The Shadow of the Great Game

by Narendra Singh Sarila

  Jinnah saw the viceroy again on 12 January 1940 and advised on the form the British undertaking should take: ‘If you say that you would make no new pronouncement or new constitutional departure unless the Muslims approved, he [Jinnah] would be attacked as the arch supporter of Imperialism and for playing our [British] game. Therefore the formulation should be that any pronouncement of a future advance would have to receive the approval of the two communities.’22 And then delivered the following broadside against the Congress Party that he knew would be more conducive to clinch his argument than any other on the basis of merit: ‘Show Congress that they can get nothing further out of you and once they know that, they will be more likely to come to a settlement and even if they don’t, what do you lose?’23 It is well to record here that whatever the sentiments of Jinnah on his ability to manipulate the viceroy, the latter was quite sure that he was using the former.

  ‘He [Jinnah] represents a minority and a minority that can only hold its own with our assistance’24

  was how Linlithgow later put it to the secretary of state.

  The next day Linlithgow was in Bombay and sent for Jinnah to seek his help in installing a Muslim League Ministry in the North West Frontier Province – the crucial province – from which the Congress Party Government had walked out in October 1939. Jinnah agreed to go to Lahore and make the effort. The collaboration between the British and Jinnah was now growing day by day. Linlithgow then told him that he was under pressure from England not to ‘indefinitely postpone normality’; in other words, he should try to bring back a measure of popular participation in government. The Muslim League chief’s reply, as reported by the viceroy, was as follows: ‘The Hindus were not capable of running a government as we will find for ourselves before we had finished.’25 And when Linlithgow drew his attention to an article by John Gunther, the American journalist, on Nehru, that had just appeared in the Life magazine in the United States, and asked him to do something to contradict such pro-Congress propaganda, Jinnah replied that he had no funds to do so, thereby leaving whatever had to be done in this context to his new British partner.26

  At his next meeting with Gandhiji on 5 February 1940 Linlithgow unfolded his country’s plan to bring about ‘normality’ that the British Cabinet was pressing for. According to his report he told Gandhiji that despite his earlier announcement to suspend negotiations for the All-India Federation, HMG was now willing to resume them even during the war, and that such a federation could most appropriately be used as a means to achieve the goal of self-government within the Empire – by which he signalled Britain’s continued support for a unitary constitution, a significant point. Linlithgow’s report continues: ‘Gandhi responded to this by repeating the Congress stand that “there was no sufficient ground to render further discussions profitable”.’ Linlithgow claimed that he, nevertheless, persisted: ‘The whole business was something that had to grow’ – that some movement on the part of the Congress Party would start a process of mutual accommodation. But Gandhiji remained silent and another opportunity for holding a dialogue and for stemming the Jinnah tide was lost. Reported Linlithgow to Zetland: ‘The most probable explanation of the Congress attitude is that if they can but hold out for a little longer we may suffer such strong pressure from public opinion at home that we shall offer them a better bargain.’27

  The viceroy saw Jinnah later the same day. Jinnah complained that the viceroy never appeared to break with Gandhiji, which created ‘dreadful suspense’. He threatened: ‘If the Congress Governments returned to provincial office there will be civil war in India.’ Then taking up Linlithgow’s request of the previous month to install a Muslim League Ministry in the North West Frontier Province, he observed that he required the support of the governor, Sir George Cunningham, to be able to do so. And added: ‘There could be no better advertisement of the real position in India whether before the country or throughout the world than that a non-Congress Ministry should be set up in the North West Frontier [Province].’28 Naturally, because a Congress Party Ministry in a 95 per cent Muslim-majority province was embarrassing to him – and to his plans for partition. And the viceroy agreed to ask the governor of NWFP to help Jinnah. It was to block further British initiatives of the type Linlithgow had made to Gandhiji and to keep the ball under his own feet that Jinnah now decided to come out openly with his ‘two-nation theory’ and place it on the negotiating table.

