After the fall of Rangoon and the Japanese occupation of the whole of Burma (now Myanmar), when the Japanese invasion of India seemed imminent, the Indian big bourgeoisie, like the Congress leadership, was a divided house. A section including Walchand Hirachand, the Gagalbhais, Lalbhais and Sarabhais, sure of the victory of the Axis powers, preferred a change of masters and waited to welcome the Japanese.(157) Another section, to which belonged Thakurdas, Cowasji Jehangir and many other millowners, did not lose faith in ultimate British victory and remained loyalists. About mid-May, Bombay governor Lumley informed Linlithgow that Thakurdas had come out "openly with the assertion that India's hope lay with the success of the British and that full support must be given to the war".(158) It seems there was a third section including the Birlas and Tatas, who, while not enthusiastic about precipitating any conflict with the raj and serving British imperial interests to the best of their ability, enriching themselves in the process, contributed liberally to the Congress funds and offered secret help. G.D. Birla's letter of 14 July 1942 to Mahadev Desai, when the Working Committee adopted the `Quit India' resolution, was far from enthusiastic or optimistic as regards "Bapu's movement". Rather, it painted the darker aspects of the political situation in India, which were not conducive to the success of the struggle. A memorandum submitted in late July or early August to the Viceroy, which was sponsored by Thakurdas and signed, among others, by J.R.D. Tata and Birla, said that as businessmen their interest lay "in peace, harmony, goodwill and order throughout the country". It further stated: "We have always believed in creating a firm and solid foundation for building up a permanent friendship between England and India, and throughout our public career most of us have endeavoured to work for this object."(159) At this crossroads of history the question before the Indian big bourgeois and their political frontmen was not one of achieving freedom from imperialist domination but of choosing between rival imperialist masters.
When the August rebellion started, the Ahmedabad millowners kept their mills shut for three months at the instance of Kasturbhai Lalbhai. Immediately after the `Quit India' resolution was passed in Bombay, Kasturbhai, who had promised Rs 10 lac (a very huge amount in those days) to Gandhi's movement, discussed plans with Khandubhai Desai of the Ahmedabad Labour Union. They hit upon the plan of sending away the workers of the Ahmedabad mills to their villages so that the government would not be able to hold anybody responsible for the stoppage of work. Kasturbhai had also discussions with Ambalal Sarabhai, another big tycoon. After about three months of "strike", when the millowners realized that their calculations had proved wrong, Kasturbhai received Khandubhai's consent and the so-called strike was over.(160) In Bombay, as Snow said, a few
"millowners themselves, led by Patel's friends such as Mafatlal Gagalbhai...staged lockouts. Foremen and managers simply told the workers to go home and promised to see that they got their wages. But when owners saw that the revolt had failed they quickly reopened the factories."(161)
The entire Tata Iron and Steel Works remained closed for about a fortnight in August-September. Edgar Snow wrote that though the TISCO workers had no serious grievances, "just before Gandhi was arrested the owners inexplicably distributed a three months' `Bonus' to all employees, who then promptly went on protest strike, led by their foremen!" Bhuyan states that Ardeshir Dalal, a director, and Jehangir Ghandy, the general manager, were in favour of the "strike".(162)
Linlithgow gave "a very broad hint" to Homi Mody, then a member of the Viceroy's Council and a senior director of the Tatas before and after serving on the council, that if the Tatas "continued to play the fool" the government might "have to send our orders in other directions".
The threat had immediate effect and normal work was resumed in TISCO without delay.(163)
Some writers have failed to realize that these industrialists were playing for high stakes. They ignored short term profits and lent secret support to a "short and swift struggle" against the rule of British capital but not against the rule of all foreign capital. What the Tatas, Lalbhais, Sarabhais, Gagalbhais and their ilk lost due to temporary stoppage of work was more than made up by the undreamt-of profits they harvested afterwards in conditions of scarcity.
