India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  The popular reaction against the INA trials was strengthened by the growing food crisis of 1946 and the resulting deep cut in rations. Another contributing factor was increasing public disapproval (especially in urban areas) of the use of the Indian army in South-East Asia. These troops occupied Vietnam and Indonesia after the end of the war. The ostensible aim was to repatriate Japanese troops, and to release internees and prisoners of war from camps established by the Japanese army. In both cases the British also deemed it in their interest to restore French and Dutch rule. Confronted with nationalist opposition, the British not only employed their own forces, but co-opted tens of thousands of Indian troops to control the situation. In the Indonesian city of Surabaya, the 20th Indian Division fought its largest set-piece battle since the end of the war. Large parts of the city were reduced to rubble; some 15,000 people were killed.28

  The three INA officers were eventually convicted, but only of the lesser charge of rebellion against the king emperor. The sentences passed were never imposed. All three were later released from jail and given dishonourable discharges from the Indian army. But the trials and the protests had driven a further nail into the Raj’s coffin. Not only were the British increasingly unsure about the political reliability of the Indian army, but they also realized that the army could no longer be taken for granted as the strategic reserve of the Empire.

  During the INA trials, the British were exceedingly worried that popular feeling might percolate into the ranks of the armed forces. Members of the Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) and some army personnel had openly donated money to the INA fund and attended protest meetings in uniform. The real blow, however, was delivered by the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) mutiny of February 1946.

  The mutiny started on 18 February in Bombay.29 The naval ratings on HMIS Talwar protested against the poor quality of food and racial discrimination by British officers. The protest spread rapidly to Castle and Fort barracks on shore, and to twenty-two ships in Bombay harbour. By the following evening, a Naval Central Strike Committee was elected. The mutineers marched out in a procession through Bombay, holding aloft a portrait of Subhas Bose. Their ships also raised the flags of the Congress, Muslim League and the Communist Party. By this time, the news of the strike had reached the naval ratings in Karachi. In response, the ratings from HMIS Himalaya, Bahadur and chanak unanimously resolved to mutiny. The programme of protests would involve complete abstention from work, processions through Karachi, shouting of slogans denouncing the British and calling on the Congress and the Muslim League to unite.

  The demands advanced by the Naval Central Strike Committee combined service grievances with wider national concerns. The latter included the release of INA personnel and other political prisoners; withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia; and the acceptance of only Indian officers as superiors. Ratings in striking naval establishments outside Bombay echoed these themes.30 The strike spread to other naval establishments around the country. At its height, 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 ratings were involved in the mutiny. The revolt at various locations was co-ordinated by signal communication equipment on board HMIS Talwar.

  The RIN mutiny also influenced Indian army and air force personnel. There were instances of ‘collective insubordination’ among supply and transport companies of the army in Bombay. The 17th Maratha Light Infantry, which arrived in Bombay from Malaya on 22 February, also experienced a case of ‘collective insubordination’. About 250 Indian soldiers of the Signal Training Centre in Jubbulpore (Central Provinces) ‘broke barracks on 27th February and paraded the town shouting slogans’. The airmen in various RIAF bases refused to eat or come on duty, placing ‘ “demands” for settlement of alleged grievances such as the rate of demobilization, gratuity, deferred pay, leave with pay etc. … [and in] sympathy with other mutineers and a protest against the official attitude adopted towards the R.I.N.’ Military intelligence noted that in general ‘there is amongst many [soldiers] an undoubtedly strong sympathy for the R.I.N. ratings’.31

  The ratings’ hesitation in opting for a full-blown mutiny enabled the British to pin them down to their locations. Subsequently, owing both to British threats of force and to assurances from Patel and Jinnah, the ratings in Bombay surrendered on 23 February. Others followed suit. The most significant feature of this short uprising was the massive outpouring of public support for the mutineers. The city of Bombay went on strike on 22 February in solidarity. The public transport network was brought to a halt, trains were burnt, roadblocks were created and commercial establishments were shut down. An army battalion was inducted to control the situation. Three days later Bombay was quiet, but 228 civilians had died and 1,046 had been injured. Similar strikes occurred in Karachi and Madras on 23 and 25 February. Smaller strikes took place in other parts of the country.

  The RIN mutiny had a significant impact on both the British and Indian leadership. To the former it demonstrated that the Indian armed forces were no longer entirely under control. The ratings were not only influenced by the INA trials, but had shown considerable political consciousness. Leaders of the Congress realized that any mass uprising would inevitably carry the risk of not being amenable to centralized direction and control. Besides, they were eager not to encourage indiscipline in the armed forces. Patel told the agitating sailors that the ‘armed forces were being taken over by Indians as free India’s defence forces, and they did not want to start off with indiscipline’.32 The promise held out by the INA protests and RIN mutiny of communal solidarity also proved to be short-lived. As the elections approached, the competitive mobilization by both Congress and the Muslim League gave an edge to inter-communal relations.