  The Congress Party, stranded in the wilderness, also now decided to issue a threat. The Congress Party Working Committee meeting at Patna at the end of February 1940 described the war as an ‘imperialist war’ and resolved that ‘the withdrawal of Congress Ministries [from the provinces] must naturally be followed by civil disobedience to which the Congress will unhesitatingly resort as soon as the Congress organization is considered fit enough for the purpose.’ This resolution was confirmed at the Ramgarh session of the Congress Party in March that year. Widely criticized in India as ‘completely ignoring the realities of the internal and international situation’, it provided Jinnah with the perfect backdrop for his move on Pakistan, which he made a few days later.

  Eleven days before he gave the call for the partition of India, Jinnah took the viceroy into confidence regarding his plans on 13 March 1940. According to Linlithgow’s report to Zetland, Jinnah told him:

  Given the development of the war [its possible extension into Asia] there was much to be said for our [British and Muslims] getting together…[but] if we wished for their [Muslims’] definite and effective help we must not sell the pass behind their backs.… He and his friends were clear that Muslims were not a minority but a nation, that democracy (i.e., majority rule) for India was impossible, and they were anxious not to let us get ourselves in a position in which our hold over India was deliberately and progressively withdrawn so that in the end the control of the country would be handed over to Hindu Raj. He [Jinnah] was quite prepared to contemplate the possibility that we might have to stay here much longer than was anticipated for the job of keeping the ring…. He wanted Muslim areas to be run by Muslims in collaboration with Great Britain, and that Muslims would be able to safeguard “because of their military power even those of their community who were domiciled in the Hindu areas”.29

  Jinnah’s audacious remark that Muslims in their own state would be able to safeguard even their co-religionists left behind in India and his call for a continued British presence in the subcontinent after partition amounted to invoking a full-fledged Anglo–Muslim League alliance against a ‘Congress–Hindu India’ of the future.

  Linlithgow replied to Jinnah as follows:

  His Majesty’s Government’s presence would be needed in India longer than even some imagined [and this could be] in a manner as little out of tune with Indian aspirations as possible [and] in such a tripartite arrangement [Muslims, Hindus and the princes]…Britain would have the predominant responsibility for defence.30

  Jinnah preferred instead a separate Muslim state dependent on British support to safeguard British interests. And that is what happened in the end.

  Jinnah, on 24 March 1940, proclaimed at Lahore that ‘the Muslims are a separate nation according to any definition of a nation and they must have their own homelands, their territory and their states’. He suggested grouping the geographically contiguous areas in which the Muslims were numerically in a majority as in the northwest and eastern zones, to constitute autonomous and sovereign states with such territorial adjustments as may be necessary. No Muslim leader had so far proposed that a sovereign and separate Muslim state (or states) be founded in India in provinces where Muslims were in a numerical majority. The reasons for this were not hard to seek. But before we delve into these, let us continue to follow the British–Jinnah dialogue on the one hand and the ups and downs of the Congress Party policies on the other, which were contributing to the forging of the Anglo–Muslim League alliance.

  The British reaction to Jinnah’s announcement becomes evident from the exchanges
between the viceroy and the secretary of state on it. On 4 April 1940 Linlithgow wired Zetland:

  I am not too keen to start talking about a period after which British rule will have ceased in India. I suspect that day is very remote…. It would [however] be politically unfortunate to criticize it [Jinnah’s plan].… The wise tactics would be to keep our hands free until a critical moment is reached in future constitutional discussions.31

  And in a subsequent telegram advised: ‘Any constitutional progress for India must be preceded by internal agreement…to strike a balance.’ In other words, use this Jinnah’s plan to forestall the Congress Party and its supporters in England. Zetland agreed:

  I do not feel much uneasiness about provoking Congress which has largely shot its bolt.… I feel the greatest possible uneasiness…over any measure that might provoke [the] Muslim League, in view of the uncertainties as regards the Middle East.… I would deprecate any step which might be interpreted as weighing scale in favour of Hindus by giving an insufficient weight to Muslim Leaguers.32

