles after the promulgation of the Bengal Ordinance on October 25, 1924.

“When the Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon and the steps taken by Sir Bampfylde Fuller to suppress the protest against it threw Bengal into a ferment, the ‘agitators’ of Bengal were prosecuted before the ordinary civil courts of the country. In the majority of cases the prosecutions failed, because in the opinion of the High Court the case was supported by false witnesses; it was proved that they manufactured evidence in various ways—for example, by placing bullets in incriminating places, and by introducing bombs into the dwelling places of the accused. The High Court found also that certain District Magistrates lent their countenance to Police pressure on witnesses, and that Sessions Judges in many cases convicted against the evidence. All this appears in the published reports of the cases which are available to anyone who desires details.”

“The Indian Government availed themselves of the opportunity of the War to pass the Defence of India Act, which it is now sought to review. Under this Act, a man might be arrested and kept indefinitely in jail (or interned in a particular locality) without being brought to trial. For those who were to be tried, new courts were or could be constituted and new laws of evidence or procedure were prescribed. The Rowlatt Act, a repetition of the Defence of India Act, was responsible for an agitation unexampled in India. The Punjab rose in fury: Amritsar, Lahore, Jallianwala massacres, indiscriminate arrests, trials and convictions which recall the days of Jeffreys in England followed…. India lost faith in England…. Then the Labour Party came into power. In India there were great hopes… Events have belied these expectations… But no one expected they would go farther and revive a measure which has been responsible for a terrible conflagration and has destroyed England’s moral supremacy and Englishmen’s influence for good. This Act, as I have pointed out, would destroy freedom of speech, of the Press, and of the person. Trials would become a farce.”

Bertrand Russell

Mazumdar writes that he has taken great pains to ascertain the truth from many respectable persons who are still living, who have personal experience, and who have no motive to misrepresent the British Government or exaggerate their iniquities. All evidence indicates that, under the pretext of suppressing revolutionary crimes, the British government in India adopted the most unscrupulous methods. Such methods would shock the civilised world. Special interest attaches itself to Bertrand Russell, who visited India after the ruthless suppression of the Civil Disobedience of 1930. Russell compares the British atrocities in India to those of the Germans in Western Europe during the First World War. There is also the testimony of European and American correspondents of newspapers who published accounts of what they saw.

The Case of General Dyer and The Jalianwala Bagh Episode

Mazumdar writes,

“The whole episode of Dyer—his brutal measures, the light punishment inflicted upon him, the condonation of his conduct by the House of Lords, the favourable verdict by a British judge, and the acclamation of praise with which his inhuman conduct was greeted by Englishmen and English women, both in India and England—illustrates, as nothing else could, the racial arrogance of the English people and the little regard or consideration which they had for Indians as a whole.”

Non-Official Britishers in India

RC Mazumdar indicts the Anglo-Indians for their pro-British sympathies. He writes,

“The non-official British population of India who may be referred to as Anglo-Indians for the sake of convenience, constituted an unofficial wing of the British bureaucracy in India. They were the greatest enemies of the true interest of India, for the very simple and obvious reason that as India politically advanced, their material power and prestige almost necessarily declined. The Anglo-Indians of the nineteenth century could afford to be generous or indifferent to the Indians as they had no reasonable apprehensions of any political regeneration of India. The Anglo-Indians of the twentieth century were faced with a national reawakening of the Indians, of the portents and possibilities of which their local knowledge made them fully conscious.”

The Tyranny of The British

The repressive actions of the government fall broadly into two categories. The first is a series of ordinances that practically suspended all the normal laws safeguarding the life, property, and personal liberty of the Indians and placed them under the regime of executive orders. The most important among these were:

1. The Bengal Emergency Powers (Supplementary) Ordinance of January 2, 1932
2. Emergency Powers, Unlawful Instigation, and Prevention of Molestation and Boycotting Ordinances, all passed in January 1932—three in number.
3. Amending Ordinances nos. 7 and 8 of 1932—two in number.
4. The Special Powers Ordinance of 1932
5. Three Bengal Emergency Powers Ordinances, Nos. 9, 11, and 12, were passed, respectively, on May 28, June 30, and July 20, 1932.

The second class comprised the actual measures taken against individuals, groups, and organisations to put down Civil Disobedience. A report of a visiting delegation refers to ten Ordinances that were in force at the time they visited India. The delegation observes:

“It would appear not merely from what actually goes on in India, but from the decisions of courts that the rights that the Indian subject enjoys are in fact determined by the acts of ‘competent’ authorities in India, in which category would come all executive orders and Acts. As against executive authority and “suspicion” and orders of the “Local Government” the subject has no rights in India.”

Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Osborn, in his book Must England Lose India? quotes an official who tells him:

“I give you my word that after some of my punitive police have been stationed in a village for a few days, the spirit of the toughest of the political agitators is broken.’ Lieutenant Colonel Osborn inquired, ‘How?’ ‘Well, they will help themselves to everything. Within twenty-four hours, there will not be a virgin or a four-anna piece left in that village.’”

The Churchill Speech Which Finally Convinced the Indians About the Perfidious Albion

The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941. The Charter provided a broad statement of U.S. and British war aims. Issued jointly by Britain and the U.S.A., it declared, among other things, that “they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-Government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.” Indians heartily approved this clause.

But Churchill hastened to dispel all hope and enthusiasm by declaring in the House of Commons on September 9, 1941, that the Atlantic Charter had no application to India, though, in his opinion, it was in full accord with British policy in India. If Britain had made a deliberate resolve to antagonise all sections of public opinion in India, she could not devise anything more suited to the purpose than this speech of Churchill, says Mazumdar.

Most Indians merely found in it a formal corroboration of what they had all along believed, namely, that the British never meant any real concession to India. British dishonesty, said Congress leaders, had now been nakedly exposed. The Liberals, including Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, who was the greatest champion of unconditional aid to British war efforts, felt shocked. The subsequent attitude of the Indians should be from the perspective of the situation created by Churchill’s speech. Henceforth, India would never trust or put any faith in the promise of ‘perfidious albion.’

Thus, the stand became that all payments for war help from India should be only in the form of cash without any credit. This was the real cause of the failure of the Cripps Mission in late 1942, which was the British offer of Dominion status for India if the latter provided manpower to fight for the British and the Allied powers.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Second World War

The dynamics of the Second World War played a huge role in the freedom movement in India. Most Indians are simply unaware of the role played by Churchill and American President Roosevelt. The Japanese invasion against the British led to the fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942.

Mazumdar explains how this brought home to everyone the danger to India. He writes,

“Churchill, however, did not move an inch. But Roosevelt, the President of the U.S., took a more realistic view of the situation and urged upon Churchill to settle matters with India. The help of U.S.A. was then the only hope for the safety of Britain, and Churchill could ignore Roosevelt’s advice only at his country’s peril. Still, he wavered until the fall of Rangoon revealed to him, for the first time, the desperate situation which faced Britain in the east. That the despatch of the Cripps Mission was mainly, if not wholly, due to the pressure of Roosevelt, was merely a conjecture at the time, but it has since been confirmed as a fact by the publication of the secret documents of the Foreign Office, U.S.A.”

The American Pressure on Churchill

On February 17, 1942, two days after the fall of Singapore, the Assistant Secretary of State, U.S.A., submitted a long memorandum that said,

“It seems to me that the State Department must immediately get to work on the changed situation in the Far East arising out of the fall of Singapore. The first item on the list ought to be to tackle the Indian problem in a large way… It would seem that the logical thing to do was to have Churchill announce in London that the British plans contemplated the introduction of India as a full partner in the United Nations.”

On February 25, 1942, the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate discussed Indian affairs. They were impressed by the manpower of India as a source of military strength but fully realised that:

“the Indians would not have the desire to fight just in order to prolong England’s mastery over them… Concerning India, the argument was that ‘we are participating on such a large scale and had done so much for England… We should demand that India be given a status of autonomy.’… The only way to get the people of India to fight was to get them to fight for India…The American people…would expect this Government to do everything within its power to obtain military participation by India…. even though we had to go to the extent of dictating to England what she should do with regard to India.”

Evidently, because of this report, Roosevelt sent on the very same day a cable to the U.S. ambassador in London suggesting that he or Averell Harriman, his special representative in London, should send him “a slant on what the Prime Minister thinks about the new relationship between Britain and India.” Harriman immediately saw Churchill, who promised to keep Roosevelt informed of the trend of discussions about India that were taking place.

Roosevelt’s Screws

On March 4, Churchill cabled:

“We are earnestly considering whether a declaration of Dominion Status after the war carrying with it if desired the right to secede should be made at this critical juncture. We must not on any account break with the Moslems who represent a hundred million people and the main army elements on which we must rely for the immediate fighting. We have also to consider our duty towards 30 to 40 million untouchables and our treaties with the Princes states (sic.) of India, perhaps 80 million. Naturally, we do not want to throw India into chaos on the eve of invasion.”

In reply, Roosevelt cabled a long message to Churchill on March 10. Churchill received it on the same day, and the very next day, he announced the Cripps Mission in Parliament. It is a reasonable inference that Churchill accepted the advice or suggestion of Roosevelt, though perhaps very grudgingly. According to Attlee, the Chairman of a Special Committee on India in the war-time Cabinet recommended the Cripps Mission. Attlee writes that “it was greatly to the credit of Winston Churchill that he accepted that (Cripps Mission) when he did not like the idea of any change really.”

Mazumdar concludes that all this fully supports the theory that Churchill’s decision was due to the pressure of Roosevelt. The recommendation of the Special Committee on India might also have the same influence. Roosevelt was highly interested in the fate of the Cripps Mission and sent Col. Louis A. Johnson as his representative to New Delhi to keep him informed about the progress of the negotiations between Cripps and the Indian leaders. Though Johnson had no official status to meddle in the affair, he played an important role as a peacemaker throughout the negotiations.