A note prepared by the Government of India's Intelligence Bureau, entitled "Congress and`Big Business'", dated 28 February 1944, contains reports from chiefs of intelligence and police of various parts of India that the Congress was receiving financial help from Indian big business. It also says:
"In November 1942, two Gujarati merchants told a secret agent that the motives which led the millowners of Ahmedabad to close their mills were more economic than political, as the Congress leaders, particularly Vallabhbhai Patel, had impressed upon them that a Japanese invasion was a certainty and that in that event their accumulated profits in the shape of money would have no value; the millowners calculated that the losses incurred by closing their mills could be made up by the rise in prices, which would follow the decrease in production."
The Intelligence Bureau note further states that when Herbert Matthews, a New York Times correspondent, visited Ahmedabad in March 1943,
"the local millionaires deplored what had been happening in the country and pointed out that their object in life being to make money, like most Indian businessmen, they were keeping one foot in the Congress camp, which they expected to see running the country, and another in the British camp, which is running it now and gives them fat orders."
According to this note, "in the course of the statements made to the police after his arrest, Jaya Prakash Narayan said: `...in fact I hate their [the Birlas'] dual policy. On one side they claim to be nationalists while on the other they have all the military contracts'."(164)
When the calculations of this section of the big bourgeoisie went wrong, they tried quickly to re-establish the old relations with the raj. Interestingly, perhaps to expiate their `sin' of 1942, the Ahmedabad millowners celebrated the victory of the British and their Allies by offering a "Victory Bonus" to workers in 1945.(165) The Indian big bourgeoisie was then eager not only to serve British capital as before but to hitch its fortune to the more resplendent star of US monopoly capital.
Rajagopalachari's article "Save the Post-War Years", which appeared in the autumn of 1943, is quite significant. It is a plea for "constructive thought" and for rejection of "a soul-killing negative attitude". He criticized the other Congress leaders for losing the opportunity presented by the Cripps offer and betraying "a lamentable lack of foresight". He held that the Cripps proposals were "the only practical plan for reconciliation of all the forces that are in play in India". As the end of the war was in sight, he pleaded for the revival of the long-term aspect of the Cripps plan and for its acceptance by the Congress, even if such acceptance was considered a surrender. "If we do nothing now", he warned, "we shall be losing precious time in the immediate post-war period when every other country will be reorganizing its industry for self-preservation." Interestingly, he criticized the Congress for launching movements in 1919 and 1930 and for its refusal to co-operate with the British government "in the making of the Constitution".(166)
This was the voice not of Rajagopalachari alone, who was intimate with Birla, but the voice of the entire Indian big bourgeoisie. That India should "save the immediate post-war period from futile controversy" and utilize the "precious time" for "constructive effort in a new world" was what this class, flush with war-profits, yearned after.
This eagerness to co-operate with Britain and the USA is reflected in the FICCI's communications with the Government of India. On 11 February 1943, Sir Muthia Chettiar, president of the FICCI and a leading industrialist and banker, wrote to the Viceroy's private secretary that Gandhi had "unequivocally condemned violence" and was eager to end the political impasse. He appealed to the Viceroy for a reversal of the government's policy in order to "bridge the widening gulf between Britain and India" and release Gandhi, then on fast, "in the interest of amicable Indo-British relationship". A communication from the FICCI to the Government of India, Department of Supply, dated 6 May 1943, said that as India would soon become "a virtually important base of operations", the "country should be industrially equipped" and "her capacity to contribute to the war is increased substantially through the establishment of such war industries".(167)
It may be noted that the annual session of the FICCI in 1943, over which G.L. Mehta presided, was attended by, among others, Rajagopalachari, several members of the Viceroy's Executive Council and a number of high officials of the government, who warmly congratulated the president for his address.(168)
During the war the British raj and the Indian big bourgeoisie were bound with close ties of collaboration. An Eastern Group Supply Council with Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India was set up early in 1941 and the Indian big bourgeoisie was depended upon for supply of some commodities essential for the prosecution of the war. The FICCI viewed this as an opportunity for building up some basic industries with British patronage.(169)