  Meanwhile, there had been some adverse comments in the United States on Jinnah’s proposal to partition India. On this, Linlithgow advised Zetland ‘to make some play with the extent to which we have…continued insistence on Indian unity which you and I have repeatedly stressed’. He, however, warned that ‘any condemnation of Jinnah’s scheme will at once irritate Muslim feelings and will be seized on by Congress’.33

  The secretary of state made a statement in the House of Lords on 18 April 1940. This was in response to Jinnah’s repeated pleas for a guarantee to the minorities. Zetland was equally responding to Linlithgow’s advice to ignore the Pakistan scheme but yet keep Jinnah in play:

  I cannot believe that any government or Parliament in this country would admit to impose by force upon, for example, 80 million Muslim subjects of His Majesty in India a form of constitution under which they would not live peacefully and contentedly.34

  On 19 April, Linlithgow underlined this particular portion of the secretary of state’s speech and sent it to Jinnah.

  The viceroy was, by that stage, so taken up with idea of building up Jinnah as the spokesman of the Muslims in India that when Sikandar Hayat Khan, the premier of the Punjab, once again brought to the attention of the British governor of the province, Henry Craik, the danger that the Pakistan scheme would pose to the peace and unity of his province, Linlithgow asked the governor to just ignore him. By encouraging separatist forces in the Punjab in order to build up the strength of the Muslim League in India against the Congress Party, Linlithgow was playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship. And he cannot be entirely absolved of the blame for the communal carnage that subsequently engulfed the province in 1947, well after he had retired to his castle in Scotland.

  In May 1940 as the German panzers smashed through the low countries and raced towards Paris, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as the prime minister of Great Britain and Leopold Amery, who had been two years senior to Churchill at the Harrow School and who had hurled the Cromwellian words ‘in the name of God, Go!’ at Chamberlain, on the floor of the House of Commons, succeeded Lord Zetland as secretary of state for India. Churchill proved a great war leader and probably saved the world from Hitler. But his assumption of office was ominous for India, which, as was well known, was his blind spot. Amery, his friend, has been quoted as wondering

  whether on the subject of India he is really quite sane – there is no relation between his manner, physical and intellectual on this theme and the equability and dominant good sense he displayed on issues directly affecting the conduct of the war.35

  Churchill and his Tory friends had earlier sabotaged the scheme for an All-India Federation, which had been launched by his own Conservative Party Government in 1935, fearful that it may ultimately lead to dominion status for India. To Churchill ‘India was a geographical expression, a land that was no more a single country than the equator’; he had no qualms regarding how many pieces it was broken up into. After hearing him speak at a cabinet meeting, Lord Wavell, the future viceroy, noted in his diary: ‘Churchill hates India and everything to do with it.’36 Churchill himself is on record as saying: ‘I hate Indians – they are a beastly people with a beastly religion’.37 And, of course, Gandhiji was always Churchill’s bugbear, whom he termed ‘an enemy’ and ‘a thoroughly evil force’. Many Englishmen of those times, ‘temperamentally, by upbringing, and by instinct’, were believers ‘in a racially based imperialism’, as the historian Patrick French points out. However, Churchill’s feelings about India were far more intemperate.

  On taking over as prime minister, Churchill was too busy rallying England to face up to the German invasion to interfere in Amery’s handling of India. But even so, he insisted that telegrams exchanged between him and Linlithgow be shown to him, a practice not followed by his predecessor. Churchill’s objective was, no doubt, to block any constitutional advance his secretary of state, who prided himself on being an egghead, might think up. And indeed the fidgety nature of Amery can be discerned in an early telegram he sent to Linlithgow asking him whether there was any chance of enlisting Jawarharlal Nehru as ‘the recruiter in chief’, i.e., of winning him over. After all, Nehru like himself and his chief, was an old Harrow boy. (And be it noted in tribute to the old school tie that when Nehru was sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment by a British magistrate later the same year, Amery and Churchill enquired from Linlithgow whether the sentence did not appear too harsh – a concern quite out of character for Churchill for Indian leaders.)