The Congress rejected his proposals and knew that the British were negotiating from a weaker position. In August 1942, the Congress working committee not only rejected the proposals but also launched the ‘Quit India’ movement and called for a ‘Do or Die’ movement for independence. In reaction, the British imprisoned practically the entire Congress leadership for the duration of the war. Jinnah, to whom Cripps had offered the right to opt out of a future union with India, supported the war effort with his fellow Muslims and gained status in British eyes. This was a great moment for Jinnah, who had more say as he remained free, and most Congress leaders were in jail.

When Atlee Fixed a Date for Indian Independence On 20^th February 1947

After the war, Winston Churchill lost the elections, and Clement Atlee from the Labour Party, more sympathetic towards the Indian cause, became the prime minister. Atlee fixed the date for the independence of India to be no later than June 1948. Winston Churchill condemned the handing over of the Government of India to the ‘political classes who were men of straw of whom in a few years no trace will remain.’ He concluded:

“Many have defended Britain against their foes, none can defend her against herself. But, at least, let us not add—by shameful flight, by a premature hurried scuttle—at least, let us not add to the pangs of sorrow so many of us feel, the taint and smear of shame.”

In winding up the debate, Prime Minister Attlee emphasised that ‘the dangers of delay, the dangers of hanging on, were as great as the dangers of going forward.’ He was sure that the whole House would wish godspeed to the new Viceroy in his great mission. ‘It is a mission, not as has been suggested, of betrayal on our part, it is a mission of fulfilment.’

Lord Mountbatten and his Incompetence

Lord Mountbatten assumed the offices of Viceroy and Governor-General on March 24, 1947. His immediate task was to restore peace among the two warring sections—the Congress and the Muslim League—both in his Executive Council and the country at large. He lost no time in arranging interviews with the party leaders. Mazumdar writes,

“Gandhi, in his second interview, on the first day of April, suggested that the Viceroy should dismiss the existing Cabinet and give Jinnah the option of forming a new one; that the selection of the members should be left entirely to Jinnah—they might be all Muslims, or all non-Muslims, or they might be representatives of all classes and creeds.”

Congress leaders most unceremoniously rejected it, and Gandhi had to withdraw it.

In March 1947, there were widespread riots known as the Rawalpindi massacre. There was widespread violence, massacres, and rapes of Hindus and Sikhs by Muslim mobs in the Rawalpindi Division of the Punjab Province. The Muslim League National Guards (the militant wing of the Muslim League), local cadres, and politicians of the League demobilised Muslim soldiers, local officials, and policemen who were responsible for instigating these riots, which left two thousand Sikhs and seven thousand Hindus dead and set off their mass exodus from Rawalpindi Division.

About 80,000 Sikhs and Hindus left the Division by the end of April. This was an ethnic cleansing and marked the beginning of systematic violence against women that accompanied the partition. Mazumdar writes that there was rampant sexual violence, rape, and forced conversions, with many women committing mass suicides along with their children and many killed by their male relatives for fear of abduction and rape. The events are sometimes referred to as the Rape of Rawalpindi.

Mazumdar, in a severe indictment, writes that Mountbatten was incompetent in handling the riots.

“The inactivity of Mountbatten in this respect is all the more strange, because he was so deeply impressed by the communal disturbances spreading like wildfire, that he felt that if the procedure for the transfer of power was not finalized quickly, there was a possibility that at least in some parts of the country there would be no authority to whom power could be transferred.”

He accordingly revised his tentative plan and sent it to London with Lord Ismay and George Abell on May 2.

“This was to transfer power to the Provincial Governments, leaving them to come together to form a Central Government, if and when they chose. The Princely States would also be free to make such arrangement as they wished in these conditions.”

PART 5

Criticism Of Gandhi

Part 5 is a critique of Gandhi – his political origins, his role in the freedom struggle, his multiple calls for mass movements, and his misses and blunders at multiple moments of high impact.

Gandhi In South Africa 

Mazumdar shows how the Gandhi years in South Africa were a partial success. Indians were hardly in a better position after Gandhi left the country. The Satyagraha campaign led by Gandhi in South Africa resulted in the Gandhi-Smuts settlement of 1914 and the Indian Relief Act. Though Gandhi hailed it as the “Magna Charta of our liberty” in South Africa, less idealistic people held that it “was not in fact so great a victory for the Indians as it appeared at first sight.”
Two things are quite clear, says Mazumdar. Firstly, Smuts gained his main objective, which was to terminate Indian immigration into South Africa; and secondly, Gandhi’s hope that “my countrymen will have comparative peace and South Africa shall hear little of the Indian problem in an acute form” was completely belied. The position of the Indians in South Africa “is more unsatisfactory in theory and practice today than it was at the turn of the century,” one said.

The Reciprocity Resolution passed in 1918 affirmed the right of each country in the British Empire to regulate the composition of its population by imposing restrictions on immigration. This was clearly a political immaturity, or lack of diplomatic wisdom, of the Indians, says Mazumdar. This was hardly a great victory in their fight for equality. While conceding equal rights to all the British dominions, it practically meant submission to the policy of restricting the immigration of Indians into South Africa and other parts of the empire. India, having no such settlers from other dominions, could do nothing to oppose it by way of reciprocal actions.

“The ink with which the Reciprocity Resolution was written was hardly dry before the South African Whites renewed their campaign against Indian settlers.”

The Asiatic Land and Trading (Amendment) Act of 1919, passed by the Transvaal Government, prohibited Indians from owning fixed property anywhere in the Transvaal, either directly or indirectly, and curtailed their trading rights in the mining areas. The South African League extended this by declaring in their conference in 1920 that

“South Africa is not prepared to take the first steps in national suicide by admitting Indians to free and indiscriminate residence amongst white people.”

This was merely the beginning of a series of anti-Indian Legislations.

Smuts, who now championed the anti-Indian campaign, publicly declared:

“The whole basis of our particular system in South Africa rests on inequality. It is the bedrock of our constitution.”

Thus, Smuts, who had expressed his sympathy for Indians when they fought to defend the British Empire, now appeared in his true colour. In violation of his agreement with Gandhi in 1914, the Asiatic Land and Trading (Amendment) Act of 1919 was put into operation. The government introduced the Class Areas Bill in the Union Assembly in 1924, giving effect to the policy of commercial and residential segregation of Indians throughout the Union. The Bill lapsed as the party of Smuts was defeated at the General Election. But General Hertzog, the new Premier, introduced the Colour Bar Bill, which prohibited the employment of Asiatics and natives in mines and industrial works. This Bill was too much even for Smuts, and though the Union Assembly passed it, the Senate, where Smuts commanded a majority, rejected it.

Hertzog then introduced the Areas Reservation and Immigration and Registration Bill on July 23, 1925. It was based on the same principles of segregation as the Class Areas Bill of Smuts’ Government, but much wider in scope. This bill provided that:

(1) the Indians shall be permitted to buy and sell land and carry on trade only in areas to be set apart in towns and cities and nowhere else; and
(2) the Governor-General may proclaim that no Indian shall buy or lease land more than 30 miles away from the coastline, except from an Indian within those 30 miles.

Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915, just when the First World War started. He sailed back via England to a thumping reception in Bombay.

Gandhi’s Contribution in 1920–1921: The Non-Cooperation Movement

Gandhi launched the non-cooperation movement, which was the first mass-scale political campaign, on September 4, 1920. The reasons for this were many:

• withdrawing support for British reforms following the Rowlatt Act (March 1919);
• a political awakening by Indians against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (April 13, 1919).
• boycotting British goods and promoting Swadeshi,
• supported the Khilafat agitation (1919–1922), which called for the reinstatement of the Caliph of Turkey;
• and an end to untouchability.

The movement suddenly stopped on February 4, 1922, on Gandhi’s call after the Chauri Chaura incident.

Mazumdar writes that the most outstanding feature of the non-cooperation movement was the willingness and ability of the people in general to endure, to a remarkable degree, hardships and punishments inflicted by the government. This is the reason why, though the non-cooperation movement collapsed, the memory of its greatness survived and was destined to inspire the nation to launch it again later. The movement inspired people with a new confidence in their power to fight for freedom.

Two undeniable facts strike anyone who reviews the whole course of events during the movement, writes Mazumdar:

“First, the Congress had, for the first time, become a mass movement in the sense that national awakening had not only penetrated to the people at large but also made them active participants in the struggle for freedom.
The second, which is no less important, but generally ignored at the time, is that the Indian National Congress was, almost overnight, turned into a genuine revolutionary organization. It was no longer a deliberative assembly but an organized fighting force, pledged to revolution. Its weapons were different, but its aims, objects, and temperament closely resembled those of militant nationalism.”

But there were differences too. Unlike militant nationalism, the Congress did not work in secret, and its non-violent creed and method had the full sympathy and active support of the people at large. These two features were the greatest contributions of Gandhi to India’s struggle for freedom.

When the Afghans Planned to Attack India (1919)

The Third Anglo-Afghan War began on May 6, 1919, when the Emirate of Afghanistan invaded British India, and ended with a truce on August 8, 1919. The Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 resulted in the Afghans gaining control of foreign affairs from Britain and the British recognizing the Durand Line as the border between Afghanistan and British India.

On May 11, the Pioneer challenged Muhammad Ali to say whether, directly or indirectly, he was not in communication with the Amir of Afghanistan about the invasion. Muhammad Ali gave an evasive reply.

“I am a Muslim first and everything else afterward.”

