With the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in March 1931 Gandhi announced: "An age has passed.... A new age has begun." He declared that while "civil disobedience and jail-going, or direct action was the method to be followed before the settlement, the way of argument and negotiation takes its place" after it.(1)
During his negotiations with Irwin Gandhi had confided several times to the Viceroy his hope that "it would never be necessary at all" to resume civil disobedience and his resolve "to throw his whole heart and soul into trying to co-operate in constitution-building..."(2) After concluding the pact Gandhi affirmed time and again that he would "strain every nerve to make absolutely final what today is provisional" and hoped that the conflict with the raj would end "for all time" and that the truce would be permanent.(3) So while embarking "on a career of co-operation", he directed his appeals to the princes of the native states as well as to the English. "If India is to come to her own through conference and consultation", he said to them, "the goodwill and active help of Englishmen are absolutely necessary."(4)
Now it was "perpetual friendship" he longed for. "If a permanent settlement", wrote Gandhi to Walchand Hirachand, "is the aim of the provisional settlement, as it undoubtedly is, boycott or exclusion, by whatever name we call it, should cease whilst an attempt at perpetual friendship continues."(5)
A new age had dawned -- an age when all semblance of direct action was ruled out. "The settlement", he told his audience in Gujarat, "has been made in the hope that what has now to be secured will be done through talks, discussions and negotiations."(6) And he declared: "Having suspended civil disobedience, we now enter a period of disciplined obedience."(7)
What did the Gandhis and Nehrus hope to achieve through discussions and negotiations at the next Round Table Conference with the representatives of the British raj and a crowd of princes, business magnates and various other Indian agents of imperialism -- all hand-picked by the raj? Gandhi had already agreed with Viceroy Irwin that "the scope of the further constitutional discussions" would be confined to considerations of "the scheme for the constitutional government of India discussed at the [first] RTC". Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee had already agreed to the Crown control of defence, external affairs, the position of minorities, emergency situations, an overwhelmingly large part of India's finance and so on.(8)
Besides the `reservations and safeguards' to ensure the continuity of direct imperial rule, there would be the princes, as envisaged by the all-India `federation', to buttress it. As R.J. Moore writes, even the Indian demand for dominion status was diverted "to the nebulous formula: central responsibility with reservations and safeguards upon the creation of an all-India federation".(9) The "new age" which Gandhi and other Congress leaders looked forward to would confer neither independence nor dominion status but some doses of self-government which would do no harm to the imperial order. What the Congress leaders wanted above everything else was an end to conflict with British imperialism and resolved to stick to the constitutional path, the path of "talks, discussions, and negotiations". The fear of flaming mass discontent or uncontrolled, violent, popular upsurge had persuaded Gandhi to initiate controlled, limited mass actions in 1919, 1920, and 1930 in order to defuse the revolutionary situations, to "sterilize the forces of violence", as he said.(10) But what followed them exceeded the worst fears of the Congress leaders as well as those of the big bourgeois. Sholapur, Peshawar, Chittagong, etc., were pointers. The militant peasant struggles in U.P. and elsewhere were no less disquieting. The Gandhis, wiser after these experiences, wanted to abandon for all time even innocuous satyagrahic mass action and enter an era of co-operation with the British raj.