  By June 1940 the Congress Party’s capacity to negotiate on the basis of realistic and easily understandable policies had further deteriorated. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, on 29 June 1940, Gandhiji had told Linlithgow (much to his amazement) that Britain should resist Hitler’s invasion exclusively through non-violent action, even if it meant self-annihilation. The next day Gandhiji wrote a letter to the viceroy, which said:

  You are losing: if you persist it will only result in greater bloodshed. Hitler is not a bad man. If you call it off to-day he will follow suit. If you want to send me to Germany or anywhere else I am at your disposal.38

  Linlithgow’s reply brings one down to terra firma:

  We are engaged in a struggle. As long as we do not achieve our aim we are not going to budge. Everything is going to be all right.39

  Gandhiji had become extra loud in preaching non-violence during the summer of 1940. This was partly to head off the challenge posed by Subhash Chandra Bose. What, however, remains inexplicable is why he started counselling Britain to adopt non-violent non-cooperation as the best method of fighting Hitler. Such advice, given to a people at a time when they were bracing themselves to offer ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’, with their leader promising ‘we shall go on to the end…whatever the cost may be…we shall never surrender’, played right into the hands of Churchill’s friends who saw the Mahatma as the arch saboteur of the British Empire.

  Nehru saw the danger of Gandhiji’s going too far with his ‘non-violence’. After the fall of France, he was able to impress upon his colleagues the risks to India and the world if Hitler were to overwhelm Britain. He devised a formula that might open the way for a dialogue with Britain and lead to cooperation in the war effort. A new resolution was passed by the Congress Party in July 1940. While this resolution pressed for a British declaration granting complete independence after the war, it laid aside ‘the creed of non-violence in the sphere of national defence’, which had been the party’s most important declared reason for its inability to have anything to do with the war. Gandhiji resigned from the leadership of the party so as not to compromise his own absolute opposition to violence by association with it (apparently forgetting that at the beginning of the war, it was he who had offered unconditional support to the war effort).

  Linlithgow was ‘against running after the Congress’ and preferred a policy ‘of lying back’.40 In his dispatches during this period, he
shows greater interest in hunting and fishing than in responding to any initiatives from the Congress Party’s side. For example, he reported his satisfaction at landing a thirty-six-and-a-half pound Mahaseer in the UP forests and his anxiety to bag a Ghond stag.41 The reasons for the viceroy’s relaxed mood were not far to seek. Around 200,000 recruits were offering themselves for military service each month, out of which only about 50,000 could be absorbed by the defence forces. Moreover, Indian industrialists, including the Congress Party financiers, such as Ghanshyam Das Birla, were fully engaged in producing goods for the Army, if not out of loyalty to the King Emperor than out of devotion to their own pockets. What more help could the Congress Party in Linlithgow’s estimation give to Britain at this time, except to get in his way if its leaders were asked to join his government?

  Jinnah met the viceroy on 27 June 1940. He had apparently received intelligence with regard to Amery’s plans to come out with a declaration on HMG’s policy on India in the wake of the formation of the new government. He pressed Linlithgow ‘for a declaration on agreement between the principal communities as precedent to the implementation of any constitutional scheme’. Referring to Zetland’s April statement in the House of Lords, he demanded a firmer guarantee to ensure that ‘the likes of Cripps and Wedgewood Benn* in England at some future date would not sell the Muslims to the Hindus’.42 Jinnah’s views were accepted by the War Cabinet, though Churchill warned against ‘any far-reaching declaration’. The upshot was the British declaration made by Linlithgow on 8 August 1940 and, at Jinnah’s request, repeated by Amery in the House of Commons on 14 August. It offered dominion status after the war; an expansion of the Viceroy’s Executive Council to accommodate representatives of political parties; a War Consultative Committee which would include some princes; and a guarantee to the minorities as follows: