Before and after the interview with Gelder, Gandhi sought an interview with the Viceroy. Despite what Nehru described as his "grovelling before the Viceroy",(193) he was refused any interview on the ground that he had not withdrawn the `Quit India' resolution. Nor was permission given to him to see the Working Committee members. The British imperialists wanted him to appear before them in sack cloth and ashes, as Gandhi himself felt.(194)
Interestingly, whether Gandhi was legally empowered to withdraw the August resolution, whether the authority vested in him by the AICC in August 1942 had lapsed with his arrest or not -- this legal question worried him much. He asked lawyer friends for their legal opinion and was assured by a panel of three eminent lawyer friends that his authority had legally lapsed. And he went on knocking at the Viceregal door.
Gandhi also felt the need for forming an alliance with Jinnah. On 17 July he wrote to Jinnah seeking an interview and appealing to him not to refuse it. Gandhi was invited by Jinnah to meet him in Bombay in September.
In an unpublished statement sent to Gandhi for his approval, K.M. Munshi wrote:
"The two-nation theory has been accepted and brought into operation by Gandhiji. Whatever the verbal jugglery, the Hindu and Muslim nations are now going to meet in the persons of their most prominent representatives, a consummation which Mr Jinnah devoutly wished."(195)
During the negotiations with Jinnah in September, Gandhi proposed to "recommend to the Congress and the country the acceptance of the claim for separation" on the following basis. A commission should demarcate areas in Punjab, Bengal and Assam where Muslims were in absolute majority and, if a plebiscite in the Muslim-majority areas was in favour of separation, these areas including Sind, the NWFP and Baluchistan should form a sovereign independent state after India was free. A treaty of separation should provide for the administration of certain subjects like Foreign Affairs, Defence, Internal Communications, and for safeguarding the rights of minorities in the two states. Later, he explained that he did not envisage a common centre but "a board composed of representatives of the two States regulating matters of common concern and enforcing the treaty obligations". He told the press that "where there is an obvious Muslim majority they should be allowed to constitute a separate State by themselves and that has been fully conceded in the Rajaji formula or my formula.... The right is conceded without the slightest reservation."(196)
According to Gandhi, when "independence for India as it stands" was achieved "by joint effort", "demarcation, plebiscite and partition if the people voted for partition" would be the responsibility of the provisional government. When asked by Jinnah to clarify his conception of the all-powerful provisional government, "the basis or the lines on which such a Government is to be set up or constituted", Gandhi refused to be pinned down to anything. Pressed by Jinnah, Gandhi said: "The provisional interim government will be responsible to the elected members of the present Assembly or a newly-elected one."(197) That is, it would be predominantly a Congress government. Criticizing Rajagopalachari's scheme, Ambedkar asked who was to enforce the agreement "if the Provisional Government failed to give effect to the Congress part of the agreement".(198) Jinnah called this "putting the cart before the horse". He wanted a full political settlement and then withdrawal of British power by "joint effort". Jinnah claimed that his Pakistan comprised six provinces -- Sind, Baluchistan, the NWFP, Punjab, Bengal and Assam, "subject to territorial adjustment that may be agreed upon" -- and that in the Muslim-majority zones the Muslims alone would enjoy the right of self-determination (he was opposed to any plebiscite in which all inhabitants of those zones would take part). Gandhi's formula, like Rajagopalachari's, was rejected by Jinnah.
Though the negotiations failed they had a far-reaching impact on Indian politics. Gandhi agreed in principle to the partition of India on religious lines and recognized the right of self-determination of a religious community living intermingled throughout India with other religious communities and as a part of the different nationalities of India. Upholding the right of these nationalities to self-determination could have removed the anxieties of the Muslim masses regarding a Hindu-majority, unitary Indian state, helped unite the masses of the different communities within various nationalities, reassured secular-minded Muslim leaders and marginalized communal Muslim leaders. Instead, Gandhi played the communal game and marginalized the role of many secular-minded Muslim leaders like, for instance, Fazlul Huq and Congress Muslims like Ashrafuddin Choudhuri in Bengal. As B.B. Misra observes, "Gandhi's attempt to use the C.R. formula not only failed politically, but also aggravated communal tension."(199)
"To one man [ie, Gandhi], however", Sumit Sarkar writes, "the idea of a high-level bargain by which the Congress would attain quick power in the major part of the country at the cost of a partition on religious lines still [even in early 1947] seemed unimaginably shocking and unacceptable."(199a) Perhaps any comment is superfluous except that, though one does not quarrel with Sarkar's idealization of his hero, truth should not be sacrificed in the process.