“This Afghan hare is none of my starting. I do not remember having said anything about any foreign invasion of India for more than a year.”

However, in the Allahabad District Conference held on May 11, 1921, he stated:

“they wanted to win Swaraj but not with the aid of a foreign power. If any such waged war against the present Government for the purpose of making India free, they would not render any help to Government but would simply watch the fight and take no part in it because they did not believe in violence.”

He added, however, that there was no correspondence between him and the Amir. 

Gandhi also took a very curious view on this matter. Not only did he advise the Amir not to enter any treaty with the British Government, but also declared:

“I would, in a sense, certainly assist the Amir of Afghanistan if he waged war against the British Government. That is to say, I would openly tell my countrymen that it would be a crime to help a government that had lost the confidence of the nation to remain in power.”

Gandhi further stated that the non-co-operators were not to help the government in any case.

“I would rather see India perish at the hands of Afghans,” said he, “than purchase freedom from Afghan invasion at the cost of her honour. To have India defended by an unrepentant Government that keeps the Khilafat and Punjab wounds still bleeding, is to sell India’s honour.”

Many resented this attitude. C. F. Andrews was afraid that Gandhi was unwittingly supporting pan-Islamism. Lajpat Rai wrote three articles in his paper Bande Mataram, strongly condemning the attitude that the Moslems should join the Afghan invader in case a Jihad was declared. B. C. Pal strongly attacked Gandhi in the columns of The Englishman. 

The Civil Disobedience Movement, 1930

The second mass movement of Gandhi was the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930, and it started with his famous Dandi march. It aimed to abolish the salt tax and boycott the all-British Simon Commission of 1928, which recommended constitutional reforms. On January 26, 1930, the Congress declared Purna Swaraj, or total self-rule. The fight against the repressive measures resulted in more repressive and harsher measures from the British government against the people of India.

Amongst the various activities were processions, public meetings, and conferences despite bans; boycotting of British goods; issuing unauthorized bulletins; saluting the national flag in public; and manufacturing salt. There was the celebration of National Week (April 6–13) and the holding of the Annual Session of the Congress in Delhi despite the police ban and the strictest surveillance. Civil Resisters made no physical resistance, even when arrested or mercilessly beaten, and did not defend themselves in court even against false accusations, for they took no part in any judicial trial.

Mazumdar writes that the British rule in India sank to the level of mediaeval tyrannies whose annals of brutality fill the mind of a modern reader with an unspeakable horror and whose modern parallel is only in the Communist and Fascist rule in Europe. An English delegation carried a report on the Civil Disobedience Movement. Bertrand Russell writes in the preface to the Report of the Delegation:

“There has been no lack of interest in the misdeeds of the Nazis in Germany; they have been fully reported in the Press and have been commented on with self-righteous indignation. Few people in England realise that misdeeds quite as serious are being perpetrated by the British in India.”

The Report describes, as follows, the general nature of the Disobedience campaign:

“Civil Disobedience is often spoken of as lawlessness. Inasmuch as it is defiance of existing law it is lawless. But it would be a gross misrepresentation to describe the Civil Disobedience campaign as a movement that lets loose lawless people in society; a campaign in which everybody was asked to do as they pleased. Still more would it be grotesque to describe it as an encouragement to violence, crime, or licence. Civil resisters do not go about breaking laws as they please, nor interfering with the liberty of others. Civil Disobedience is a form of direct action against the Government of the day. Its moral basis is that law in India is not based on consent; its administration is under alien direction; and its ends are not determined by Indian wills or purposes. Civil Disobedience thus becomes both a moral protest and weapon of attack on the present system of administration.”

“We had not understood what the expression Police Raj, which we have heard used so often, meant till we came to India and saw it in action. The Police are a law unto themselves. Petty officials exercise very wide powers that are freely used. The statement that in India ‘the police beat first and inquire afterwards’ is only partially true to-day, as there is no necessity for any inquiry. The Ordinances have destroyed every safeguard against police oppression, which obtains all over India and is by no means confined to the ill-paid ranks of the Force. Police methods are cruel and vindictive. Men are beaten inside lockups; brutal force is used in ‘dispersing’ resisters (often only one, as in the case of picketing), undertrials are starved in lock-ups; and property is appropriated or destroyed. Vulgar abuse and the infliction of humiliation and violent assault are pretty common. It is difficult to understand why force should be used at all in effecting arrest of civil resisters, as it is admitted that they neither resist nor evade arrest. In any case, beating-up or lathi charges, or kicks and bullying preliminary to, or instead of, arrest, is a wanton piece of brutality. One explanation given to us was that such methods were more effective and cheaper than arrests. The explanation carries with it its own condemnation. Another gross abuse that appeared to be widely prevalent was the practice of allowing the police to buy, directly, goods that had been attached or confiscated.”

The End of Civil Disobedience

Mazumdar writes that while the Civil Disobedience movement was continuing in full force despite the unabated fury of government repression and the imprisonment of almost all notable Congress leaders together with nearly ninety thousand followers, Gandhi suddenly sidetracked the whole campaign by raising a side issue. The Congressmen continued their fight with grim determination, but Gandhi had no heart for the Civil Disobedience movement, and the anti-untouchability campaign fully occupied his mind.

Thus, the great Civil Disobedience campaign came to an ignoble end, despite all the brave and heroic deeds of which any nation may well feel proud. On the eve of his famous march to Dandi, which started the campaign, Gandhi had said:

“Civil Disobedience, once begun this time, cannot be stopped and must not be stopped so long as there is a single civil resister left free or alive.”

Mazumdar writes,

“What puzzled the Indians most was the leader’s order to lay down arms and surrender even before the soldiers had abandoned the grim struggle. Gandhi had practically given up the fight for freedom on 18 August 1932.”

Madan Mohan Malaviya made a public statement on May 2, 1932, that gave a report of the then-situation:

“During these four months up to April 20th last, according to the reports published in the press, 66,646 persons, among whom were included 5,325 women and many children, have been arrested, imprisoned, and humiliated. This could not possibly include arrests in the far-off villages in the interior of the country and, therefore, the Congress estimates the total arrests to be over 80,000 up to that date. The jails are overcrowded, and ordinary prisoners are being released before their time to make room for political prisoners. To this has to be added the number of arrests made during the last ten days, including those of the delegates to the Delhi Congress. According to the reports in the press firing has been resorted to in at least 29 cases with considerable loss of life. There have been lathi charges against unarmed crowds at 325 places. There have been 633 cases of house searches and 102 cases of confiscation of property. A general policy has been pursued of imposing extraordinarily heavy fines on persons who have been convicted in connection with the movement and property far in excess of what was necessary for realising the amount of fines has been attached and sold. The Press has been gagged as it has never been gagged before. 163 cases have been reported where the newspapers and the public presses have been regulated by orders for confiscation, demands for security, and consequent closing down of the presses, warnings, searches, and arrests of editors, printers, or keepers. Numerous public meetings and processions of non-violent men and women have been dispersed by lathi charges and sometimes by firing.”

Slowly and silently, the movement faded away. During the upheaval caused by the great earthquake in Bihar on January 16, 1934, it passed away unnoticed into the limbo of oblivion. The tempo of the Civil Disobedience movement continued for one year, as more evident from the address of the President as quoted above.

Mazumdar writes,

“And yet Gandhi cried halt just at this psychological moment, as he did in 1922.” 

The Aftermath of the Collapse of the Civil Disobedience Movement

A conference held in Delhi on March 31, 1934, resolved that the All-India Swarajya Party needed revival. Gandhi not only welcomed the revival of the Swarajya party and its decision to fight the forthcoming elections but also felt that it was

“not only the right but the duty of every Congressman who believed in its utility to do so.”

The decision of 1920 to boycott the Council was reversed in 1923, reaffirmed in 1929, and again reversed in 1934.

The Indian National Congress thus slid back into the position it had renounced because of the non-cooperation movement in 1920. The Working Committee, in accordance with the resolutions of the AICC, called upon all Congressmen to give up Civil Disobedience, and there was an official termination of the movement on May 20, 1934. The Government of India, being satisfied that the Civil Disobedience movement was dead, lifted the ban on the Congress organizations, except in Bengal and N.W.F.P., on June 12 and announced a general policy of expediting the release of the Civil Disobedience prisoners. 

Gandhi-Irwin Pact: Nehru Forced to Accept

Gandhi and Lord Irwin had eight meetings that totalled 24 hours. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was a political agreement signed by Gandhi and Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, on March 5, 1931, before the Second Round Table Conference in London. There was a vague offer of ‘dominion status’ for India by the Viceroy in 1929 in an unspecified future. There was also a proposal for a Round Table Conference to discuss a future constitution.

The Second Round Table Conference was held from September to December 1931 in London. This marked the end of the Civil Disobedience Movement in India. The government agreed to withdraw all ordinances and end prosecutions, release all political prisoners not guilty of violence, permit peaceful picketing, allow the manufacture of salt by people near the seacoast, and lift the ban on the Congress.

Mazumdar writes that it is a moot point to decide why Gandhi made such a volte-face. The only rational justification is a realisation on his part that in this unequal fight with the government, the chances of success were remote, and a compromise in good time is preferable to an admission of failure and forced retreat. But whatever the real grounds for Gandhi’s retreat, one ignored aspect must be a valuable long-term gain. For the first time in the history of British India, the British Government condescended to treat the Indian National Congress on a footing of equality as a political opponent and entered a prolonged negotiation with its accredited agent to settle terms of peace.

