Simla
& After
By Mr. D. V. GUNDAPPA
What at first sounded as the promise of a new epoch
in the history of India came in the form of a broadcast speech to the people of
this country by His Excellency Lord Wavell, Viceroy and Governor General of
India, on the 14th of June 1945. In the course of that speech, he outlined
“proposals designed to ease the present political situation and to advance
India towards her goal of full self-government.” These proposals he had been
authorized to make by His Majesty’s Government; and they were on the same day
laid before the British Parliament by Mr. L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for
India. The central part of the proposals was–
“The formation of a new Executive Council more
representative of organized political opinion. The proposed new Council would
represent the main communities and would include equal proportions of Caste
Hindus and Muslims. It would work, if formed, under the existing Constitution.
But it would be an entirely Indian Council, except for the Viceroy and the
Commander-in-Chief who would retain his position as War Member. It is also
proposed that the portfolio of External Affairs, which has hitherto been held
on the Viceroy, should be placed in charge of an Indian Member of Council, so
far as the interests of British India are concerned.
Such a new Executive Council will
represent a definite advance on the road to self-government. It will be almost
entirely Indian, and the Finance and Home Members will for the first time be
Indians, while an Indian will also be charged with the management of India’s
Foreign Affairs. Moreover, members will now be selected by the Governor-General
after consultation with political leaders; though their appointment will, of
course, be subject to the approval of His Majesty the King-Emperor.
The Council will work within the framework of the
present constitution; and there can be no question of the Governor-General
agreeing not to exercise his constitutional power of control; but it will, of
course, not be exercised unreasonably.
I should make it clear that the formation of this
interim Government will in no way prejudice the final constitutional
settlement.
The main tasks for this new Executive Council would
be:
First, to prosecute the War against Japan with the
utmost energy till Japan is utterly defeated.
Secondly, to carry on the Government of British India, with all the manifold tasks of post-war development in front of it, until a new permanent constitution can be agreed upon and come into force.
Thirdly, to consider, when the Members of the
Government think it possible, the means by which such agreement can be
achieved. The third task is most important. I want to take it quite clear that
neither I nor His Majesty’s Government have lost sight of the need for a
long-term solution; and that the present proposals are intended to make a
long-term solution easier.
I have considered the best means of forming such a
Council; and have decided to invite the following to Viceregal Lodge to advise
me: -
Those now holding office as Premier in a Provincial
Government; or for Provinces now under Section 93 Government, those who last
held the office of Premier.
The Leader of the Congress Party and the Deputy
Leader of the Muslim League in the Central Assembly; the leader of the Congress
Party and the Muslim League in the Council of State; also the leaders of the
Nationalist Party and the European Group in the Assembly.
Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Jinnah as the recognized leaders
of the two main political parties.
Rao Bahadur N. Siva Raj to represent the Scheduled
Classes.
Master Tara Singh to represent the Sikhs.
Invitations to these gentlemen are being handed to
them today and it is proposed to assemble the Conference on 25th June at Simla
where we shall be cooler than at Delhi.
I should make it clear that these proposals affect
British India only and do not make any alteration in the relations of the
Princes with the Crown Representative.”
Mahatma Gandhi’s immediate reaction was friendly,
notwithstanding a caveat on two points: First, he would be an adviser, but not
a member of the Conference, as he had no locus standi in the Congress.
Second, he would not be a party to the bisection of the Hindu Community into
Caste Hindus and Scheduled Castes. The Viceroy met both points readily (i) by
agreeing to invite Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as President of the Congress to be
its spokesman, and (ii) by explaining that the term “Caste Hindus” was used not
with any offensive intention, but mercy to indicate that “there should be
equality between Muslims and Hindus other than members of Scheduled Castes.”
Mr. Gandhi had also raised the question of India’s independence. To this Lord
Wavell replied, repeating the Secretary of State’s words, as follows: “The
offer of March 1942 stands in its entirety. That offer is based on two main
principles: First, no limit is set to India’s freedom of decide her own
destiny, whether as a free partner in the Commonwealth or even without it.
Second, this can only be achieved under a constitution or constitutions framed
by Indians to which the main elements are consenting parties.”
The country welcomed the Viceroy’s announcement
with a genuine sense of relief. The next few days were a period of great
activity among political leaders; and the various political organizations
re-stated their positions in the light of the Viceroy’s proposals. The Viceroy
had informal preliminary discussions with the leaders on the 24th. On Monday
the 25th of June, 1945, the Conference opened at the Viceregal Lodge, Simla,
all those invited being present except Mahatma Gandhi, who however stayed
within easy reach for consultation by any party that cared for his advice. The
Viceroy, welcoming the members, said: - I said in my broadcast that on all
sides there was something to forgive and forget. We have got to rise above the
level of old prejudices and enmities and of party and sectional advantage, and
think of the good of India,–the good of her 400 million peoples……You must
accept my leadership for the present; until there is some agreed change in the
Constitution, I am responsible to His Majesty’s Government for the good
government and the tranquillity of India. I ask you to believe in me as a
sincere friend of India.”