The big bourgeois served on different official committees during the war. For instance, Birla was a member of the Reconstruction Committee, Trade and Industry; Thakurdas, of the Reconstruction Committee, Resettlement and Re-employment; Shri Ram, of the Reconstruction Committee, Disposals, Contracts and Government Purchases; and so on. When Birla saw Wavell on 6 March 1944, he affirmed that "he believed in co-operation, [and] agreed [with the Viceroy] that political leaders had missed a great opportunity during the war". He was anxious that the post-war years should not be wasted. He "favoured industrial visit to [the] UK" by a delegation of Indian industrialists and "would be prepared to go himself". He also "recommended [the] appointment of a Member [of the Viceroy's Council] for Reconstruction".(170)
Now it became the cry of the Indian big bourgeoisie: "Save the Post-War Years". A Brief Memorandum Outlining a Plan for Economic Development for India, popularly known as the Bombay Plan, authored by the big tycoons, Thakurdas, J.R.D. Tata, Birla, etc. came out in January 1944 and a second part of it later in the year. Sitting in prison, Nehru hailed it as "one of the most cheering and promising signs of the times in India recently" and resented Prof. K.T. Shah's criticism of it.(171) To quote Profs. P.A. Wadia and K.T. Merchant,
"The future for investment which the authors of the Plan envisage is evidently a holy alliance between foreign capitalists and themselves on a profit-making basis, of which we have had such bitter experience in the past and in the present."(172)
What Rajagopalachari said soon became the voice of the entire Congress leadership as well. The process of close integration between the Indian big bourgeoisie and the foreign, mainly British, capitalists at this stage formed the prelude to the intimate co-operation between the Congress leaders and the British imperialists to solve the constitutional problem and put down all anti-imperialist struggles. No wonder that Rajagopalachari became a member of the Interim Government formed by the Congress in early September 1946 -- a valued comrade of Nehru, who had regarded him two years before as "a more dangerous person in all India" than all others.(173)
All the sound and fury of the days before 9 August 1942 turned overnight into a whimper. On 14 August, within less than a week of his internment at the Aga Khan Palace, Gandhi complained to the Viceroy with an air of injured innocence that Linlithgow had acted hastily. Gandhi would "have dealt with every difficulty" if the Viceroy had given the opportunity. While assuring him that he remained "the same friend you have known me", he appealed to him as "a sincere friend of the British people" for a reconsideration of the government's policy. Writing on 23 September to the Home Department, Government of India, Gandhi decried the revolt of the people as a "calamity", "deplorable destruction". Claiming that "the Congress policy still remains unequivocally [sic!] non-violent", he affirmed:
"The wholesale arrest of the Congress leaders seems to have made the people wild with rage to the point of losing self-control."(174)
As noted before, the Congress leaders including Gandhi were not squeamish about violence before their incarceration. Not only Gandhi but the entire Working Committee disowned the struggle. In the letter Azad addressed on 13 February 1943 to the Viceroy -- a letter drafted by Nehru and sent on behalf of the Working Committee -- they disclaimed all responsibility for the rebellion and referred the Viceroy to Gandhi's speeches on 8 August at the AICC meeting, urging observance of non-violence, and to the non-violent tradition of the Congress. It stated that "Responsible Congressmen tried to divert this feeling [of bitterness towards the raj in the people's minds] into peaceful channels" and blamed the arrest of the leaders for what followed.(175)
Nehru wrote: "...for the first time since the great revolt of 1857, vast numbers of people again rose to challenge by force (but a force without arms!(176)) the fabric of British rule in India. It was a foolish and inopportune challenge..." It was "the impromptu frenzy of the mob" that defied the organized and armed forces of the raj. The verdict of the Congress leaders on the Quit India struggle is recorded in the official history of the Congress. Sitaramayya wrote that with the arrest of "responsible men or women to guide popular activities", the people "grew insensate and were maddened with fury" and committed various "excesses"; and that "the turbulent elements of society partly bent on adventure but mainly provoked by the leonine violence of Government to acts of counter-violence, were providing a menace to public security".(177)
Who or what was responsible for the outbreak of the rebellion? That was the question over which there was a voluminous correspondence between Gandhi and the government, besides numerous statements. While Gandhi and other Congress leaders insisted that the responsibility lay with the government, for arrests of the leaders had "goaded the people to the point of madness", the government blamed the Congress leaders for their call to `open rebellion' and prominent Congressmen's role in it. In a curt letter of 14 October 1943, Tottenham, the Additional Home Secretary, referring to Gandhi's long reply to the official publication Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances, 1942-43, wrote that the government "do not deny...your habit of reinterpreting your own statements to suit the purposes of the moment..."(178)
