Excerpt: A New History of India by R Mukherjee, S Punja and T Sinclair - Hindustan Times
close_game
close_game

Excerpt: A New History of India by R Mukherjee, S Punja and T Sinclair

ByRudrangshu Mukherjee, Shobhita Punja, Toby Sinclair
Feb 07, 2023 07:17 PM IST

This extract from a new book, that presents India’s history from its origins to the 21st century, looks at the period of political unrest leading up to independence

India became free of British rule on 15 August 1947. But this independence came with the terrible price of Partition. A new nation state called Pakistan was carved out of India. This division affected the lives of millions of people who because of decisions made by political leaders lost their homes, their properties, their jobs, and their sense of belonging. Partition also resulted in violence in which thousands were killed, injured, and raped. This chapter attempts to look at this process very briefly and consider how Independence came with Partition. One of the important points to underline here is that the eventual outcome was the result of very convoluted and protracted negotiations principally between representatives of the British government and leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League. The most prominent among the League leaders was Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

Jawaharlal Nehru Addressing the Midnight Session of the constituent Assembly of India on 15 August 1947. (HT Photo) PREMIUM
Jawaharlal Nehru Addressing the Midnight Session of the constituent Assembly of India on 15 August 1947. (HT Photo)

455pp, ₹999; Aleph
455pp, ₹999; Aleph

The conduct of the war on the Allied side and the immediate aftermath of the war had altered the objective conditions that determined the nature of British imperialism. The Atlantic Charter of 1941 which the US president Roosevelt had insisted upon and which the British prime minister, Churchill, a dyed-in-the-wool and brutish empirewallah, had reluctantly agreed to sign, had put it down that once the war was over, and the Allied powers were victorious, Britain would pull back the frontiers of its empire and begin the process of decolonization. This process received a fillip with the defeat of Churchill in the British elections of 1945. The new prime minister, Clement Attlee, belonged to the Labour Party; he, in 1947, announced that Britain would pull out of India by June 1948. This not only set a timetable but also introduced an urgency to the negotiations and decision-making. Within India, there were two factors which were important. One was that most of the Congress leaders had been in prison from August 1942 to June 1945. They emerged prison-weary but were forced to face a very volatile political situation (about which more later). And the second was the growing strength of the Muslim League. By 1943, League ministries were in place in Assam, Sind, Bengal, and the North-West Frontier Province. More significantly, the Pakistan demand was gaining in popularity among sections of Indian Muslims. There were reasons for this growing popularity. Pakistan was being presented to the peasants of Bengal and Punjab as the end of the domination and exploitation of Hindu landlords and moneylenders. Pakistan also meant an area where there would be no or less competition from Hindu business groups and professional classes. These factors made the League a force to reckon with in the negotiations regarding the transfer of power.

Immediately after the end of the war, parts of India witnessed militant popular movements that were completely outside the Gandhian fold and the control of the Congress. These movements were so powerful that the autumn and the winter of 1945–46 pushed British rule, in the words of one British official turned historian, to ‘the edge of a volcano’. One such movement was the protest that followed the government’s decision to hold public trials of the INA prisoners. In an incredibly stupid move, the British decided to hold the first of these trials in the Red Fort where they put in the dock a Hindu (PK Sehgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz), and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon). The accused were defended by Tej Bahadur Sapru, Bhulabhai Desai, and Jawaharlal Nehru. For this momentous trial, Nehru donned his silk gown after twenty-five years. Even the Muslim League joined the protests. The protests clearly went beyond any kind of communal divide and aroused widespread public sympathy. The magnitude of the protests made the British fear that there could be another uprising like the one witnessed in August 1942. Calcutta, over two days, 21 to 23 November, saw an upheaval in support of the INA prisoners in which supporters of the Forward Bloc, the Communist Party, and Muslims participated. The protestors were fired on by the police, killing two students, a Hindu and a Muslim. This led to strikes and large-scale violence. What surprised the police—and this was noted by officials — was that firing in no way dissuaded the crowds; in fact the people stood their ground. What is equally significant is that episodes of this kind of popular militancy were frowned upon by the Congress leadership. Calcutta witnessed another such upheaval in February 1946 against the seven years’ rigorous imprisonment sentence passed on Abdul Rashid of the INA. These protests again saw remarkable shows of unity between students and workers and Hindus and Muslims. Such protests were by no means futile. The British were forced to make concessions which included the remission of imprisonment sentences passed on the first batch of accused in the INA trials.