Gandhi, like Rajagopalachari, proposed the dismemberment of Bengal and Punjab as part of the process of dividing India on a religious basis and the destruction of the integrity of the Bengali and Punjabi nationalities. In August 1944, on the eve of the Gandhi-Jinnah talks, the Bengal Congress sent a delegation to meet Gandhi. The delegation led by K.S. Roy, leader of the Bengal Assembly Congress Party, which discussed with Gandhi the Rajagopalachari formula, told him that its application to Bengal on district-wise basis would result in cutting up the province into two areas and that the people of Bengal were opposed to its dismemberment "as Bengal situated as at present is culturally and linguistically one single homogeneous unit". The delegation said that Bengal accepted the principle of self-determination but that it should be applied on the linguistic and cultural basis. K.S. Roy said to Gandhi: "If the worst comes to the worst, we in Bengal will all go in to Pakistan, but for goodness sake do not partition Bengal. Do not vivisect it." Gandhi gave his promise to the delegation as well as to a delegation of students that "he would not do anything without consulting Bengal".(200) But he broke his pledge soon after when he placed his proposals before Jinnah.
As Ayesha Jalal writes,
"What the Bengali Muslims were really after was freedom from central control and Government House in Calcutta saw clear hints of a specifically provincial Bengali nationalism capable of being deployed against Jinnah's centralist pretensions."(201)
P.C. Joshi wrote that "on the eve of the Gandhi-Jinnah meeting, the Bengal Provincial Muslim League passed a resolution in favour of a United Bengal which would exercise its sovereign will and decide whether to join Pakistan or Hindustan or to join neither, and instead remain completely independent", that "the Provincial League sent its resolution to the Congress leader, Kiran Shankar Roy, to discuss it among themselves", and that they told Jinnah "that the Bengalis would be able to decide their own fate".(202)
Another process, a more powerful and sinister one, was at work. When the Bengal Congress delegation was meeting Gandhi in August 1944, K.M. Munshi wrote to Gandhi: "We cannot reconcile ourselves till the Punjab and Bengal are not partitioned." And at about the same time G.D. Birla wrote to Gandhi's secretary:
"I have heard many Bengalees saying that they would not mind even going to Pakistan if Bengal was kept intact.... If Bengal is kept as it is, then it is not a Pakistan but separation of Bengal from the rest of India. It will be troublesome for Hindus and Muslims both."(203)
Instead of being troublesome to the Hindus and Muslims of Bengal, it would have averted an endless series of appalling tragedies, if Bengal remained intact and free to determine its future. But, no doubt, it would have been injurious to the interest of big Hindu as well as Muslim compradors -- the Birlas and the Ispahanis.
Sitting in Ahmednagar Fort prison, Nehru felt upset at Gandhi's "grovelling before the Viceroy and Jinnah". He noted in his prison diary on 5 August:
"This may be the satyagraha technique. If so, I fear I do not fit in at all.... Tall talk and then excuses and explanations and humility. What I may do outside after our release, I do not know. But I feel that I must break with this woolly thinking and undignified action -- which really means breaking with Gandhi."(204)
As usual, this was one of Nehru's fleeting moods. He did "fit in" -- quite well -- with Gandhi's politics: his own interests would not allow him to break with Gandhi.
Though Gandhi pined for reconciliation with the raj and showed enough humility, he had to wait for the reconciliation until mid-1945, when the war in Europe was over and the defeat of Japan was a matter of weeks.
