Nehru was opposed to the assumption of political office. Real power, he argued, was the Congress’s hold on the people, and this would be diluted by ‘office power’. A drastic shift from the stance staked out previously would be disastrous for the Congress. Yet, with Patel and Azad backing Rajagopalachari, Nehru reluctantly fell into line. The final text went even further than Rajagopalachari’s draft. The resolution proclaimed that if its suggestion were taken up by the government, the Congress would ‘throw in its full weight in the efforts for effective organization of the Defence of the country’.12 Commending the resolution to the All-India Congress Committee in Poona, Nehru said: ‘It may be that the dancing star of independence may emerge out of chaos, but it may also be that nothing but black clouds may emerge out of chaos.’13
The final note of scepticism in Nehru’s speech stemmed from his awareness of the new prime minister’s record on India. Nehru had welcomed the eclipse of Chamberlain and the ascension of the ‘far abler and more virile Mr. Churchill’. He observed that ‘England now speaks with a different and a sterner voice so far as her defence is concerned … But in other matters has there been any change?’14 Nehru also took a dim view of the new secretary of state for India, Leo Amery. When Amery took over on 10 May 1940, Nehru wrote a short note on his past support for Japanese imperialism in Manchuria. In a speech in the Commons in 1933, Nehru recalled, Amery had said: ‘Our whole policy in India … stands condemned, if we condemn Japan.’15
Amery had actually been born in India and lived there till the age of four. A contemporary of Churchill’s at Harrow, he was elected a fellow of All Souls College in Oxford. Thereafter, he served as a correspondent for The Times during the Boer War and entered politics as a Conservative. Like many of his colleagues at All Souls, he was a Christian imperialist who held that ‘The empire is not external to any of the British nation. It is something like the kingdom of heaven within ourselves.’16 After a stint as colonial secretary between 1924 and 1929, Amery found himself in the political backwaters. From the mid-1930s, however, he joined Churchill as a ferocious critic of the appeasement of Germany and a fervent advocate of rearmament. When war broke out, Amery was outspoken in his disapproval of Prime Minister Chamberlain’s wartime leadership. After a series of debacles in early 1940, he attacked the government famously quoting Oliver Cromwell: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’
As secretary of state for India, Amery’s policies continued to be shaped by his views about the divinity of the British Empire. While he did not share Churchill’s views about the need to sustain a Hindu–Muslim divide in India, Amery too believed that religious divisions in India were age-old and deep-seated. So, the future of India had to be decided on the basis of an agreement between Hindus and Muslims.
In his first statement to Parliament, Amery reaffirmed that his government wanted India to attain Dominion status and that it was for Indians to devise the best constitution. The difficulty at the moment was an acute divide in Indian opinion on fundamental issues. Yet he refused to ‘regard the cleavage as unbridgeable’. Amery also expressed appreciation for Nehru’s statement that ‘he would not take advantage of our difficulties’.17
A week later, Amery wrote to Linlithgow: ‘I suppose there is no chance of enlisting Nehru as recruiter-in-chief?’18 Considering Britain’s strategic isolation, as well as the expressions of sympathy – if not support – from leading Congressmen, Amery wondered if the viceroy could take some initiative. Indeed, he discerned ‘an opportunity which might not recur’. Amery proposed an informal conference with leaders of the Indian parties, the current and former premiers of the provinces and princes’ representatives to consider constitutional developments after the war. Such an idea would turn the tables on their critics and meet the demands for a constitution devised by Indians. Above all, ‘while the Committee was prosecuting its useful studies India could get on with the war’.19
Amery’s scheme of gainful employment for Indian politicians was received icily by the viceroy. Warning Amery ‘not to take a false step’, Linlithgow pointed out that these were matters of ‘real delicacy’. Despite the Congress’s opposition, Britain had every reason to feel satisfied about India’s contribution to the war. The viceroy argued against any attempt to mollify the Congress, especially in view of the demand for Pakistan – an ‘admirable rallying cry’ – advanced by Jinnah. Besides, there were the Hindu Mahasabha, the depressed classes, the princes: all of whom contested the Congress’s claims to speak for India. Linlithgow was certain that ‘we should continue as before and make no move until circumstances are more propitious for one’.20 The viceroy was not oblivious to the softening of the Congress’s stance; he merely believed that the premier Indian party needed to soften itself into surrender.
