Meanwhile, the Indian National Army prisoners were being held in Red Fort and their court martial was in progress. The attention of the nation was focused on them. The British had tried to keep the whereabouts of the INA detainees a secret, but Patel had got information about them and brought it to Gandhi's notice. Some of the patriots had already been court-martialled and shot. As soon as this was reported to Gandhi, he wrote to Lord Wavell: 'This I write in fear and trembling, lest I may be overstepping my limit. I am watching the progress of the trial of the members of the corps raised by or under Shri Subhash Babu. Though I can have nothing in common with any defence by force of arms, I am never blind to the valour and patriotism often displayed by persons in arms.... India adores these men who are on trial. No doubt the Government have overwhelming might on their side. But it will be a misuse of that power if it is used in the teeth of universal Indian opposition. It is not for me to say what should be done except that what is being done is not the way....'
Then Gandhi met General Auchinleck, comander-in-chief of India. He expressed his pleasure by the reassuring reply given by the general. Gandhi championed the cause of the INA under-trials and left no stone unturned in his effort to save them, although he did not endorse their philosophies. Nehru, who had often expressed doubts about the efficacy of non-violence, was now convinced that India would not achieve independence by resorting to violence or with the help of another nation. The CWC recorded its opinion that 'Whilst it is right and proper for the Congress to defend the members of the INA now undergoing trial and to aid its sufferers, Congressmen must not forget that this support and sympathy do not mean that the Congress has in any way deviated from its policy of attaining Swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means'. Gandhi, accompanied by Patel, visited the INA detainees once in the Kabul Lines and once at Red Fort. At Red Fort the prisoners told them how, in the INA, they had totally obliterated the barriers of religion and caste and Hindus and Muslims ate in the same mess. However, as prisoners of war, their British jailors had resorted to segregation. They were served 'Hindu tea' and 'Muslim tea' separately by the camp authorities. This was a prevalent practice in the Indian Armed Forces in British India.
Gandhi told them that they should overcome this by, 'Mixing the two together half and half and then sharing!'
'That is exactly what we are doing,' they replied.
General Mohan Singh, one of the founders of the INA, preferred separate quarters in the detention camp due to the cracks that were dividing the INA now, after Subhash Chandra Bose's death. Gandhi visited him next and then went to the field hospital where the injured prisoners of war were confined. He met Major-General Chatterjee, Major-General Loganathan and Colonel Habib-ur Rehman here. Until Gandhi met the INA prisoners he had refused to believe the reports of Bose's death in a plane crash. Colonel Habib-ur Rehman, who was with Netaji on the plane, gave an eye-witness account of the crash. He told Gandhi, 'Netaji had received extensive burns on the hands and other parts of the body. But unmindful of them he asked me how I was. I told him I felt all right, and hoped to pull through. He told me that he did not expect to survive and gave his last message: "I am going, but tell my countrymen and all concerned, the fight for Indian Independence must continue till the goal is attained." The crash occurred at 9.30 am. At half past three in the afternoon he breathed his last, retaining consciousness almost till the end. Not a groan escaped his lips in spite of the agony.' During his prayer meeting the next day, Gandhi announced that, contrary to his previous belief, he was now convinced that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was dead.
Earlier, on 2 April, during a meeting with Pethick-Lawrence, Gandhi had suggested acts of confidence building. One was the release of all political prisoners, including those who were arrested in cases of sabotage in the pursuit of freedom: 'They could not be a danger to the state now that the pursuit of freedom had become a common cause'. Gandhi's recommendation was gradually implemented. The socialist leaders Jayprakash Narayan and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya were released on 12 April. The Indian National Army under-trials were released two days later.
The members of the British Cabinet Mission arrived at Karachi Airport on 23 March 1946 and reached Delhi the following day. From the 1st to the 17th of April, they met various 'representative Indians', meeting 472 leaders in the course of 182 sittings in an effort 'to arrive at the greatest common measure of agreement' among the various parties. They abandoned British protocol and established personal contacts with the Indian leaders. After the first week, the expectations of the people of India began to rise. They saw a change in the attitude of the British and thought that a national government would soon be formed at the Centre. They thought that the changed attitude and method of interaction used by the Cabinet Mission and the statement of Prime Minister Clement Attlee in Parliament showed a new conviction and sincerity on the part of the British. Woodrow Wyatt, a staff member of the Cabinet delegation, met Gandhi in the second week of April. 'Do you think we are getting off your back?' he asked.
'I feel that you will. But you must have the strength.'
Wyatt referred to the hurdles created by the League's demand for Pakistan. 'What if we imposed what we considered to be a just solution and went?'
'All would be upset.'
'So it must be left to India's decision?'
