Last Phase of Indian National Movement - Study Notes

Lesson summary

Britain involved India in the Second World War without consulting the Congress ministries in the provinces, and the ministers resigned in protest. The last phase of the freedom struggle that followed combined mass action (Individual Satyagraha, Quit India, the INA and the RIN revolt) with a series of British offers and plans, while the Muslim League pressed its demand for Pakistan. It ended with independence and partition on 15 August 1947.

Before 1942

• Individual Satyagraha: chosen so that the war against fascism was not hampered. Satyagrahis were handpicked by Gandhi, informed the District Magistrate and declared that it was wrong to help the British war effort with men or money.
• Began on 17 October 1940 with Vinoba Bhave near his Paunar ashram in Maharashtra; suspended in December 1940, revived from January 1941 and withdrawn in August 1941.
• August Offer (8 August 1940, Viceroy Linlithgow): dominion status at some unspecified future date; a larger Viceroy's Executive Council; a War Advisory Council with Indians; recognition of minority rights; a constitution drafted by Indians after the war.
• Congress membership fell from 4.5 million (1938-39) to 1.4 million (1940-41).
• Bose resigned as Congress president; Rajendra Prasad was elected at Calcutta; Bose founded the Forward Bloc and was removed from all positions in August 1939.
• Lahore resolution of the Muslim League, 23 March 1940: Muslim-majority areas in the north-west and east to be grouped into 'Independent States'. Muslims became a 'nation', not a 'minority'.

7.1 Cripps Mission

• 1941: France, Poland, Belgium, Norway and Holland fell to Germany; Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 and overran the Philippines, Indo-China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Burma.
• US President F.D. Roosevelt and Chinese President Chiang Kai-Shek pressed Churchill to win Indian cooperation.
• Congress Working Committee resolution, December 1941: cooperation if independence was promised after the war.
• Sir Stafford Cripps, a Labour member of Churchill's war cabinet, arrived in March 1942.
• Proposals: dominion status and a constitution-making body after the war, partly elected by provincial assemblies and partly nominated from the Princely States; any province could stay out and make a separate agreement with Britain.
• Nehru: 'When I read these proposals for the first time I was profoundly depressed.'
• Rejected: dominion status too little, nominated members from Princely States, and the prospect of partition.
• Bose addressed India on the Azad Hind Radio from Germany in March 1942.

7.2 Quit India Movement

• Prices had shot up and food-grains were short.
• Working Committee at Wardha, 14 July 1942, resolved on mass civil disobedience; C. Rajaji and Bhulabhai Desai resigned from it.
• Gandhi, 16 May 1942: 'Leave India to God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy.' Call: 'Do or Die', a 'fight to the finish'.
• All leaders arrested early on 9 August 1942. Hartals and strikes: Tata Steel at Jamshedpur closed 13 days from 20 August; Ahmedabad textile workers struck over three months.
• Repression: 57 battalions, aircraft used to strafe protesters. Linlithgow called it 'by far the most serious rebellion since 1857'.
• Second phase in villages: 60-point rise in food prices (April-August 1942); Socialists organised guerrilla action. Attacks on telegraph lines, railways and offices from late September 1942, most intense in eastern U.P., Bihar, Maharashtra and Bengal.
• National governments: Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar (Midnapore, Bengal, till September 1944) and a parallel government at Satara.
• Leaders: Jayaprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Asaf Ali, Yusuf Mehraly, Ram Manohar Lohia. Gandhi's 21-day fast from 10 February 1943.
• By end of 1943: 91,836 arrested; 1060 shot dead; 208 police outposts, 332 railway stations, 945 post offices destroyed or damaged; 205 policemen defected. R.H. Niblett of Azamgarh recorded 'white terror'.
• Usha Mehta ran the clandestine radio from Bombay, heard as far as Madras.
• Gandhi released on health grounds on 6 May 1944. Wavell replaced Linlithgow in October 1943.