Replying to Linlithgow’s patronizing advice, Amery wrote that they would incur a ‘grave responsibility’ if they failed to use the opportunity opened by the spontaneous response in India to the European crisis. Amery urged upon him ‘most strongly the reconsideration of your position, but on the basis of a revised plan’. This plan would involve a British declaration offering India Dominion status at a future date; the freedom to decide its own constitution; the setting up of a constituent body immediately after the war and after the Indians had reached an agreement among themselves; and an undertaking to accept this constitution provided British security, financial and commercial interests were safeguarded. Meantime, the Indians could form an informal committee to examine constitutional questions.21
Linlithgow remained unpersuaded by Amery’s proposal. However, in the light of the French collapse and its dangerous portents, he invited Gandhi and Jinnah for further discussions. At their meeting on 29 June, the viceroy held out his old ideas of eventual Dominion status and an expansion of his Executive Council by roping in a few Indians. He added, however, that Dominion status would be granted within a year of the war’s end – provided there were prior agreement among the Indians. Gandhi promptly said that the Congress would never approve of it and strongly advised the viceroy against proposing it in public. He sought ‘nothing short of immediate unequivocal declaration of independence’.22
Jinnah told the viceroy that the Congress’s call for a national government – with a ‘composite cabinet’ – was not acceptable unless the government associated the Muslim leadership as equal partners in Government both at the Centre and in all the provinces.23 By this time, Linlithgow needed no convincing that Muslim leadership was vested with the League. Jinnah’s demand for parity not only helped scuttle the Congress’s offer of co-operation, but allowed Linlithgow to tell Amery that his scheme was unworkable.
The viceroy had not reckoned with Amery’s tenacity, however. Unfazed by Linlithgow’s pessimism, he placed before the war cabinet a draft declaration for India. The persistence of the current political deadlock in India, Amery argued, could not be seen coolly. It was essential to go beyond the ‘vague generalities of previous declarations’ and put out a statement that was ‘far-reaching and precise’. Such a declaration would at once take the sting out of the critics and enable the viceroy to begin useful discussions with Indian leaders. The declaration would state that India would attain the status of ‘an equal partner member’ of the British Commonwealth at the ‘earliest practicable moment after the war’. It would recognize the right of the Indians to frame their own constitution subject to prior agreement among themselves, though the government would not abdicate its responsibility towards ‘large and powerful elements’ in India. The viceroy would invite representatives of most parties and groups to join his Executive Council as well as a wider ‘War Council’. And the governors of provinces would stand ready for the resumption of office by Indian political leaders.24
Linlithgow reluctantly agreed, and suggested the announcement of Dominion status within a year of the end of the war. But he also claimed that the Congress was unlikely to at all modi
fy its position. Indeed, the more Linlithgow examined the draft declaration, the less he liked it. He grumbled that the declaration was ‘arbitrarily urged upon me’ and stoutly protested against the ‘insistent pressure’ from Amery: ‘There can be no question of dictation from one or the other.’ Having flashed his ire, the viceroy agreed to go along with the draft, subject to some modifications.25
Linlithgow also asked Amery to place their exchange before the cabinet. The prime minister now joined the debate. Churchill pointedly asked Linlithgow why he had abandoned his earlier stance that ‘in view of the attitude of Congress and the widening rift between the Moslem League and Congress, the right course was to lie back and make no further gesture or pronouncement’. The prime minister saw great difficulties in agreeing to any such declaration at a time ‘when invasion appears imminent, when the life of the Mother-country is obviously at stake’.
Sensing the opportunity to claw back some lost ground, Linlithgow replied that he had cautioned Amery against ‘any premature move’ and had only agreed to his draft on the misapprehension that the cabinet backed the idea. Left to himself, Linlithgow wanted to announce only the expansion of the Executive Council with ‘some reference to the general constitutional position’. Even the ideas recently discussed with Gandhi had to be taken up with others: the Muslim League, the Mahasabha and the Chamber of Princes as well as his own officials.26
On 25 July, the cabinet considered a draft sent by the viceroy that was centred on his recent proposals to Gandhi. Churchill felt that even such a declaration was ‘full of danger’. If they went ahead with it, ‘opinion in the United States might well take the line that, having gone so far, we had better give Indians all that they asked for and have done with it’. Besides, any such declaration would stoke ‘acute controversy’ in India. They should say no more than what Amery had earlier told Parliament. All this met with the agreement of the war cabinet, including the leader of Labour Party, Clement Attlee. The prime minister took it upon himself to prepare a draft of the viceroy’s statement announcing the expansion of his Executive Council and the creation of a War Advisory Council.27 Amery’s draft declaration lay dead in the water.
On 8 August 1940, Linlithgow announced that he had been authorized to invite some ‘representative Indians’ to his Executive Council and to establish a War Advisory Council. As for India’s constitutional future, he made only two points. First, the British government could not contemplate transferring power to any Indian government whose authority was ‘directly denied by large and powerful elements in India’s national life’. Nor would they sit back and allow those elements to be coerced. Second, they would agree to set up after the war a representative body of Indians to craft the framework of the new constitution. Meanwhile, they invited Indian leaders to confer among themselves on the post-war representative body as well as the principles of the constitution.28
The Congress lambasted the so-called ‘August offer’. This was hardly surprising. The statement was merely a diluted version of the ideas put by the viceroy to Gandhi – ideas that had been explicitly rebuffed by the latter as unacceptable. Moreover, even the specific time-frame – a year after the war ended – for constitutional reform suggested by Linlithgow had been airbrushed out of the statement. Above all, the statement handed an unambiguous veto to the Muslim League and the princes on the future political development of India. Coming in the wake of an explicit offer of co-operation – in the teeth of Gandhi’s opposition – the government’s offer was intensely galling to the Congress.
Gandhi was vindicated, of course. His senior colleagues who had steered the ‘Poona offer’ were left seething. Nehru declared the idea of Dominion status ‘dead as a doornail’.29 He sneered at the suggestion that India’s right to self-determination would be exercised by
a noble company of bejewelled Maharajahs, belted knights, European industrial and commercial magnates, big landlords and taluqdars, Indian industrialists, representatives of the imperial services, and a few commoner mortals, all sitting together, possibly under the presidentship of the Viceroy himself.
