As the end of the war came near, the British imperialists as well as the Indian leaders and big bourgeois felt afraid of a post-war upheaval and thought of devising means to combat the menace.
In September 1943, Viceroy-designate Wavell and most members of the Indo-Burma Committee of the British War Cabinet were keen on a negotiated settlement with the Indian leaders, for "our main aim must be to keep India within the Commonwealth". Their move fell through because of Churchill's opposition. Apprehending a likely "flare-up" in India after the war Wavell complained at a governors' meeting that the British government did not understand the Indian problem as it had failed to understand the Egyptian problem before World War I. To forestall mass struggles after the war he tried to convince Churchill of the immediate need for opening negotiations with Indian leaders and wrote to him on 24 October 1944:
"If we can secure India as a friendly partner in the British Commonwealth our predominant influence in these countries [Burma, Malaya, etc.] will, I think, be assured: with a lost and hostile India, we are likely to be reduced in the East to the position of commercial bag-men."(1)
As noted before, Gandhi and the Congress leaders who were outside prison were also hungry for co-operation. The Congress leaders' appraisal of the post-war situation was not different from that of Wavell. Early in January 1945, Bhulabhai Desai, leader of the Congress party in the Central Assembly, pleaded with Wavell that "the continuation of the present situation was more likely than not to lead to an upheaval".(2) Afraid of their own people and aware that the interests of the classes they represented were tied to British imperial interests, they sought immediate understanding with the raj to face the likely post-war upsurge of struggles of the people, who had been dragged down to the lowest depths of want and misery.
In mid-November 1944, with Gandhi's blessings, Bhulabhai Desai entered into an agreement with Liaquat Ali Khan, known as the Desai-Liaquat Pact, and approached the Viceroy for the formation of an interim government on the basis of Congress-League parity, which would "function within the framework of the existing Government of India Act". If formed, it would get the withdrawal of Section 93 from the former Congress provinces, where governments would be constituted on the lines of a coalition -- a League proposal which had been rejected by the Gandhis and Nehrus in 1937 and subsequent years. Wavell informed the Secretary of State that "Desai's proposals fit in with those I submitted months ago..."(3) When Jinnah rejected the agreement and it was criticized by other Congress leaders, Gandhi denied giving his support to it. M.C. Setalvad, a judge of the Bombay High Court, wrote that "Bhulabhai Desai entered into the Pact with the full knowledge, concurrence and encouragement of Gandhi..."(4) During Desai's negotiations with Wavell, Birla saw the Viceroy's private secretary and as Wavell wired to Amery, Birla "was probably sent by Gandhi" and "Birla obviously thought that Coalition Government at [the ] centre under present constitution [was] by no means impossible. He said he was satisfied that Dominion status should be the aim and not repeat not complete independence. He thought Gandhi was now of the same opinion."(5)
A Congress ministry was formed in the NWFP in March 1945, before the Congress Working Committee members were released, and with Congress support a new ministry with the Leaguer, Mohammad Saadulla, as Premier was formed in Assam in the same month.
At the end of the war in Europe, Wavell released the members of the Working Committee and convened a conference at Simla in June-July 1945. As V.P. Menon wrote, the Congress came in for co-operation without any conditions.(6) The Congress leaders were anxious to join the Viceroy's Council "on the basis that they would whole-heartedly co-operate in supporting and carrying through the war against Japan to its victorious conclusion". (The Congress leaders', including Gandhi's, faith in the creed of non-violence was remarkably flexible.) Nehru felt overjoyed: "We feel", he said, "we must succeed at Simla....I am very hopeful."(7)
Wavell asked the Congress and the League to suggest names of members of the reconstituted Council. The panel submitted by the Congress included the name of Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, Hindu Mahasabha president. The Simla Conference foundered on the rock of the League's claim to nominate all the Muslim members of the Council. But so far as the British imperialists were concerned, it did not fail. It cast the Congress leaders in the role of accomplices who would work shoulder to shoulder with the raj to put out the flames of anti-imperialist struggle.
After the Simla conference was over, Wavell
"assured them [Gandhi and Azad] that even if a final constitutional settlement failed to materialize, he would see to it that an interim Government is formed at the centre out of the elements prepared to co-operate".
He wanted the Congress leaders to "see to it that a peaceful atmosphere is preserved in the country".
The Congress president wrote to him:
"the contacts established between the Congress and the Government had largely allayed past bitterness, and marked the beginning of a new chapter of confidence and goodwill."
Nehru said : "In spite of our sincere efforts, we have not succeeded but there is no ground for despondency and despair." He hoped : "I do not know how things will shape themselves. The Viceroy may take some further step, as he hinted..."(8)
The Congress leaders felt a surge of "confidence and goodwill" for the raj while the wounds inflicted by it on the people were still fresh.