7.3 Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA

• Mohan Singh, a British Indian Army officer in Malaya, sought Japanese help; Indian POWs were put under him. After the fall of Singapore he had 45,000 POWs and drafted about 40,000 into the INA by the end of 1942.
• Bose was arrested on 3 July 1940 under the Defence of India Act, escaped from Calcutta on the night of 16-17 January 1941 and reached Berlin via Kabul and the Soviet Union on an Italian passport. Hitler and Goebbels gave only the Azad Hind Radio.
• Reached Singapore on 2 July 1943; met Prime Minister Tojo in Tokyo.
• Provisional Government of Free India, Singapore, 21 October 1943; it declared war on Britain and was recognised by the Axis powers.
• Rani of Jhansi regiment of women, commanded by Dr Lakshmi, daughter of Ammu Swaminathan of Madras.
• 6 July 1944: Bose called Gandhi the 'Father of the Nation' over the radio from Rangoon.
• A battalion under Shah Nawaz joined the Japanese march on Imphal; it failed and Japan surrendered in mid-1945.
• INA trials at the Red Fort: Shah Nawaz Khan, P.K. Sehgal and G.S. Dhillon. Nehru wore his black gown in their defence. The Muslim League, Akali Dal and Hindu Maha Sabha joined the protests. Sentences remitted and the three freed on 6 January 1946.

7.4 Royal Indian Navy Revolt

• B.C. Dutt of HMIS Talwar was arrested for scribbling 'Quit India'; 1,100 ratings struck. Revolt began on 18 February 1946.
• Grievances: racist behaviour of English officers, poor food and abuse.
• HMIS Hindustan at Karachi struck on 19 February; at least 20,000 ratings from 78 ships and 20 shore establishments revolted. RIAF units and sepoys at Jabalpur struck in sympathy.
• Congress, Communist and Muslim League flags were hoisted together. A revolt without leadership; Sardar Patel brought it to an end.

7.5 Rajaji Proposals and the Wavell Plan

• Rajaji formula (April 1944): a post-war commission to demarcate contiguous Muslim-majority districts and a plebiscite of adults on Pakistan; mutual agreement on defence and communication; border districts free to choose; implementation after full transfer of power. Gandhi-Jinnah talks on it went nowhere.
• Wavell Plan: an Executive Council of Indians apart from the Viceroy and commander-in-chief, with equal numbers of caste Hindus and Muslims and separate representation for Scheduled Castes.
• Simla Conference, 25 June to 14 July 1945: broke down over the League's demand for the exclusive right to nominate Muslims.
• April 1946 Delhi convention of League legislators defined Pakistan as a 'sovereign independent state'.
• Churchill was replaced by Labour leader Clement Attlee.

7.6 Cabinet Mission and Mountbatten Plan

• Cabinet Mission (March 1946): Pethick Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and A.V. Alexander. Proposed an elected body to frame the constitution and a loose confederation. Jinnah accepted on 6 June 1946, Nehru accepted for the Congress on 7 July 1946, and Jinnah opposed it on 29 July 1946.
• Viceroy invited 14 men to the interim government on 15 June 1946; Nehru invited to form it on 12 August; 12 members announced on 25 August; Nehru assumed office on 2 September 1946.
• Direct Action Day, 16 August 1946: bloodshed in Calcutta. Gandhi stayed at Beliaghatta and later toured riot-hit Naokhali.
• Interim cabinet reconstituted on 26 October 1946 with League members Liaquat Ali Khan, I.I. Chundrigar, A.R. Nishtar, Ghazanfar Ali Khan and Jogendra Nath Mandal; Jinnah stayed out.
• 1946 elections: Congress 199 of 210 general seats; League 76. Only 207 members attended the Constituent Assembly's first session on 9 December 1946.
• Liaquat Ali Khan's 'socialistic budget' of March 1947 targeted pro-Congress industrialists.
• Attlee, 20 February 1947: Britain would leave by June 1948. Mountbatten replaced Wavell on 22 March 1947.
• Mountbatten Plan: divide Punjab and Bengal. Congress Working Committee accepted on 1 May 1947; withdrawal advanced to 15 August 1947; AICC resolution moved by Govind Ballabh Pant on 15 June 1947.