Lost opportunity

The Congress internal set-up was exposed as undemocratic in 1939.

LET the Congress first bring all important communities in the country and all principal classes of interest under its leadership. To ask the foreign Government, who is the ruling and sovereign authority in this country, to convene such a body [Constituent Assembly] before even the communal problem has been solved and before all important communities in India have accepted the leadership of the Congress is like putting the cart before the horse. The man who uttered t hese words was prepared, obviously, to accept the Congress leadership as part of a political settlement. Can you guess who said that? It was Mohammed Ali Jinnah at the Lucknow session of the Muslim League in October 1937. He had turned it into a mass body pledged to the independence of India. There was no big divide between the Congress and the League then. Coalitions were expected. But the Congress refused to share power. A decade later the country was partitioned.

By 1939, an embittered Jinnah was launched on the warpath. This is the second part of documents on 1939. The first part, also edited by Mushirul Hasan, was reviewed earlier by this writer (Turning point, Frontline, July 4). This volume contains useful documents that throw light on Jinnahs calculations immediately before the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan resolution on March 23, 1940.

The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, reported to the Secretary of State for India, Marquess of Zetland, on February 28, 1939, his interview with Jinnah. I asked him what suggestions he had to make, to which he replied that, while he did not reject the federal idea, it must be a federation which would ensure an adequate equipoise between Muslim and Hindu votes, and in which there should be an appropriate balance between the communities. I asked him how he contemplated securing this, to which he replied that he had in his mind the manipulation of territorial votes and the adjustments of territorial divisions so as to bring it about. He blushed a little as I pressed the implication of these suggestions upon him, but in the end maintained that at any rate his project for the carving up of this country was a better one than Sikanders.

Two facts emerge. He had not rejected the federal idea, but was groping for a power-sharing scheme, including vague ideas on partition. He did not want unqualified majority rule. The Congress had nothing to offer except a strong federal centre. Zetland met Chaudhary Khaliquzzaman and A.R. Siddiqi in London in March 1939 and found their ideas on partition equally vague. By then many partition schemes were afloat.

The Viceroy took delight in reporting to London dissensions within the Congress on Subhas Chandra Boses election as its president, over Gandhis opposition. Pyarelal wrote to G.D. Birla on February 22, 1939: I find that an assiduous attempt is being made in a certain section of the Press to create an impression that there was some sort of understanding or compromise arrived at between Bapu and Subhas Bose as to the future programme of the Congress. If this implies any manner of acquiescence or agreement on the part of Bapu as to the policies that Bose is professing to advocate, it is altogether erroneous and misleading. Bapu made it absolutely clear to Bose that he could not expect any kind of cooperation for his new policies from the members of the old cabinet. But Bapu may not issue a statement to counteract this propaganda at the present juncture, as it is likely to be misunderstood and exploited by interested parties.

Jayaprakash Narayan was dismayed to find the Old Guard opposing Bose. The developments that have taken place at Wardha and the decision of the thirteen members of the Working Committee to resign from it and not to join it under Subhas Boses presidentship have come to us, as I am sure they have come to many others, as a great shock. He added, The statement of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, a believer as he has been all these years in the policy of United Front, has made that shock more painful. I do not think that the situation as it has been created demands that it should be allowed to deteriorate further by raising a public controversy over it. I for one have no intention to wish it so.

It is not only the Congress-League rift that came to the fore in 1939. Far more than we realise, the Congress internal set-up was also exposed. It was not democratic.