At Cripps’ request, the Congress Party had agreed not to make public their objections to the ‘provincial option’ or to the long-term proposals in the offer, as long as the discussions on the immediate issue of the formation of the national government were underway. But after Cripps threw in the towel on 11 April 1942, the Congress leaders publicized their objections against both Britain’s long-term and short-term proposals. Immediately thereafter, Cripps abruptly left India, somewhat in a huff.
The Congress Party resolution (11 April) opposed the Cripps offer because of its ‘acceptance beforehand of the novel principles of non-accession for a Province…[which would be] a severe blow to the conception of Indian unity’. However, there appears the following sentence in the same resolution: ‘Nevertheless the [Congress Working] Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people in any territorial unit to remain in an Indian union against their declared and established will.’36
Sir George Cunningham, the governor of the NWFP, had warned the viceroy that, according to Meher Chand Khanna (later the Indian minister for relief and rehabilitation), ‘the fundamental objection felt by the Congress to Sir S. Cripps’ proposals was the Pakistan element in them. Congress could not, however, bring this element too much to the forefront without stultifying a good deal that they have preached in the past about rights of self-determination. So they manoeuvred for a breakdown on other issues’.37 But since the party considered India one and indivisible, and the principle of self-determination as not applicable to parts of states, why had it raised a doubt about its own commitment to India’s unity? The same ‘bone of ambiguity’, the result of loose thinking, would get stuck in the Congress Party’s throat on other occasions as well. Such contradictions amongst Congress Party’s leaders stood out in stark contrast to Jinnah’s clear-cut formulations, which adhered to a uniform line of reasoning, and projected an impression of strength of his position, even when it was inherently weak.
According to Hodson: ‘The Cripps offer was a compromise which had been accepted to avert a Cabinet crisis but not all Ministers hoped with equal vigour that it would succeed. To some it had been primarily a public relations exercise to appease American opinion, a section of the British opinion, and moderate Indian opinion rather than an all-out attempt to bring Congress and other parties into [the] Indian Government. When Mr Churchill learnt of the breakdown of the Delhi negotiations he put [on] an act of sham tears before his guests at Chequers [the Prime Ministerial retreat], not troubling to conceal his own pleasure. But this is very different from the allegation that he sabotaged the mission.’38
Leo Amery summarized his reaction vis-à-vis Cripps’ failure to Linlithgow as follows: ‘So far as the effect outside India is concerned it seems likely to be all to the good. For the first time America will have learnt something about the complexities of Indian affairs and of the intransigence of the Congress politicians and their underlying refusal to face responsibility’. He added: ‘What a relief now that it is over.’39 A deluge of comments on Cripps’ failed mission followed, but the one attributed to the gamekeeper of Linlithgow’s estate in Scotland takes the cake: ‘The cheek of the man [Cripps] to think that he could do in a fortnight what His Lordship has not been able to do in six years.’40
Churchill informed Roosevelt of Cripps’ failure on 11 April itself: ‘I feel absolutely satisfied we have done our utmost’, read his message. The British PM also endorsed a telegram he had sent to Cripps, in which he had stated: ‘The effect throughout Britain and in the United States has been wholly beneficial. The fact that the break comes on the broadest issues and not entangled formulas about defence is a great advantage…the foundations have been laid for the future progress of the people of India.’41
Roosevelt replied to Churchill the same day:
I am sorry to say that I can’t agree with the point of view that public opinion in the United States believes that the negotiations have failed on broad general terms. The general impression here is quite contrary.
The feeling almost universally held is that the deadlock has been caused by the unwillingness of the British Government to concede to the Indians the right of self-government, notwithstanding the willingness of the Indians to entrust technical, military and naval defence control to the competent British authorities. American public opinion can’t understand why, if the British Government is willing to permit the component parts of India to secede from the British Empire after the war, it is not willing to permit them to enjoy what is tantamount to self-government during the war. I feel I must raise this issue before you very frankly…. If the present negotiations are allowed to collapse as presented to the American people and India should subsequently be successfully invaded by Japan with attendant serious military or naval defeat for our side the prejudicial reaction on American public opinion can hardly be overestimated. Consequently would it not be possible for you to have Cripps postpone his departure on the ground that you personally have sent him instructions to make a final effort to find a common ground of understanding?42
Churchill then dug in his heels. His reply, dispatched the next day, ran as follows: ‘You know the weight I attach to everything you say to me but I did not think I could take responsibility for the defence of India if everything is again to be thrown into the melting pot at this critical juncture.’43 Besides, he pointed out that Cripps had already left India. This exchange occurred just before General George Marshall was due to reach London to thrash out with Churchill the details of the Anglo–American plans for the invasion of Europe: whether there should be a landing across the Channel as the Americans preferred, or an invasion first of North Africa as Churchill was insisting upon. With such crucial issues at stake, Roosevelt did not think it advisable at that time to press Churchill further on India.
