On 7 July 1939 Nehru wrote to Rajendra Prasad:
"there is more general ill will among the Muslim masses towards the Congress than there has been at any time in the past."
The refusal to form coalition ministries in Congress-majority provinces, in U.P. and Bombay, in particular -- as noted before -- marked the turning point. Besides, there were other factors during 1937-1939, which deepened Muslim suspicion and distrust and inflamed communal passion. All these factors can be traced to one source: the obsessive desire of the Congress leaders to arrogate to themselves whatever power the British raj doled out and to become later the sole controller of India's destiny under the British aegis. That is why the Congress leaders spurned the hand of friendship extended by Jinnah and the League. While Gandhi did so shrewdly, Nehru was more arrogant. In November 1936, while claiming that "the Congress represents the nation", Nehru declared at a public meeting:
"The other day I saw in the papers that Mr Jinnah said that the Muslim League candidates `may' co-operate with the Congress in the legislatures. I thank Mr Jinnah for the offer. But I do not want `mays' and `buts'. I want fighters. So far as we are concerned, we rely on Congressmen alone -- Congress Hindus, Congress Muslims or Congress Sikhs. So far as our fight for freedom is concerned, it is going to be carried on by the Indian National Congress and the Indian National Congress alone."(38)
We know the kind of fight for freedom the Congress leaders were waging. The same attitude as expressed above was displayed in Nehru's many statements and speeches. He dismissed the League as a pro-imperialist organization.
Jinnah retorted:
"Does it lie in his [Nehru's] mouth to parade so much that he stands for complete independence of India, which when it suits him becomes the substance of independence?"
In March 1937 Jinnah said:
"I welcome an understanding in matters economic and political; but we cannot surrender, submerge or submit to the dictates or ukases of the High Command of the Congress which is developing into a totalitarian and authoritarian caucus, functioning under the name of the Working Committee and aspiring to the position of a Shadow Cabinet of a future Republic."(39)
In September 1937 Nehru declared that there could be no compromise with the League. He discouraged all attempts to arrive at an understanding on the communal issue and rejected the importunities of friends like Dewan Chaman Lal, Hansraj and others who informed him and Gandhi after meeting Jinnah that Jinnah "is in a mood not only to discuss but to come to an agreement regarding the communal issue as well as other issues of graver import". Nehru found "nothing very much to discuss" with Jinnah and dissuaded Gandhi from meeting Jinnah.(40)
Nehru accused Jinnah of exploiting "the name of God and religion in an election contest" and "rousing religious and communal passions in political matters". Interestingly, Nehru, Azad and the Congress were playing the same game in Nehru's home province. They too pressed into service eminent Muslim theologians and other religious men -- Maulanas and Maulavis --for the purposes of electioneering and Muslim mass contact and did their best "to exploit the religious sentiments of the ignorant masses in every conceivable manner".(41) And Gandhi's charisma among the Hindus depended on his making a superb cocktail of religion and politics.
Nehru strongly denied the existence of a communal problem and described it as a "bogus question". In 1937 he talked of an economic approach to rally the Muslim masses behind the Congress. A Muslim mass contact movement was launched by the Congress on Nehru's initiative. To change their economic conditions the Hindu and Muslim masses would have to launch common struggles against feudal landlordism and foreign and native capitalists. It would mean class war which the Congress leaders abhorred and tried by all means to crush. To quote D. A. Low, "By 1938, indeed, Congress leaders with the Nehru family well in the van, were actually opposing peasant movements." As rhetoric alone failed to win the hearts of the Muslim masses, the movement petered out after some initial success. The campaign achieved the opposite of what it sought. It frightened the League to go all out to extend and consolidate its base among the Muslim masses. Gyanendra Pandey writes:
"Its one perceptible consequence in U.P. was a further closing up of the ranks of Muslim politicians and another spurt of Hindu-Muslim rioting."(42)
Addressing the Lucknow session of the League in October 1937, Jinnah as president lashed out at the Congress:
"A great deal of capital is made as to phrases more for the consumption of the ignorant and illiterate masses. Various phrases are used such as Purna Swaraj, self-government, complete independence, responsible government, substance of independence and dominion status. There are some who talk of complete independence. But it is no use having complete independence on your lips and the Government of India Act of 1935 in your hands. Those who talk of complete independence the most, mean the least what it means...."The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last ten years, has been responsible for alienating the Mussalmans of India more and more. Wherever they are in a majority and wherever it suited them, they refused to co-operate with the Muslim League and demanded unconditional surrender and signing of their pledges."