The pact put the Indian National Congress on a high pedestal and increased its prestige and stature. More importantly, the British conceded to the Congress the authority to speak for political India in the future too. British statesmen like Churchill fully realized that they had yielded ground.
Mazumdar writes,

“The very fact that Gandhi, ‘the half-naked fakir,’— to use Churchill’s expression — ascended the staircase of the Viceregal Lodge, day after day, to continue diplomatic negotiations on behalf of the Congress, made it patent to all that henceforth the British rule in India must take due cognizance of the great national organization which was fighting for India’s freedom.”

The Civil Disobedience Movement came to an end without achieving freedom but had great importance in India’s struggle. It demonstrated the awakening of political consciousness among the masses and their ardour and ability to take an active part in the struggle for freedom, to a degree undreamt of before, either by the friends or foes of India. It also gave evidence of the high moral inspiration and unflinching courage infused among the people by Gandhi. 

Gandhi and His Non-Intervention in the Bhagat Singh Execution (March 23, 1931). Bose Revolts.

The resolution of the Congress endorsing the Gandhi-Irwin Pact is a curious example of self-delusion and an attempt to mislead the people. The Pact lays down the acceptance of British control over such matters as defence, external affairs, the financial credit of India, etc. Yet, according to the resolution of the Karachi Congress, while endorsing the Pact, “the Congress desires to make it clear that the Congress goal of Purna Swaraj remains intact.” Though asked by Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru at first refused to move the resolution in the open session of the Congress. It went against his grain, he said. But at the last moment, he decided to sponsor it.

The younger section, though disapproving of the Pact, did not oppose it in the plenary session of the Congress. But the sullen resentment of the youths found expression in other ways, particularly over the news of the execution of the three youths, Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru, and Sukh Dev, convicted in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. Bhagat Singh was the founder of the Youth movement in Punjab, and, according to the official history of the Congress, “at that moment, Bhagat Singh’s name was as widely known all over India and was as popular as Gandhi’s.” Gandhi was pressurised to intercede with the Viceroy for the commutation of their capital punishment. Mazumdar writes that Gandhi probably did his best, but the utmost that he could get from the Viceroy was an assurance to postpone the execution and reconsider the matter.

This led the public, including Gandhi, to believe that there would be a cancellation. But on March 23, only a few days before the Karachi Congress session (March 26 to March 31, 1931), the British executed Bhagat Singh and his two comrades. The news filled the whole country with grief and cast a gloom over the whole Congress camp. The President cancelled the usual festivities on the opening day of Congress.

The younger section, however, was under the impression that Gandhi did not press the matter upon the Viceroy’s attention sufficiently strongly, and Subhas Chandra Bose had suggested to him that he should, if necessary, break with the Viceroy on the question. But Gandhi, averse on principle to revolutionary activities, did not go so far. The younger section, therefore, held Gandhi in a way responsible for the death of Bhagat Singh, and when Gandhi, along with the President-elect Vallabhabhai Patel, alighted from the Railway train at a minor station, twelve miles from Karachi, a hostile demonstration met them, and several young men offered black flowers and black garlands. 

The Second Round Table Conference in London: A Failure for Gandhi (September to December 1931) 

One British person commented,

“The Conference, instead of breaking up in disorder with 100 percent of Hindu political India against us, ended in promises of cooperation by 99 percent of the Conference, including even such people as Malaviya, while Gandhi himself was indisposed to join the Standing Committee. The Muslims have become firm allies of the Europeans. They are very satisfied with their own position and are prepared to work with us.”

The failure of Gandhi to achieve any success brings out in relief the inconsistency and unwisdom of the Congress in refusing to attend the first (November 1930–January 1931) and accepting the invitation to the second Round Table Conference. The conditions under which Congress agreed to attend the second Round Table Conference could have been the same as the first. By joining it from the very beginning with sufficient strength, the Congress could influence its outlook and general approach.

As it is, Gandhi confronted a communalist structure, allowing him to grow up freely without hindrance. Besides, with Irwin as Viceroy and the Labour Party in power, there was a far greater chance of gaining substantial reforms than in the second Conference, when Lord Willingdon was the Viceroy and the Conservatives had come into power. The failure was mainly due to the lack of harmony among Indian delegates and the obstinate reluctance of the Conservatives to part with real power in India. 

Mazumdar writes:

“But the tactics, or lack of tactics, on the part of Gandhi was also responsible for it to a large extent. The saint had no place in a meeting of die-hard politicians. Gandhi’s idealism made no impression on them, his frank gesture for peace and cooperation at any price was taken as a sign of weakness, his lack of diplomacy in putting all his cards on the table was fully exploited by the astute British politicians, and the measure they made of his power and ability by actual contact was far lower than their previous estimate based on reports of his leadership in India.”

Gandhi had realized from the very beginning that the importance of the Indian National Congress, which he represented, was deliberately minimal, if not totally ignored, and that its treatment was merely one of many parties represented at the conference.

Mazumdar scathingly writes:

“Gandhi’s Christian meekness and humility fell flat on the followers of Christ, who only understood the language of strength or force.”

His conduct at the conference added one more illustration of his utter inability to continue negotiations with trained politicians. 

The Third Round Table Meeting (November–December 1932) 

It seems to be, however, clear that the Burmans (Myanmar was then Burma) were not opposed to separation; what they were afraid of was the possibility of the perpetuation of British domination if they were separated from India without the clear promise of self-government for Burma. The British Government, however, was keen on separating Burma from India, and the Conference ultimately decided upon the separation.

1940 Civil Disobedience of Gandhi

The Congress decided to start the Civil Disobedience campaign, as contemplated in the resolution adopted at the Ramgarh Congress, under the leadership of Gandhi. But, curiously enough, Gandhi chose the issue to be not the independence of India but the right to preach openly against the war, and it was to be an individual (later changed to a small group) and not a mass Satyagraha. It started on October 17, 1940, and as soon as an individual (or a small group) was arrested, another took his place, until the prisoners numbered six hundred. However it created little enthusiasm and less interest, and Gandhi suspended it on December 17, 1940.

It was resumed on January 5, 1941, and more than 20,000 were convicted. This barren policy was severely criticised by many and seems to be due to the unwillingness on the part of Gandhi and Nehru to embarrass the British Government and, at the same time, a desire to take the wind out of the sails of Subhas Bose’s Party (Forward Bloc), which had begun its campaign of Civil Disobedience in right earnest.

Even the repeated rebuffs of the British Government to the Congress had not modified in any way the attitude of Gandhi and Nehru towards the British.
On May 20, 1940, Nehru said:

“Launching a Civil Disobedience campaign at a time when Britain is engaged in a life and death struggle would be an act derogatory to India’s honour.”

Similarly, Gandhi said,

“We do not seek our independence out of Britain’s ruin. That is not the way of non-violence.”

Gandhi probably thought that by following a mild policy, he would ultimately secure valuable concessions from the government, but he was disappointed.

Gandhi After the Collapse of the Cripps Proposal (1942)

Since the collapse of the Civil Disobedience of 1930, Gandhi had abandoned the idea of mass movement. But, as Azad put it, his “mind was now moving from the extreme of complete inactivity to that of organized mass effort.”
On June 7, Gandhi wrote,

“I waited and waited until the country should develop the non-violent strength necessary to throw off the foreign yoke. But my attitude has now undergone a change. I feel that I cannot afford to wait. If I continue to wait, I might have to wait till doomsday. For the preparation that I have prayed and worked for may never come, and in the meantime, I may be enveloped and overwhelmed by the flames that threaten all of us. That is why I have decided that even at certain risks which are obviously involved I must ask the people to resist the slavery.”

Gandhi is also reported to have said,

“I have not asked the British to hand over India to the Congress or to the Hindus. Let them entrust India to God or in modern parlance to anarchy. Then all the parties will fight one another like dogs, or will, when real responsibility faces them, come to a reasonable agreement. I shall expect non-violence to arise out of that chaos.”

Gandhi’s changed attitude towards Britain also brought about a change in his method of activity.

Nehru on Gandhi 

One might well ponder how and why a dynamic personality like Jawaharlal Nehru made an abject surrender to Gandhi?

Nehru himself said about Gandhi that:

“ideologically he was sometimes amazingly backward…much that he says seems to fit in with a medieval Christian saint and not at all with modern psychological experience and method.”

Fortunately, Nehru has himself answered this question, on behalf of himself and many others who were insensibly drawn within the magnetic circle of Gandhi:

“How came we to associate ourselves with Gandhiji politically and to become, in many instances, his devoted followers? The question is hard to answer. Personality is an indefinable thing, a strange force that has power over the souls of men, and he possesses this in ample measure. He attracted people. They did not agree with his philosophy of life, or even with many of his ideals. Often, they did not understand him. But the action that he proposed was something tangible.”

PART 6

The Revolutionaries; The Hindu Mahasabha; The Japanese Invasion; And The Inevitability Of Pakistan

Part 6 deals with the revolutionary movement, the growing discontent and most importantly, sheds light on what went on behind the scenes in the decision-making about the partition of India.

The Revolutionary Movement 

The revolutionary movement, which became a potent force in Indian politics during the Swadeshi movement, continued, with checks and breaks, up to the end of the Civil Disobedience movement of Gandhi. The two movements — one violent and another non-violent — went on side by side, and it was almost inevitable that each would be influenced by the other.

The idea of an armed rebellion still swayed the revolutionary party, but there was a more conscious attempt to bring the organization in line with the national movement and make revolutionary mentality more broad-based in the country by rousing the political consciousness of the people to the futility of Gandhian ways of non-violence and negotiations. Counteracting the Gandhian movement of non-violence and focusing the attention of the country on the supreme need for ‘Direct Action’ to achieve complete independence and to remove the lethargy in political activity were the chief objects of the revolutionaries. According to their own statement, the hunger strike in jail and the throwing of bombs on the floor of the Assembly Hall were inspired by this motive.