When Gandhi was repeatedly professing his friendship for the King's deputy in India, on whom his `change of heart' theory refused to work as on other British rulers, Churchill declared:
"We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."(179)
Indeed, notwithstanding the facade of a long-drawn wordy warfare over the issue about the immediate cause of the rebellion, what Gandhi was actually proposing was an abject surrender consistent with pre-1942 relations with the raj. He wanted to be convinced by the Viceroy "of my error or errors". "If I have not ceased to be your friend, why did you not, before taking drastic action, send for me, tell me of your suspicions and make yourself sure of your facts?" he asked the Viceroy.(180) Nehru noted in his prison diary: "All the brave words he said last year were empty verbiage or so they have subsequently proved."(181)
Soon there was a change in the tide of the war. For forty-eight days from 23 August 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad, "an unprecedentedly bitter battle, unparalleled in the history of mankind", raged until on 9 October the German line of encirclement of the industrial district of the city was breached by the Soviet defenders. It was the first major victory of the Soviet Union and the Allies, which was hailed by Mao Tsetung immediately after as "not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war" but as "the turning point in the history of all mankind". Hitler's strategy had failed. Hitler, who had hurled an army of over 1,500,000 backed by the bulk of his tank and air forces to press through Stalingrad and the Caucasus to effect a junction with the Japanese in India, was "on the threshold of a final defeat", as Mao Tsetung wrote confidently on 12 October 1942.(182)
When German-Japanese strategy to effect a junction of forces in India was defeated on the Stalingrad front and Gandhi's expectations were belied, when his appeals to Linlithgow elicited far from friendly responses, and his escape route by disclaiming all responsibility for the `Quit India' movement was firmly closed by Linlithgow, he could do nothing else but discharge what Nehru called "almost his last weapon"(183) -- the decision to go on fast. He communicated to the Viceroy his decision to fast from 9 February to 2 March "solely for the service of God and in His presence". He felt hurt when Linlithgow called his proposed fast "a form of political blackmail". The government offered to release him during the period of the fast but Gandhi informed the government that, if released, he would not fast -- a proposal to which the government did not agree but provided him with additional facilities of interview and added staff to nurse him and so on.
Nehru was afraid that if the fast led to Gandhi's death the Gandhian era would come to an end and "The last chance of any settlement or compromise will go, on any basis". The possibility of Gandhi's survival, on the other hand, would be an "anti-climax", according to him. He disliked "the prospects either way".(184) Gandhi, however, survived the fast.
William Phillips, a former U.S. Under-Secretary of State and Roosevelt's friend, was appointed the U.S. President's Personal Representative in India in December 1942. Roosevelt keenly wanted to bring about a solution of the Indian deadlock and Phillips was charged with this mission. Before the end of January 1943 Phillips, who had been seeing prominent Indians, gave Linlithgow the impression that the Indian dispute could be settled "by the immediate formation of a provisional government. Devdas Gandhi...seems to have told him that the Mahatma would be very ready to make liberal concessions in the event of such a government..."(185)
Linlithgow, Amery and Churchill took strong exception to any US interference in their own imperial interests -- a domestic question.(186)
Horace Alexander saw Gandhi during the fast and informed the Bombay governor that Gandhi seemed "so genuinely anxious to find means of restoring goodwill". Gandhi would "only welcome release...if the Government is assured that he, as a free man, will be an asset, not a liability". Rajagopalachari also met Gandhi on 26 February and saw "some light" and "caught some hope from Mahatma Gandhi's bedside".(187)
A `leaders' conference' attended by, among others, Rajagopalachari, Bhulabhai Desai, K.M. Munshi, Sapru, Jayakar, Birla, Thakurdas, Tata, Walchand Hirachand, Kasturbhai Lalbhai and several more tycoons, was held in Bombay. The conference adopted a resolution, which, while regretting "the deplorable events of the last few months" and seeking "a reconsideration of their policy both by the Government and the Congress", stated:
"The recent talks which some of us have had with Gandhiji lead us to believe that a move for reconciliation at the present juncture will bear fruit".