At the Lucknow session, the League declared as its goal "establishment in India of full independence in the form of a federation of free democratic States in which the rights and interests of the Mussalmans and other minorities are adequately and effectively safeguarded". (The League variety of "full independence" was not different from that of the Congress -- self-government within the British empire or commonwealth.) Between the Lucknow session and the March 1940 session at Lahore, which adopted the `Pakistan resolution', the League membership shot up from a few thousand to well over half a million.(43) During this time Muslim business magnates, compradors like the Ispahanis, Adamjis and Haroons, came to play a more dominating role than before in shaping its policies.
The Lucknow session set the alarm bells ringing. Gandhi immediately wrote to Jinnah "out of an anguished heart", describing his speech at Lucknow as "a declaration of war" and regretting that he had dispensed with Gandhi's role as a bridge between the Congress and the League. Previously, Gandhi had been deaf to Jinnah's entreaties to him to play that role. Instead of "fundamental differences", Nehru too discovered "a very large measure of agreement between us, not only in regard to fundamentals, but even regarding many details". He went on emphasizing that "The Muslim League stands for independence".(44)
Both Gandhi and Nehru started corresponding with Jinnah. From the beginning Nehru was evasive in his correspondence. He claimed ignorance of the differences between the two organizations and insisted that Jinnah should make a list of them before he would meet him. Jinnah wanted a meeting to discuss and resolve them, if possible, instead of his submitting first a list of them to Nehru. At Nehru's insistence he reminded him of the "Fourteen Points", which Nehru considered obsolete. Throughout the long correspondence Nehru did not shake off his high and mighty attitude, his incorrigible vanity. In mid-April 1938, Nehru informed Jinnah that he could hardly meet him in April and May and would go abroad early in June. It was a mere battle of words for Nehru -- no sincere attempt to resolve momentous issues affecting the people. The correspondence had the only effect of embittering the relations further.
Gandhi and Jinnah met, but Gandhi's attitude too hardly inspired enthusiasm. In a statement to the press, dated 22 April 1938, he said:
"...I am not approaching the forthcoming interview [with Jinnah] in any representative capacity. I have personally divested myself of any such.... I go as a lifelong worker in the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity."(45)
It was transparent to Jinnah and the League that this was the usual ploy of the supreme leader of the Congress to avoid making any commitments on behalf of his organization.
By that time Jinnah's position and the League's had hardened. They claimed that the negotiations could proceed on the basis of Congress recognition of the League as "the authoritative and representative organization of the Mussalmans of India". Subhas Bose, then Congress president, also met Jinnah in mid-May. The negotiations foundered on the rock of the League's claim. In one of his letters to Subhas, dated 2 August 1938, Jinnah argued that the League's position as the representative organization of the Muslims had been accepted in 1916 while concluding the Congress-League Pact and till 1935 when Prasad-Jinnah talks took place. As Nehru questioned "the position -- in fact the very existence -- of the League", the Executive Council found it necessary "to inform the Congress of the basis on which the negotiations between the two organizations could proceed".(46)
The Congress leaders' claim to be the sole spokesman of India was countered by the League's claim to be the sole spokesman of the Muslims of India.
The Congress ministries, too, contributed their share to the growth and spread of communalism. On 9 December 1939 Dr Syed Mahmud, who had himself been a minister in Bihar, wrote to Gandhi that the Congress had "failed to properly and efficiently govern" and was "full of provincialism, caste prejudices and revivalism". The report of a Sub-Committee appointed by the Congress Working Committee stated :
"It is evidently true that all our Congressite Hindu friends became openly communal. They completely forgot their creed and became so much unconscious that their masks dropped off and they looked quite naked to the public eyes."(47)
The Muslims came to have several specific grievances. These were highlighted by two reports, the Pirpur Report published at the end of 1938 and the Shareef Report on Bihar. Muslim grievances centred around certain issues, besides several accusations which were not substantiated. The main issues were: the policy of the Congress ministries of encouraging Hindi at the expense of Urdu; introduction of the Wardha scheme of education; the prevention of cow-slaughter; `Bande Mataram' as the national anthem; the use of the Congress flag as the national flag; and Gandhi worship.