It was strange to be told that the British government did not approve of coercion: ‘What else does it do in India?’ Nehru declared that ‘the whole thing is fantastic and absurd, and has not even the merit of decent phraseology about it’ – an observation that would surely have stung the prose stylist in Churchill.30
Patel declared that the government was sowing discord among the Indian people. India’s problems were for Indians to solve. ‘It is as if a watchman were to say to his employer, “What will happen to you if I leave?” The answer will be: “You go your way. We shall either engage another watchman or learn to keep watch ourselves.” ’31 The leader of the rebels, Rajagopalachari, was disillusioned and disappointed. ‘I am angry,’ he said in a public meeting: ‘I want you also to feel angry.’32
The sole effect of the viceroy’s statement on the Congress was to reunite the party under the leadership of Gandhi. The break with their leader was already gnawing at the Working Committee, and Gandhi too was upset. So there was palpable relief among senior Congressmen at the brusque rejection of their offer of co-operation by the Raj. Nehru publicly stated that the ‘Poona offer’ of the Congress was ‘dead and gone, past all resurrection … Many of us who did not fancy it may well feel relief at this escape from its dangerous implications.’ The Congress was back to the position adopted in the March 1940 resolution at Ramgarh. The only difference was that the resolution – which had called for civil disobedience at an appropriate time – had to be given immediate effect.33
On 22 August 1940, the Congress Working Committee expressed ‘deep pain and indignation’ at the viceroy’s statement. Not only did it deny India its right to freedom, but it turned the issue of minorities into ‘an insuperable barrier’ to progress.34 Three weeks later, the All-India Congress Committee adopted a resolution tabled by Gandhi. It observed that the ‘Poona offer’ was rejected by the British government in a manner that left ‘no doubt that they had no intention to recognize India’s independence, and would, if they could, continue to hold this country indefinitely in bondage’. The Congress’s offer of co-operation no longer applied: ‘It has lapsed.’ Gandhi continued, however, to flinch from the prospect of launching mass civil disobedience. Thus the resolution noted that the Congress had no desire at the moment to undertake non-violent resistance, except to preserve civil liberties.35 The inflexible master conceded that his colleagues may debate pros and cons with him; but eventually ‘my judgement should prevail because I am both author of satyagraha [non-violent resistance] and general in satyagraha action’. They could only skirt his judgement by absolving him of leadership.36 This course of action his associates had forsworn. As Patel told Gandhi, ‘It shall never happen again in our lifetime.’37
Even Rajagopalachari acquiesced in the new party line. The Poona offer, he wrote to Gandhi, had been aimed at making Congress’s participation in the war effort ‘consistent with self-respect and fruitful’. But the proposal was swept aside by the British government. The Congress was now ‘entitled to refuse to participate in the war’.38 Nevertheless, Rajagopalachari was concerned that the viceroy’s statement ‘justified Ulsterism’. To undercut the British claim to exclusive solicitude for Indian minorities, he advanced a proposal to the Raj and the Muslim League:
Let me make a sporting offer. If HMG will agree to a provisional national government being formed at once, I undertake to persuade my colleagues in the Congress to agree to the Muslim League being invited to nominate a Prime Minister and let him form the national government as he would consider best.39
Neither His Majesty’s Government nor Jinnah deigned to take notice. The Muslim League had welcomed the viceroy’s statement and noted with satisfaction that the government had met its demand for a veto. Yet Jinnah continued to raise the stakes. So, even while expressing its satisfaction, the League claimed to find it ‘very difficult’ to deal with the offer because the details of the ex
pansion of the Executive Council were unclear. The League also called on the government to take it as ‘equal partners in charge of the reins of the Government’.40 The viceroy held out only two seats to the Muslim League. Claiming that this did not give ‘any real and substantive share’ in the government, Jinnah turned down the ‘August offer’.41
The Muslim League’s position influenced that of the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar had welcomed Linlithgow’s speech of 10 January 1940 as a ‘clear and definite’ promise of Dominion status. In May, the Mahasabha Working Committee had reiterated that it was prepared to accept Dominion status as an immediate step towards full independence. The grant of Dominion status should not, however, be conditional on any Hindu–Muslim pact. Mirroring the League’s stance, the Mahasabha had insisted that the Congress could not claim to speak for all Hindus.42
Savarkar welcomed the viceroy’s August offer. After two meetings with Linlithgow, he even sent a list of Mahasabha members who could be nominated to the Executive Council and the War Advisory Council. Declaring the League’s demand for Indian partition to be unacceptable, he warned that the Muslims had to deal not with ‘colourless Congressites or their Pseudo-Nationalistic innuendos but with the organic racial forces of genuine Hindudom for whom India, this Hindusthan, constitutes not only an indivisible Father Land but an Indivisible Holy Land too’.43 Although Linlithgow was inclined to offer no more than one seat on the Council, Savarkar was ready to co-operate. He urged Linlithgow not to abandon the plan for the expansion of the Executive Council.44
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