Mr. Gandhi was glad that Lord Wavell offered to be
the “leader” that is, Lord Wavell was going to be one with the
Conference and a fellow partner in its work, and not an uninterested outsider
wielding only power.
The Conference continued on the 26th and 27th and
was adjourned to the 29th so as “to enable the delegates to continue their
private discussions.” Pourparlers that had begun between the Congress and the
League camps through the good offices of Pandit Govind Vallabh Pant continued.
The adjourned meeting was held on the 29th of June, but only to be further
adjourned (after about an hour’s session) to the 14th of the following month.
At the meeting of the 29th (according to press
reports), as attempts to reach an agreement had not shown signs of success, His
Excellency asked the various parties to furnish their lists of names for the
proposed Executive Council, so that he could make the final selection from out
of those list. The Muslim League and the Congress were each to submit from 8 to
12 name from within their respective parties; and they could in addition
suggest other names outside their organisations. The other parties at the
Conference were to submit each 3 or 4 names from among their members, and
recommend a few more from outside their fold. At this stage, Mr. Jinnah stated
that the question whether the Muslim League would submit any names at all had to
be decided by his Working Committee, and he therefore wanted an adjournment for
15 days. The Congress President wanted it adjourned for a week. It was
authoritatively reported (by the A. P. I.) that Lord Wavell made it clear that
in submitting lists of names, the parties were not committing themselves to
anything. Similarly, the mere fact of his asking for lists of names from the
various parties did not in any sense means that he was bound to accept all the
names suggested by any party to represent any particular community. ‘What could
be guaranteed was parity of representation between Hindus and Muslims and
representation for other minorities. On this understanding, the lists were to
be placed in the Viceroy’s hands by July 6.
On the 7th of July, the Congress President was
reported to have handed in his list of 15 names. The Scheduled Castes, the
Nationalist Party and the Sikhs submitted their respective panels. The leader
of the European party wrote to the Viceroy saying that there was no room for
non-official Europeans in the Council as outlined by His Excellency, the
European group did not think it necessary to submit any names; but the party
assured the Viceroy of its hearty co-operation. The Muslim League alone stood
out, led by Mr. Jinnah.
It is necessary to note at this point that the wholly pertinent question of what course of action the Viceroy intended to adopt in the event of Mr. Jinnah’s (or any outer party’s) declining to fall into line, had been actively canvassed by the Press. The Congress President made it clear that, in such an event, the Congress, if called upon, would play its part. But would Lord Wavell proceed with the task as planned, not minding the defection of any party? No reply was forthcoming; and apparently Lord Wavell wanted to take time and consult Whitehall. Confabulations among the party leaders were again resumed; and there was a spate of counsel and argument and exhortation published in the press from a multitude of sources. The Conference at last met on the 14th of July, only to hear from Lord Wavell that it had failed. In making that dismal announcement, Lord Wavell gave the following explanation: -
“I must give the Conference an account of what has
happened since we adjourned on June 29. As you know, my original intention was
that the Conference should agree upon the strength and composition of the
Executive Council, and that thereafter parties should send me lists of names.
To these lists I would, if necessary, have added names of my own, and attempted
to form on paper an Executive Council which might be acceptable to H. M. G.
myself, and the Conference. I intensified to discuss my selections with the
leaders, and finally to put them to the Conference.
“Unfortunately, the Conference was unable to agree
about the strength and composition of the Executive Council; and on June 29 I
undertook, with the approval of the Conference, to endeavour to produce a
solution not based on any formula agreed in advance. I asked the parties to let
me have lists of names, and said I would do what I could to produce a solution
acceptable to the leaders and to the Conference.
“I received lists from all parties represented here
except from the European Group, who decided not to send a list, and the Muslim
League. I was, however, determined that the Conference should not fail until I
had made every possible effort to bring it to a successful ending; I,
therefore, made my provisional selections including certain Muslim League
names, and I have every reason to believe that if these selections had been
acceptable here, they would have been acceptable to H. M. G.
“My selections would, I think, have given a
balanced and efficient Executive Council, whose composition would have been
reasonably fair to all parties.
“I do not find it possible, however, to accept the
claims of any party in full. When I explained my solution to Mr. Jinnah, he
told me that it was not acceptable to the Muslim League, and he was so decided
that I felt it would be useless to continue the discussion.
“In the circumstances I did not show my selection
as a whole to Mr. Jinnah, and there was no object in showing them to the other
leaders. The Conference has, therefore, failed.
“Nobody can regret this more than I do myself. I
wish to make it clear that the responsibility for the failure is mine. The main
idea underlying the Conference was mine. If it had succeeded, its success could
have been attributed to me; and I cannot place the blame for its failure upon
any of the parties.”
In the flood-tide of comment and counter-comment
that has followed the close of the Conference, there has been such a
misrepresentation of the respective attitudes of parties and such as confusion
of issues that, if the precise point on which the Conference broke is not stated
prominently, there is the danger of blame being shifted from deserving to
undeserving shoulders. Let us therefore mark the words of the Viceroy in the
above speech on the attitude adopted by the Muslim League. Those words are
further elected in the following reply of the Viceroy (9th July) to
Mr. Jinnah: - “I am unable to give you the guarantee you wish, i.e, that
all the Muslim members of the proposed new Council shall necessarily be members
of the Muslim League. As explained to you, I cannot commit myself to give a
similar guarantee to the other party. I have to attempt to form an Executive
Council representative, competent and generally acceptable.” It would thus be
far from the truth to hold, if any body were to hold that it is the Congress’s
unreasonableness that ended the Conference. The Congress is not to be seen in
the final stage of the picture at all. Having stressed its non-communal,
non-denominational and all-inclusive position in unmistakable terms, having
refused to be counted as the representative of any one community or class or
section, and having declared its resolve to put forward the very best in the
country for the responsible offices, irrespective of party and community, it
left the rest of the matter in the hands of the Viceroy. That the Congress did
so is all to its credit.
The Congress, in contrast to the League, went out
of its way to find and nominate proper representatives for sections and
interests not named by the Viceroy, but organically belonging to the nation. It
did a handsome thing (if report speaks true) in including in its panel Dr. S.
P. Mukherjee, the strong and sagacious President of the Hindu Mahasabha. The
Congress recommended leaders of the Muslim League too for the Viceroy’s
Council. The height to which the Congress rose in constructive statesmanship
and in trans-party patriotism on this occasion is one of the Pisgah views of
the whole Conference episode.
Nothing is to be gained by our pretending that the
situation has not been made distinctly the worse by the failure of the Simla
Conference. We have been advised by Lord Wavell to avoid recrimination and by
Pandit Jawharlal to shun despondency. In tendering such advice, they doubtless
imply that the reactions deprecated are but natural. The issues involved touch
our life much too intimately and seriously to let us pass over the event
without concern. Not disregarding the high-minded advice tendered, it is our
duty to analyze the facts and forces involved in the Simla effort so that the
mistakes which led to its failure may not be repeated at the next effort,
whenever that be and in whatever form.
The Simla effort is not the first of its kind in
our recent history. There have been many attempts at negotiation and compromise
and rapprochement since the Simon Commission’s days; and every failure
has left the situation worsened. The harm may be set down as of three or four
kinds: -
(1) Each party tries to throw the blame for the
failure upon the other; and in the aftermath of partisan rancours, the country
once again becomes a scene of belligerent camps. Goodwill and the disposition
to trust become more difficult than ever to re-establish.
(2) Concessions proposed tentatively, and on
condition that they would become available only after the acceptance of the
entire scheme of settlement, are construed by the party propitiated as an
unqualified admission of part of its legitimate claim, and then urged at the
next opportunity as the basis for further demands. The party’s mouth thus goes
on opening wider and yet wider, and asking far larger and ever larger
sacrifices from others.
(3) While the contending parties keep bickering at
each other, the Powers-that-be find themselves free to dispose of present
material questions according to their own choice. Powerful business interests
are now sufficiently forewarned of the prevalent popular tendencies in India to
wish to have their questions decided at once under the existing regime and
before popular legislatures acquire powers of effective scrutiny and control.
Particularly at the present moment, when Europe and America have begun to
restore their factories and workshops to the producing of goods of merchandise,
great obviously is their need to get India’s economic policies ordered suitably
to their future advantage. The absence of a national government and the
continuance of the Imperialist bureaucracy are precisely the conditions that
can secure fop foreign industrial and commercial interests a lasting and
irrevocable hold on the bazaars and markets of India. Advantages and
opportunities now lost to this country are weapons put in the hands of her
economic rivals to keep her crippled for many a decade to come.
(4) And finally, a failure affects the general
psychology of the public and fills the atmosphere with skepticism and cynicism.
It thus becomes a part of the problem itself, increasing its complications for
being handled at the next effort.
Disappointment and regret expressed at the collapse
of the Simla Conference is therefore no ebullition of vapid sentiment. It is on
the other hand nothing but a natural reaction to the umpteenth instance of the
frustration of right and reason in those concrete and practical matters which
affect the every-day life and well-being of the country. A political conference
is thus not an experiment to which one can set one’s hands without the most
serious and careful preparation. The failure of an experiment in a chemist’s or
a physicist’s laboratory may not provoke regrets outside; but the failure of
experiment on a surgeon’s table cannot go unwept.
There can be no question as to the sincerity of
Lord Wavell’s intentions. The voluntariness of his effort, the unexpectedness
of it and the labour it has cost him including a busy sojourn in London, (at
the least) from March to July–all point to the earnestness as well as the
nobility of his mind. The manner of his speech–its directness, its freedom from
bombast and circumlocution, and its avoidance of the acid flavours of
polemics,–has led the public to take him for an honest and humane statesman,
one who is keen on doing a good deed rather than on managing a clever business.
And the method of his approach to the heart’s of the leading men of the nation
has made him accepted as a genuine friend of India.