The most outstanding leaders of the Indian big bourgeoisie -- Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas and G.D. Birla -- hailed the Gandhi-Irwin agreement as the model to be followed. Thakurdas described it as "a return to political sanity".(11) Birla, the `radical nationalist', was more eloquent. "The Irwin-Gandhi Pact", he wrote, "was a great step towards binding India and Great Britain together....It struck at the roots of the method of securing political advance by means of disorder, and substituted the method of mutual discussion and confidence."(12)
Though the big bourgeoisie enthusiastically welcomed the pact, wide sections of the people condemned it as "betrayal". Several provincial Congress Committees like that of Bengal were opposed to it. At their conferences, which were held at the same time as the Karachi session of the Congress, the Workers and Peasants Party and the All-India Youth League denounced it as well as the Congress decision to attend the next RTC. The youth of Bombay "were completely opposed to the peace negotiated by Gandhi". Instead of looking forward to co-operation with imperialism, the Bombay Youth League, at a meeting held in June 1931, exhorted the leaders to `launch a further campaign of civil disobedience'. The non-communist militant leaders of Bombay's working class, like G.L. Kandalkar, president of the Girni Kamgar Union, who had earlier tried to rally the working class behind the Congress, "denounced the settlement as a betrayal of the interests of the workers and peasants in the sub-continent".(13) In Gujarat, the Patidar peasantry had responded to the call for civil disobedience by refusing to pay land-revenue and were subjected to severe repression. But what broke their morale, according to David Hardiman, was not the official repression but the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Neither were their confiscated lands restored to them nor was land-revenue halved, as one of Gandhi's `Eleven Points' had stipulated. "The Patidars therefore considered the pact a betrayal."(14) So did the peasants of coastal Andhra.(15) The reaction was not different elsewhere.
As Gandhi was faced with mounting criticism of the pact, he went on declaring: "The Congress is out to win purna swaraj at the earliest possible moment"; "We are pledged to the Lahore resolution"; "The settlement does in no way commit us to a position less than the Lahore resolution".(16) Gandhi seemed to have a unique capacity of equating Crown control over defence, foreign affairs, a large part of finance, internal administration and so on with complete independence, the demand of the Lahore resolution. While this was his public stance, he told Irwin in private that his goal was not complete independence, not secession from the empire, not the break-up of the empire.(17) He told journalists that "purna swaraj would be possible within the British empire...." Then, as if by sleight of hand he caused the empire to disappear and declared: "The Empire no longer remains, it having turned into a Commonwealth, and swaraj within the Commonwealth is perfectly possible."(18)
But the road to purna swaraj within the empire was not wholly smooth. There were problems ahead. One such problem was differences between the elite Hindus and the elite Muslims.
The imperial strategy of devolution of power by stages killed two birds with one stone. It helped the raj to build collaborative structures at every stage to ensure the security of its vital interests as well as exacerbated the communal conflict and helped to implement its policy of `divide and rule'. The Congress strategy of attaining its goal by stages "through conferences and consultation", which was intended not to disturb the status quo violently, ideally fitted into the imperial strategy and suited its interests as well as those of the big bourgeoisie, the princes and big landlords. But devolution at every stage was preceded by protracted negotiations between the raj and the elite leaders of the different communities and interests (except the toiling people). The negotiation table -- round or rectangular -- gave rise to violent disunity between the elite leaders, for each section fought for a larger share of the British concessions and tried to rally its co-religionists to add strength to its demands.
In the course of his presidential address to the Cocanada (Kakinada) session of the Congress at the end of 1923 Maulana Mohammed Ali rightly said:
"The adjustment of communal shares in representative institutions, local, provincial and all-India, and in the administration also, give rise to bitter communal dissensions, and here it is clearly impossible to shift the blame on the masses. Once more personal ambitions, well or ill disguised as communal interests, play a great part..."(19)
Personal ambitions worked havoc only when these were closely interwoven with the interests of certain powerful classes or strata playing for bigger stakes. It was only when highly ambitious individuals became the front-men of these classes that they became strong enough to sway the masses. It is not surprising that in a colonial and semi-feudal society (or societies) the poison of communalism churned up at the top flowed down and infected the ordinary, unsophisticated people of the two communities, whose real interests were the same -- both economic and political -- and were opposed to the interests of the alien rulers and of those whom, ironically, they looked up to and followed as their leaders. This process was initiated and guided by the British imperialists, who "regarded", as Churchill did, "the Hindu-Moslem feud as a bulwark of British rule in India".(20)
Actually two processes were at work -- the process which started from below, the people irrespective of castes and creeds uniting and resisting alien rule and domestic oppression, and the process initiated from above by the elites of the different communities who could not come to a reasonable compromise over their demands, roused communal animosity and disrupted the unity of the people. The upsurge of people's struggles at different times, led by little-known heroes thrown up by the struggles, showed that the people of different communities often united to resist oppression; and that the genuine resistance against foreign and domestic exploiters submerged their communal and caste differences and integrated them with one another. In the absence of a revolutionary party it was the politics of the elite leaders that disrupted their unity.
The solution of the communal problem lay in the lasting revolutionary unity of the people against imperialism and its native allies. Alternatively, there could be an elite-level unity, which, though not a solution of the problem, would not have excited communal passions and diverted anti-imperialist, anti-feudal struggles into the communal channel and carnage. Even such unity remained a mirage.
It appears that Muslim leaders laid the greatest emphasis on the federal character of future India and on the autonomy of the federating units with the residuary powers vested in the units. On the other hand, Congress leaders wanted a unitary India with a strong centre. There lay the crux of their differences. Muslim leaders offered to give up separate electorates not only in 1927(21) but several times afterwards, if this demand of theirs was met.
In Last Words of Maulana Mohammed Ali, which he dictated in the form of an open letter to the British Prime Minister just on the eve of his death in London early in January 1931, Mohammed Ali, then a delegate to the first RTC, a former Congress President and Gandhi's erstwhile militant associate, said:
"The small monopolistic caste that desires to remain in control of the destinies of the Hindu community and that being the majority community, of the Indian nation as a whole through it -- is the caste... of the Banya... I am more anxious than any [other] Indian perhaps to get rid of the foreign incubus...of a `nation of shopkeepers' controlling our destinies.... I do not wish to create a home-made incubus of shopkeepers of our own.... To my mind most of the agitation today is being financed and partly for selfish reasons, by the banias of Bombay and Gujarat.... The Mussalmans desire -- and this is the crux of their 14 points and not separate electorates -- that there should be federal government so that the central government with a permanent Hindu majority should not override them everywhere.... Unless in these few provinces(22) Muslim majorities are established by the new constitution, I submit, not as a threat but as a very humble and friendly warning, there will be civil war in India. Let there be no mistake about that."(23)
In March and April 1931, several Muslim conferences were held. It is significant that, despite differences on other issues, it was the unanimous demand of all these conferences, organized by Congress, pro-Congress as well as anti-Congress Muslim leaders, that the future constitution of India should be federal with full autonomy for the federating units and with residuary powers vested in them. This was the demand of the Council of the All India Muslim League, which met on 15 March 1931. The same demand was raised by the All India Muslim Conference, the All India Shia Political Conference as well as the All India Muslim Nationalists' Conference -- all held in April 1931. The leading lights of the Muslim Nationalists' Conference were Congress leaders like Dr Ansari, Abbas Tyabji, Dr Syed Mahmud and Tasadduq Sherwani.(24)
Maulana Mohammed Ali or the League looked at this demand for autonomy of the units from the communal angle, for the Muslim leaders hoped that the Muslim elite would be able to dominate Muslim-majority provinces, if these were autonomous within a federal India with a weak centre. The Muslim business elite, much weaker than its Hindu and Parsi counterparts, was afraid that it could hardly expect to enjoy a share of power in a unitary India with an overwhelming Hindu majority.