  The outcome of the elections in 1946 was a major turning point. The Congress, as expected, won the bulk of non-Muslim seats in the provinces and for the central legislature. The Muslim League had presented the elections to the Muslim electorate as virtually a referendum on ‘Pakistan’. It reaped major rewards. In contrast to its poor showing in the elections of 1937, the League now proved to be a force to reckon with.

  The party’s main achievement lay not in the number of seats won, but in the fact that it managed both to widen its appeal and to overcome the regional barriers that had blocked the emergence of a strong Muslim party. The League’s performance in provinces like Madras and Bombay was striking. These areas could in no conceivable scheme form part of Pakistan; but the Muslim electorate did respond overwhelmingly to the call. In other provinces, too, Jinnah had succeeded in making the League an important force by careful power-broking with local politicians and grandees. In any event, the Muslim League’s performance gave substantial ballast to its political position and to the demand for Pakistan.

  In retrospect, the elections of 1946 were significant because they reflected and contributed to the communal polarization. In so doing, they cleared the path for Pakistan and set the stage for the carnage accompanying Partition.

  To try to stave off the former, a cabinet mission was sent to India in late March 1946 to create a constitutional package for a united India and to plan for the transfer of power.33 The mission consisted of three senior members of the Labour government: Lord Pethick-Lawrence (secretary of state for India), Stafford Cripps (president of the board of trade), and A. V. Alexander (first lord of the Admiralty). They spent three months in India, holding a number of meetings with the leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League. Neither party was able to advance suggestions that met the other side’s approval.

  The discussions, however, made it clear that Jinnah was averse to a Pakistan that involved partitioning Punjab and Bengal, both of which had substantial non-Muslim minorities. Jinnah’s stance reflected two considerations. The idea of partitioning Punjab and Bengal was unlikely to go down well with his supporters in both these provinces. Further, Jinnah himself attached great importance to the presence of substantial non-Muslim minorities within the boundaries of Pakistan. This would ensure that India would agree in turn to provisions for
safeguarding the rights of Muslims in the Hindu-majority provinces. In fact, this idea of reciprocal safeguards (or ‘hostage theory’ as it came to be called) had been a recurring theme in the Muslim League’s mobilization campaigns in provinces such as United Provinces since the passage of the Lahore Resolution of 1940.34

  Following another ineffective round of negotiations with the two main parties in Simla, the Cabinet Mission declared its own plan for a united India on 16 May 1946. Partition, on the basis of either a large or a small Pakistan, was rejected. The mission laid out a three-tier structure for the future Indian Union. At the top-most tier, the central government would deal only with foreign affairs, defence and communications, and would have the powers to raise finances for these subjects. All other subjects would rest with the provinces. The idea of parity at the centre was dropped. But a decision on any major communal issue in the central legislature would require a majority of each community as well as an overall majority.

  The Constituent Assembly would be elected by the provincial assemblies. The latter formed the lowest tier of the structure. The provinces would be free to form groups, and each group could determine the provincial subjects to be taken in common. These groups formed the middle tier of the structure. Members of the Constituent Assembly would divide up into three sections. Section A would consist of Bombay, Madras, Bihar, Central Provinces and Orissa. Section B of Punjab, North-West Frontier Province and Sindh. Section C of Bengal and Assam. Each section would draw up provincial constitutions for the provinces included in that section. Each section could also decide whether any group constitution was required.

  Any province could by a majority vote of its assembly call for a reconsideration of the Union and group constitutions periodically after ten years. Any province could elect to come out of any group in which it had been placed after the first general elections under the new constitution. Till such time as the constitutions were framed, an interim government having the support of the major political parties would be set up immediately.

  The Congress and the Muslim League claimed to accept the plan. But in fact their ‘acceptance’ was based on their own interpretations of what the plan promised and how it would work. Anxious to secure an agreement, however weak, the Cabinet Mission played along with both sides. Eventually, after the mission left for London, its plan would quickly unravel.

  Historians continue to debate why the Muslim League went along with the plan. It has been argued that Jinnah’s acceptance of the plan demonstrates that he did not want a separate state.35 But it is equally plausible that Jinnah went along with the plan because the alternative would have been a sovereign but truncated Pakistan with partitioned Punjab and Bengal. Further, Jinnah appears to have considered the plan as a preliminary step towards an independent Pakistan with all of Punjab and Bengal. The Muslim League’s acceptance statement claimed that the provision of compulsory grouping laid the foundation of Pakistan and that the right of secession of groups was provided in the plan by implication. Indeed, members of the Muslim League had written to Jinnah that ‘we work the Plan up to the Group stage and then create a situation to force the hands of the Hindus and the British to concede Pakistan of our conception’.36

  The Congress, for its part, insisted from the beginning that the procedure of sections and grouping could not be mandatory. The Congress’s major concern was that North-West Frontier Province and Assam (both of which had Congress governments) would be compelled to accept constitutions that would be drawn up by sections B and C, dominated by the Muslim League. The leaders of both these provinces had made it clear that this would be totally unacceptable to them. The Muslim League’s acceptance statement reinforced these concerns. On 25 June 1946, the Congress sent a cleverly worded letter of ‘acceptance’. It claimed that in the first instance, the provinces could choose whether or not to belong to the section in which they were placed. However, the Congress did not make its acceptance of the plan conditional upon the Cabinet Mission’s acceptance of this interpretation.