None of these, however, is the point that is
exactly relevant to the reason for the collapse of the Conference. Where Irwin
and Willingdon and Linlithgow and Cripps and Sapru and Rajagopalachari and so
many others failed, what exactly is it that gave courage to Lord Wavell to step
in? What, to use a phrase now common, was the “sanction” behind him? If he had
not made himself sure as to that, he wet to his task ill-equipped. The
recalcitrance of Mr. Jinnah and his League was no unknown factor. Successive
Viceroys and Secretaries of State had made a great thing of it. They had also
called the Congress unreasonable and refractory. Lord Wavell himself, as
Commander-in-Chief during the Cripps negotiations, saw at first hand the gifts
for obstinacy possessed by the several parties with whom he now undertook to
deal. It should have required no great exercise of prophetic powers on his part
to have foreseen the possibility,–just the possibility, to put it at the
lowest of either the Congress or the League or some other party setting its
face against his proposals. How had Lord Wavell armed himself against such a
contingency? Before he left London on the 5th of June, did he ask Mr. Amery for
authority to go ahead with his Plan even if Mr. Azad or Mr. Jinnah declined to
co-operate while all others agreed to work it? This is the crucial question. If
no assurance was forthcoming from His Majesty’s Government on this point, Lord
Wavell was clearly taking too great a risk.
V. Has England No Independent Conception of Duty?
“Agreement-among-Indian parties”–has been a parrot
phrase on the lips of British statesmen. It calls for two comments: First, no
agreement seems at all possible so long as there is a foreign ruling power in
the country to promote disagreement and profit therefrom. So long as there is a
manager in an establishment willing to listen to tales from his subordinates,
there are bound to be tale-bearers and spies and informers among them eager to
bid for his favours. Disunity among the people is indeed one of the deadliest
forms of the demoralization that results directly from their subjection to
foreign domination. It is therefore sheer cant for any Britisher to point to
political dissension in India as something with which he has had nothing to do
and to affect to deplore it as though he derived no advantage from it.
Second, irrespective of agreement or disagreement
in India, has England no code of right and duty towards this country to which
she is committed by the whole course of her history and her position in the
world? Is she not capable of finding out, independently of this section or that
in India, what it would be just and honorable for her to do by India as a
whole? The better inspired among England’s statesmen have, in point of fact, evolved
an independent conception of England’s duty to India. According to Burke and
Bright and Montagu, England is in India on a mission of liberation; and
England’s finest achievement is to be in welding the various peoples of this
vast land, of differing creed and differing tongue, into one secular
nationality and endowing them with capacity and power for democratic self-rule.
This mission is to be fulfilled through civic education and the disciplines of
responsible citizenship. It should be carried out in spite of the obscurantism
and the obduracy of any section or class, of people. It is from this point of
view that British statesmen have got to look at their duty. It stands there
independently of the religious fanaticism and the communal bigotries raging in
the country. By a long and laborious process of search and struggle for the
higher ideal in the art of civic life, humanity has arrived at the idea of the
democratic State embodying a secularized citizenship and acting as a link in
the chain of international world good. It is by the idea of such a State,
emancipated as much from the Temple and the ‘Mosque as from the Church and the
Synagogue, that England has to stand. It is precisely the kind of emancipation
that she has achieved for herself in her own history; and that precisely is the
gift that India needs at her hands. In lending countenance to religious and
communal clamours in Indian politics and offering inducements to the demand for
new theocratic States,
England is not only proving herself untrue to the teaching of her own
history but also exposing herself to the charge of perpetuating disunity in
India so that it may excuse her perpetuation of her own domination. For the
light that should guide his footsteps, Lord Wavell has no need to turn to the
Muslim League or any other party in India. It shines forth from every page of
that noble literature which has won for itself the deep devotion of his heart
and from every page of that manly story of civil liberty which is the unique
heritage of an Englishman. That light comes reflected from every print or
eminence in contemporary world-politics. It prescribes a two-pointed program:
First, England’s governing motive should be to help in the evolution of a
single all-Indian nationality, to fulfil itself through a non-denominational
secular citizenship in a democratic polity. Secondly, in order to facilitate
that evolution, and in ways subsidiary to that ideal, such concessions and such
inducements may be offered to apprehensive religious or linguistic or socially
backward minorities as may be necessary to reassure them and secure their
willing loyalty to the national constitution. This is or ought to be, the
programme for Lord Wavell and every Britisher concerned about India,– whatever
be the doctrines of the Muslim League or the Congress or the Hindu Mahasabha or
any other organization. England has that duty independently and irrespective of
all distracting cries, whether they be Indian or non-Indian; and on that should
Lord Wavell concentrate.
Outside the Muslim League, the Wavell Plan was greeted with an amount of enthusiasm that no previous move of the kind had ever evoked. People saw reason for so much optimism in the fact that it was of the Viceroy’s own initiation. The public had come to realize the utter futility of a move made by any party lacking his authority. More than one leader had declared it as his conviction that the responsibility for finding or making a way out of the impasse belonged to the Government in the first instance, and that attempt by anybody else was bound to end in failure. When therefore Lord Wavell took it upon himself to devise a solution, great naturally was the goodwill forthcoming from every Non-League section of the public.
One of the most welcome and most remarkable
features of the country’s response was the readiness with which various
Non-League Muslim organizations rallied round the Congress. The Ulemas, the
Majlis, the Momins, the Watans, the Ahrars,–these and other Muslim
organizations stood by the cause of undivided all-Indian Nationalism and made
Mr. Jinnah’s totalitarian pretensions utterly untenable. In the face of this
impressive demonstration, no impartial observer will hesitate to adjudge the
importance attached to the League by the British Government as far too
excessive and that by design. The Indian Christian community was not slow or
half-hearted in expressing its acceptance of the Wavell scheme. A scheme that
received so much public support, from such diverse quarters, did deserve a far
better fate at the hands of the British Government. But there was just one man
to oppose it in the name of an inflated organization; and he was allowed to
triumph against all, the agent of the British Power itself included.
It is not fair to attack the Wavell Plan, as some
critics have done, from the point of view of permanent principle and ultimate
ideal. Its author intended it as nothing more than a short-term device. The
Executive Council he contemplates is of the nature of an ad hoc body.
Its purpose is to serve as a bridge of transition from the awkward present to
the hoped for future. It would be obviously impossible for any one to find room
in such a makeshift contrivance for all the countless parties and interests
that there are in the country demanding proportionate representation for
themselves. What Lord Wavell put forward was just a rough working formula; and
it is sheer pedentry to search in it for all the theories of democracy and all
the canons of constitutionalism.
Much criticism has descended on one point in the
Plan in particular, namely–parity between Hindus and Muslims. Mr. Bulabhai
Desai and Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, as leaders respectively of the Congress
and the Muslim League parties in the Central Assembly, were known to have entered
into a pact for the re-construction of the Central Government on the basis of
equality of representation in it for the Congress and the Muslim League. If the
principle of Parity had thus found favour with the leaders of the two pivotal
parties in the country, Lord Wavell is surely not to be blamed for having
re-adapted the same principle, into a somewhat better form as viewed from the
country’s point of view. If Lord Wavell had postulated this condition of parity
as a requirement of strict justice, objection would doubtless have been well
placed; but it is clear that parity was suggested merely as a matter of
expediency for the moment. If Lord Wavell thought that parity was the point up
to which he might reasonably go in making concessions to Mussalmans and that it
was worth while to offer them even so much if that could only win them over,
the nationalist-minded public at any rate cannot hold him as in fault. Mahatma
Gandhi has said time and again that he would readily place a carte blanche in
the hands of Mussalmans if only they would make the cause of Indian nationalism
their own. Congress leaders have expressed their readiness to welcome a
Government formed by Mr. Jinnah as Premier if only he would help the emergence
of a Free and United India. People who are willing to go so far to conciliate a
disgruntled brother can see nothing blameworthy in the concessions proposed by
Lord Wavell. Anything for peace and friendship!
Lord Wavell’s chief concern was apparently to get
the various quarrelsome parties into one single railway train and set it going.
It is not an uncommon thing in India to see a third-class carriage at a Railway
Station more or less filled inside and those at the windows and the door trying
to keep out new-comers by vehement protests and angry gesticulations. When
however an enterprising new-comer has forced himself in, and a few more
passengers have been squeezed in by the imperious Guard and the train has at
last started, the huddled crowd inside gradually settles down and brings its good
humour into play. Conversation grows and intimacies begin to develop, so that
at a later station a few miles away, when some of the fellow-passengers get
down, there are pathetic scenes of friendly leave-taking. A couple of hours’
enforced fellowship produces all that miracle of psychology. Lord Wavell
apparently was hoping that if the discordant political parties could only be
got to come together and move along under his guardship for a couple of years,
the sharing of administrative care and responsibility and the pursuit of common
tasks and objects would soften their mutual hostilities and reconcile them to
one another. When such was the purpose, the way to its achievement could hardly
have been through formulae of representation meticulously based on the communal
arithmetic. A certain latitude had to be allowed for the discretion of the
captain of the team in such a case; and it was only appropriate that Lord
Wavell reserved for himself the responsibility of exercising that discretion.
One point there is on which special emphasis must
be laid in all contexts pertaining to the composition of representative bodies.
The good to be expected from a representative institution is in the main of the
negative more than of the positive kind. The object of representation is to
abolish monopoly, to prevent collusion, to keep out the private selfishness of
individuals and groups. It is also to prevent the ascendancy of any one
ideology or any one point of view to the exclusion of other possible ideas and
other relevant points of view. A councilor committee can scrutinize and control
more than originate and produce. Service of a positive nature is to be looked
for not so much from the machinery of representation as from purely individual
gifts of energy and vision and ability. Therefore, when considering the method
of representation of parties or communities in a ministerial or executive body,
what we have to aim at is not so much the photographic representation of the
elements of public life in the country as the diversification of ideology and
the mutual counter checking of interests. Moreover, we ought not to forget the
obvious impossibility of finding room in a committee or a council for the
mathematical ratio of representation for each and every small or big group or
section of the population. When once the principle of according representation
to every distinct group entity is conceded, there will be no limit to the
number of communities and sub-communities springing up to clamour for separate
representation each for itself. Such being the practical considerations, Lord
Wavell cannot be blamed at all for not making his formula more exhaustive of
parties and interests and more mathematically logical. One conspicuous omission
from the Conference was that of the Hindu Mahasabha–the real counter-agent to
the Muslim League. By parity of reasoning as well as by virtue of its own
inherent strength, the Mahasabha’s claim for recognition must be acknowledged
to be legitimate. We can only account for its exclusion by supposing that Lord
Wavell feared that its presence would act as an additional red rag to the
Muslim League bull. The willing and welcomed presence of the Congress at the
Conference table must itself have been a sufficient irritant to the League.
Lord Wavell must have thought that the Congress-League dissensions would by
themselves provide a tough enough task for his hands; and he must therefore
have considered it prudent not to add to possible complications by inviting the
Hindu Mahasabha also into the arena.
It must have been from similar considerations that
he kept clear of the Indian States. What he was planning was a temporary
bridge. A permanent settlement would necessarily have to be all Indian that
is–inclusive of the States. That admittedly is too large and complex a task to
be attempted immediately and that is a task, too, that can be usefully
attempted only by an agreed agency of the people of India. The object Lord
Wavell set before himself was a less ambitious one. It was merely to prepare
the ground and create the atmosphere in which it was for others to bring about
the desired consummation. He thought it expedient to attack the problem in its
temporary and simpler phase; and that is the evolving of an interim Government
for British India. A great soldier, he thought it bad strategy to open fire at
once on more front than could be managed with the material on hand. That the
Simla Conference could not succeed even without the hurdles of the Hindu
Mahasabha and the more obstinate hurdles to be presented by the States, proves
that the Viceroy’s apprehensions about inviting those two elements were not
far-fetched.
Although the Conference has miscarried as regards
its chief purpose, it has served to bring a most refreshing fact into
impressive light,–the fact that the top men of the Congress have gifts of
statesmanship worthy of their high responsibility. For constructiveness of
attitude and temper, for a ready appreciation of the forces of existing fact,
for practical good sense, for the spirit of accommodation to expediency without
compromising the ideal, and above all for that larger patriotism which
transcends Party, dearly cherished though the Party be–Maulana Azad has stood
out as a beacon-light to the nation. The Conference similarly served to bring
out Pandit Jawharlal’s steadfast sense of realism, his habit of seeing things
against their whole background and his courage that never shrinks from
responsibility. A nation that has leaders like Azad and Jawharlal need never
despair.
The Congress has tried various plans to promote
Hindu-Moslem unity; but it is obvious that there remains still as great a need
as ever for continued effort to promote that cause. The heart-content of the
ideal of Hindu-Moslem Unity is more accurately and more pointedly stated as the
idea of a secular nationality functioning through a secular State and a secular
citizenship. The phrase “Hindu-Muslim Unity” implies the retention of the
consciousness of one’s being a Hindu or a Muslim. It is needful that we should
train ourselves to transcend even this feeling of Hindu-ness or Muslim-ness in
the field of civil and political life. It is an elementary fact that the State
and its citizenship are concerned primarily with questions of our mundane
well-being and not with ecclesiasticism and theology. Pandit Jawharlal pointed
out of a recent speech that our most vital problems are of an agrarian,
industrial, commercial and technological nature and that such problems can make
no difference between Hindu and Muslim. What politics is concerned with are the
primary hungers common to all men alike, be their religion any or none. The
notion of this universality of the ultimate economic and social content of all
politics should be brought home to the minds of the masses, both Hindu and
Muslim. It is the importation of the memories of religion into the field of
political and even social life that is poisoning our civic relations and
impairing our strength and efficiency as a nation. It is this excessive
religiosity, we suppose, that Pandit Jawharlal had in mind when he recently
characterized the communal trouble as a conflict between midevalism and
modernism. Our obsession with religion has been much too much. This religiosity
must go. Anything out of its proper place is a nuisance; and religion cannot be
granted any exemption. If the Congress would do something to impress this truth
upon the minds of the masses, a solid and permanent way will have been made out
of our present political and likely social troubles.
Sir
Stafford Cripps, out of the crowd of commentators on the Simla Conference, has
tried to draw a red herring across the track, suggesting that a transitional
arrangement is both impracticable and unnecessary and that we should at once
seek a permanent solution through his bisecting formula. The seed of poison in
his 1942 proposal was in the encouragement offered to Mr. Jinnah. It is this
poisoned part that made the rejection of his entire scheme inevitable in spite
of its satisfying part. It is true the Congress did not specifically and
prominently raise the vivesectional clauses of the Cripps offer for its attack;
but the Congress did not endorse them either. The Congress took up other points
for discussion; and the talks broke down before the remaining points could be
reached. Sir Stafford Cripps is not making himself more acceptable to India by
persisting in his advocacy of dividing the country. He would be set down as no
less obtuse than his opposite Mr. Churchill if he cannot learn the lesson that
Eire, nearer home, has been hammering into the mind of England about the
division of that island. No. Sir Stafford is not on the right road; and Lord
Wavell is. Lord Wavell is happily inspired if Mr. Jinnah’s understanding is correct
in his characterisation of Lord Wavell as “the latest exponent of unity” and in
the following observation: - “We know that this interim or provisional
arrangement will have a way of settling down for an unlimited period and all
the forces in the proposed Executive plus the known policy of the
British Government and Lord Wavell’s strong inclinotion
for a United India would completely jeopardise us.”