The question of language became a burning issue during these years. The Hindu-Urdu controversy embittered communal relations in North and Central India, which had its impact throughout India.
The Marwari businessmen who spread all over India as the commercial agents of British capital and came to control together with the British much of the inland trade of India by the beginning of the twentieth century, set their hearts on foisting Hindi as a common language and the Devanagari script as the common script on the peoples of the whole of India to establish their hegemony over them. Language was to them and to their political spokesmen an indispensable means of fulfilling their commercial and political ambitions. Gandhi wrote that he had "seen in the course of my travels" in 1917 and earlier "that cow protection and Hindi propaganda had become the exclusive concern of the Marwaris". A Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and other organizations were founded and generously funded by Marwari big businessmen to popularize Hindi in different parts of India -- the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, Bengal, Assam and elsewhere. The move was supported by the Gujarati big bourgeoisie. This cause of promoting Hindi as the all-India language was taken up by Gandhi and the Congress in right earnest. It was his life-long mission to make Hindi India's national language and grow and nurture the plant of `Indian nationalism'.(48) The trend towards centralization appeared with Gandhi's advent on India's political stage. He presided over the first `All India One Script and One Language Conference' at Lucknow in December 1916 and served as president of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan for many years. Throughout his life it was his constant refrain that "it is your dharma to learn Hindi". Gandhi insisted that the different scripts such as Tamil, Bengali, Telugu should be abolished and that there should be only one script -- Devanagri. The adoption of "one script for all the languages derived from Sanskrit and the Dravidian stock", he said, "will help to solidify Hindu India..."(49)
In 1936 the Rashtrabhasa Prachar Samiti with Rajendra Prasad as president was set up by the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan for the propagation of Hindi as the national language. As Prasad wrote, "its policy was laid down by Gandhiji" and the funds were contributed by "our industrialist friends..."
Gandhi insisted that Congress proceedings should be "conducted exclusively in Hindustani".(50)
Faced with Muslim opposition, Nehru, while asserting that "Hindi or Hindustani is certainly the national language and it ought to be", conceded that there might be two scripts -- Devnagari and Urdu-Sindhi. Gandhi endorsed Nehru's suggestions "in a general way" but wanted Devanagari as the only script for the entire sub-continent and the abolition of all other scripts.(51)
The Congress leader's language policy raised apprehensions among the Muslims and added fuel to the communal flames. To the Muslims it appeared to be an attempt to impose Hindu culture upon them. Lashing out at the Congress leaders at the Lucknow League session in October 1937, Jinnah denounced the policy seeking to impose Hindi as the national language of India. One of the factors that led to the partition of India on communal lines was the Congress leaders' determined bid to make Hindi the Rastrabhasha of India.(52)
This policy of elevating Hindi to the status of the national language of India and having Devanagari as the only script eliminating all other scripts (the occasional suggestion of giving the Persian [Urdu] script an equal status was only a pious pronouncement) suited the interests of the Indian big bourgeoisie who were bent upon having a centralized, unitary state to dominate the Indian sub-continent. This policy was directed not only against the Urdu-speaking Muslims but also against the different nationalities of India.
The Wardha scheme of education, formulated under Gandhi's inspiration, also aroused the resentment of the Muslims. According to the Muslim League, the text-books prepared under this scheme "did not suit the Muslims' needs". The Congress policy again was to undermine the distinctive cultures of the different nationalities and to impose a uniformity in the realm of thought and culture through the educational system. The Wardha scheme upheld "the philosophy of non-violence -- non-violence as a creed, to which pro-Congress Muslims also objected". As Gandhi said, Ramdhun, a kind of collective prayer to Ram, occupies an important place in this scheme of education.(53)
Humayun Kabir mildly put it that
"The use of the criminal law [by Congress ministries] for the prevention of cow slaughter was a definite mistake for this was a real restriction of the civil liberties of a community."
The Muslim League also objected to the use of the Congress flag as the national flag and the Bande Mataram song with its Hindu religious imagery as the national anthem. Gandhi-veneration or worship was another cause of resentment. After replacing Dr Khare as Prime Minister of the Central Provinces and Berar, Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla issued an order on 7 September 1938 making it obligatory to use the word `Mahatma' before Gandhi's name in all official papers. A Muslim correspondent complained to Gandhi:
"Your title as Mahatma is officially recognized by a Government circular, your birthday declared as a holiday, and consequently the Local Board in Amraoti has issued orders to take your image in a procession and to worship your image."
