School of Oriental and African Studies)

BRITISH ATTITUDES T 0 INDIAN NATIONALISM 1922-1935 by Pillarisetti Sudhir (School of Oriental and African Studies) A thesis submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1984 ProQuest Number: 11010472 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010472 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is essentially an analysis of British attitudes towards Indian nationalism between 1922 and 1935. It rests upon the argument that attitudes created paradigms of perception which condi tioned responses to events and situations and thus helped to shape the contours of British policy in India. Although resistant to change, attitudes could be and were altered and the consequent para digm shift facilitated political change. Books, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, private papers of individuals, official records, and the records of some interest groups have been examined to re-create, as far as possible, the structure of beliefs and opinions that existed in Britain with re gard to Indian nationalism and its more concrete manifestations, and to discover the social, political, economic and intellectual roots of the beliefs and opinions. The first chapter is an introductory discussion of attitudes considered as ideological correlates of imperialism. The second chapter deals with British views on the working of Dyarchy in India and Indian demands for further reforms. British reactions to the rise of militant nationalism and the controversy over the Simon Com mission are analysed in the third chapter. The fourth chapter is primarily an examination of the responses to the first civil disobe dience campaign and the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. The fifth and sixth chap ters analyse the debate on the White Paper, the activities of some pressure groups, the role played by the State in moulding public opi nion, and the discussions leading up to the 1935 Act. The seventh and final chapter draws together the threads and sets out the conclu sions derived from this study. 3 CONTENTS P- ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 1. INTRODUCTION 5 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 23 2. REFORM AND REACTION: THE ILLUSORY PEACE 1922-6 27 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 67 3. THE GATHERING STORM: THE SIMON COMMISSION DECISION AND THE AFTERMATH, 1927-9 76 NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 111 4. RESPONSES TO RADICALISM: FROM THE LAHORE CONGRESS TO THE GANDHI-IRWIN PACT 118 NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 175 5. THE WIDENING RIFT: TOWARDS THE WHITE PAPER, 1931-3 186 NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 239 6. THE FINAL COMPROMISE: THE MAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1935 249 NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 281 7. CONCLUSION 287 NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 305 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 330 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must at the outset record the very deep debt of gratitude I owe to the late Dr B.N. Pandey who supervised my research in the first three years with such great patience and friendliness. Sadly, it is now a debt that can never be redeemed. I should like also to express my thanks to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom for awarding me an Academic Staff Scholarship without which this study could not have been undertaken. I am grateful to the North-Eastern Hill Univer sity, Shillong, for granting me the necessary study leave. Needless to say, I must acknowledge with deepest thanks the friendly assistance I have received from the staff of the Associa tion of Commonwealth Universities, the British Council, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the various libraries and archives I have used. My thanks are due to many individuals who helped to make my stay in the United Kingdom a memorable one. I should like espe cially to mention Professor Duncan Forrester and his family, and of course Romila and Amita, who have waited patiently for so long. I am extremely grateful to Professor Kenneth Ballhatchet for so generously expending time and energy on guiding me through the travails of completing the thesis. Finally, my thanks are due to Ms Ysabel Howard who typed the thesis with great diligence and care, and with remarkable edi torial skills. The errors that remain are my own. 5 1: Introduction This study of British attitudes to Indian nationalism between 1922 and 1935 essentially attempts to answer three basic questions: what were these attitudes; what was their economic, social, politi cal and intellectual context; and, finally, what was the relation ship between these attitudes and imperial policy? Such an investigation seems justifiable on two grounds. First, it will enable the reconstruction, albeit in part, of the structure of beliefs and ideas about the Indian Empire that existed in British society during the period under study. This reconstruction, even if incomplete, can be a means of extending social history (1). Secondly, metropolitan attitudes towards a subject people and their nationalism constitute an important part of the ideological correlates of imperi alism. An examination of such attitudes will therefore provide an additional interpretative dimension to the study of the complex geo metry of imperialism. Recent historians of the retreat of the Raj have advanced seve ral reasons. Some have argued that the end of the British Empire in India was virtually predetermined, the decline of the Empire having been programmed, as it were, into the logic of imperialism and its institutions (2). Others have seen the collapse of Empire as stem ming from a failure to maintain structures of collaboration, or an 6 inability to solve problems created by international economic crises (3). Another view is that, far from seeking ways of ending British rule in India (and elsewhere), Britain was attempting to shore up the Raj through increasingly complex political moves, some of which were designed to undermine the strength of nationalism by the develop ment of provincial loci of power (4). Concentrating as they do on economic and political factors, most of these explanations do not take note of what may be called the psychological or ideological component of imperialism. This is partly because attempts to establish a causal connection between ideas and imperialism necessarily founder on the imprecision inherent in the relationship. That there is a link between the structure of beliefs and imperialism is perhaps self-evident. Imperialism in general, and British imperialism in particular, was accompanied in its various phases by the expression of several ideas and opinions, some supportive of, and some hostile to, imperialism. What, however, is not so clear is the nature of this relationship. Michael Howard has suggested that the structures of beliefs and ideas in a society 'determined action and perhaps made some actions more likely than others' (5). Corelli Barnett was more emphatic. He has argued that the collapse of British power and the decline of the Empire in the Nineteen Forties was caused by a moral revolution which transformed British character (6). D.K. Fieldhouse, discussing the concept of 'popular imperialism', has advanced the contrary but more plausible view that 'it would be far more accurate to say that impe rialism as a state of mind was a shadow cast by the events of impe rial expansion than that empire was the product of the imperial idea' (7). The truth cannot perhaps be discerned by asking whether ideas determined action or whether imperialism was the progenitor of the imperial idea. It may be that the relationship was more a 'confused mixture of cause and effect' (8). It will be more helpful, therefore, to assume that the relationship between ideas and imperialism was one of interdependence and interaction rather than one of unidirectional causation. If imperialism in practice generated a set of ideas, these ideas in turn set the boundaries of the intellectual matrix within which the various decision-makers were constrained to move. The process was constant, dynamic and reciprocal. Imperial ideology may therefore be seen neither as a cause, nor as a consequence of im perialism, but as one of its significant correlates. The dominant ideology in any society tends to legitimize, justi fy, and reproduce or perpetuate the structure of that society. In the case of imperialism too, the dominant ideology performed similar functions in two interrelated but different areas, for, of necessity, imperial ideology had two separate foci: the metropolitan society on the one hand, and the subject society on the other. In the latter, it was imperial ideology which diminished the need for repression and coercive action to maintain or extend the Empire. The psychological incorporation of a subject people into the imperial system was accomplished in several ways. The apparently passive acceptance of imperial dominance by the indigenes of a colony was secured by, for example, making them feel in ferior to the alien ruling elite (9). Or it was obtained through the dissemination of myths about the permanence of Empire (10). On occa sion, imperial hegemony was buttressed by the resurrection or even in vention of indigenous traditions (11). Imperial ideology served also to secure local collaborators who helped imperial penetration and later its perpetuation. Such collaborators often had material reasons for tending to support the Empire, but this tendency was reinforced by ide ology. The introduction of the English language and a Western system of education into India, for example, acted to psychologically inte- / grate the new 'Westernized' Indian elite into the imperial system.

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