In
maintaining that strong inclination for a United India, Lord Wavell is but
proving himself a faithful interpreter of Britain’s highest message to India.
A
permanent constitution, with independence of the kind and degree looked for by
India and foreshadowed in the Cripps-Amery proposals, must necessarily be an
all-Indian constitution: it must provide room for the Indian States. The
fashioning of such a constitution must take much more time, and call for much
more public discussion, than the immediate material interests
of the country would permit of our giving. These interests cannot be kept
waiting or allowed to suffer damage. A central National Government of a
transitional nature must therefore be secured at once. To follow Sir Stafford
Cripps’s advice is to waste in speculation and wrangling the time and energies
that should be applied to our present needs and opportunities.
Bitter
as the Country’s disappointment is, it should have been far more so if Lord
Wavell had not in his concluding speech given an indication of his resolve to
persevere. He has taken time for reviewing the position and exploring the
possibility of a fresh approach. He is entitled to look for the country’s
willing response to his appeal that nothing may be said or done that is likely
to stir the fires of communalism and make his task more difficult. As Mr. C.
Rajagopalacharyar has pointed out, the failure of the Conference need not
necessarily mean the failure of the Plan. It will be tragic if all the goodwill
and enthusiasm called into play by the Simla effort were allowed to evaporate.
It should now be Lord Wavell’s concern to capitalize all that.
The
essence of his plan is (i) that there should immediately be an Interim
Government formed for British India–as a bridge to lead us to a permanent
All-Indian Government; and (ii) that the Interim Government should be a
composite body, made up of persons in whose selection each of the major
sections of the population on the one side and the Viceroy on the other have
both had a hand,–the first exercising the initiative and the second the
decision. This primary-cum-secondary process of choice has the merit of
satisfying the constitutional principle that the personnel of the Cabinet
should be determined by the Prime Minister in his discretion, but acting within
the field of choice indicated by the country. The Mussalmans are certainly one of
the major sections of the Indian people–when once religion is counted, maybe
for the nonce, as a relevant factor. But there are many among Muslims who do
not see how the loyalties of religion are at all relevant to civil
relationship, and a great many more who do not share the Pakistan ideology. Are
such Mussalmans to have, or are they not to have, their share of representation
in the government of this country which is theirs too? This issue has been
raised before the world more clearly now than ever before by Mr. Jinnah’s stand
at the Simla Conference.
Lord
Wavell has not conceded the monopoly claimed by the Muslim League. But that
judgment of his, he has not followed up by logical action. We hope we may take
it that he has only deferred action. The Conference he convened was merely his
means for persuading all parties to act together on lines he had suggested. The
Conference failed in the sense that it failed to persuade and bring in one of
the parties into the field of action. But if the means fails, the plan which it
was meant to subserve need not be set down as a failure. Conference or no
Conference, Lord Wavell is free to proceed with his purpose of setting up a
national cabinet.
Various
lines of action are being suggested for Lord Wavell’s consideration: One is
that general elections may be ordered so that the exact extent of the Muslim
League’s hold upon Mussalmans may be ascertained. But this is beside the point.
What is in question is not the measure of the League’s populilrity, but the
right of those Muslims that do not belong to it, even though they be a
minority, to a measure of representation in governmental bodies. If the total
Moslem population, because of its being a
minority in comparison with the Hindus, deserves special treatment, the Non-League
Moslems, because of their being a minority among the Moslems –a
minority in a minority,–are, by the same token,
entitled to a similar concession. If this proposition be granted, the position
is already clear enough now to be acted upon without any elections; and Mr.
Jinnah’s business then is simply to get his Working committee to draw up a list
of names for Lord Wavell’s consideration, according to the terms of his plan.
Elections
cannot solve our present difficulty. First, they will have to be held on the
basis of the 1935 Act–in separate communal
compartments; and that means that communalist fanatics will again sweep the
polls. Secondly, the present is a time of extraordinary communal excitement.
Most common minds are at such a time apt to lose their normal scale of values
and become incapable of calm reflection and judgment. Electioneering will let
loose firebrands and filibusters upon them, to add to the exitement and
confusion. What is the value to be attached to a verdict obtained under such conditions?
Thirdly, it would be a grievous mistake to regard the results of an election as
evidence of the permanent attitude and disposition of a people or a community
towards their neighbours An election is more or less an ad hoc affair,
and its significance cannot last for more than 3 or 4 or 5 years. It can bring
out the judgment of the people only on a given issue and that the limited issue
of the hour. In other words, what an election shows is just the mood of the
moment, the impulse just kindled by the occasion and likely to pass away with
it. But the character of a people, their deeper qualities of mind and soul, and
their social and cultural milieu, are more permanent things; and they
are not the things that can be gauged by means or election statistics.