The British Labour Party won the general elections in July and this was hailed by Birla's Hindustan Times, the unofficial Congress organ, as "the downfall of India's oppressors". On assuming office the Labour Party announced elections to central and provincial legislative assemblies in India. Summing up the views of the provincial governors at their conference early in August, Wavell said: "We should endeavour to retain the initiative and to divert political energy into legitimate channels." Election seemed the first step.(9)
Close co-operation between the raj and Indian big bourgeois and Congress leaders had already started. Sir Ardeshir Dalal, one of the Tata directors and an author of the Bombay Plan, so much lauded by Nehru, had been appointed a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in charge of planning and development early in June 1944. In mid-May 1945 the government arranged the visit of a delegation of Indian industrialists led by Birla and J.R.D. Tata to Britain and the USA for exploring chances of collaboration with the British and US monopoly capital. The raj regularly invited discussions with Congress leaders on constitutional questions, the future administrative set-up, "a scheme of army reorganization" and other matters like education, industry and planning. For instance, Nehru was being consulted on constitutional issues and army reorganization; Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Zakir Hussain, intimately associated with the Congress leaders, went to England "on some education committee of which Sargent was chairman". "Except in politics", wrote Guy Wint, "British-Indian rapprochement is making very helpful progress."(10)
Beset with sharp contradictions, the British imperialists sought to forge a new kind of relationship with India, under which their economic, political and strategic interests would remain secure. Their only hope lay in adjusting their relations with the classes -- the classes that were dependent on them for their growth and development -- and in giving them the reins of administration while exercising control from behind. As R.J. Moore observes,
"Labour favoured an early withdrawal not only because the party was pledged to it, but because it would best serve Britain's own interests. The co-operation of Congress...seemed necessary to the preservation of the now uncertain internal order and the security of the Indian Ocean area.... The best security for commercial and financial interests lay in an orderly transfer and the continuation of the collaborative arrangements that had prospered before and during the war (when leading magnates were associated with government)."(11)
British imperialism emerged victorious out of World War II but far weaker economically, politically and militarily than US imperialism and the erstwhile Soviet Union. Much of its industry was shattered and its capital investments in Canada and the USA were taken over by the latter. For its post-war reconstruction it was dependent on US aid and loan-capital.
On the other hand, World War II was the `Best of Wars' for US monopoly capital. In his The Struggle for the World, published in 1947, James Burnham wrote of "an American Empire which will be, if not literally worldwide in formal boundaries, capable of exercising decisive world control. Nothing less than this can be the positive or offensive phase of a national United States policy." He added: "There is already an American empire, greatly expanded during these past years."(12) An article and map based on Burnham's book were carried by Life, Henry Luce's journal.
The contradiction between British and US imperialism became acute in the post-war years. Under the Anglo-US Financial Agreement of December 1945 the USA extended a loan to Britain to assist in her post-war reconstruction on condition that Britain would end by mid-1947 the "Empire dollar pool" and eventually the system of Imperial preferences. The US demand for liquidation of Britain's direct rule in India became insistent.(13) The USA was "making sheep's eyes" not only at vital British oil reserves in the Middle East, as Churchill insinuated, but also at India, "the jewel in the crown of the British Empire". The enlightened section of the British imperialists -- the Labourites -- realized that the post-war situation would not permit them to maintain the old imperial structure of domination. With the change in the situation, relations with the colonies had to be restructured, if the British strategic and economic interests were to be defended against the mounting offensives not only of the people of India but of the USA as well as the growing world-wide forces of national liberation and socialism.
Like the spectre of the USA's `Manifest Destiny', the spectre of Communism also was haunting the raj, as it haunted all other imperialists and reactionaries. The emergence of the Soviet Union with its power and glory greatly enhanced, the collapse of different reactionary regimes in Eastern Europe, the heroic advance of the People's Liberation Army and expansion of Red bases in China, and the armed national liberation struggles in Indo-China and Indonesia were contributing to the revolutionary ferment in India and accelerating the change in her political climate. India was loud with protests against the despatch of Indian troops by the raj to defeat the national liberation wars in Indo-China and Indonesia and restore them to the old colonial masters -- the French and the Dutch respectively. At the San Francisco Conference in 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov declared:
"We have at this conference an Indian delegation, but India is not an independent state. We all know that the time will come when the voice of independent India will be heard too."
Like the imperialists, Indian reactionaries too were worried. In a note enclosed with his letter of 20 August 1945 to the Secretary of State, Shiva Rao warned:
"the influence of the communist element in India, particularly in the Trade Unions, has been growing since 1941. Russia has expressed active interest in her independence (through Molotov at San Francisco) and in that of all colonial areas."(14)
As Gary Hess writes,
"The spectre of communist influence, seemingly certain to increase as long as the British held onto power, added another compelling reason for the United States to encourage a quick and orderly withdrawal."