'Yes, leave it to the Congress and the League. Thanks to Jinnah's genius and British cooperation, he has built up a powerful organisation comprehending not all but the major part of the Muslims. I will advise you to try him and if you feel he cannot deliver the goods, take the Congress into your confidence.... But in any case the British occupation must end forthwith.'
'And what happens after the British leave?'
'Probably there will be arbitration.... But there might be a bloodbath. It will be settled in two days by non-violence if I can persuade India to go my way, or the ordeal may last longer. Even so, it would not be worse than what it is under the British Rule....'
Talking to Sir Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, Sir Cripps commented, 'Where agreement has to be arrived at, it may be necessary for the party even with the strongest case agreeing to accept something less than what it may rightly be considered entitled to in order to avoid a possible decision against them.'
There was an opinion gathering strength amongst some influential Muslim supporters of the League that Jinnah's obstinacy on Pakistan was harming the cause of the Muslims. Sir Cripps agreed that Jinnah's Pakistan was an 'impossible idea, even the League had realised it. When I find a person getting louder and more violent in his denunciation of his opponents, I get the feeling ... that he is beginning to recognise that the extreme case for which he stands is becoming desperate.'
On 17 April the Cabinet Mission took a seven-day break and left for Kashmir to review the result of the interviews and informal talks with the leaders. They returned on 24 April; on the 27th, Pethick-Lawrence wrote to the presidents of the Congress and Muslim League suggesting that they make 'one further attempt to obtain agreement'. They suggested certain fundamental principles for agreement: there should be a Union government dealing with foreign affairs, defence and communications; there would be two groups of provinces, one of predominantly Hindu provinces and the other of Muslim provinces. These groups would deal with all other subjects which the provinces desired; the provincial governments would deal with all other subjects and would have all the residuary sovereign rights. If the League and Congress were prepared to enter into negotiations on this basis, Pethick-Lawrence went on to suggest in his letter, arrangements would be made for them to meet in a conference together with the Cabinet Mission. They suggested Simla as the probable venue, and asked the presidents of both the parties to nominate four representatives who would negotiate on their behalf.
The Congress had expressed its opposition to the formation of groups on communal lines, with separate legislatures and executive machinery for each group. It also objected to the compulsion for a province to join a particular grouping. The NWFP was ruled by
a Congress government headed by the Khan brothers. Under the Cabinet Mission's scheme, the NWFP would have to join the separate group with a Muslim League majority in the other provinces. Even in the eastern parts of the country Assam, a non-Muslim province, found itself to be in a situation where it would have to join a Muslim province group since its neighbouring provinces of East and West Bengal were ruled by the Muslim League and they would opt for a separate grouping. 'In any event,' wrote the Congress president in response to Pethick-Lawrence's letter, 'it would be wholly wrong to compel a province to function against its own wish.' The Congress wanted the formation of groups if the provinces so desired to be left for the Constituent Assembly to decide.
When the Cabinet Mission explained that acceptance of the invitation to the proposed conference would not imply preliminary acceptance or approval of the terms suggested, the Congress president accepted the invitation to attend the conference. The Muslim League agreed to participate without 'commitment or prejudice' to its position as set forth in its Lahore Resolution of 1940 on Pakistan, and confirmed its participation at the Muslim League Legislators' Convention on 9 April 1946. On the afternoon of 28 April, Gandhi received a message from the Cabinet Mission that Pethick-Lawrence and Cripps would like to meet him urgently either at Harijan Colony or in the gardens of the Viceroy's House. They preferred the latter since they wanted to keep the meeting private. Since the arrival of the Cabinet Mission, correspondents from every major newspaper and press service from around the world had descended on New Delhi and were reporting a minute by minute account of the mission's work and its interactions with Indian political leaders and parties. The press hounded the members of the Cabinet Mission and Gandhi, in particular. Gandhi agreed to go to the Viceroy's House that day.