That these expedients quickened the national consciousness of the people and indirectly helped to create a favourable atmosphere for the growth of revolutionary mentality among ever-increasing circles is abundantly proven by the country-wide enthusiasm evoked by the hunger strike and martyrdom of Jatin Das as well as of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. A spontaneous movement developed and was centered around the hunger strike. June 30, 1929, was observed as Bhagat-Datta Memorial Day, and meetings were held in many places, especially in the Punjab.

The A.I.C.C. issued a circular to observe August 18, 1929, as “Political Sufferers’ Day” all over the country. The people held meetings and organized processions in defiance of Section 144, the lathi charges, and other oppressions of the police. The whole country seemed to reverberate with the new revolutionary cry of Inqilab Zindabad. (Long live the revolution.) The tumultuous enthusiasm for the revolutionary heroes particularly stirred the younger section, and even Gandhi had to bend before the new force in the Karachi Congress.

A notable feature of the revolutionary movement is that the ideology of the revolutionaries was more clearly formulated and widely promulgated. Some idea of it may be formed from the Joint Statement issued by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Datta during their trial for the Assembly Bomb Case. After stating the reasons for throwing bombs, they proceeded to explain what ‘violence’ was and what was not:

“Force, when aggressively applied, is violence and is therefore morally unjustifiable. But when it is used in furtherance of a legitimate cause, it has its moral justification. Elimination of force at all costs is utopian, and the new movement which has arisen in the country and of which we have given a warning is inspired by the ideals which guided Guru Govind Singh and Shivaji, Kamal Pasha and Reza Khan, Washington and Garibaldi, Lafayette, and Lenin.”

Far more interesting is the comprehensive ideal of revolution. The revolutionaries had not only destructive but also constructive ideas. They not only wanted to replace British imperialism with a Republican form of government in India, but they also wanted to place it on a socialistic foundation. This was already indicated by the addition of the word ‘Socialist’ to the original name of the Hindusthan Republican Association.

After narrating how they surrendered of their own accord and were prepared for any penalty, Bhagat and Batukeshwar observed:

“By crushing two insignificant units a nation cannot be crushed. We wanted to emphasize the historical lesson that lettres de cachet and Bastille could not crush the revolutionary movement in France. Gallows and Siberian mines could not extinguish the Russian Revolution. Blood Sundays and Black and Tans failed to strangle the movement of Irish freedom. Can Ordinance and Safety Bills snuff out the flame of freedom in India?”

Another interesting characteristic of the revolutionary movement is a high degree of development in technical skill, as displayed by the preparation of superior types of bombs. This was accompanied by a higher efficiency in military skill and strategy, of which a typical example was the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930.

The revolutionary movement, however, did not die out in 1934.

The new constitutional reforms of 1935 took away the edge of both violent and non-violent methods in Indian politics. But the revolutionary spirit, like that of Gandhi’s Satyagraha, was not lost on the people. When Gandhi sought to revive the Civil Disobedience movement in 1942 but was prevented from launching it by his sudden arrest, the revolutionary spirit raised its head, and the cult of non-violence was submerged under that of violence. The widespread but short-lived outbreak of 1942 was the product of an admixture of revolutionary violence and a spirit of non-violent resistance inculcated by Gandhi. The two streams joined together and gave a new form to this, the last battle for India’s freedom fought on Indian soil.

Hindu Mahasabha 

The session of the Hindu Mahasabha at Nagpur in 1938 was largely attended, and a detachment of volunteers was armed with swords and lathis. It passed a resolution demanding universal military training to counteract the Muslim preponderance in the Indian Army and to prepare the way for a full-scale national militia. It would be clear from what has been said above, particularly the result of the election of 1937, that however deplorable the attitude of the Hindu Mahasabha from a national point of view, it had no large following among the Hindus and did not represent the Hindu community in any sense of the term. Besides, it had no chance of carrying its views against those of the Congress, which the Muslims themselves looked upon as a Hindu organization.

If this supposition were true, then logically, the Hindu Mahasabha should not have counted for much in the eyes of the Muslims. But the world is often governed by sentiments rather than logic. There were two special reasons why the Muslims got nervous over the views so frankly expressed by Savarkar. First, he aimed at establishing Hindu Raj in India, a contingency that was a nightmare with the Muslims and never ceased to create the worst fear in their minds. Secondly, the Muslim League was aware of the effect produced by enthusiastic appeals to communal instincts.

The same means by which the Muslim League gained pre-eminence at the expense of Nationalist Muslims and other Muslim organizations might also enable the Hindu Mahasabha to secure predominance in the Hindu community despite the Congress. Suspicion breeds mistrust, and many Muslims thought that several Congressmen probably agreed with Dr. Savarkar. 

The Japanese Reaching India Almost 

The war suddenly took an alarming turn as far as India was concerned with the entry of the Japanese into the war on the side of the Axis powers against Britain. The rapidity with which they seized Singapore (15 February 1942), hitherto regarded as almost impregnable, overran Malaya, and entered Burma raised their prestige as a military power and brought India within the range of actual hostilities.

It was quite clear that the Japanese intended to invade India from the east through Burma and Manipur. No doubt was left on this point by the propaganda through radio that the Japanese were coming to deliver India from the yoke of the British. The Indians had too much knowledge of their own history and of Japan’s treatment of China to believe in Japanese propaganda.

They were not, with probably a few exceptions, pro-Japanese. But they were not drawn closer to the British either. To the old causes of anti-British sentiments, the Japanese invasion added more. In the first place, they could not help but feel that the present predicament was entirely due to the British, who had dragged them into the war against their will. For, it was argued, the Japanese would never have invaded India if she were not a part of the British Empire, and even then, if India had enjoyed Dominion status, she could remain neutral like Eire (Ireland) and not be forced to become a belligerent. The Indians could not help but feel that, in their present state of dependence, they were destined to share only the evils and sorrows of the British Empire and not its benefits and blessings.

Secondly, despite the many shortcomings and evils of British rule, the Indians always balanced them against one inestimable advantage it offered, namely, security from foreign invasions. The fortunes of the war clearly indicated the hollowness of this claim in the immediate, and possibly remote, future. Thirdly, the Japanese victories had considerably lowered British prestige and destroyed the myth of their invincibility. Many had also come to believe that the days of the British Empire were numbered.

Non-Violence Still A Weapon 

As regards the Congress, though the Japanese invasion did not change its attitude, it certainly changed its leadership. Once more, as in June 1940, Gandhi feared that the war conditions would force Britain to offer independence to India on condition of participation in the war, and he rightly felt that most Congressmen would accept it.

The Working Committee of the Congress met at Bardoli on December 23, 1941, and passed a long resolution, a part of which is quoted below:

“The whole background in India is one of hostility and distrust of the British Government, and not even the most far-reaching promises can alter this background, nor can a subject India offer voluntary or willing help to an arrogant imperialism which is indistinguishable from Fascist authoritarianism….“The Committee is therefore of opinion that the resolution of the A.I.C.C., which was passed in Bombay on 16 September, 1940, and defines the Congress policy, holds to-day still.”

By another resolution, the Working Committee relieved Gandhi of the responsibility laid upon him (of leading the Satyagraha movement),

“but the Committee assures him that the policy of non-violence adopted under his guidance for the attainment of Swaraj, and which has proved so successful in leading to mass awakening and otherwise will be adhered to by the Congress.”

The Working Committee issued a series of instructions in anticipation of the Japanese attack.

The general trend of these instructions was to set up the Congress as an independent organization, outside the Government, throughout the country, to help and serve people in any contingency arising out of the threatened Japanese invasion. The net position was that although the Congress shook off the pacifism of Gandhi, it reiterated its old policy of non-cooperation with the war efforts of the government so long as the independence of India was not guaranteed. 

Partition was an Evil Necessity

Azad, Mosley, and many others have condemned both Nehru and Patel on this account and held them up as the real authors of the ill-fated partition of India. But before denouncing Patel or Nehru and describing them as mere dupes of ‘wily Mountbatten’s clever manoeuvring,’ it is only fair to remember that the Congress had unanimously passed resolutions, directly or indirectly conceding Pakistan, in 1934, 1942, 1945, and March 1947. Gandhi and Nehru referred to this contingency as a very possible one. No Congress leader liked the idea, but some had to accept it as an evil necessity, and each might have his own special reason for finally accepting the partition as a concrete proposal.

Jawaharlal Nehru at first reacted violently against the partition but was gradually reconciled to it. Azad suggests that Vallabhbhai Patel and Lord and Lady Mountbatten influenced him. There may be some truth in it, but as regards the reasons that finally induced him to accept it, we have the testimony of Nehru himself, which should outweigh everything else.

Leonard Mosley writes:

“Pandit Nehru told Michael Brecher, his biographer, (in 1956, the reasons for accepting the Partition of India): ‘Well, I suppose it was the compulsion of events and the feeling that we wouldn’t get out of that deadlock or morass by pursuing the way we had done; it became worse and worse. Further a feeling that even if we got freedom for India with that background, it would be very weak India, that is a federal India with far too much power in the federating units. A larger India would have constant troubles, constant disintegrating pulls. And also the fact that we saw no other way of getting our freedom — in the near future I mean. And so we accepted it and said, let us build up a strong India. And if others do not want to be in it, well how can we and why should we force them to be in it?’”

But perhaps Pandit Nehru came nearer the truth in a conversation with Mosley in 1960 when he said,

“The truth is that we were tired men, and we were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going to prison again — and if we had stood out for a united India as we wished it, prison obviously awaited us. We saw the fires burning in Punjab and heard every day of the killings. The plan for partition offered a way out, and we took it.”