1. CWG, LXXV, 188-9.
2. Ibid, LXXIII, 1 fn.1; LXXV, 189-92,450-2.
3. Ibid, 219-29.
4. TOP, I, 375,448,937-8; II, 529-32,802-3; Nehru, A Bunch, 466-8,484-5.
5. SWN, XII, 467 -- emphasis added; XIV, 163; Nehru, Inside America, 191.
6. TOP, I, 415; Gopal, op cit, 276.
7. Quoted in M.S. Venkataramani and B.K. Shrivastava, Quit India: The American Response to the 1942 Struggle, New Delhi, 1979, 16.
8. Quoted in Monthly Review (New York), Nov. 1966, 9.
9. SWN, XII, 104-5,114,124,131.
10. Ibid, XI, 24,141-2; XII, 131,169,176-7.
11. Ibid, 123-7 -- emphasis added.
12. TOP, I, 110-2,395,404 -- emphasis added.
13. Ibid, 396-7.
14. For the final form of the draft, see Azad, op cit., 228-9.
15. Birla, Bapu, IV, 291.
16. See Cripps' report of the interview, TOP, I, 498-500; see also Moore, Churchill, Cripps, and India, 87.
17. Azad, op cit., 56; CWG, LXXV, 440.
18. Quoted in Menon, op cit., 114.
19. Sitaramayya, op cit., II, 283.
20. TOP, I, 636.
21. Tendulkar, op cit., VI, 89; Edgar Snow, People on Our Side, 27; TOP, III, pp. XII, 321; Sudhir Ghosh, Gandhi's Emissary, 80.
22. Gopal, op cit., 279.
23. R.J. Moore, Churchill, Cripps, and India, 92-3. Moore quotes from R.G. Coupland's Diary "India : 1941-1942".
24. CWG, LXXV, 246.
25. See Gopal, op cit., 290.
26. Roosevelt and Churchill, Their Secret Wartime Correspondence, ed. by F.L. Loewenheim, H.D. Langley and M. Jones, 81.
27. See Ibid, 174 note 2, 174-6,178 note 2; see also Amery's letter to Linlithgow, 5 Jan. 1942, TOP, I, 7-8.
28. Cited in R. Palme Dutt, The Crisis of Britain and the British Empire, London, 1957 edn., 128.
29. SWN, XII, 169.
30. Roosevelt and Churchill, op cit., 183-4 and note 1; Moore, Churchill, Cripps, and India, 105; passim.
31. The Economist (London), 27 Jan. 1968; cited in Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism, 43.
32. For the resolution, see Azad, op cit., 61-3.
33. Moore, Churchill, Cripps, and India, 105-6.
34. Johnson's account of the interview, TOP, I, 665-6; SWN, XII, 194-5 -- emphasis added.
35. R.G. Coupland's Diary, 7 Apr. 1942; cited in Moore, Churchill, Cripps, and India, 107.
36. TOP, I, 691.
37. Ibid, 697.
38. CWG, LXXVII, 428.
39. TOP, I, 739,756-7,759-60.
40. Nehru, A Bunch, 469-70.
41. Azad, op cit., 64-5.
42. TOP, I, 666.
43. Gopal, op cit., 288 -- emphasis added.
44. B. Shiva Rao, "India, 1935-47" in Philips and Wainwright (eds.), op cit., 440-1; see also TOP, II, 136,141,144.
45. SWN, XII, 305-6.
46. Nehru, A Bunch, 479-80.
47. Claire Boothe Luce to Nehru, 1 Apr. 1942, JN Papers, Vol.43.
48. TOP, II, 475,652,701,815-6.
49. Nehru, A Bunch, 487-8.
50. SWN, XII, 208,213,222-3,226,235,260,305,329.
51. Ibid, 134 -- emphasis added.
52. Nehru, A Bunch, 470-1.
53. Sitaramayya, op cit., II, 634-5.
54. TOP, I, 528; also Nehru, The Discovery of India, 468; Rajendra Prasad, India Divided, 152.
55. SWN, XII, 309.
55a. Birla, Bapu, III, 316,319.