“One such movement was the protest that followed the government’s decision to hold public trials of the INA prisoners. In an incredibly stupid move, the British decided to hold the first of these trials in the Red Fort where they put in the dock a Hindu (PK Sehgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz), and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon). The accused were defended by Tej Bahadur Sapru, Bhulabhai Desai, and Jawaharlal Nehru. For this momentous trial, Nehru donned his silk gown after twenty-five years. Even the Muslim League joined the protests.” (HT Archive)
“One such movement was the protest that followed the government’s decision to hold public trials of the INA prisoners. In an incredibly stupid move, the British decided to hold the first of these trials in the Red Fort where they put in the dock a Hindu (PK Sehgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz), and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon). The accused were defended by Tej Bahadur Sapru, Bhulabhai Desai, and Jawaharlal Nehru. For this momentous trial, Nehru donned his silk gown after twenty-five years. Even the Muslim League joined the protests.” (HT Archive)

In Bombay, around the same time as the protests in Calcutta against the prison sentence on Abdul Rashid, a different and a more radical protest occurred. On 18 February 1946, ratings of the Royal Indian Navy, on the signals training ship Talwar, went on hunger strike against the bad food offered to them and the racial discrimination they suffered. The strikes spread on shore and on twenty-two ships moored in the Bombay harbour. The ships put up the tricolour, the hammer and sickle flag, and the green crescent flag on their masts. The ratings formed a Naval Central Strike Committee and put forward their demands — better food, equal pay for white and Indian sailors, release of INA and other political prisoners, and withdrawal of Indian soldiers from Indonesia. Violent encounters with the army ensued. The ratings received support from the common people of Bombay — crowds brought food for the ratings and shopkeepers invited the ratings to take whatever they needed. By 22 February, the strike had spread — all the naval bases in India went on strike as did some of the ships out in the ocean. The numbers at the height of this protest were huge — 78 ships, 20 establishments on shore, and 20,000 ratings. In Karachi there was a gun battle, and Hindu and Muslim students and workers displayed their solidarity through violent clashes with the police and the army. While the Communist Party of India called for a general strike in Bombay, the Congress leadership remained indifferent to the movement. The general strike was successful with 300,000 workers refusing to work on 22 February; all mills remained closed and there were violent encounters between the people and the police on the streets. Two army battalions had to be deployed to restore normalcy in Bombay. An official estimate said that 228 civilians were killed and over 1,000 injured. Sardar Patel and Jinnah worked overtime to persuade the ratings to surrender. The ratings were assured that the national parties would ensure there would be no victimization. The promise was never kept. The ratings were betrayed by the elite national leadership but their uprising deserves the epithet ‘the last war of independence’.

A few months after the heroic rising of the ratings, in September 1946, a series of peasant uprisings occurred, with the largest number taking place in Bengal. The demand was that sharecroppers should be given two-thirds of the crop instead of half or even less. The movement thus came to be called the Tebhaga Movement. The movement was led by communists with militant students organizing the sharecroppers who were demographically a very large part of the rural population. The movement peaked during November, the time of the harvest, with sharecroppers taking the harvest to their own threshing floors (instead of to the houses of the landlords) to ensure that they could keep two-thirds of the crop. The struggle was most intense in North Bengal. Police violence sponsored by landlords tried to suppress the movement. The peasants resisted and put up a fight with their traditional weapons like lathis; the fight was thus unequal and destined to fail. A full-scale armed struggle was not possible as the communists did not have access to arms.

The communists organized another movement in Travancore, a princely state where they had strong bases among agricultural labourers, fishermen, toddy tappers, and coir-factory workers. CP Ramaswami Iyer, the powerful diwan of Travancore, announced a plan to introduce an ‘American model’ constitution by which the executive would be controlled by the diwan. It was evident that Ramaswami Iyer was working towards an independent Travancore. Tensions were already running high because of food shortages. While the state Congress prevaricated, the communists decided to go on the offensive to throw out the American model. Repression followed; in retaliation the communists called for a general strike. Martial law was proclaimed on 25 October 1946 and a bloodbath ensued. This uprising called the Punnapra–Vayalar uprising paved the way for the integration of Travancore into the Union of India.

Telangana (then in the princely state of Hyderabad) saw the beginnings of a sustained peasant guerrilla war that lasted from July 1946 till October 1951. At the height of the war, it covered 3,000 villages, 41,000 square kilometres, and involved 3 million people. (CPI(M) archives via Wikimedia Commons)
Telangana (then in the princely state of Hyderabad) saw the beginnings of a sustained peasant guerrilla war that lasted from July 1946 till October 1951. At the height of the war, it covered 3,000 villages, 41,000 square kilometres, and involved 3 million people. (CPI(M) archives via Wikimedia Commons)