  The Muslim League was right in claiming that the sectional procedure had to be followed; but wrong in insisting that grouping was compulsory and that the groups could secede subsequently. The Congress was right in claiming that grouping was not mandatory; but wrong in insisting that the provinces could opt out of the sectional procedure for provincial constitution-making. Each side’s interpretation unnerved the other. The fundamental problem was the lack of trust between the Congress and the Muslim League.

  Owing to the Congress’s open proclamation of its interpretation, Jinnah withdrew the League’s acceptance towards the end of July 1946. The League now insisted that it would settle for nothing less that the immediate establishment of an independent and fully sovereign Pakistan. It observed 16 August as Direct Action Day. Three days later nearly 4,000 residents of Calcutta were dead and over 10,000 injured. The violence quickly spread from Bengal to Bihar and to Garhmukhteshwar in United Provinces. The resulting communal polarization made some form of partition almost inevitable.

  Throughout 1946, urban India was rocked by an almost continuous series of strikes. The year witnessed 1,629 industrial disputes involving almost 2 million workers.37 An all-India railway strike was narrowly averted in the summer. There were a number of police strikes in places as far apart as Dhaka and Delhi, Malabar and the Andamans. A great majority of these strikes were due to rising inflation and deepening cuts in rations. Rural India was not quiescent either. There were several organized militant peasant movements, mainly involving sharecroppers and poor peasants.38 Interestingly, many of these movements sprang up in the regions of India that were most affected by war-induced inflation and scarcity, hunger and deprivation. Thus the Varli tribal agricultural labourers in the Bombay province mobilized against the demands of the landowners and money-lenders for forced labour.

  In eastern India, the communists had fanned out into the countryside during the war years. Their popularity owed much to their response to the Bengal famine of 1943. In contrast to the ineffective relief operations organized by the government and by groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha, the communists responded with vigour. They organized meetings criticizing the government’s food policy and simultaneously undertook extensive relief work in central and northern parts of Bengal. In consequence, they gained a major following among the poor peasants and sharecroppers. This enabled them to create a sound platform for the ‘Tebhaga’ movement aimed at securing the sharecroppers’ long-standing demand for a two-thirds share of their produce as opposed to the customary share of half.39

  In September 1946, the communists helped kickoff the Tebhaga campaign. Soon the movement spread out to several districts all over Bengal. The sharecroppers’ agitation was at its most intense in the northern districts. The peasants harvested their crop and stored it in their own storehouses. They then asked the landlords to collect their share of a third. In eastern, central and western Bengal, the peasants declared Tebhaga ilaka or liberated areas. Here they set up parallel administrative and legal structures. The rapid spread of the movement from February 1947 invited a tough response from the government. The peasants put up strong resistance but ultimately the communists decided to pull back.

  Another popular uprising occurred in October 1946 at Punnapra-Vayalar in the state of Travancore. In 1946, the government of Travancore state started making moves towards a declaration of independence from the Union. As a first step, an undemocratic constitution was imposed on the state. This development coincided with serious food scarcity and a lockout in the coir industry. The workers joined forces with agricultural labourers and other occupational groups, and attacked a police check-post at Punnapra. In the face of massive government retaliation, resulting in nearly 270 deaths, the movement died out.

  The urban unrest and rural revolts of the post-war period did not amount to a mass revolutionary movement. Even so, they did leave a significant imprint on the course of events. They reinforced the British government’s assumption that it would
be extremely difficult to continue governing India. At the same time, they contributed to the Congress leadership’s belief that the country was teetering on the brink of anarchy and hence a swift transfer of power was desirable.

  Epilogue: Last Post

  ‘Whatever the present position of India might be,’ wrote Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘she is potentially a Great Power.’ Barely three days earlier, on 2 September 1946, Nehru had been sworn in as the vice-president of the viceroy’s Executive Council – effectively prime minister – in a Congress-led interim government. Now, he was telling the Ministry of External Affairs why India must aim to be elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. ‘Undoubtedly,’ continued Nehru, ‘she [India] will have to play a very great part in security problems of Asia and Indian Ocean, more especially of the Middle East and South-East Asia. Indeed, India is the pivot round which these problems will have to be considered … India is the centre of security in Asia.’

  While Nehru was not opposed to having countries of the Middle East or South-East Asia in the Security Council, he insisted that ‘it is India that counts in the security and defence of both these regions far more than any other country’. It was obvious therefore that ‘India, by virtue of her geographical and strategic position, resources and latent power, should be a member of the Security Council.’1 The mandarins and strategists of the Raj would have applauded. The Raj might be on its way out, but India would continue to work its own empire – especially the spheres of influence constructed so carefully over a century and a half and defended at so high a cost in the recent war.

  Yet Nehru was not merely embracing the strategic mantle of the Raj. He was clear that India would no longer remain an appendage of the British imperial system – nor indeed of any other great power. ‘India should adopt’, he wrote in the same note,