Colonel Louis Johnson’s presence in New Delhi during the Cripps mission had given the US president a trustworthy source of information on the events that created doubts in his and Cordell Hull’s mind whether or not Churchill had really wanted the mission to succeed. On 4 April Johnson had wired the following message to Hull: ‘Unless the President feels that he can intercede with Churchill it seems the Cripps mission is doomed to failure’, adding that ‘Cripps so believes too’.44 And as the negotiations collapsed on 11 April, Johnson informed Hull: ‘Cripps with embarrassment told me that he could not change [the] draft [of the British offer] without Churchill’s approval’. He added that ‘Churchill had cabled him that he will give no approval unless Wavell [the commander-in-chief in India] and Viceroy endorsed the change’. Johnson then concluded: ‘London wanted a Congress refusal.’45
Johnson passed on his impressions to Washington (i.e., to the secretary of state) on other matters as well. For example, he found the ‘industrial and political situation here much more difficult than I was advised before arrival’. Also, he felt that ‘Indian industrialists can raise war production two and a half times and China was willing to place orders in India but Civil Servants and ten or twelve British industrialists who dominate Indian policy in London are against it’. He also reported that the ‘Muslim League [was being] used by Britain as a counterforce to [the] Congress’ and that ‘Wavell hates and distrusts Nehru’.46 (How Churchill had Johnson eventually evicted from his post in India is related later.)
Johnson’s impressions were largely corroborated by the report sent to the US administration by two other sources, namely, Edgar Snow and Louis Fisher.
Snow, best known as a China hand (author of Red Star over China, Grove Press edition, New York, 1989), had been visiting India regularly since 1931. President Roosevelt met Snow in February 1942 and encouraged him to go to India once again, but this time as a war correspondent and ‘write when you hear anything interesting’ and also ‘to ask Nehru to write me a letter and tell me exactly what he wants me to do for India’.47
Fisher, a renowned writer, was helped by Sumner Wells, the assistant secretary of state, in getting a flight to India in order ‘to appraise th
e political situation there following the failure of the Cripps offer’. He spent a week with Gandhiji in Sevagram in June 1942. His book, The Great Challenge (Associated Faculty Press, Utah, 1971), records his journey and his experiences.
The British were, meanwhile, making every effort to convince Roosevelt that the blame for the failure of the British initiative fell squarely on Indian shoulders. They also tried to drive home the point that it was not Britain’s reluctance to hand over power that was delaying self-government in India but the lack of agreement among the diverse political elements in India.
While Halifax stonewalled enquiries by Cordell Hull as to whether the US could be of any assistance in India, a campaign was mounted through others, i.e., non-Britishers, to explain ‘the complications of the Indian situation’ to the president. For instance, Graham Spry, a Canadian national who had accompanied Cripps to India, was brought to Washington to give an eyewitness account of what exactly had transpired in Delhi. According to a note written by Spry on 15 May 1942, the US president, at the outset, posed two questions: (1) Had any restrictions been placed on Cripps’ instructions during the later stages? (2) Had Colonel Johnson been helpful ‘because some of your people over there thought he was interfering’?
The British had anticipated the first query, and Spry immediately produced a message from Sir Stafford, which he read out to Roosevelt: ‘Please convey to the President my personal assurance that throughout the Indian negotiations I was loyally supported by the War Cabinet, the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief.’ This statement, was of course not quite accurate (as the earlier discussion has shown), and Winston Churchill himself, in the House of Commons on 12 September 1946 admitted that: ‘His Majesty’s Government had not been willing to support Sir Stafford Cripps to the extent to which he himself was prepared to go.’
To the second question, Spry smoothly replied that Sir Stafford was ‘most grateful’ for the colonel’s help who, he emphasized, had throughout acted strictly in his personal capacity as an intermediary. Spry’s responses appeared to take a load off the president’s mind and made him more receptive to the other information on India furnished to him by the Canadian.
Spry recorded the other remarks made to him by the president as follows: ‘Nehru seemed to wish the negotiations to succeed… Gandhiji’s “resurgence” had caused some surprise…I think our people began to see it is not easy.’ The last observation signified that the British had got their message through. A perusal of the US State Department papers shows that Spry used his time in Washington to explain to American officials that the defence of India did not depend upon obtaining the support of the Congress Party, as was its claim, and that about 50,000 Indian volunteers were joining the Army each month, despite Gandhiji and Nehru standing aside, which was the ground reality.48
The Indian agent general in Washington, Sir Girja Shanker Bajpai, a member of the elite Indian Civil Service and till lately a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, had been attached to the British Embassy simultaneously with the appointment of an American commissioner in Delhi in 1941. On 24 April 1942, when questioned by Wallace Murray, the adviser on political relations in the State Department, as to why the Cripps Mission had failed, he replied that the major cause was the difference in the views of Jawaharlal Nehru and C. Rajagopalachari (another eminent Congress leader from South India) on the one hand and Gandhiji on the other. ‘I am sorry to say’, he added, ‘that some members of the party [Congress] reasoned that if the British lose and the Japanese succeed in occupying India the Indians would be in a better position to negotiate a satisfactory settlement with the Japanese than they would have been if they had fallen in with the British proposals.’49 For his role in the United States during the war, Nehru termed Bajpai ‘a goose of British Imperialism’. Nevertheless, Nehru appointed Bajpai as the first secretary-general of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs after independence. And it was Bajpai who was instrumental in setting up the Foreign Service of free India.