If during the Tebhaga Movement and Punnapra–Vayalar Movement popular armed struggle had been largely sporadic, Telangana (then in the princely state of Hyderabad) from July 1946 saw the beginnings of a sustained peasant guerrilla war that lasted till October 1951. At the height of the war, it covered 3,000 villages, 41,000 square kilometres, and involved 3 million people. The war was waged against various forms of extortion practised by upper-caste landlords on lower-caste and tribal peasants and debt slaves. Communists were yet again at the forefront of the struggle which had the added dimension of being against the nizam of Hyderabad. Once the Indian army entered Hyderabad in September 1948 to force the nizam to join the Indian union, the guerrilla war turned against the new Indian state. The guerrilla war, even though it was eventually suppressed, was not without its moments of glory. In the villages that were under the control of the peasant guerrilla bands, forced and bonded labour was abolished, there was a rise in agricultural wages, lands that had been unjustly seized were returned to their previous peasant owners, waste land was redistributed as well as land above 40 hectares of dry land and 4 hectares of wet land. Some of these gains remained even after the movement had been quelled.

While these movements — all outside of Congress control — were on, the elite politicians belonging to the Congress, the League, the princes, and British officials parleyed across tables to decide the future of India — how power was to be transferred and to whom.

An added dimension to the negotiations was the spread of communal rioting across India, especially North India. It started in Calcutta on 16 August 1946 with Jinnah’s call for Direct Action for Pakistan. It spread to Bombay in early September, to Noakhali in East Bengal in early October, to Bihar in late October, to Garhmukteshwar (in UP) in November and to large parts of Punjab from March 1947. The scale of this communal violence can be gauged by the figures from Calcutta where in three days from 16 to 19 August at least 4,000 people were killed and 10,000 injured. The violence had killings as its principal objective.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (HT Photo)
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (HT Photo)

Growing popular militancy and communal violence were increasingly closing the options of the negotiators. Moreover, the negotiations and the various proposals that were put forward were going nowhere. In February 1947, the League refused to join the Constituent Assembly and cooperate in the functioning of the cabinet. In retaliation the Congress demanded that the League ministers resign from the Interim government. Things seemed to be leading to an impasse especially with Attlee’s announcement that come what may, the British would pull out of India by June 1948.

Refugee trains in Punjab, 1947. (Wikimedia Commons)
Refugee trains in Punjab, 1947. (Wikimedia Commons)

One of the proposals that the British were seriously considering was to break up or Balkanize India. Though this was firmly rejected by the Congress, it was becoming evident that some sort of partition would have to be accepted. The Congress was eager to avoid more communal violence and popular militancy outside its control. Under the Mountbatten Plan, hurriedly worked out, after what was code-named Plan Balkan (a plan to transfer power to separate provinces or confederations) was rejected, it was decided that power would be transferred to two central governments — India and Pakistan. This was accepted by the Congress, the League, and the Sikh leaders on 2 June 1947 and announced the next day. This led to the enactment of the India Independence Act which was presented to and passed by the British parliament and the Crown on 18 July. And on the basis of this India became independent on 15 August 1947; a day before that a new nation state called Pakistan was also born.

There were layers of irony in all this. First, the Indian national movement—the struggle to free India from British rule— had never visualized a freedom that would truncate India. Second, and equally importantly, the Indian freedom struggle had been a movement of the people of India of all shades of opinion, caste, and creed, yet the final outcome was the product of a handful of leaders sitting across a table to thrash out a shoddy compromise. Leaders who had suffered for their ideals to free India stooped low to retain power and control.

Mahatma Gandhi in Noakhali, Assam during the Partition riots 1947. (HT Photo)
Mahatma Gandhi in Noakhali, Assam during the Partition riots 1947. (HT Photo)

This narrative would be incomplete without the mention of the one man who stood apart from the negotiations and refused to be part of any discussion that had the division of India on the agenda. This was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. As soon as he realized that his hand-picked men, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, and so on were becoming back room politicians completely divorced from the people, and and when he saw the country being engulfed by communal violence, Gandhi withdrew from Delhi to go and work among the victims of communal violence — in Noakhali, Bihar, and Calcutta. He wanted the British to leave India and let the Indians decide their own future. Thus when India erupted in jubilation on the midnight of 14 –15 August, Gandhi was not in Delhi and he was in no mood to celebrate. He was in a very poor part of eastern Calcutta working to instil ahimsa and abhaya among those who had been scarred by communal violence. When asked on the morning of 15 August for his reaction, he said with no little poignancy, “Today is a day for fasting and prayer.” The person called the Father of the Nation was not present at the birth of the nation.

Unlock a world of Benefits with HT! From insightful newsletters to real-time news alerts and a personalized news feed – it's all here, just a click away! -Login Now!

Continue reading with HT Premium Subscription

Daily E Paper I Premium Articles I Brunch E Magazine I Daily Infographics
freemium
SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Share this article
SHARE
Story Saved
Live Score
OPEN APP
Saved Articles
Following
My Reads
Sign out
New Delhi 0C
Friday, March 29, 2024
Start 14 Days Free Trial Subscribe Now
Follow Us On