He added,

“But if Gandhi had told us not to, we would have gone on fighting and waiting. But we accepted. We expected that partition would be temporary and that Pakistan was bound to come back to us. None of us guessed how much the killing and the crisis in Kashmir would embitter relations.”

When we remember that Nehru looked upon Brecher as his best biographer and frankly confided his inmost personal feelings to Mosley, we may reasonably put a great value on their version of what Nehru himself had said. The two statements, though somewhat different, are not self-contradictory, and perhaps both contain a great deal of truth.

Like Nehru, Gandhi also admitted not only the possibility but almost the inevitability of Pakistan. He wrote in the Harijan in 1942 that if many Muslims want to partition India, they must have the partition, and in 1944 he continued negotiations with Jinnah on this basis. And yet, when the crucial moment for the final decision arrived, he told Azad on March 3, 1947, before he met Mountbatten:

“If the Congress wishes to accept partition, it will be over my dead body. So long as I am alive, I will never agree to the partition of India. Nor will I, if I can help it, allow Congress to accept it.”

According to Azad, a great change came over Gandhi after he interviewed Mountbatten. Gandhi

“no longer spoke so vehemently against it (partition.) and began to repeat the arguments which Sardar Patel had already used. For over two hours I pleaded with him but could make no impression on him.”

According to Rajendra Prasad,

“Mahatmaji feared that the results of that acceptance (of Partition) would be disastrous… But when he realised that those who were entrusted with the responsibility of administration found that it was not possible to carry on and that there must either be partition or open war with the League, he decided to keep quiet and not oppose partition in any way.”

However, the reasons that Gandhi himself gave for his conversion are somewhat different. When opposition to the acceptance of partition was running very high in the meeting of the A.I.C.C. on June 14, Gandhi spoke for about 40 minutes, urging the acceptance of partition. His main argument was that if the A.I.C.C. threw out the recommendations of the Working Committee, they must find a new set of leaders who could not only constitute the Congress Working Committee but also take charge of the government. As it was impossible to replace the old and tried leaders, he would advise the House to accept the resolution.

Gandhi thus threw his whole weight in favour of the partition. Gandhi concluded by saying that he was one of those who had steadfastly opposed the partition of India, but sometimes certain decisions, however unpalatable they might be, had to be taken. The first part of the last sentence cannot be accepted as quite accurate in view of his statement and activities in 1942 and 1944, just mentioned above, and it is difficult to reconcile the main trend of his speech with Nehru’s statement that if Gandhi had said ‘no’ to Pakistan, the Congress leaders would have all stood by him.

Mountbatten very effectively used one strong argument in favour of the partition of India to win over the Congress leaders. In all the plans discussed so far, there was one point in common, namely, that there should be a weak centre with very limited authority, while the residuary powers should be vested in the Provinces. This was a concession to the Muslims, who were apprehensive of the Hindu majority in the center. In a country like India, with diverse languages, races, religions, and people in different stages of political and cultural evolution and with different historical traditions, a strong central authority was needed to keep down the fissiparous tendency, which has been a permanent feature of Indian politics since the beginning of recorded history.

The separation of Muslim Provinces would give the rest of India the opportunity to evolve a constitution with a strong central government. So, Pakistan would not be an unmixed curse. What it would take away in quantity would be compensated by the solidarity it would give to the rest. What idealism would suffer; real politics would gain. This argument must have deeply impressed the Congress leaders after their recent experience of the joint Hindu-Muslim administration in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, writes Mazumdar.

PART 7

The Enduring Myth Of 1942 Quit India Movement, And The Crucial Events Between 1942 To 1947

The last part of the series deals with the Quit India Movement, Subhash Chandra Bose’s contribution to the cause, the partition of India and final moments of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s before the transfer of power.

Dr. R.C. Mazumdar strikes the hardest blow at the biggest myth of the independence story, the Quit India movement, which did not do much for Indian independence. It all but collapsed within a few months. The reasons for Indian independence were due to the many factors that played out between 1942 and 1947. Subhash Bose, the INA, the Red Fort Trials, the naval mutiny of Bombay, the labour government in the UK, and the financial issues of post-war Britain were arguably the more important reasons for Indian independence.

The 1942 Quit India Movement

Mazumdar starts by saying that it is necessary at the very outset to remove two great misconceptions regarding the outbreak of 1942. The first, namely, that it was predominantly non-violent, will not bear a moment’s scrutiny in the face of the detail. Gandhi himself, Nehru, Azad, Patel, and the official history of the Congress all admitted this patent fact.
According to Patel:

“one had to face reality, and India switched over from a non-violent to a violent attempt to regain independence.”

If the outbreak of 1942 is a specimen of a ‘predominantly non-violent form of satyagraha’, then this phrase must mean something very different from what Gandhi himself understood by it. Indeed, the movement called forth on more than one occasion the true spirit of non-violent satyagraha, when people, young and old, gave a display of cool, sublime courage by calmly facing the bullets with the national flag in their hands and the revolutionary cries on their lips. It proved that the spirit of 1930 was not yet dead, but to call the movement of 1942 a non-violent movement in any sense is nothing but a perversion of truth or a travesty of facts.

Secondly, credit is given to Gandhi for conducting this glorious revolution, which led us to our goal of freedom. Both assumptions are opposed to facts. It is well known, and the Congress was the first to admit it, that the movement collapsed in two months, and India had to wait for five more years before it achieved freedom under very different circumstances. Similarly, far from claiming any credit for the achievements of 1942, both Gandhi and the Congress offered an apology and explanation for the ‘madness’ that seized the people participating in it.

Jayaprakash Narayan most emphatically asserts:

“to fasten the August programme on Gandhiji is a piece of perjury of which only the British ruling class can be capable.”

The correspondence between Gandhi and the Government of India is conclusive on this point. We may next consider the question of whether, and if so, how far, the Congress was responsible for the outbreak of 1942. It has been argued that the Congress leaders could not be held responsible for the violent outbreaks that broke out after they were all behind prison bars. It was, however, pointed out by the government that during the period between the Working Committee’s resolution on July 14 and the meeting of the A.L.C.C. at Bombay on August 8, the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru, and Patel, indicated in public speeches the nature of the coming struggle, and laid special emphasis on two points.

First, it was the final struggle for freedom that ‘would kindle a fire all over the country, which would only be extinguished after either achieving it or wiping out Congress’s organisation altogether’. The people — everyone, and not merely Satyagrahis as in 1930 — must therefore respond to this desperate campaign in a spirit of ‘do or die’. The second was the insistence with which almost all speakers urged that every man should be prepared and willing to act on his own initiative. In view of such speeches, the government argued, not without some reason, that the Congress leaders could not altogether be absolved of responsibility for the outbreak of 1942.

But in all fairness, the responsibility — or credit — cannot be said, on such evidence alone, to extend beyond the creation of a mental state or excitement easily leading the mass to a violent outbreak, though the leaders never ceased to emphasise the non-violent character of the movement they had in view. The utterances of Congress leaders also largely support the view that the outbreak was a spontaneous popular reaction to the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders and not a premeditated course of rebellion.

In reply to such a suggestion,

“the government spokesman in the Central Assembly pointed out that the disorders had begun simultaneously at widely separated points, that the worst trouble had been located in a vital strategic area, that expert technical knowledge had been displayed and special tools used in the assault on communications, and that discrimination had been shown in the conduct of sabotage from which, for instance, the plant and machinery of private industrialists were exempted, all of which seemed to be evidence of design and preparation.”

These revelations also much weaken the plea, urged on behalf of the Congress, that the violent items of the campaign would not have come into operation but for the terrorism of the government. In support of this view, it is pointed out that the popular reaction to the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders was very mild on the 9^th and 10^th and assumed a violent character only on the 11^th after the government had broken up peaceful processions by lathi charge and firing.

Nehru clearly expressed this view, and this was the view in the official history of the Congress. But the view was by no means confined to the Congressmen or even the Indians. Horace Alexander, a well-known British journalist who toured India during the period, also says that it was the “repression let loose by the police that goaded violent fury from crowds that had intended to act quite peacefully.”

Gandhi himself wrote to Lord Linlithgow that it was the ‘leonine violence’ that goaded the people to acts of violence. Such a view seems to be incompatible with the elaborate plans and preparations for violent acts like disruption of communications and sabotage of industrial works. It is idle to contend that these items would not have been conducted but for the terrorism of the government.

Special attention may be drawn in this connection to a document secretly circulated by the Andhra Provincial Congress Committee. It was headed with Gandhi’s slogan, Do or Die, and it outlined a plan of action to be developed in successive stages, the fifth of which was to include the cutting of telephone and telegraph wires, the removal of rails, and the demolition of bridges. Other items in the programme were ‘to impede the war efforts of the government’ and ‘to run a parallel government in competition with the British Government.’ It is significant that all these were the characteristic features of the 1942 movement throughout the country.

The truth of these instructions, as well as the statement of the government quoted above regarding preparations to carry them out, has been challenged as they emanate from official sources. But we have corroboration of the same from unofficial sources as well. The Bihar Congress Committee had issued detailed instructions as to the course of action to be followed “after the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders,” and these conformed strictly to the Gandhian policy of non-violent Satyagraha.

But on August 11, seven students were killed by police firing while attempting to hoist the national flag on the Patna Secretariat building. On the 12th, a meeting held at the Congress Maidan under the chairmanship of a prominent member of the Congress resolved:

1) to destroy all communications by cutting railway lines, telegraph, and telephone wires, etc.; and

2) to take control of police stations, courts, jails, and other government institutions and to burn the records, etc. kept there. Activities along these lines began on an extensive scale, spontaneously and immediately.

The word ‘spontaneously’ obviously means ‘without any direct and definite instructions from the Congress. But it is difficult to understand how on that very evening “telegraph and telephone wires were cut at many places and telephone posts were uprooted” without some previous direction (like the Andhra document), organisation, training, and equipment.

This was followed by another Congress Circular, which began with the slogan ‘Do or Die’ and sketched a programme of fifteen items, including the following:

1) Railway lines should be uprooted, large bridges should be pulled down, and telegraph and telephone wires should be cut off! and roads too should be torn asunder.
2) Courts and Adalats, thanas, and post offices should be brought under possession and a tricolour flag hoisted on them.
3) The arms of the police and the military should be taken non-violently.
4) Always be non-violent.

To reconcile the first three of these items with the fourth may appear difficult to an ordinary mind, but a philosophical explanation has been provided by Jayaprakash Narayan. He observed, when taking up the leadership of the movement after escaping from prison:

“Dislocation is an infallible weapon for people under slavery… cutting wires, removing railway lines, blowing up bridges, stoppage of factory work, setting fire to oil tanks as well as to Thanas, destruction of government papers and files… all such activities come under dislocation, and it is perfectly right for people to carry out these.”

A review of these facts, to which others may be added, leaves no doubt that the violent acts in the 1942 movement cannot be explained as ‘insensate and mad acts of fury on the part of the people provoked by ruthless acts of the government,’ but were really due to the fact that whatever might have been its original character, the movement of 1942 shortly merged itself into the revolutionary or terrorist movement, which was always an active political force running on a parallel line with the non-violent policy of Gandhi.

How strong this revolutionary feeling was may be judged by the fact that even a powerful section of the Congress led by Jayaprakash Narayan openly repudiated the policy of Gandhi and preached the cult of violence and mass revolution — to fight Britain with arms — and regarded this course to be in accord with the Congress resolution of Bombay, though not with Gandhi’s principle. It is not difficult to visualise the rapid development of the course of events after August 1942.

The resentment at the arrest of Congress leaders, including Gandhi, and the absence of his restraining hand violently reacted to the amorphous groups of people who had no specific instructions to follow but were urged to pursue their individual inclinations. The revolutionary wing of the Congress and even its other members who adopted non-violence as a policy and not a creed became very lukewarm in support of it.

The professed revolutionaries must have taken full advantage of the situation. They had their own organisations and a ready technique of violence to be carried through different stages according to circumstances. Many of these revolutionaries must have already infiltrated the Congress camp. Horace Alexander tells us that “a section of younger Congressmen, some of whom were impatient with Gandhi’s delays and hesitations,” tried to procure arms and actually “set up bomb factories at several places.” We know that similar activities were executed by one or more groups that went underground after the government ruthlessly crushed the movement.

The one led by Jayaprakash was the most prominent among these underground organizations. The cult of violence preached by him and the specific acts to be done in accordance with it have been mentioned above. Leaflets carrying these instructions were issued and widely circulated throughout the country. There was a secret meeting of a small group at Sardar Griha in Bombay, and it was decided to work underground in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Their programme was to procure arms and ammunition from non-British ports like Goa and Indian States where the Arms Act did not apply.

Factories for preparing bombs and other explosive materials were set up at Agra, Gwalior, Kanpur, etc. Nagpur supplied dynamite from its neighbouring mines. Efforts were made to get rifles and guns from the North-Western Frontier Province. Enterprising girls freely travelled from one place to another, hiding their arms and ammunition. The movement gained momentum after the escape of Jayaprakash Narayan and his colleagues from Hazaribagh jail in October 1942, when efforts were made to coordinate the activities in all the states.

Programmes were framed with some reorientation, and in a highly significant document entitled “The Freedom Struggle Front,” the socialist leaders unfolded their strategy.

“The training of workers, the issue of leaflets, newssheets, and slogans, the organisation of contacts, the raising of funds, frequent reviews of progress, and the issue of directions to the fighting line” were to be the urgent administrative problems of the Freedom Struggle Front.

The first circular issued under the signature of Jayaprakash Narayan, addressed to “All Fighters for Freedom,” justified the use of arms to fight the British in terms of the Bombay resolution. He laid stress on intensive propaganda work among the masses — peasants in villages, workers in factories, mines, railways, and elsewhere.

Then there was work to be done in the “Indian army and services in Native States and on the frontiers of India.” Jayaprakash’s other appeals were addressed to American officers and soldiers (to desist from shooting Indians), to students, to the peasants, and others. The Central Action Committee, consisting of Jayaprakash and some other leaders and a batch of students from Banaras Hindu University, met in Delhi to chalk out a programme of action for the whole of India.

Gandhiites such as Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani did not endorse the programme and kept out of the struggle. A separate code for sending and receiving information was formed. There was to be a dictator for each province, and in the case of larger provinces like Uttar Pradesh, districts were grouped into zones for each of which a dictator was appointed. Agra, Kanpur, and Banaras were the zones in Uttar Pradesh. Each dictator had a committee of action under him, and in the case of the arrest of a dictator, the seniormost member was to take his place. There were several departments, such as demonstration, propaganda, information, finance, intelligence, volunteering, village, school, college, dak, ambulance, etc., each in charge of a member of the committee.

Besides issuing the usual exhortatory pamphlets, some of which have been appended to the White Paper, and setting up provincial and zonal committees, minute technical instructions were circulated to help saboteurs destroy planes, tanks, locomotives, etc. with easily obtained substances and methods. There was a separate set of instructions for guerillas, and details about the training and equipment were given in these pamphlets. For the training of Azad Dastas, or guerilla bands, a center was set up outside the British territory at a place known as Bankro Ka Tapu.

Sardar Nityanand Singh of Bihar was the chief instructor at this center, while Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia took over the charge of the radio and publicity department. Among the revolutionary groups working in different parts of the country, Siaram Dal and Parasuram Dal in Bihar, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army in Uttar Pradesh, and Anusilan Samiti and Jugantar Group in Bengal were the most important ones. This gigantic revolutionary movement, which spread over almost all the provinces, however, soon lost its tempo, and by February 1943, it was over.

But though the 1942 movement in the open was practically crushed in less than a month and finally collapsed within two months, it would be a mistake to suppose that it was a dismal failure. The violent mass upsurge of 1942 left no doubt that freedom’s battle in India had begun in earnest. The individual, and in many instances, collective, heroism and bravery in the face of heavy odds, the readiness to suffer and sacrifice everything for the freedom of the motherland displayed by a very large number of people all over this vast country, and, above all, an enthusiastic response to the call of the Congress from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, were unerring signs of India’s grim determination to be free from the British yoke.

But this does not prove the oft-repeated claim that India won her freedom through the non-violent Satyagraha of Gandhi. The movement of 1942, the last rising of the people against the British Government, was not non-violent and was neither planned nor led by Gandhi.

To give him credit for it, after he had publicly disowned his responsibility for the whole movement, would be an indirect imputation of untruth and insincerity on his part — a charge that his worst critics would be the foremost to repudiate.

As far as India is concerned, the years 1942–43 mark the end of her struggle for freedom. The revolutionary movement, which had begun early in this century, as well as the non-violent Satyagraha, which Gandhi had launched in 1920, both ended almost simultaneously without achieving freedom. Curiously enough, the last battle for India’s freedom began almost immediately after, far beyond her frontier, and this also proved a failure in this respect. But it was out of these failures that success came in less than five years.

The Final Phase (1935–1947): Bose, the Second World War, the INA Trials, the Naval Mutiny, and a Depleted England

The Congress, with a majority of Hindus, swept the polls in elections held at the beginning of 1937. The Muslims wanted to form a coalition ministry with the Congress in each province, but the Congress refused to admit into the ministry anyone who did not subscribe to its creed. Jinnah, previously favourably disposed towards the Congress, now vehemently declares that “Muslims can expect neither justice nor fair play under the Congress Government.” Jinnah became the unquestioned leader of the Muslim community.

The Congress formed ministries in seven out of eleven provinces. With a successful administration, the Congress rapidly grew in popularity. But soon a “left-wing” developed in the Congress, and its great strength became manifest when its leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, defeated even Gandhiji’s nominee (Pattabhi Ramayya) for the Presidency. When the moderate section forced Subhas Bose to resign, he formed a new party, the “Forward Bloc”, and this open split weakened the power and prestige of the Congress.

The political situation was tranquil until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 when the Congress took exception to the fact that Britain had dragged India into the war without her consent. The Congress Committee asked the British Government to state whether their war aims included the elimination of imperialism and the treatment of India as a free nation. As no satisfactory reply was forthcoming, all the Congress ministries resigned in October–November 1939.

On August 8, 1940, the Viceroy made a statement in which he refused to concede to the National Government that “its authority is denied by large and powerful elements in India’s national life,” which obviously referred to the Muslims.
But he offered:

(1) to set up, after the war, a representative body to devise a new constitution for India;
(2) to enlarge the Viceroy’s Executive Council by nominating additional Indian members; and
(3) to appoint a “War Advisory Council” consisting of representatives of British India and Indian States.

The Congress not only rejected this offer but also launched in October 1940 an individual civil disobedience campaign under the leadership of Gandhi.

This deadlock continued for a year and a half. When the Japanese, after overrunning Malaya, were rapidly advancing in Burma, the British made a conciliatory gesture. On March 8, 1942, Rangoon fell, and at once Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the British Cabinet, came on a mission. He promised dominion status and a constitution-making body after the war was over but held out no hope of any immediate change in the government of India. The Congress as well as the Muslim League refused his offer, and the Cripps Mission (March–April 1942) ended in complete failure.

