The post-war upheaval, apprehended by the raj and Congress leaders, began almost immediately after the end of the war. On 21 to 23 November 1945, Calcutta witnessed the first outburst of the pent-up fury of the people. The immediate cause of it was the firing on a procession of students along an important thoroughfare of the city -- Dharamtala Street, now Lenin Sarani -- demanding the release of INA prisoners. The British had brought back to India captured officers and soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA), which Subhas Bose had organized in Malaya and Singapore. The colonial rulers staged the trials of three officers of the Army -- Shah Nawaz Khan, P.K. Sahgal and G.S. Dhillon. (We shall soon return to this subject). The procession of the students in Calcutta was stopped and fired upon. A student and another young man became martyrs and many were wounded. That set Calcutta ablaze. All communal considerations were forgotten; the united people, undaunted by armoured cars and other military paraphernalia, fought with whatever they could lay their hands on. Hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike; trains were stopped; barricades were set up and street battles took place -- people fighting with primitive weapons against the heavily-armed forces of the raj. Police and military vehicles were burnt down -- about 150 of them. According to official estimates, 33 persons including an American were killed and 200 civilians, many policemen, British and American soldiers were wounded.(20)
When the news spread, the whole of Bengal was surcharged with bitter anti-imperialist feeling. Anti-imperialist processions, meetings and other demonstrations were held all over Bengal.
Describing the mood of the people, Governor Casey wrote:
"Both in North and South Calcutta a feature of the disturbances...was that the crowds when fired on largely stood their ground or at most only receded a little, to return again to the attack."
There was a revolutionary solidarity among the people. On 27 November, Wavell informed the Secretary of State :
"Casey was impressed by the very strong anti-British feeling behind the whole demonstration [in Calcutta and Howrah] and considers the whole situation still very explosive and dangerous."(21)
Gandhi immediately came to Calcutta and had a series of interviews with Casey. Gandhi assured the governor that "our future long term relations would be good"; that he did not want any "public enquiry...into recent disturbances"; that he would do his utmost in bringing about a peaceful solution of India's constitutional problem; that "he was trying to reduce temperature"; that he was lulling the people into the belief that "India was going to get her freedom out all right" and asking them to "work on that assumption and on no other". Gandhi also met Wavell who too had rushed to Calcutta and assured him that "he was trying to get the tone [of the Congress leaders' electioneering speeches] lowered".(22)
Gandhi's emissary, Sudhir Ghosh, also saw Casey and said to him that the Congress believed that there could be no agreed solution to the Indian problem and wanted the British to hand over control to the Congress.(23) Nehru, Patel and Azad also had their shares of interview with Casey. The Working Committee, meeting in Calcutta early in December, adopted a resolution, drafted by Gandhi, which affirmed
"for the guidance of all concerned that the policy of non-violence adopted in 1920 by the Congress continued unabated and that such non-violence does not include burning of public property, cutting of the telegraph wires, derailing the trains and intimidation".
While eulogising the patriotism, sacrifice, etc., of the INA men in another resolution, the Working Committee disapproved of the methods they had adopted.
The lesson of the November upsurge went home to the British imperialists. They immediately changed their policy regarding the trials of INA officers and soldiers. Instead of court-martialling at least 200 to 300 of them and executing 40 to 50 prisoners, as previously planned, they decided to try a few of them, not on the charge of "waging war against the King", but on the charge of "brutality and murder".(24) The sentences of imprisonment already passed on Shah Nawaz and others were remitted.