At the Congress Working Committee meeting in April 1940, Syed Mahmud said :
"Gandhiji's reforms also meant more Hindu revival than anything else. In his scheme of reforms there was no place for Muslims. The Congress was also guided by the spirit of Hindu revival."(54)
One of the significant acts of the Congress Working Committee was to prune the Independence pledge first adopted in 1930. Early in January 1938, the Committee decided to drop from the pledge that portion which described the moral and material harm done to India by British imperialism.(55)
"To my knowledge" wrote K.M.Munshi, the most powerful man in Bombay's Congress ministry, "no Congress Minister ever made any effort to combat the new Act..." On the contrary, in dealing with different issues like release of political prisoners, suppressing militant struggles and in creating a friendly non-violent atmosphere, the raj was receiving unstinted help from the Congress leaders. When Linlithgow expressed his anxiety as the released Kakori prisoners were feted by the people everywhere despite Congress leaders' disapproval, Birla assured him that U.P.'s Congress Prime Minister "Pant was fully conscious of his responsibility" and that "all the big leaders of the Gandhi Seva Sangh", an ostensibly non-political organization, "were strenuously working to fight out violence". A grateful Viceroy, as Mahadev Desai informed Birla, "felt that Bapu was an asset".(56) As Gandhi repeated many times on different occasions, a career of close co-operation between the British imperial masters and the Congress had started.
Meeting in August 1937, the Working Committee discussed the questions of the release of political prisoners, lifting of the ban on organizations connected with the CPI, etc., and Gandhi "thought that there should be no break with the Governors on this point"; Nehru agreed with Gandhi and that "was the general opinion of the Committee".
AICC members sought to move several resolutions at the meeting of the Committee at the end of October 1937, criticizing the Congress ministries for their failure to release all political prisoners and lift the ban prohibiting persons convicted of political offences from being employed in "local bodies and municipalities", for sending the C.I.D. to shadow Congress workers and to report "the meetings organized by Congress and other anti-imperialist organizations", for using repressive laws against political workers, even those which authorized detention without trial, etc. The Madras ministry was also criticized for the arrest of the Congress socialist leader Batliwala on a charge of sedition and his subseqent imprisonment for six months. Meeting at the same time, the Congress Working Committee "was of the view that so far as it was possible discussions on these topics be avoided in the AICC. It was also the Committee's opinion that instead of allowing the AICC to exercise control over the Ministries it would be better if this control was exercised by the Working Committee."(57)
Nehru wrote to Gandhi that the Congress ministries "are adapting themselves far too much to the old order and trying to justify it".
And to G.B. Pant, he wrote: "the Congress ministries are tending to become counter-revolutionary."(58) Yet, in public, he was the best defender of the Congress ministries.
To quote Munshi again,
"During the time that the Congress Ministry was in office, my relations with Sir Roger Lumley, the Governor, had become friendly, and Sardar Patel used me as a conduit pipe for conveying or receiving informal suggestions between Gandhiji and the British Government."
S.Gopal says that B.G.Kher and Munshi provided the Viceroy and the Governor "full reports... of discussions and differences within the Congress" and this "encouraged Linlithgow to promote the restiveness of the Bombay ministry against central control". Munshi, "more royalist than the king", as R.M. Maxwell, Home Secretary, Government of India, observed, "asked a surprised Viceroy to put the C.I.D. of Bengal in touch with his own C.I.D. to deal with communists in and around Bombay". Munshi says that the Central Intelligence Department "often supplied me with confidential information outside the routine reports" and that the Director of Central Intelligence, "whenever he came to Bombay, discussed with me the general situation regarding the Communist movement".(59)
About Rajagopalachari, Prime Minister of Madras, S. Gopal writes that he
"ordered the police to shadow Congressmen, arrested Congress socialists, continued the ban on the Independence pledge and demanded security from a socialist journal.... He invoked the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which the Congress had sharply denounced in earlier years, against anti-Hindi pickets; strong action, he told Erskine, paid in India and the British had been far too weak during the civil disobedience campaigns. He intrigued with the Governor against his own party to prevent the formation of an Andhra Province, and when he took a month's leave requested the Governor to take over much of his work as he trusted Erskine more than any of his colleagues. He wished to recommend some of his supporters for knighthoods and other titles, and was `out-Heroding Herod as defender of the rights of the Services'.... `In fact', summed up Erskine, a die-hard Tory himself, 'he is even too much of a Tory for me...'"(60)
Munshi, Rajagopalachari and Congress ministers of their type derived their strength from Gandhi. When numerous complaints were made to Gandhi against Rajagopalachari, Gandhi was eloquent in praise of him and justified his actions.