56. D.D. Kosambi, Exasperating Essays, 17.
57. TOP, II, 117-8.
58. Edgar Snow, People on Our Side, 34.
59. PT Papers, File 279 (Parts I and II); see also Thakurdas to Birla, 12 Mar. 1942, ibid.
60. Birla, Bapu, IV, 290,291.
61. CWG, LXXV, 409-10; also 444 and LXXVI, 12-3.
62. Ibid, 71-2,99.
63. Snow, op cit., 56.
64. CWG, LXXVI, 31, and fn.1, 36,40,51-2,53.
65. TOP, I, 802.
66. Azad, op cit., 67-8; Tendulkar, op cit., VI, 96.
67. CWG. LXXVI, 449.
68. Ibid, 209; also 159, 442.
69. Ibid, 160.
70. Ibid, 49-50 -- emphasis added.
71. Ibid, 63-5 -- emphasis added.
72. Ibid, 67,107,110,372,373.
73. GOI, Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances 1942-43, 42-5; SWN, XII, 286-93.
74. Ibid, 277-85; CWG, 424-5.
75. SWN, XII, 294-5 -- emphasis added.
76. CWG, LXXVI, 95.
77. Ibid, 98-100 -- emphasis added.
78. Ibid, 105,106,114.
79. Ibid 112,120,139-40,167,433,452, passim.
80. TOP, I, 82 -- emphasis added.
81. CWG, LXXVI, 120,143,167.
82. TOP, II, 128-32; CWG, LXXVI, 106-11 -- emphasis added. While reproducing the report of the meeting, the editors of CWG note that they cannot "vouch for its authenticity". According to the editors of TOP, this report of the meeting was enclosed with a letter, dated 17 May 1942, from Sharaf Athar Ali, a communist of Bombay, to CPI general secretary P.C. Joshi. Athar Ali was present at the meeting. His report was intercepted by Intelligence officials.
Wickenden Report states that Athar Ali's report is corroborated by D.N. Wandrekar's letter, dated 6 June 1942, to Dr A.G. Tendulkar, detenu in the Nasik Road Central Prison; see Wickenden Report, 23,158,225-6.
83. Birla, Bapu, IV, 308.
84. Ibid, 308; CWG, LXXVI, 195,208,215,253,431,449, passim.
85. Ibid, 223-6,264-5.
86. SWN, XII, 358-9,368.
87. Ibid, 359-62 -- emphasis added.
88. CWG, LXXVI, 450.
89. Ibid, 195,196,444.
90. Ibid, 254,297,372-3.
91. Snow, op cit., 30; also 49.
92. CWG, LXXVI, 246; Birla, Bapu, IV, 307-8,313.
93. Sitaramayya, op cit., II, 337.
94. CWG, LXXVI, 293-4; Azad, op cit., 76; Gopal, op cit., 292.
95. Gary R. Hess, America Encounters India, 1941-1947, Baltimore, Maryland, 1971, 65; also Nehru, The Discovery of India, 483-4 ; Brecher, op cit., 285,286.
96. Birla, Bapu, IV, 318,320.
97. CWG, LXXVI, 454-5.
98. Ibid, 294-7,298-9,303,379 -- emphasis added.
99. Shankardass, Vallabhabhai Patel, 244; see also Prasad, Autobiography, 532.
100. Ibid, 535-6 -- emphasis added.
101. Azad, op cit, 81 -- emphasis added.
102. Wickenden Report, 249; SWN, XII, 362; CWG, LXXVI, 237.
103. Ibid, 384-401.
104. SWN, XII, 457.
105. CWG, LXXVI, 380.
106. Linlithgow to Amery, 26 Jan. 1943, TOP, III, 544 and 553, fn.1 and 2.
107. Nehru, The Discovery of India, 487,498 -- emphasis added; see also Azad, op cit., 74.
108. Gopal, op cit., 300; see also SWN, XIII, 3-4 and fn.14.
109. CWG, LXXVI, 368, fn.2.
110. Kosambi, op cit., 16-7.
111. Snow, op cit., 50.
112. Ibid, 47-8.
113. TOP, II, 486,487, fn.3.
114. See, for instance, Gandhi's press statement of 5 August 1942, CWG, LXXVI, 372: Gandhi fervently hoped that "Britain will shed that taint [of imperialism], and that her great ally America will make her do so" (emphasis added); also Azad, op cit., 84; Wickenden Report, 368-9.