Wavell and Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief, noted with satisfaction that the election speeches and propaganda of the Congress leaders had "become more sober", that Gandhi had issued instructions for the preservation of non-violence and that Birla had "told the Hindustan Times to lower its tone".(25)
Even before the November upheaval in Calcutta, Nehru had been emphasizing "the necessity of maintaining a peaceful atmosphere in the country while this [the INA] trial lasts". Before and after the upheaval, Nehru went on telling the people that "The British are packing up", that the task of winning independence "has been almost accomplished because in the present day world the British empire has ceased to exist". In his speeches and statements he decried "sporadic violence" and expatiated on "the folly of disorder and violence". He advised students not "to take suddenly the reins of the nation in their own hands" (as they had done in November) but to "leave political leadership to those...qualified to lead". They were asked to forget British rule and think how "to build up the future India", etc. A superb actor on India's political stage, he did his "utmost to avoid conflict and restrain the hotheads", as he pledged himself to do in his letter of 3 December 1945 to Cripps.(26) Wavell noted that "Indian business magnates...are anxious for a solution without conflict and disorder".(27)
Ignoring the Congress leaders' sermons, Calcutta erupted again from 11 to 13 February 1946. The occasion was a protest demonstration by students against the sentence of rigorous imprisonment for 7 years passed on Abdul Rashid of the INA. The city was paralysed by a general strike; jute mills in Calcutta's suburbs remained closed for two days; suburban train services stopped; people fought bitter street battles with the armed police and the army units riding armoured cars. A marked feature, like that in November, was strong solidarity among Hindus and Muslims who together directed their attacks against Europeans. The flare-up reached greater heights than that in November. According to official statistics, 84 persons became martyrs and 300 injured. As in November, the anti-imperialist wave in Calcutta and the suburbs sent ripples throughout Bengal. The Congress leaders like Azad, Nehru and Patel admonished the people and asked them to go back to their homes and leave it to them to bring freedom and prosperity to the people. Bands of Congress, League and Communist volunteers jointly moved about and helped in restoring order.
Waves of anti-imperialist struggle rose one after another in different parts of India and lashed at the regime of the imperialists. What was lacking was a revolutionary party to co-ordinate, develop and lead them. The most spectacular and most significant among them was the uprising in Bombay which began on 18 February 1946. The ratings of the Royal Indian Navy rose in revolt first in Bombay and then in Karachi, Calcutta and Madras. The rebel sailors who had various grievances -- bad food, racial discrimination, insults meted out by British officers, and so on -- were also inspired by the deeds of Subhas and the example of the INA. In its report the RIN Enquiry Commission observed:
"Politics and political influence had a very great effect in unsettling men's loyalty and in preparing the ground for the mutiny and in the prolongation and spread of the mutiny after it had started. The glorification of the INA had undoubtedly a most unsettling effect on the morale of the men of the services."(28)
By 22 February 1946 the rebel sailors were in control of about 22 vessels in Bombay, including the flagship of the British Vice-Admiral. A total of 78 ships of the Royal Indian Navy, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 ratings were involved in the struggle. Over a thousand men in the Royal Indian Air Force camps in Bombay came out on a sympathy strike. When ordered, Indian soldiers refused to fire on the R.I.N. ratings in Bombay as well as in Karachi. And Bombay's workers and youth, irrespective of the community to which they belonged, stood by the heroic men of the navy, carried food to them, erected barricades and fought pitched battles with armed policemen and several British battalions equipped with tanks and armoured cars. On 22 February, Bombay observed a general strike in the teeth of bitter opposition from big Congress and Muslim League leaders -- Sardar Patel, Jinnah, Chundrigar, S.K. Patil and others. Patel had issued statements asking the people not to go on strike and advising the ratings to surrender to the authorities, while assuring them that they would see to it that there was no victimization. Azad, too, issued a similar statement. The president of the Bombay Congress, S.K. Patil, had secret confabulations with Bombay governor John Colville, and the Congress and League placed "volunteers" at the service of the raj "to assist the police" to fight the people.(29)
Ignoring the Patels and Patils and Chundrigars, the entire working class of Bombay came out at the call of the Naval Central Strike Committee, which was supported by the CPI, and for two days there were pitched battles on the city's streets, in which, according to official estimates, there were about 1500 casualties, including more than 200 dead. A British officer described how "armed patrols in full battle order moved about the streets in lorries, firing at random into crowded streets and moved on before anyone could even pick up a stone".(30) What is significant is that the wall that had been sedulously erected by the raj to separate the armed services from the people crumbled down.