Throughout these negotiations, the Congress could not count on the support of the Muslim League. Mr. Jinnah now publicly expressed the view that neither minority safeguards nor separate electorates could save the Muslims from the Congress at the center. When the Congress Ministries in the Provinces resigned, the Muslim League observed a day of deliverance and thanksgiving throughout.

In the Lahore Session of the Muslim League (March 1940), Jinnah declared that the Muslim nation must have a separate independent state, Pakistan. First proposed in 1930 and dismissed as impractical, the Muslim League formally endorsed it under the leadership of Jinnah. From that date on, all attempts at reconciliation between the Congress and the League foundered on this issue of Pakistan. The government could also now refuse the Congress’s demand for a national government on the ground that Muslims opposed it.

On August 8, 1942, the All-India Congress Committee adopted a resolution, The Quit India Movement, in favour of starting a mass struggle on the widest possible scale. Soon, the British arrested all its leaders and declared Congress an illegal body. The government again adopted strong measures of repression, including firing from airplanes. According to official estimates, there were arrests of more than 60,000 people, detention of 18,000 people without trial, killing of 940, and 1,630 injuries through police or military firing during the last five months of 1942.

The British government soon faced another danger. Subhas Chandra Bose, who had escaped from India in 1941, made contact with Germany and Japan. When the Japanese conquered the Malay Peninsula, many Indian soldiers fell prisoners into their hands. Under an agreement with the Japanese Government, Bose, now called Netaji (Leader), organised them into an army that he named the Azad Hind Fauz, or Indian National Army. He inaugurated the Government of Free India in Singapore, and in 1943, his soldiers advanced with the Japanese army up to the very frontier of India.

In 1945, the Labour Party came into power in Britain. The new British government made an earnest effort to end the political deadlock in India. They decided to hold fresh elections of Indian Councils, both Central and Provincial, to reconstitute the Viceroy’s Executive Council. The elections held at the beginning of 1946 resulted in a sweeping victory for the Congress in terms of general seats and for the Muslim League in terms of Muslim seats.

The Indian National Army, organised by Bose, surrendered to the British after the collapse of Japan, and there was a trial of several of its officers in India for treason. This was a highly impolitic step on the part of the government, as it gave the Indian people a complete picture of an organisation of which they had hitherto known truly little. A wave of enthusiasm swept the country, and demonstrations happened in several cities. On February 18, 1946, the Indian soldiers of the Royal Indian Navy in Mumbai rose in an open mutiny, which, for a few days, assumed serious proportions. 

On February 19, the British Prime Minister announced that three members of the Cabinet would visit India “to promote, in conjunction with the leaders of Indian opinion, the early realisation of full self-government in India.” Later, on March 15, he referred to complete independence as a possible goal of Indian constitutional development, if Indians so chose. The Cabinet Mission arrived in Delhi in March 1946 and held a series of conferences with the leaders of the Congress and the League. As no agreement was possible between them, the Mission issued a statement on May 16, 1946, giving a broad outline of the idea of the future government of India and laying down the procedure for framing a detailed constitution.

The Cabinet Mission recommended a federal type of government for the whole of India, including the States. The federal government would deal with foreign affairs, defence, and communication, and the other powers would be with the provinces and states. The proposal was to divide British India into three groups of provinces: one comprising the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind, and Baluchistan; a second comprising Bengal and Assam; and the third the rest. Each province would have the right to opt out of the Federal Union after the first election of its Legislative Council under the new Constitution. The Cabinet Mission further recommended the establishment of an interim national government by the reconstitution of the Viceroy’s Executive Council from among the leaders of the different parties.

On June 6, the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission’s proposals, reiterating that the attainment of the goal of a complete sovereign Pakistan remained the unalterable objective of the Muslims in India. The Congress rejected the Viceroy’s proposal for an interim government but agreed to participate in the Constituent Assembly to frame the Constitution. The Cabinet Mission left India on June 29.

The Muslim League demanded that the Viceroy proceed with his scheme for an interim government even though the Congress would not take part in it. This the Viceroy refused to do, for he had already declared that it was to be a government of all the parties who had accepted the Cabinet Mission’s plan. There were also sharp differences between the Muslim League and the Congress over the interpretation of the Cabinet Mission’s plan. After a somewhat acrimonious controversy, the Muslim League formally withdrew its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission’s plan.

The Viceroy thereupon, in accordance with his previous declaration, reconstituted his Executive Council without any representative of the League. This complete triumph of the Congress provoked a violent reaction among separatist Muslims, and the Muslim League fixed August 16, 1946, as the day of “direct action.” On that day, while some of the supporters of the League contented themselves with demonstrations of a peaceful type, a rowdy section in Calcutta got completely out of control. They killed many Hindus by looting and burning their houses and shops. Soon, the Hindus retaliated, and for several days, the streets of Calcutta were the scene of communal riots of the worst type. Neither the League Ministry nor the Governor and the Viceroy, who were ultimately responsible for law and order, took adequate steps to stop the hideous violence that disgraced the name of the first city of modern India.

On September 2, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues became members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. Soon after this, the Hindus of several villages in the district of Noakhali and the adjoining part of Comilla suffered terribly from raids organised by bands of armed men belonging to the other community. This provoked reprisals in Bihar, where large numbers of Muslims received the same treatment at the hands of the Hindus. Pandit Nehru flew to Bihar, and the Congress Ministry there took vigorous steps to suppress the disturbances.

The Executive Council of the Viceroy, under the guidance of Nehru, worked like a cabinet and changed the whole spirit and outlook of the Indian government. Lord Wavell, whose power thus became almost non-existent, now sought to bring in the League members as a counterpoise in the name of communal parity. He told Pandit Nehru that the League had agreed to join the Constituent Assembly and had reconstituted the Executive Council by including members of that organisation. The introduction of this new element destroyed the team spirit of the Council, as the League members openly repudiated the idea of collective responsibility.

What was worse, the League did not join the Constituent Assembly, and Jinnah made the startling disclosure that it had never agreed to do so. It was an awkward situation for the Viceroy, and the British Government did nothing to improve it when it declared, on December 6, that if the Muslim League did not join the Constituent Assembly, the British Government could not implement the decision of this body, at least as it affected the provinces with a Muslim majority.

Nevertheless, the Constituent Assembly met on December 9, 1946, without the members of the League. They elected Rajendra Prasad as President and selected various committees to draft the various parts of the Constitution. The tense atmosphere continued until February 20, 1947, when the British Government made an important announcement of policy. It declared its intention to quit India by June 1948 and appointed Lord Mountbatten Viceroy of India to arrange for the transfer of authority from British to Indian hands.

This momentous proclamation evoked hearty enthusiasm all over India, save in the ranks of the Muslim League, which once again resorted to “Direct Action.” Riots broke out all over the Punjab and soon extended to the North-West Frontier Province, and looting, arson, murder, and violence occurred on a large scale over a wide area. These successive communal outbreaks had a very unfortunate consequence. The Hindus and the Sikhs, who had hitherto been strongly in favour of a United India, now gradually came to realise its impracticability and demanded partition of Punjab and Bengal if the Muslims refused to join the Constituent Assembly.

Lord Mountbatten assumed office as Viceroy on March 24th, 1947, and on June 3rd, broadcast the famous declaration laying down “the method by which power will be transferred from British to Indian hands.” The main points of this new procedure or policy were:

1. Areas with a majority Muslim population should be allowed to form a separate Dominion, and a new Constituent Assembly would be set up for that purpose. But in that case, there would be a partition of Bengal and the Punjab if the representatives of the Hindu majority districts in the legislatures of those provinces so desired.
2. A referendum would be held in the North-West Frontier Province to ascertain whether it should join Pakistan.
3. The district of Sylhet would be joined to the Muslim area in Bengal after the views of the people had been ascertained by a referendum.
4. Boundary Commissions would be set up to define the boundaries of the Hindu and Muslim Provinces in Bengal and Punjab.
5. Legislation would be introduced in the current session of Parliament for immediately conferring Dominion Status on India (or the two Dominions if partition is decided upon), without any prejudice to the final decision of the Constituent Assembly (or assemblies) in this respect.

There were mixed feelings among the public. The Hindus and nationalists of all persuasions deplored the vivisection of India, while the Muslims of the League were not fully satisfied with the “truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan,” as Jinnah once described it. It was, however, generally agreed that the new scheme offered the best practicable solution to the Indian problem. Accordingly, both the Congress and the League accepted it, and the partition of Punjab and Bengal happened through two commissions appointed by the British Government, with Sir Cyril Radcliffe as Chairperson of both.

The India Independence Bill, passed by the British Parliament on July 1, 1947, without any dissent, was fixed for August 15, 1947, as the date of the transfer of authority. Accordingly, at midnight on August 14–15, there was a special session of the Constituent Assembly in Delhi. It solemnly declared the independence of India as a part of the British Commonwealth and appointed Lord Mountbatten as the first Governor-General of the new Indian Dominion. Mr. Jinnah became the first Governor-General of Pakistan, which soon took steps to summon its own Constituent Assembly. 15 August 1947, which saw the end of the long-drawn National Struggle against British rule, is a red-letter day in the history of India, and the date will ever remain engraved in the hearts of millions of her people.

History Of Freedom Movement: The View Of R.C. Mazumdar – Part 1

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement in India By R.C. Mazumdar – The Politics Of The Book – Part 2

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – The Muslim Politics – Part 3

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – The Ruthless English: Attitudes, Second World War, Churchill, and Mountbatten – Part 4

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Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – Part 6 – The Revolutionaries; The Hindu Mahasabha; The Japanese Invasion; And The Inevitability Of Pakistan

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