115. See Arun Chandra Bhuyan, The Quit India Movement, 42-3, fn.22.
116. Nehru to J.L. Berry, 23 June 1942, SWN, XII, 374-5; Wickenden Report, 80,219.
117. SWN, XII, 406.
118. "This time we have to finish the entire work in three or four days", said Gandhi to Vinoba Bhave and others on 26 July: CWG, LXXVI, 334; also 295, 380; SWN, XII, 406, 423; passim.
119. Gandhi told the Working Committee and his disciples as well as informed the Viceroy that he would fast unto death, if he was put behind bars. Rajendra Prasad and others warned the people of this possibility. See CWG, 317-9; 333-5; TOP, II, 408; Wickenden Report, 241,251,262-3,313.
120. CWG, LXXVI, 63,107,110,372,373; TOP, II, 980-1.
121. SWN, XII, 359,360,407,408,509 and fn.4,510,511 and fn.2, 512,515-7. See also 522.
122. Ibid, 509.
123. TOP, III, 190.
124. Ibid, II, 407-8; Mahadev Desai to Amrit Kaur, 15 July 1942, Wickenden Report, 236.
125. TOP, II, 407-8.
126. Azad, op cit., 81 -- emphasis added.
127. TOP, II, 432.
128. CWG, LXXVI, 370.
129. Ibid, 375.
130. Ibid, 449.
131. Gopal, op cit., 300; Prasad, Autobiography, 537-8.
132. Azad, op cit., 82-3, 85 -- emphasis added.
133. Wickenden Report, 262-3.
134. Tendulkar, op cit., VI, 216 -- emphasis added.
135. TOP, II, 368-9 -- emphasis added.
136. Ibid, 367-8 -- emphasis added.
137. Ibid, 397-8,433,620.
138. Azad, op cit., 85.
139. TOP, II, 853.
140. Wickenden Report, 123,137-8; also Bhuyan, op cit., 91.
141. Gyanendra Pandey, "The Revolt of August 1942 in Eastern UP and Bihar", in Gyanendra Pandey (ed), The Indian Nation in 1942.
142. Wickenden Report, 186, fn.128; also Bhuyan, op cit., 101.
143. Wickenden Report, 187-8; Biswamoy Pati, "Storm over Malkangiri: A Note on Laxman Naiko's Revolt", in G. Pandey (ed), op cit., 193-202; Bhuyan, op cit., 79.
144. See David Arnold, "Quit India in Madras: Hiatus or Climacteric", in G. Pandey (ed.), op cit.
145. See David Hardiman, "The Quit India Movement in Gujarat", in G. Pandey (ed.), op cit.
146. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide, 106.
147. Max Harcourt, "Kisan Populism and Revolution in Rural India", in D.A. Low (ed.), Congress and the Raj, 342.
148. J.H. Voight, "Co-operation or Confrontation? War and Congress Politics, 1939-42", in ibid, 368, note 115.
149. Stephen Henningham, "Quit India in Bihar and the Eastern United Provinces", in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, II, 130,159-62.
150. Freedom Struggle in Tamluk, I: Sarbadhinayak, 26-8.
151. Ibid, 31.
152. GOI, Some Facts about Disturbances in India 1942-43; quoted in Freedom Struggle in Tamluk, I, 32.
153. Freedom Struggle in Tamluk, I, 32-6.
154. Hitesranjan Sanyal, "The Quit India Movement in Medinipur District", in G. Pandey (ed.), op cit., 68.
155. Cited in ibid, 56.
156. Gail Omvedt, "The Satara Prati Sarkar", in G. Pandey (ed.), op cit. The quote is on page 254. See also Bhuyan, op cit., 125-6.
157. Shankardass, Vallabhbhai Patel, 245; Unpublished biographical notes of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, quoted in Dwijendra Tripathi, "Congress and the Indian Industrialists (1885-1947)", (mimeo), 52; TOP, IV, 768-71; Snow, op cit., 51,54,56.