The brave men of the navy refused to be cowed by any threat -- not even the threat of Admiral Godfrey (who had flown in bombers) to sink the navy. They appealed to political parties to lead them and promised to place the navy at their disposal. No party, not even the CPI, came forward to give them leadership. On the other hand, besides the Congress leaders, Jinnah also asked them to surrender.
Ultimately, on 23 February, the Strike Committee surrendered, stating that they were surrendering not to the British but to the Congress and the League. Their last message to the people said: "For the first time the blood of the men in the services and the people flowed together in a common cause."(31) After the surrender, the Congress leaders like Patel and Azad promptly forgot, as usual, the promise to see that "no disciplinary action" was taken against the navymen. Many of them -- two thousand or more -- were arrested and kept in detention camps; about five hundred were sentenced to prison terms to serve as common criminals.(32) The navymen were not reinstated, neither by the British nor by the Congress leaders in the post-colonial period.
At a mass meeting held in Bombay on 26 February, Patel as well as Nehru condemned "the mass violence in Bombay", that is, the actions of the navymen and workers who had dared to raise the banner of anti-imperialist revolt. Addressing the press next day, Nehru thundered :
"The R.I.N. Central Strike Committee had no business to issue such an appeal [to the city of Bombay to observe a sympathy strike]. I will not tolerate this kind of thing."(33)
Theirs was a totalitarian claim to the leadership of the people, an infringement of which was intolerable.
Gandhi condemned the rebels for their "thoughtless orgy of violence" in very strong language. To him the "combination between Hindus and Muslims and others for the purpose of violent action is unholy..." He "would rather perish in the flames" than see India delivered over to "the rabble". No doubt, it was "unholy" for the Hindus and Muslims to unite and rise against colonial rule and he went on denouncing those who disbelieved in British professions that they would grant freedom to India. Though violent revolt of a united people was a `sin', Gandhi looked forward to communal holocausts, to "internecine warfare" between the Hindus and the Muslims, in which a few lakhs would be killed as the only solution to India's problems. He would expect "from Congress in the event of civil war...that they fight decently and take one tooth for one tooth..."(34)
And Nehru decried revolutionary violence, which, according to him, had been effective in the 18th century but was quite futile after the new inventions of war.(35)
Besides the navy, Indian air force units also mutinied in some places, though on a minor scale. And workers were on the march everywhere despite the opposition of Congress and League leaders. The number of workers who went on strike in 1946 was 1,961,984 and in 1947, 1,840,784. There was an unprecedented upsurge of anti-imperialist struggle, in which workers, peasants, students, other youths, and employees, even sections of the Indian army, air force and police and lower rungs of the bureaucracy took part, and armed confrontations were frequent. In his diary Wavell noted under the date 19 February 1946 what he was offered as one day's fare:
"A day of alarms but not excursions. I saw Porter,(36) all for capitulation to the INA; Bewoor(37) about a postal strike; Carr(38) about RIAF mutiny; Griffin(39) and Conran-Smith(40) about a railway strike; and finally the C-in-C, most gloomy of all about the RIN mutiny at Bombay and the INA trials; What a cheerful day -- prospect or reality of three mutinies and two strikes!"(41)
The fire of anti-imperialist struggle was not confined to cities and towns ; it spread to some remote rural areas. In Telangana in the Hyderabad state -- Telangana now a part of Andhra Pradesh -- started a peasant struggle, which soon developed into a liberation struggle. There emerged a peasant army and liberated areas. All these struggles showed that the Congress and Muslim League leaders were on the same side of the barricade as the raj.
In his letter to King George VI, dated 22 March 1946, the Viceroy, referring to the revolts in India, wrote : "It is a sorry tale of misfortune and of folly. Perhaps the best way to look at it is that India is in the birth-pangs of a new order."(42)
Birla's Eastern Economist was satisfied with the role of the Congress leaders:
"In fact whenever they spoke, it was to denounce rebellion, mutiny, indiscipline. It was Sardar Patel's intervention that brought RIN mutiny to an end. Gandhiji's statement on the same brought out for the first time in recent history a chorus of unstinted praise from every section of the British press. Maulana Azad denounced unequivocally the recurring disturbances at Calcutta....In fact the fear was and is that if the Government failed to accomplish a negotiated transfer of power, even the Congress would not be able to check the deluge that would follow. India would cease to be a politically stable area and this would knock out the international foundations of the British Empire."(43)
The Birla organ's fear of a likely deluge of mass struggles sweeping away all Congress resistance and its solicitude for the international foundations of the British empire are worth noting.
Despite the shootings and other repressive measures, the communal tension that was steadily being built up, and all other efforts of the Congress and League fire-fighters, flames of struggle -- especially industrial strikes which often turned political -- continued to leap up in different parts of India.
Towards the end of March 1946, Turnbull, Secretary to the Cabinet Mission that came to India in that month, wrote :
"The only hope is that the big boys of Congress and League are said to be much alarmed lest their followers break loose and of Russia."(44)
Thanks to "the big boys of Congress and League" and to the policies of the non-Marxist, non-revolutionary CPI leadership, what emerged was a mockery of a new order.
As captured INA soldiers were brought home by the British, who prepared for their court-martials on the charge of waging war against the King-Emperor, tales of Subhas having founded the INA in South-East Asia and a free Indian government in Singapore, of having planted the flag of Indian freedom, though under the Japanese auspices, on the Andamans, and of the INA having fought its way into North-East India and having unfurled the flag of Indian independence in Kohima, thrilled the people and captured their imagination. Subhas's call "On to Delhi" found an echo in the hearts of the people and the greeting "Jai Hind" (Victory to India) he introduced resounded throughout India. As Palme Dutt wrote, the example of the INA and "the subsequent trials of the INA leaders kindled to white heat the flame of militant patriotism and the conception of the armed conquest of power in place of the old non-violent struggles".(45) The INA, though defeated, shook the loyalty of the Indian armed forces to the government and brought about a transformation in the outlook of a large section of them.
Another feature which appealed to all Indians was its truly united, non-communal character.
As we have seen, the INA issue acted like a catalyst in changing an apparently quiescent India into a revolutionary India, with one condition for a successful revolution absent -- a party with a revolutionary line.
To exploit the INA issue, the Congress leaders immediately began "making great play in support of the INA, demanding their unconditional release and sometimes lauding them as heroes", as Wavell said.(46) They formed an INA Defence Committee with leading legal and political personalities and with Asaf Ali as convener. For dramatic effect Nehru himself donned the barrister's robe.
But their private stand was quite different. On 18 October 1945 Asaf Ali had quite a long interview with one Captain Hari Badhwar, a report of which was sent to New Delhi and to the Secretary of State. Asaf Ali said that it was the "inflamed feeling" among the people on the INA issue that "forced Congress to take the line it did", that "if Congress was in power it would have no hesitation in removing all INA men from the Services and even in putting some of them on trial..." Asaf Ali added "that if Government now postponed trial Congress would be prepared to put leaders on trial when in power. When asked if Congress leaders would announce this officially, he said that they could not do so though there was no objection to H.E. the C-in-C being informed."
Some Congressmen including Dr Khan Sahib, the Congress premier of the NWFP, said to the governor of the province, G. Cunningham:
"If only they [the INA leaders] had been shot in Rangoon or Singapore, everyone would be pleased."(47)
When the Congress assumed office in Bombay, the ministry banned ex-INA men even from the police. So did the UP ministry at the instance of Nehru.(48)
Though the Congress leaders would not recruit ex-INA men in the police or the army, they, as we shall see, besides retaining British governors and others, offered better emoluments to British soldiers to induce them to serve in the army of `free' India.
When Nehru visited Malaya in March 1946 with all help extended to him by the Indian government and was offered by Lord Mountbatten, the head of the British Military Administration in Malaya, every facility including the use of cars, an aeroplane, the assistance of the Chief of Staff of the Malay Command and another officer whenever required, he cancelled at Mountbatten's request a public function at which he was to place a wreath on the memorial of dead INA men. He was impressed by the activities of the INA, which gave even the poorest Indians in Malaya a sense of pride and discipline.(49)
Fearing that INA trials would create public excitement, that is, rouse intense anti-imperialist feeling, Nehru advised Commander-in-Chief Auchinleck to drop all trials. Giving him "a glimpse into my own mind", he confided that his earlier attitude had been influenced partly by his "apprehension" about "the inevitable consequences in India" of the court-martial. He stated:
"Within a few weeks the story of the INA had percolated to the remotest villages in India.... The widespread popular enthusiasm was surprising enough, but even more surprising was a similar reaction of a very large number of regular Indian army officers and men."
Nehru gently reminded Auchinleck of this aspect of the question though he agreed with him that "it is a dangerous and risky business to break the discipline of an army", even that of a colonial power.
During a "longish talk about the INA" with Wavell on 13 May 1946, Nehru said that "they had gone too far in their glorification of the INA, and the tendency was now swinging the other way".(50)
Until at least the end of 1946 (early in September 1946, Nehru had formed the Interim Government at the centre), 35,000 INA officers and men were still in prison. Because "of the universal expression of public opinion throughout the country", a resolution recommending the immediate release of all INA prisoners and other political prisoners was discussed in the Central Assembly and would have been unanimously passed. But the Nehrus got it postponed "because of the Commander-in-Chief's wishes". The resolution was moved again on 18 February 1947. Nehru wanted to respect the wishes of the C-in-C, who was opposed to release, but he was afraid that the result of ignoring the demand of the people was "bound to lead to public agitation and possible trouble" and to agitate the minds of the Indian army officers and men. In a note prepared for the cabinet, he made "it clear that there is no question before us of reinstatement of the INA personnel in the defence services". Though the entire country demanded the release of the INA prisoners, though the elected members, whether Hindus, Muslims or others, wanted their release, they continued to languish in detention camps because of the objection of the British Commander-in-Chief. Before another resolution would be moved in the Assembly in April 1947, Nehru sought Viceroy Mountbatten's instructions.(51)
The INA issue, like `Quit India', was used by the Congress leaders as a trump card during the elections of 1945-6.(52)
Another issue on which the Congress leaders were eloquent during the elections was the demand for inquiry into atrocities on the people committed by the minions of law and order during the `Quit India' movement. Nehru thundered:
"There is much talk about war criminals. The time is not far off when we shall prepare our list of anti-national criminals, those who mercilessly crushed the spirit of our patriots, who opened fire on them.... We shall never forget them."
At the Meerut session of the Congress in November 1946, Nehru declared that "those who were responsible for the atrocities committed on the people must not escape punishment."
But the reality was different from the rhetoric tuned to the mood of the people. When the Congress leaders assumed office, they, far from trying the "anti-national criminals", depended on them for the same reasons as the British had done, and promoted many of them to higher posts. True to their character, Patel took strong exception to an exhibition showing pictures of police atrocities committed in 1942, held in Banaras, on the ground that it was likely to affect the morale of the police force and agitate the public mind against the services.(53)
As noted before, the resolution, known as the `Pakistan' resolution, adopted by the Muslim League in March 1940, demanded the formation of independent and sovereign states in the north-west and the north-east of India where the Muslims were in a majority. The resolution was left deliberately vague. Addressing the Muslim League Working Committee meeting held between 24 and 26 April 1943, Jinnah advised its members to "discourage anything that will create dissensions in the Muslim camp. For instance, discussions or determination of fundamental rights for citizens in Pakistan, or production of a cut and dried scheme for Pakistan must create controversies and differences of opinion and should, therefore, be avoided for the present."(53a) If the concept of Pakistan was made clear, the Muslims, at least of Bengal and Sind, would not have responded as enthusiastically as they did to the call for founding Pakistan. Many Muslim leaders like Fazlul Huq, who moved the `Pakistan' resolution in Lahore, and Abul Hashim, general secretary of the Bengal Provincial League from 1943, believed that the resolution envisaged the formation of a number of independent Muslim-majority states and hoped that Bengal would be one such state. But after the League had swept the polls in 1945-6 elections, a newly-elected League legislators' convention was held in New Delhi from 7 to 10 April 1946 and the resolution was interpreted to mean the creation not of independent and sovereign states but a single unitary state comprising Punjab, Sind, the NWFP and Baluchistan in the north-west and Bengal and Assam in the east. A resolution to that effect was adopted amidst protests from Abul Hashim and others. In the years between 1940 and 1946, the Muslim League came under the dominant influence of the big Muslim compradors like the Ispahani brothers, Dawood, Haroon and the like -- the Muslim counterparts of the Birlas, Tatas, Sarabhais, etc. They demanded a unitary state with a strong centre, where they could thrive by using the state machinery, untrammelled by competition with the more powerful Marwari, Gujarati and Parsi business magnates.(54)
Pakistan was the demand of the big Muslim compradors, backed by big Muslim landlords and the upper stratum of the Muslim professional classes, and not of the Muslim masses, though the demand for separation caught the imagination of the Muslims within a few brief years because of the refusal of the Congress to dispel their suspicion of the great Hindu majority, rather because of the Congress leaders' pursuit of a monopoly of whatever power the British would concede, and because of the League's cry of `Islam in danger'. It was their own `emancipation' that the Muslim business magnates were seeking -- not the emancipation of the Muslim masses, about forty million (or 45 per cent) of whom would have to remain outside the promised land, if it emerged. The fate of the Muslim "hewers of wood and drawers of water" was no different from that of their Hindu counterparts. The British raj, too, which at first encouraged the idea of Pakistan,(55) could hardly be accused of having any desire to liberate the Muslim masses. By raising the slogan of `Islam in danger' and indulging in rhetoric about the emancipation of the Muslim masses from Hindu domination, the League leaders could rally the Muslim masses behind their demand in semi-feudal conditions when religious obscurantism prevailed and when there existed no revolutionary party, just as the Congress and Akali leaders could sway their co-religionists. After the emergence of Pakistan, the Pakistan state machinery has minted big Muslim industrialists whom Gustav Papanek calls "robber barons" out of those who were mainly merchants in undivided India(56), while the lot of the Muslim masses has hardly improved.
On 24 October 1945, Wavell wrote to Pethick-Lawrence:
"The whole question of Central control over industry in India is bound up with the political problem, and quite apart from the natural desire of all Provinces to have a fairly free hand in developing their own industries, the Muslims in the Pakistan Provinces believe that their industrial development may be strangled by a Hindu centre."(57)
When asked by Bengal governor Casey "if the Muslim League was still absolutely intent on Pakistan and nothing else", M.A.H. Ispahani, the head of a big firm based in Calcutta and member of the League Working Committee, said that he
"regarded the problem as an economic one -- in that it was essential for the Muslims to get opportunities for self-advancement, administratively and otherwise.... He said that the present leaders of the Congress were banias -- small-minded merchants with whom it was impossible to get along -- they're all take and no give.... He said that it was impossible for the Muslims to achieve economic emancipation in the hands of the Hindus."
It is obvious whose "self-advancement" and "economic emancipation" Ispahani was talking about. In August 1946, the League's general secretary Liaquat Ali told Sir A. Waugh, the member of the Viceroy's Council for Industries and Supplies, that "so long as Marwaris and other Hindu capitalists had a money stranglehold anywhere in India, Muslims could never improve their lot".(58)
As Ispahani said, "Business and industry were overwhelmingly the monopoly of the Hindu bania and the British merchant and industrialist." In his article he presented a somewhat detailed account of the comparative weakness of the Muslim businessmen.(59)
As noted before, Jinnah entrusted Ispahani and Abdur Rahman Siddiqi, both non-Bengali businessmen of Calcutta, with the task of organizing the League in Bengal. In Bengal, Ispahani was the most trusted man of Jinnah as G.D.Birla was of Gandhi. The Muslim business magnates financed the League, helped Jinnah to convert Dawn, a League weekly, into a daily and themselves brought out pro-League dailies like Morning News and The Star of India. Some of them served on the League's Working Committee and Council. Jinnah encouraged them to build new industrial enterprises and set up the Federation of Muslim Chambers of Commerce and Industry in 1944.(60) The League had set up its own Planning Committee in 1943.
As we have seen, Birla had been putting pressure on Gandhi at least since January 1938 to agree to partition of India on a religious basis and consequent dismemberment of Bengal and Punjab. Later, in a self-congratulatory vein, he wrote:
"I somehow or other not only believed in the inevitability of Partition but always considered this as a good way out of our difficulties."(61)
As the Birlas aspired to self-government within the empire through negotiations and as there were three parties to a settlement, they thought it prudent to agree to an India minus certain parts to expedite the settlement. By 1945 the Tatas also seemed to have been anxious for an early settlement of the constitutional problem on the basis of an agreement on the Pakistan issue. In 1945 Homi Mody and John Matthai, both senior directors of the Tatas, served as members of a three-member sub-committee of the Sapru Committee appointed by the Non-Party Leaders' Conference, and submitted a memorandum declaring the proposed Pakistan state as viable. Besides, in a note of dissent appended to the Sapru Committee's report, they expressed the view that if the Muslims wanted separation, it should not be deplored.(62)
A myth has been spread that Gandhi was opposed to partition to the very end and that Nehru, Patel and other leaders reluctantly agreed to it after the holocausts of late 1946 and after the experience of the Interim Government in late 1946 and early 1947 had convinced them of the impossibility of working with the Muslim League.(63) We have already seen that such views are in blatant contradiction with facts. Gandhi, as noted before, agreed in principle to partition immediately after the demand had been raised; he blessed the Rajagopalachari formula in early 1943 and had meetings with Jinnah in September 1944 recognizing the principle of partition on a religious basis. In reply to Birla's letter arguing in favour of partition, Gandhi's secretary, Mahadev wrote on 16 July 1942 :
"Now about your letter.... Bapu has given it careful attention.... The question is not of Pakistan or separation as such, but of the real content of these conception [sic]."(64)
Gandhi appears to have had hardly any objection to the partition of India on a religious basis: his concern was about the "content", that is, areas which might be claimed for inclusion in Pakistan.
But on this issue of Pakistan Gandhi was not consistent. He sometimes considered it a "sin" and vowed bitter opposition to it. It seems that his attitude to Pakistan varied according to the political situation in the country.
We have also seen that the Congress Working Committee virtually accepted partition in a resolution rejecting the Cripps proposals in 1942 and did not rule out Pakistan during their negotiations with Cripps.(64a) To cut a long story short, we may refer to Nehru's letter to Cripps, dated 27 January 1946, in which he affirmed that the British Government "cannot force Pakistan on India, in the form demanded by Jinnah, for that certainly will lead to civil war.... Thus the crux of the Pakistan issue is this: A Pakistan consisting of only part of Punjab and part of Bengal, or no separation at all."(65) This became the burden of the speeches and statements of the Congress leaders. Till almost the end, they, especially Gandhi, put maximum pressure on the raj to recognize them as its sole heir in an undivided India. But if their claim was not conceded, Bengal and Punjab, like real estate with human chattels, must be divided between the rival claimants. The wishes of the people of Bengal (then more than sixty million -- about seventy million if Bengali-speaking people in the contiguous districts of Bihar and Assam were counted) and of the people of Punjab (about thirty million) were worth no consideration. For the Congress leaders the question of referendum on this issue did not arise. More of it later.