At the cabinet meeting on 4 April 1945, Churchill "spoke of the difficult and unfriendly attitude of Russia since the Yalta conference; of the mighty military power of the USA; and hence the need for Empire unity".(15)
Another contradiction which beset British imperialism was with its own people. With the end of the war the British youth became sick of it and felt no inclination to serve in distant lands and shed their blood for the profit and power of their capitalists. Those who had joined the armed forces demanded speedy demobilization and mutinied in some places to realize their demand. The British rulers were often heard to bewail the shortage of manpower to preserve the empire.
But of all the contradictions with which British imperialism was faced in the immediate post-war years, its contradiction with the Indian people was, no doubt, the principal one. In the winter months of 1945-6, India, as Penderel Moon said, was on the "Edge of a Volcano".
In the meantime, to refurbish their own image, which had been tarnished by the repudiation of all responsibility for the `Quit India' movement, Gandhi's condemnation of underground activities and his instruction to underground workers to surrender,(16) Nehru, Patel and some others, especially Nehru, did some sabre-rattling during the election campaign. They claimed full credit for the August rebellion; predicted the end of British rule within a short time; denied the possibility of a compromise with the League; and demanded investigations into the atrocities committed by the minions of law and order during the struggle and their punishment. The Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, dismissed these as part of electioneering. Birla hastened to assure Pethick-Lawrence and Stafford Cripps that there "is no political leader including Jawaharlal who wants to see any crisis or violence" and that "everyone is anxious for settlement". He explained that "even leaders are often led".(17)
The Congress election manifesto was drafted to sound as progressive as possible. For the first time the Congress promised in the election manifesto for the provincial assembly elections to abolish zamindari but assured the zamindars that they would be compensated. It stated that the future constitution should be a federal one with autonomy for its constituent units. The election campaign was fought by the Congress on the issue of Indian unity and by the Muslim League on the issue of Pakistan and its sole right to represent the Muslims.
In the elections to the Central Assembly the Congress won an overwhelming majority of general (that is Hindu) seats: all Hindu Mahasabha candidates were routed. Patel had wanted uncontested election of Hindu Mahasabha president Shyamaprasad Mukherji,(18) but the Bengal Congress, then dominated by Sarat Bose, put up a candidate against him. Shyamaprasad, for whom the Congress high command had developed affection, could not escape defeat and save his deposit. The Muslim League won all the Muslim seats in the Central Assembly, obtaining 90 per cent of the votes cast.
In the provincial assembly elections, which took place early in 1946, the successes of the Congress and the League were almost equally spectacular. All Hindu Mahasabha candidates were defeated, except Shyamaprasad who won from a pocket constituency. When the Muslim League wave was sweeping through India and Bengal, Fazlul Huq was returned to the Bengal Assembly with five companions of his, defeating the League.
The Congress formed ministries in eight provinces and the League in Bengal and Sind. The leader of the Muslim League Assembly Party in Bengal had proposed the formation of a coalition ministry with the Congress but the Congress high command was opposed to it. Thanks to the Congress high command, Muslim League ministries had functioned in Bengal from 1937 to 1946 with a break for a little over a year. As Abul Hashim, then general secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League said,
"They kept out accredited Hindu leaders from the governments. There were two or three Hindu ministers but they did not represent their community.... We were fully conscious of its inevitable reaction, which ultimately led to the partition of Bengal in August 1947. We decided [in early 1946] to constitute a coalition ministry with the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha. The Congress high command did not agree. They apprehended that if there was a coalition between the Muslim League and the Congress in Bengal, the All India Muslim League would demand similar coalitions in other provinces of India."
It was the Congress leaders' obsessive desire to have a monopoly of power at the Centre and in the Hindu-majority provinces that stood in the way of a settlement with the League -- a settlement which would have averted the `Great Calcutta killing' of mid-August 1946 and later more appalling holocausts, the partition of India and the dismemberment of Bengal and Punjab.
Even after the riots in Calcutta, Noakhali and Bihar in 1946 -- in early November that year -- Muslim League leaders of Bengal met Gandhi at the residence of Suhrawardy, Bengal's prime minister, in Calcutta with the proposal for a coalition government in Bengal. But "Mr Gandhi said that he preferred a one-party government to a coalition government."(18a) Gandhi left for Noakhali on an ostensible mission of restoring communal peace there after blasting all hopes of bringing about communal harmony even at that late hour.
In the Punjab, though the Muslim League party was the biggest single party in the assembly, the Congress formed a coalition with the Akali Party, a party of Sikh communalists, and the Unionist Party, a party dominated by pro-imperialist big landlords of Punjab. This unprincipled alliance was one more instance among countless ones which exposed the hollowness of the Congress leaders' claim that it was their anti-imperialist and anti-feudal crusading zeal that had not allowed them to form coalition with the League in 1937 and after. The Unionist Khizar Hayat Khan, leader of a small minority party, headed the Punjab ministry with the support of the Congress. Before the elections, the Congress had poured funds to get Muslim candidates under different banners elected, but all Congress-supported Muslim candidates in different provinces were defeated.(19)