Somewhat later, in 1941, Nehru paid this tribute to Rajagopalachari:
"Rajagopalachari was terribly keen on making Provincial Autonomy a success and making it lead to Swaraj and Independence."
S. Gopal writes:
"Jawaharlal's attitude... was to stand up loyally for the ministries.... In the U.P. itself he assisted Pant in dealing with labour troubles in Kanpur, controlling the students and facing the criticism of the provincial Congress committee that Pant was becoming `a second Chhatari'. So vigorous was his support that both Gandhi and the British toyed with the hope of his taking over from Pant as chief minister."(61)
Gandhi himself described the kind of "self-government" under the ministers as "a mockery" and the ministers as "toy ministers", "whether they wear the Congress label, the League label or any other".
How powerless these ministers were and how humiliating were their positions may be guessed from the following. Bihar's chief secretary issued a confidential circular to commissioners of divisions with the instruction that an order not bearing the signature either of a secretary, an under-secretary or an assistant secretary to government should not be carried out.
It is not surprising that the Viceroy lavished praises on the Congress ministers. Linlithgow, pleased beyond measure at the performance of the Congress ministries, said to K.M. Munshi on the eve of World War II:
"You cannot get away from me, and I cannot get away from you. The circumstances daily arising in India and the world render that impossible."(62)
Such were the firm bonds that tied the Congress leaders to the chariot of British imperialism.
In a note to the members of the Working Committee, dated 24 November 1937, Nehru referred to "the increasing agitation in the Indian states from Kashmir to the south", "the unusual ferment among students" and the serious "labour situation". "Yet", he wrote, "the vital problem continues to be that of the peasantry.... All these indications point to a pre-revolutionary stage of a struggle.... There are only two ways of dealing with it: the way of repression, and the way of solving some at least of the problems which affect the masses and thus controlling and disciplining the new forces that are growing everywhere."(63) The policy of Nehru the `socialist' and the Congress was one of "controlling and disciplining the new forces" by introducing some palliatives where they could, so that the "pre-revolutionary stage" should not lead to the revolutionary stage.
From 1934 the workers were again on the march fighting against the wage-cuts resorted to by the millowners during the depression years, against rationalization, retrenchment and so on. The solidarity and militancy of the workers were causing alarm to the raj and the native exploiters. The All India Kisan Samiti, which was formed in December 1936 and adopted the Red Flag as its flag, had a membership of 6,00,000 by May 1938 and 8,00,000 by April 1939. Its programme included abolition of the zamindari system and ownership of all lands by the tillers. Peasant struggles were sweeping some parts of the country.
At Lucknow in April 1936 the Congress announced its intention to prepare a "full all-India agrarian programme" but deferred it. Even the Faizpur Congress in December did not adopt any such programme and refused to include the abolition of feudal landlordism as one of its tasks despite the stiff fight put up by the Kisan Sabha leaders like Swami Sahajananda.
Gandhiji's support for feudal landlordism is well-known. In the course of a discussion with Bengal Congressmen, among whom was Subhas Bose, on 13 April 1938, Gandhi said :
"The difference between your view and mine is based on the question whether the zamindari system is to be mended or ended. I say it should be mended..."
Presiding at the U.P, Political Conference on 30 December 1938, Nehru declared :
"We are not opposed to the zamindars or taluqdars. The question is not of causing harm to anybody but of giving relief to poor tenants and of raising those who are fallen. There is no question of enmity towards anyone."(64)
`Socialist' Nehru proposed to provide relief to poor tenants within the framework of the zamindari and the taluqdari system. With the same object in view, and to control and discipline the new forces, Congress ministries in Bombay, U.P. and Bihar introduced some tenancy legislations, carefully avoiding any of the basic agrarian issues: the ownership of land, the abolition of the zamindari system, serfdom, debt slavery, etc.
