Reconstruction of Post-colonial India - Study Notes

Lesson summary

Freedom came with a price. The partition of India divided Bengal and the Punjab, set off migration and communal violence, and left the infant nation to frame a secular, democratic and republican Constitution, merge more than 500 Princely States, reorganise provinces on the basis of language and build a foreign policy of peace with justice.

8.1 Consequences of partition

• February 20, 1947: Prime Minister Atlee set June 30, 1948 as the date for British withdrawal.
• March 22, 1947: Mountbatten replaced Wavell as viceroy.
• June 3, 1947: the Mountbatten plan advanced the transfer of power to August 15, 1947, to two dominions; only 72 days were left.
• June 14, 1947: the AICC at Meerut accepted the plan. Gandhi, who had opposed division, conceded its inevitability.
• Sir Cyril Radcliffe: a lawyer with no exposure to India, arrived on July 8, 1947 to preside over two Boundary Commissions (Punjab and Bengal), each with two Muslim and two Hindu judges. They had five weeks and used the faulty 1941 census; the report came on August 9, 1947.
• The new map was not made known to the people when they celebrated independence on August 14/15, 1947. Radcliffe's award contained all kinds of anomalies; East Pakistan became Bangladesh in December 1971.
• Gandhi stayed far from New Delhi and fasted on August 15, 1947.
• Refugee columns were called kafilas; trains were attacked; an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 died and 15 million were displaced. Camps were set up around the Red Fort and the Purana Quila.
• April 8, 1950: Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan signed the Delhi pact to restore the confidence of minorities.
• W.H. Auden's poem Partition describes Radcliffe's hurried task.

8.2 Making of the Constitution

• Gandhi laid down in 1922 that swaraj must spring from the wishes of the people through freely chosen representatives; the Congress formally demanded in 1934 that Indians draft their own constitution and rejected the White Paper.
• Provincial elections under the 1935 Act were held in 1946; the elected assemblies chose the Constituent Assembly. The Muslim League stayed away.
• The Congress ensured Dr B.R. Ambedkar's election from Bombay and made him chairman of the drafting committee.
• The Karachi session (March 1931) resolution on Fundamental Rights laid the basis for rights and directive principles.
• First meeting: December 9, 1946, with Rajendra Prasad as chairman. Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution on December 13, 1946.
• Adopted on November 26, 1949. Fundamental Rights drew from clause 5 of the Objectives Resolution; the legal language also drew on the UDHR of December 10, 1948.

8.3 Merger of Princely States

• By August 15, 1947 all states except Kashmir, Junagadh and Hyderabad had signed the Instrument of Accession, accepting India's authority over Defence, External Affairs and Communications.
• The All India States People's Conference (December 1945 and April 1947) warned that states refusing to join would be treated as hostile; princes were offered a generous privy purse.
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Home Minister in charge of the States Ministry, achieved the rapid unification.
• People's movements: Punnapra-Vayalar struggle in Travancore against Diwan Sir C.P. Ramaswamy, Praja Mandal and tribal agitations in Orissa (Nilagiri, Dhenkanal, Talcher), and the Congress movement against the Maharaja of Mysore.
• Hyderabad: the Nizam declared independence; police action followed within 48 hours, legitimised by the Telengana people's movement against the Nizam and his Razakkars.
• Junagadh: its ruler wanted to join Pakistan against the people's wishes.
• Kashmir: Maharaja Hari Singh wanted independence; the National Conference led a 'Quit Kashmir' agitation. After Pakistani raiders attacked in October 1947 he signed the Instrument of Accession. Article 370 gave autonomy; it was abolished in 2019.

8.4 Linguistic reorganisation of states

Article 3 lets Parliament form new states and alter areas and boundaries.

8.5 India's foreign policy

• Architect: Jawaharlal Nehru. Principles: anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, non-alignment, Afro-Asian unity, non-aggression, non-interference, respect for sovereignty and world peace.
• India was the first to recognise the People's Republic of China (January 1, 1950). China occupied Tibet in 1950.
• Panch Sheel (1954): respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, peaceful co-existence.
• 1959: Dalai Lama given asylum; Chinese fire on an Indian patrol at the Kongka pass in Ladakh. 8 September 1962: Chinese attack on the Thagla ridge.
• Asian Relations Conference, March 1947 (more than twenty countries); Colombo conference 1954; Bandung Afro-Asian Conference, April 1955, with its 10-point declaration; Non-Aligned Movement born at Belgrade.
• 1961: Nehru, Nasser and Tito call for nuclear disarmament and peace.