UNIT 35 TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE Structure 35.0 Objectives 35.1 Introduction 35.2 Background: India and the Raj 35.2.1 Second World War: Impact on the Indians 35.2.2 Second World War: Impact on the British Government 35.2.3 End of the War: The British Policy 35.2.4 Congress and the Muslim League 35.3 Attempts at a Negotiated Settlement 35.3.1 The Simla Conference 35.3.2 The Labour in Power 35.3.3 Elections and the Cabinet Mission 35.3.4 The Communal Carnage and Interim Government 35.4 The Popular Urges 35.4.1 Direct Confrontations 35.4.2 Indirect Confrontations 35.5 Let Us Sum Up I 35.6 Key Words 35.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises 35.0 OBJECTIVES This Unit deals with a brief but a very crucial period of Indian Nationalism. After reading this unit you will: become familiar with the impact of the World War on the British rulers and the Indian . people, be able to link up the various kinds of political activities undertaken during this period, to narrate the popular struggles which break out in this period , and evaluate their role in weakening and ultimately throwing out the Raj. INTRODUCTION In the earlier unit you have been familiarised with the various constitutional processes at r work, political developments and their crystallization, the political maturing of certain sections of Indian society and finally the break out of the second World War and its consequences. As a result of all this the 1940s witnessed a vastly different political scenario. New tensions and conflicts emerged. The relationship, mainly conflictual, between the rulers and the ruled acquired new dimensions, and the range of political i activities became much wider as the possibility of independence began taking shape. 'lhere I were now on the one hand, new attempts being made for a negotiated settlement, for a peaceful transfer of power-a politics of the negotiating chamber. On the other hand, the popular urges for freedom, dissatisfied with the methods of negotiation, looked for different outlets. These outlets were found in various confrontations with the British and were different from the politics of the negotating chamber. During this period the separatist politics also raised its head and the movement for Pakistan gathered greater momentum. The situation thus, was very complex. All streams of politics - nationalist as well as communalist-were attempting for a peaceful transfer of power. But the popular struggles, direct anti-British fights as well as the anti-feudal struggles challenged the British authority on a different plank. In this unit we attempt to unfold some of the complex characteristics and the different dimensions of India's struggle for freedom during 1945-47. Towards A Sovereign State litical events of the preceding decades. It the background to the developments which took r it was the Second World War and its impact on ch shaped the course of some of the the Government, its policies and various sections of the India 35.2.1 Second Wo att on the Indians Popular distress was d products (agricultural, Year 1 Wheat Cotton Manufactures Kerosene 1939 100 100 1941 196 140 large scale hoarding ket" at very exorbitant prices. Artificial, qilitary - "the war contractors" - the hoarders the climate turned nndent bungled their work and those for the army vements of food grains from one place to another; As the cumulative disorders, a gruesome tragedy in fact took place in Bengal in the la devastating famine-suspected largely to be "man-made" or th etic officialdom-starved more than 3 million ed by famines, the condition of the rest of India 1 and presented more or less a uniform picture of n centres. Clearly, the suffering people had and the so-called all powerful Raj could do 35.2.2 Second W pact on the British Government Qere also not really in a position to deal efficiently fig fixed wholly on the prosecution of the fight, to bother about the plight of the Indians, or to the war came to a close, the Raj was too r exhausted, too much in need for a respite, to start setting its Tndian house in order afresh. Towards Independence I ! The situation had changed considerably: @ The European element in its armed forces was already hankering for demobilisatiori - for an opportunity to go home - rather than staying on indefinitely in India; @ To many Britons. India did no more appear to be an ideal place for their civil and military careers or an easy field for their protected expatriate entrepreneurship. @ It was no longer convenient, even possible - in the face of obvious Indian hostility - to make use of India's economy for furthering Britain's global trade interests, except by forcibly silencing all opposition. @ The extent of force that Britain had to use upon India in its desperate bid tor survival in 1942 was extremely difficult to repeat at the end of the war in 1945, and that, too, on an anticipated massive scale. The Raj was not as conditioned mentally and materially for bulldozing another "Quit India" movement - lurking in the horizon - as it had been in 1942. Financially, India was no more a debtor to Britain for meeting the expenses of her t "governance". and Britain - on the contrary-had become indebted to India to the tune of above f 3,3000 million (the Sterling Balance). @ Administratively, the Indian Civil Service - the famed "steel frame" of the empire - was reduced during the war to a wholly run-down state. Harassed by such crisis-management duties as holding the prices. ensuring the supplies, tackling the famines or famine-like conditions, hunting the "fifth-columnists", sounding air-raid signals, enforcing "black-outs", and burdened with the ever increasing weight of the daily executive and judicial chores, the capabilities of a meagre number of men in the ICS were stretched so further that they did not seem to be able to carry on for long without being broken down completely. To make matters worse, the enlistment of the Britons for the war took precedence over their recruitment in the ICS, and the British entry into the cadre practically stopped at the height of the war in 1943. Irrespective of its putting up a brave face, the Raj, had little reason to feel very secure with a minority of loyal Europeans in the ranks in the mid-1940 (587 in number) along side an Indian majority (614 in total) of uncertain proclivities in a rapidly changing circumstance. The days of classical imperialism had come apparently to an end with the termination of the World War. No body could sum up the British predicament in India better than the penultimate Viceroy, Lord Wavell eventually did : "Our time in India is limited, and our power to control events almost gone". 35.2.3 End of the War : The British Policy Evidently after the war. it was no longer convenient for a metropolitan country - and far less profitable - to rule directly over a colony for the systematised reaping of all the economic advantages from it. However, the Second World War by no stretch of imagination marked the collapse of imperialism, rather it had heralded its survival, and opened up the possibility of rejuvenation on new lines - neo-colonialism. A land and its people could still be effectively colonised, satellecticalIy placed, economically subjugated and militarily utilised, even after conceding to them political independence, if their integrity and solidarity were disrupted and their weaknesses perpetrated through the setting up of separate, ineffectual, puppet regimes. That the Indian nationalists would not be willing to play into the hands of the puppeteers, and that a battle-weary and an internally wrecked Britain could not again be in a position to dominate the world market, did hardly discourage the British to dream on the wild neo- colonialist lines. After all, Britain had little alternative but to hope against all hopes, and to try to ensure its future of some kind in India by diverting the Indians from their goal of sub-continental liberation, at any rate, and by disuniting and dividing them if at all possible. The road for diversion it may be recalled, had already been painstakingly laid, only the traffic had now to be successfully guided into it. Playing up the divergences of a pluralist people was expected by the British to be as useful in their tactical retreat from India as it certainly had been throughout in fostering the Raj's advance. Of all the distinctions among Indians that the imperial authorities tried to magnify, and make use of (such as between the British Indians and the states' peoples, the "martials" and the "non-martials", the urbanites and the non-urbanities and the brahmins Towards A sovereign State and the non Brahmins llowers of two co-existing religions, Hinduism and Islam, or betwee d the substantial Muslim minority, proved to gainst the other, by acknowledging the Muslim League as t y of the Indian Muslims, by casting doubts on the nationalist c dian National Congress, and by using the ress from the legislative scene on r some of the provincial ministries. and 1s noted the spreading of the League's sphere of of intrigues and dispersal of official patronages us little to counter the Pakistan do away with communalism merely through lim masses for wining them away from ande Martram, Ramrajya, etc. were used by the view point - and contrary to all their great hdd been benefiting from the exercise of some y way in North West Frontier ad gradually been attracting a the Muslim business interests started welcoming ub-Continent where they would not suffer from -standing and overbearing Hindu business houses y over jobs and business in a region, was being s in Punjab and Bengal for freedom in a future dnstrating sporadically the urges the Indian masses 26 and their indigenous collaborators.