They are precisely the things, however, that are pertinent to the purpose of
defining the composition of the State and framing a constitution for it. It
will be a blunder to let a kind of Khaki election determine the shape
and complexion of a State or a polity meant to last for all time.
Another
suggestion made to Lord Wavell is that the central Cabinet may be formed by him
out of the personnel recommended by the existing legislatures in the Provinces.
Each of the 11 provincial legislative assemblies (the popular houses) may be
asked to elect jointly 6 or 7 names as follows: – 2
Hindus, 2 Moslelm, 1 scheduled caste-man and 1 man for each of one or two other
specified minorities. Out of the total of 70 or 75 names thus got, Lord
Wavell will be free to make a selection for his Council. Some such plan seems
to be the one recommended by Mr. C. Rajagopalacharya as an alternative. But if
Mr. Jinnah is determined to obstruct, he is not without a handle here. His
Working Committee may forbid the Muslim League members in the legislative
bodies from participating in the preparation of panels. Lord Wavell will then
be faced with the same dilemma as now.
X.
Conditions of Settlement.
The
question of questions for India’s political future has then come to be this: -
“How to deal with Mr. Jinnah and his League?” Whatsoever the road to solution
that you plan, he is sure to find means of thrusting a spoke in your wheel
(What will apply to him must of course apply to any party similarly
refractory.) It is clear that Lord Wavell was not prepared to leave Mr. Jinnah
aside and go forward with the rest of the nation. But the situation has changed
since then in one material respect, namely–in the nature of the quarter from
which Lord Wavell has to take the cue.
Firstly,
the Labour Party has come into power. It has taken office with a majority
strong and solid enough to give it confidence to carry through a really liberal
measure. Secondly, Mr. Amery has been sent out and has been succeeded in the
office of India Secretary by a well-known friend of India,–one recognised as
such on all sides in India,–Mr. Pethick-Lawrence. Thirdly, the new Government
is reported to have set up a Cabinet Committee to consider the question of
closing down the office of Secretary of State for India and adding on India to
the Dominions Office. All these are hope-giving symptoms. Of course there are
very rigid limits to the hope we can allow ourselves. To the extent that India
is considered necessary for the prosperity of England, change of parties in the
British Government can make no difference in England’s policy towards India. If
a distinction may be made, it would perhaps be roughly that while the Tories
prefer to keep India as a possession, the Labourites may be content to retain
her as an ally. Even this difference in attitudes is something for India to
appreciate.
Two
conditions seem imperative in regard to a solution:
First,
the solution should be sought through a compromise among
four considerations: (1) The moral duty of Britain; (2) Britain’s “practical
politics” (which must include both her sense of her own interests and her
judgment of conditions in India); (3) the Nationalist Ideals of the Congress;
and (4) the Separatisms of Minorities such as Muslims, Harijans and the
Princes.
Second,
there should be no room left for any feeling of uncertainty
anywhere as to the fate of that compromise. There should be no suggestion in it
of any part or section of India being allowed either to keep away for any length
of time or to cut away later on from the All India Union. Concessions made to
separationists and waverers and opportunists can only weaken and delay the
process of consolidation and settlement. The Union will be no experimental or
tentative arrangement. It will be designed to last for all time, and to include
every part and every community and class of the Indian people,–only
a limited period of grace being allowed to backward elements for preparing
themselves.
The
general lines of such a solution should be–
First,
an interim central Cabinet of true national representatives must immediately be
formed on the Wavell plan,–with the Muslim League
in it if possible, but even without it if that party continues recalcitrant.
Second,
the federal part of the 1935 Act should at once be brought into effect as far
as practicable, all such States as had expressed willingness to join in it six
years ago (before the Federation part was postponed) being taken in so as to
form the nucleus of the All-India Union.
Third,
the interim Government, formed generally on the Wavell plan, will, when it
considers fit, order General Elections and make all arrangements necessary for
the setting up of a constitution-making body to frame an All-India
Constitution. The composition of that body may be roughly on the basis of the
Cripps proposals of 1942.
Fourth,
the Constituent Body will be instructed to draft the Constitution for a
permanent All-India Union inclusive of the States,–taking
for its basis the 1935 Act as far as possible with reference to the federal
frame-work and endowing the All-India Government with the sovereign powers and
status declared through Sir S. Cripps.
Lord
Wavell held a Conference of Provincial Governors in the first week of August
and no doubt heard their reports as to the political situation in the country,
particularly after the Simla Conference. He must also have heard about the
economic conditions, especially in relation to food and other civil supplies,
and been impressed with the urgency of the need for an instant change in the
character of the Governments everywhere and in the technique of the
administration. Since the Simla move, the polity of setting free political
prisoners and detenus is being continued. And there have been other signs of a
liberal disposition on the part of Government towards Congress workers. The
reticences as well as the speeches of the Congress leaders, too, betoken a
friendly disposition. It is expected that the King’s speech to the new
Parliament on the 15th of August will contain an indication of a new policy towards
India. So, as we began, let us close for the present noting these good omens of
a possible new era.
Bangalore
City,
August
9, 1945.