The resolution gave assurances that "there would be no danger to the successful prosecution of the war", if Gandhi was set at liberty.
The efforts of the `leaders' conference' to obtain the release of Gandhi and restore "internal harmony and reconciliation" bore no fruit. The British raj did not feel as yet the need for a reconciliation.
When the fast had ended, interesting questions, quite tactful ones, were put to Gandhi, perhaps by Birla, to elicit the right answers that would help the process of bridge-building and disrupt the `Quit India' struggle. To the question "Do you then disapprove of these acts of sabotage and violence?", the answer was: "I definitely disapprove of them.... I would suggest that they [the militant Congressmen and others] should surrender themselves to the police." In answer to another question, Gandhi categorically stated that "if the national government is formed and takes power on the basis of giving military help to the Allied nations, I obviously cannot obstruct and will not obstruct".(188)
Feeling that the Congress policy had reached a dead end and seeking to extricate himself from it, Gandhi now decided to woo the Muslim League, too. He agreed with Rajagopalachari to a formula for the partition of India on religious lines. Rajagopalachari had conversations with Jinnah and felt optimistic for, as Sitaramayya observes, Rajagopalachari "had the assent of Gandhi in his pocket to a formula which he had produced before him on the eve of the termination of the fast".(189)
Gandhi also wrote to Jinnah addressing him as `Qaid-e-Azam' and seeking a meeting with him.
Rajagopalachari's formula envisaged that the League would endorse "the Indian demand for independence" and co-operate "with the Congress in the formation of a Provisional National Government for the transition period". At the end of the war a commission would be set up "for demarcating contiguous districts in the north-west and east of India wherein the Muslim population is in absolute majority" and a plebiscite of all the inhabitants of such areas would be held to "decide the issue of separation from Hindustan". If the majority was in favour of the formation of a separate sovereign state, "such a decision shall be given effect to, without prejudice to the right of the districts on the border to choose to join either state". And "In the event of separation, a mutual agreement shall be entered for safeguarding defence, commerce and communications and other essential purposes. Any transfer of population shall only be on an absolutely voluntary basis." It was stipulated that the above terms of settlement would be "binding only in case of transfer by Britain of full power and responsibility for the governance of India".(190)
Jinnah did not agree to Rajagopalachari's scheme, which was blessed by Gandhi.
While in the Ahmednagar Fort prison, Nehru, like Asaf Ali, could only "see just blackness ahead", Patel, Kripalani and their group seemed to "have been hit in their great faith in Bapu's instinct for right action at the right time". They could "visualize an end of the so-called Gandhian era in Indian politics" and Nehru felt that "this prospect leads to unhappiness, for the future is uncertain and dark".(191) Almost all the Working Committee members were lodged in this prison; they appeared to be a demoralized lot. Discussion of politics was generally avoided and personal relations were hardly amiable.
Released from internment on 6 May 1944, Gandhi tirelessly ploughed his furrow -- that of restoring the old relations with the raj. He went on not merely disowning all responsibility for the `Quit India' movement but condemning secrecy (as "a sin and symptom of violence"), sabotage (as "a form of violence") and underground activities of the rebels and asking them to surrender while in the same breath he offered the raj full co-operation in prosecuting the most violent war in history.
During his interview to Stuart Gelder of the News Chronicle (London) in July 1944, Gandhi said that he sought an interview with the Viceroy "with a view to help and not to hinder the Allied war effort". He told Gelder that he had "no intention of offering civil disobedience today. I cannot take the country back to 1942." "Today", as Gelder reported, "he would be satisfied with a national government in full control of civil administration.... Such government would be composed of persons chosen by the elected members of the Central Assembly [of whom the majority belonged to the Congress]." Gandhi said: "So far as military operations are concerned, the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief will have full control." He wanted "To plead with the Viceroy", but in order to do so he wanted to "know the Working Committee's mind".(192)