Simla & After

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.

VII. Rationale of Representation

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.

VII. Debunk Theocracy

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 ground 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.

IX. What Next?

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 ward 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.