The Bombay tenancy bill granted the right of occupancy to a certain category of tenants who had held their lands continuously for six years. But, under the bill, the landlord could terminate the tenancy if he decided to use the land for some agricultural or non-agricultural purpose. A landlord could "personally" cultivate even thousands of acres with the help of servants or hired labour. The tenancy could also be terminated if the tenant failed to pay the rent (which was considered excessive by the revenue minister) by a specified date every year irrespective of whether crops had failed that year due to drought or not. This tenancy legislation actually opened the gate to mass eviction of tenants by landlords, as agrarian legislations introduced by Congress ministries in post-1947 India did.
The U.P. Tenancy Act apparently provided greater security to the tenants and lowered rents, but the actual effects were just the opposite. As Nehru belatedly admitted,
"There are some defects in the Tenancy Act which have escaped the notice of its framers [sic!].... But today authorities and zamindars are taking advantage of those defects in the law and are heartlessly ejecting tenants out of their holdings."
Referring to the Gorakhpur district, he wrote :
"...scores of thousands of peasants ... have suddenly been reduced to a state of utter insecurity. These peasants have been tilling their lands, sometimes for generations, but their names were not recorded in the patwari's papers. They paid a rent which was mutually agreed upon, but which was not recorded. Unfortunately, the new Tenancy Bill did not say anything about such tenants."(65)
Speaking of the land reform in Bihar, Rajendra Prasad claimed that it "was a solid achievement which, perhaps, no other province could boast of". The amendments to the Tenancy Act, introduced by the Bihar ministry, were actually based on a Congress-zamindar agreement and offered some very minor concessions to the kisans. In the Bihar Legislative Assembly the Congress Prime Minister assured the zamindars "that it was not the policy of the Congress government to cause the least harm to them, who, he said, played an important part in the economic system of the country".
The zamindar leader in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, C.P.N. Sinha, praised Bihar's Congress Government as "very reasonable" and stated that "some concessions were secured by zamindars in Bihar which no other Government would have allowed".
And at the landholders' conference in December 1938, the Maharaja of Darbhanga, the biggest landlord of India, "urged the landlords to strengthen the Congress government and to co-operate with those who were trying to combat revolutionary methods and class war".(66)
Not unexpectedly, the kisans' reactions were somewhat different. Condemning the tenancy legislation, the All India Kisan Conference, meeting at Gaya on 9 and 10 April 1939, adopted a resolution stating that the Congress ministry of Bihar had "entered into an agreement with the reactionary zamindars, the allies of British imperialism", betrayed the election manifesto of the Congress and sacrificed the interests of the kisans; that it had provided "a dangerous weapon...to the zamindars in the shape of facility to distrain the crops of the Kisans", and refused to solve the problem of the restoration of the Bakasht lands [kisan lands occupied by landlords for arrears of rent] and to relieve the peasants of the "crushing burden of debts". While the zamindars deprived the kisans of their lands, the Congress government pursued a repressive policy to crush the resistance of the kisans, implicated in criminal cases the kisans, kisan workers and even respected leaders like Rahul Sankrityayana.(67) Sankrityayana, a renowned scholar and linguist, who taught in universities in Sri Lanka and Leningrad, was handcuffed after arrest on a charge of theft with twenty volunteers and sentenced to six months' rigorous imprisonment.
In April 1938 Fazlul Huq, the Bengal Premier, said:
"In Bihar salami has been retained at 8 per cent which, in this non-Congress province of Bengal, has been abolished altogether. In Bihar the right of zamindars to realize rent through certificates still obtains, but here it has been done away with. Here in Bengal we have also stopped enhancement of rent for a period of ten years but in Bihar no such relief has been given to poor tenants".
In 1938 a widespread peasant movement raged in Bihar. The Congress ministry increasingly assumed "the weapons of the raj in order to contain the Kisan Sabha agitation", while the Congress committees waged war against the Kisan Sabha. Interestingly, `socialist' Nehru had a hearty dislike for the Red Flag.(68)
How did the Congress ministries befriend the working class, which was a victim of attacks by foreign and native capitalists?