According to an assessment prepared by the British Embassy in Washington,
the Cripps Mission had made a solid contribution against American doubts that Britain is incompetent to administer Indian affairs. The most enduring improvements in opinion [here] due to the mission were, first, that the Indian problem and Indian politics were not open to simple interpretations or solutions, and second that the British government professed at least the right intentions for the future when hostilities had ended. The good intentions may be suspect, and it is widely held that the British “reactionaries” did not believe in, and will not, allow the proposals to be implemented. But the American people are not so unreasonable as to want that constitutional experiments detrimental to the war should be embarked upon [for the present].… Successful military operations based on India will almost certainly strengthen the British position.50
After the collapse of the Cripps Mission, despite repeated pleadings of Chiang Kai-shek and Cordell Hull and the threatened agitation in India, President Roosevelt did not take any further initiative on India. It is clear from the State Department records that Roosevelt faced a dilemma. On the one hand, he was thinking as to what could be the American position in Asia after the war. This required him to pay special attention to a liberated China and a freed India and to use the principle embodied in the Atlantic Charter as a lever to prevail upon European countries to grant freedom to their Asian colonies and to exercise care not to identify the USA with British policy in Asia. On the other hand, Britain had become America’s closest and most useful strategic partner in the war against Germany and Japan, not the least because of its far-flung political influence, military bases and the resourcefulness of its people. Roosevelt felt that this wartime partnership could prove even more useful after the war to maintain peace in the world, on American terms. Churchill’s dominant personality was part of this dilemma. He did not agree with Churchill’s ambitions to maintain the British Empire by hook or by crook and to keep India under its control after the war. However, he saw Churchill as America’s staunchest friend in all the world and a British leader willing to bind Britain to America forever. Under the circumstances, he had to walk a tightrope. And we will discover in a later chapter how he and his advisers accomplished the task when a few months later Churchill and Gandhiji clashed during the Quit India movement.
It would be worthwhile to consider here whether or not the Congress Party leaders had made a mistake in turning down the Cripps offer. Admittedly, by accepting the offer they would be agreeing to the principle of the possible division of the country at the time of British withdrawal. If the Muslim League-controlled provinces and some of the larger princely states (such as Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore and Travancore) decided to exercise ‘the provincial option’ and opted out of the Indian Union at that time, such a step could have Balkanized the country.
Such speculation was, however, hypothetical; the immediate, practical gains to the nationalists from the Cripps offer were tangible. The offer provided an opportunity for the Congress Party to get back to power in the governments of British provinces from where they had resigned in 1939. This would help them regain the political initiative in the country. Even more importantly, it provided an opportunity for them to enter the Viceroy’s Executive Council at the Centre. Such a step, whatever the constraints to their free functioning in the council, would signal their joining the Allied cause. The upshot of it would be a powerful swell of public opinion in their favour in the USA and Britain. Such a development would make it virtually impossible for the British Tories to resist granting India independence at the end of the war. Also, the question of the partition of the country would be sidelined.
If the Congress Party had agreed to enter the Interim Government, reserving its position on the long-term ‘provincial option’, Churchill could not very well take the stand with the US president, or indeed with his own country’s Labour Party, that he would not take the help of the largest political organization in India to stop the advancin
g Japanese because that body would not agree in advance to some commitment in the future, i.e., after the war, which, in any case, as Edmund Burke put it ‘never leaves where it found a nation’. Indeed, when the time came to consider future constitutional developments in India, Churchill would not be there, for he fell from power in 1945.
Nor did the Congress Party pay sufficient attention to the fact that the Muslim majorities in the two relatively large and crucial provinces, the Punjab and Bengal, might not opt out of the Indian Union. In fact, the Muslim chief ministers of these provinces, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan and Fazal-ul-Haq, were opposed at that time to the idea of Pakistan. In the Punjab the scheme threatened the coalition government consisting of all the communities, which formed the base of Sir Sikandar’s power. In Bengal the Muslim majority (51 per cent as against 49 per cent Hindus and others) was too slender to ensure a certain vote for Pakistan. The larger princely states could attempt to break away, but such a possibility would be lessened if the nationalists were part of the Interim Government and thus able to exercise influence within such a government, rather than if they remained in the wilderness.
For his part, Nehru, with Colonel Johnson’s help, did try to work out a compromise on the contested issues, as related earlier. Abandoning his earlier reservations to support England in the war, he had now swung around to become a protagonist of the Allied cause and wished his countrymen to throw their weight behind the British in their struggle against Hitler and the Japanese. However, as he informed Cripps and Johnson, he could not count on his party colleagues to back him. The unvarnished truth is that the Mahatma stood in the way. So, with Churchill and Linlithgow opposed to the Cripps offer on the one hand and Gandhiji on the other, whatever its pros and cons, it hardly had any chance of succeeding. Why the Mahatma adopted such a dismissive attitude to the offer and the riposte he worked out to combat Churchill and company are dealt with in the next chapter.
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 12