158. TOP, II, 84,85,405,805; Frank Moraes, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas, 213.
159. Birla to Desai, Bapu, IV, 316-7; Moraes, op cit., 219-20.
160. Shankardass, Vallabhbhai Patel, 245; Unpublished biographical notes of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, quoted in Dwijendra Tripathi, op cit., 52.
161. Snow, op cit., 54.
162. Ibid; TOP, II, 776,777,829; Bhuyan, op cit., 83-4.
163. TOP, II, 869,886.
164. Ibid, IV, 765-71.
165. Eastern Economist, 21 Sept. 1945, 433.
166. C. Rajagopalachari, "Save the Post-War Years", Amrita Bazar Patrika, Puja Number, 1943.
167. FICCI, Correspondence and Relevant Documents relating to Important Questions Dealt with by the Federation during the Year 1943-44, New Delhi, 1944, 110, 245-6; see also Shri Ram's letter to Thakurdas, 29 Nov. 1943, PT Papers, File 169, Part I.
168. G.L. Mehta, "An Unforgettable Year", in FICCI, Silver Jubilee Souvenir 1927-51, New Delhi, 1952, 212.
169. Venkatasubbiah, op cit., 47.
170. TOP, IV, 779.
171. SWN, XIII, 353.
172. P.A. Wadia and K.T. Merchant, The Bombay Plan, 29; see also Suniti Kumar Ghosh, The Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 229-38.
173. SWN, XIII, 457.
174. CWG, LXXVI, 406-8, 414 -- emphasis added. See also LXXVII, 56.
175. SWN, XIII, 59.
176. Among those primarily responsible for reducing the people to this state were Gandhi and Nehru.
177. Nehru, The Discovery of India, 498,499,501; Sitaramayya, op cit., II, 373,380 -- emphasis added.
178. CWG, LXXVII, 454.
179. Churchill's address at the Lord Mayor's annual banquet on 10 Nov. 1942.
180. CWG, LXXVII, 50-51,52-3.
181. SWN, XIII, 185 -- emphasis added.
182. Mao Tsetung, "The Turning Point in World War II", Oct. 12, 1942, SWM, III, 103-7.
183. SWN, XIII, 92.
184. Ibid, 68 -- emphasis added.
185. TOP, III, 552.
186. Ibid, 555,566,569,688-90, passim.
187. Ibid, 734; CWG, LXXVII, 449-50 -- emphasis added; SWN, XIII, 81 and fn.127; see also record of the interview between Gandhi and Syed Abdullah Brelvi, CWG, LXXVII, 65-6.
188. TOP, III, 800-1,808 and note, 857-8; Birla, In the Shadow, 261-3; CWG, LXXVII, 71-3 -- emphasis added.
189. Sitaramayya, op cit., II, 506 and fn.
190. Ibid, 633; CWG, LXXVI, 456. See also Sitaramayya, op cit., II, 631-2.
191. SWN, XIII, 101,142.
192. CWG, LXXVII, 347-51.
193. SWN, XIII, 457.
194. See his letters to Horace Alexander, 12 July 1944, and Agatha Harrison, 13 July, CWG, LXXVII, 372; also Gandhi's statement to the press, 12 July and letter to Wavell, 15 July, ibid, 369,385-6.
195. Munshi, op cit., 436.
196. CWG, LXXVIII, 126-7,140,268.
197. Ibid, 92,99,101-3,104,403-4,405-6.
198. B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or Partition of India, 409-10.
199. Misra, op cit., 515-6.
199a. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947, 437.
200. IAR, 1944, II, 180-1; Roy's press statement, ibid, 181; CWG, LXXVIII, 85,89; Pyarelal, op cit., I, 89.
201. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, 124; see also fn. 170 and TOP, V, 29,30,309-10.
202. P.C. Joshi, For the Final Bid for Power!, Bombay, 10-11 (this pamphlet appeared towards the end of 1945 or early in 1946).
203. CWG, LXXVIII, 400 -- emphasis added; Birla, Bapu, IV, 333.
204. SWN, XIII, 457.