The demand of the Muslim leaders was directed against the Congress leaders' was directed against the Congress leaders' aim of building an autocratic state embracing the whole of India -- the state mainly of Hindu and Parsi big compradors and feudal elements. But the Muslim leaders' demand for provincial autonomy was quite distinct from the incipient demand of the various nationalities of India for autonomy, for the right of every nationality to govern its own affairs and to decide its own future -- including whether or not to remain a part of the federation. Such a demand depended for its fulfilment on the abolition of colonial rule and the abolition of feudalism -- anathema both to the Congress and the League. It was colonial rule which had subverted the historical process of the formation of nations in this sub-continent. Provinces of `British India' ant `native states' were so constituted as to split up nationalities -- Oriya, Telugu, Malayali, Kanarese, Maharashtrian, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Punjabi and so on -- into fragments, tagged to different provinces and `states', and had subjected them to `multiple partition'. The Congress leaders' determination to have a strong Centre armed with overriding powers over the provincial units in this multi-national, multi-lingual sub-continent, the home of about one-sixth of the human race, was most pernicious. But the Muslim leaders' demand actually amounted to the demand for domination of Muslim-majority provinces by Muslim compradors and landlords. They trampled underfoot provincial autonomy when Pakistan became a reality and adopted an equally autocratic concentration of powers in the structure of the Pakistani state.
Abul Kalam Azad expressed the fears of the Muslim leadership inside and outside the Congress when he said: "All over the world, the tendency was for the decentralization of power. In a country so vast as India and with people so diverse in language, customs and geographical conditions, a unitary government was obviously most unsuitable. Decentralization of power in a federal government would also help to allay the fears of the minorities".(25)
As it will be seen, it was this struggle for centralization of all powers versus decentralization, for a unitary state versus a sort of federation, that ultimately led to the emergence of Pakistan.
The Nehru Constitution, framed by the Nehrus -- father and son -- and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru in 1928 and acclaimed by the Congress leaders, envisaged India as a unitary state and empowered the central government to override elected provincial legislatures and ministries and even to dismiss them.(26)
Pestered with the insistent Muslim demand for a federal constitution and autonomy for federating units with residuary powers vested in them, the Congress Working Committee, which met from 7 to 13 July 1931, adopted "a scheme for communal solution", which inter alia stated: "The future constitution of the country shall be federal. The residuary powers shall vest in the federating units, unless, on further examination, it is found to be against the best interests of India." This was transparently evasive, rather deceptive, as most of the important resolutions and statements of the Congress leaders were. As the author of the official history of the Congress and Gandhi's long-time associate pointed out, the mahatma, "with his usual resourcefulness, added the subjunctive clause, `unless, on further examination, it is found to be against the best interests of India'".(27) Gandhi's "usual resourcefulness", which helped the Congress leaders to tackle inconvenient situations and won the admiration not only of Sitaramayya but of his other associates, prompted Viceroy Wavell much later to comment that Gandhi was "a consummate master of evasive tactics" and that Gandhi "has brought to a fine art the technique of vagueness and of never making a statement which is not somehow so qualified or worded that he cannot be pinned down to anything definite".(28)
Writing to Dr Syed Mahmud, one of the Congress leaders who had taken a prominent role in the All India Muslim Nationalists' Conference in April 1931, Nehru said: "About the residuary powers vesting in the provinces, I do not agree. This is bound to encourage provincialism..." Nehru was always for a strong Centre, so devoutly wished for by the big Hindu bania, as Mohammed Ali said. Nehru insisted that "We must continue taking a strong line regardless of what others may do". Even the claim for genuine autonomy for the provinces -- not sovereignty and secession -- which a Muslim delegate to the RTC demanded, upset Nehru,(29) as it does India's ruling classes even today.
In 1931 the prospect of achieving elite-level unity appeared to Gandhi none too bright. Neither a meeting of the delegates to the second RTC on 21 March 1931, convened by the Viceroy, nor his discussions with Muslim leaders brought them any nearer to a settlement of the rival claims. During his prolonged interview with Home Secretary Emerson from 13 to 16 May 1931, "Gandhi made the suggestion that Lord Irwin might even act as an arbitrator".(30) Gandhi and the Congress leadership would not seek what might be a basis for the solution of the problem but were prepared to entrust the proverbial `monkey' for finding it out and deciding the fate of the people.
Gandhi's earlier optimism somewhat faded and with the differences between the elite leaders remaining unbridged, he felt quite diffident about attending the RTC.(31) But the Working Committee decided in favour of participation in the conference.