When, in 1937, G.B. Pant reported to Patel on the serious situation in Kanpur, Patel wanted that workers and their leftist leaders should be curbed effectively. The U.P. government, of which Nehru's sister Vijayalaxmi Pandit was a member, resorted to repression to deal with the workers during the strikes of 1937 and 1938, arrested Congress socialists and other labour leaders and promulgated section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It also issued a circular calling for stringent action including the use of section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (denounced earlier by the Congress) in communal cases as well as "cases in which class hatred... is preached and in particular, to the kind of class hatred that is preached by communists and results in industrial strikes and trouble between employer and employed".(69) Nehru wanted to achieve the same result by other means. In Kanpur when there were retrenchments of workers by millowners, strikes and lock-outs, Nehru exhorted the workers not "to interfere with the smooth working of the mill or cause any obstruction". He advised them to remain peaceful and non-violent, for "government is very powerful and will put down violence by violence". The Congress ministry in Madras, David Arnold has observed, was "less than sympathetic towards industrial labour and had several times used police violence against strikers or aligned itself firmly with the industrialists and managers". Respecting the wishes of the millowners, it
"decided to completely bury the Report of the Court of Enquiry into Labour Unrest in Coimbatore Mills. The report while severely indicting the millowners and squarely holding them responsible for the prevailing crisis in industry had also recommended reasonable increases in wages for all categories of operatives."
According to Mahadevan, the leading textile magnates were closely aligned with the Congress.(70)
The working class in Bombay, the main seat of big comprador capital, was causing anxiety to the Patels. Almost immediately on assumption of office, Bombay's Home Minister Munshi started preparations for `dealing effectively' with the workers and their radical leaders.
The ministry drafted the Bombay Trade Disputes Bill which amounted almost to banning strikes, made conciliation or arbitration compulsory prior to strike notice, and imposed a fine for going on an illegal strike, three months' imprisonment for instigating workers to an illegal strike and a maximum fine of Rs 500/- for obstructing a labour officer in the discharge of his duty. While encouraging employers' unions, the bill made extremely difficult, if not impossible, the formation of independent unions of the workers.
Writing from London, Nehru said that the bill was criticized by trade unionists in England as "going back on many of the things that the labour movement had fought for during the last 50 years or more". But he discreetly decided not to give his own opinion. Later, he wrote : "On the whole the Act seems to be a good one..." He criticized the rule it laid down for the registration of trade unions but added : "But as the Act is law now it is obviously undesirable to tinker about with it too much."(71)
When the bill was rushed through the Assembly without being even referred to a Select Committee, 90,000 workers of Bombay went on a protest strike. Thorough preparations had been made by the Congress government and the workers were lathi-charged and fired upon and several workers were killed. Massive protest demonstrations took place in Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Madras and so on.
The mahatma, who always decried revolutionary violence against the imperialists and the domestic oppressors, came out in justification of the counter-revolutionary violence against the workers. He wrote:
"so long as Congressmen are in office and they cannot discover peaceful ways and means of preserving order they are bound to make use of both [the police and the army]."
In his official history of the Congress Sitaramayya has noted that "under the very Congress Ministries" there was "instance after instance of firing by the Police and the Military", and speaking of South India, added that there was no justification for the firings at Cheerala, Chittivalasa and Mandasa.(72)
When Bombay's seamen were on strike in December 1938, the Congress government not only refused "any kind of support to the strikers, but it even adopted harsh repressive measures against them". The Indian capitalists, writes Claude Markovits, felt
"reassured that a Congress Raj would be as effective as the British Raj, if not more so, in dealing with the working class.... Even British business expressed its satisfaction at the course of policy followed by the Congress ministry."
And S.D. Punekar, a Research Officer of the Ministry of Labour, Government of India, observed that "in some respects the Congress Government proved more reactionary than even the preceding bureaucratic Government".
In a letter dated 24 January 1939, Grigg, Finance Member of the Viceroy's Council, said that Congress policy was "controlled in the economic sphere by the Marwari and Gujarati millionaires".(73)
That the Congress raj would serve the big capitalists is not surprising. He who pays the piper is said to call the tune. In June 1942 Louis Fischer, the American journalist, asked Gandhi:
"Very highly placed Britishers had told me that Congress was in the hands of big business and that Gandhi was supported by the Bombay millowners who gave him as much money as he wanted. What truth is there in these assertions?"
Gandhi answered, "Unfortunately, they are true", though he claimed that "the dependence of Congress on rich sponsors" did not pervert its policy.
Pyarelal wrote:
"Raising of huge funds for his [Gandhi's] various political and non-political (constructive) activities brought Gandhiji into intimate contact with the moneyed and capitalist class.... Gandhiji...considered such association as essentially a sign of non-violence."(74)