Gandhi, Pethick-Lawrence and Cripps sat talking by the circular pool. As dusk turned to darkness it was revealed to Gandhi that all was not well within the Congress ranks. The Cabinet Mission delegation had received a letter from a senior Congress leader who had written it without the knowledge of Gandhi, the Congress president or the CWC. To Gandhi, the contents of the letter did not matter as much as its significance: a breach had been revealed in the Congress ranks and it foretold of further disintegration. On his return, a very disturbed Gandhi mentioned this incident to two of his colleagues, one of whom was a member of the CWC. They were unwilling to believe it and thought he had misunderstood. Gandhi was emphatic: 'I am neither deaf nor so stupid as not to be able to hear and correctly report a simple thing like that'. The next day, Cripps met Gandhi and brought along the letter, As we were talking to you last evening,' he said, 'you seemed to be unaware of this. So we thought we had better straighten out this matter with you.' The two Congress leaders who had doubted Gandhi the previous evening were present and were shown the letter. It was their turn to be shocked. Who wrote the letter and what its contents were is not known.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Congress president, had nominated apart from himself, Nehru, Patel and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to represent the Congress during the second Simla Conference. The Cabinet Mission and the CWC requested Gandhi to be present during the conference; he arrived in Simla on 2 May 1946. The conference went on from 5-12 May. On the third day, after taking into consideration the deliberations of the first two days, the Cabinet Mission put forth some further 'Suggested Points for Agreement'. The original list of Union subjects was expanded to accommodate 'Fundamental Rights', and it was proposed that the Union government should have the necessary powers to acquire finances which would enable it to implement the subjects. The League had recommended that the Constituent Assembly should be divided into three sections, one representing the Hindu majority provinces, the second representing the Muslim majority provinces and the third representing the princely states, the rajas of British India. The League suggested that the first two would meet separately and decide provincial constitutions for their groups and, if they wished, group constitutions. To counter-balance the Congress objection to the compulsory grouping of provinces in the section, the Cabinet Mission proposed that a province should have the freedom to opt out of the original group and go to another group or remain out of any group by a majority of the votes of its representatives, if the provincial or group constitution was not acceptable to it. The three sections would then meet to frame the Union constitution.
Under the Union constitution, there would thus be three sub-federations: Muslim majority provinces; Hindu majority provinces; and the group of princely states. The Muslim majority provinces would have a parity of representation in the Union legislature as well as the Union government with the Hindu majority provinces, irrespective of whether the provinces in question formed themselves into groups or not. Further, to compensate the League for the possible loss, through opting out, of the NWFP and Assam from the Muslim majority group, it was proposed that there should be an additional safeguard that no measure affecting a communal issue in the Union constitution would be passed unless the majority of both major communities voted in its favour.
The Congress was prepared to accept the formation of groups provided it was entirely optional. However, it held that this would be for the representatives of the provinces to decide after the Constituent Assembly had framed the constitution for the All India Federal Union. The Muslim League demanded that there should be a separate constitution-making body for the six Muslim provinces: Punjab, NWFP, Baluchistan, Sind, Bengal and Assam. Although Assam was a Hindu majority province, the Muslim League claimed it as a part of the Muslim grouping. After the constitution of the Pakistan federal government and the provinces were framed, the constitution-making bodies of the two groups would deal with the three subjects: foreign affairs, defence and, as they termed it, 'communications necessary for defence'.
The Congress and the Muslim League differed on the issue of funds for the Union government. The Congress wanted the Union government to raise the necessary finance for the discharge of its functions by taxation. The Muslim League insisted that the federal union should in no event have the power to raise revenues in its own right but only by contribution. The League also wanted that no decision—legislative, executive or administrative—should be taken by the Union. On 'controversial matters' a decision should be taken by a vote in its favour of three-fourths. The Muslim League was adamant on achieving Pakistan and if they failed, since there were dissenting voices amongst their ranks too, then they would emasculate the Union government at birth.
The Cabinet Mission had also begun to sink in the quagmire of British colonial policies and practices and was unwilling to take bold decisions. Gandhi's appeal to Sir Cripps much earlier hoping that, 'This time there is determination to do the right thing in terms of India,' had failed to break through the diplomatic correctitude and the so-called British responsibilities towards all their Indian subjects. The British refused to see India as a whole and insisted that there were several Indias, all with legitimate demands of independence and democratic safeguards.
While the Cabinet Mission continuously refused to accept partition or division and termed Jinnah's vision of Pakistan as an unrealisable 'pipe dream', they continued to encourage the separatists Muslim League. The Congress leaders, in their haste to get independence and power, kept slipping into the trap that had been so efficiently laid for them by the League and their friends in the colonial administration, from where the only escape was to accept the division of the country.
As early as 6 May, Maulana Azad expressed his concerns to Lord Pethick-Lawrence in a letter, over the confusion and vagueness of the talks: 'I confess to feeling somewhat mystified and disturbed at the vagueness of our talks and some assumptions underlying them. There can be no independence so long as there is a foreign army on Indian soil. We stand for the Independence of the whole of India now and not in the distant or near future. Other matters are subsidiary to this and can be fitly discussed and decided by the Constituent Assembly.... The Constituent Assembly is not going to decide the question of independence; that que
stion must be and, we take it, has been decided now'.
As was fated, the conference was a failure: what was acceptable to the Congress was rejected by the Muslim League, and the demands of the Muslim League were acceptable to none. Finally, on 12 May, it was announced that the conference had failed to bring about an agreement between the Congress and the League. Admitting failure, the members of the Cabinet Mission returned to Delhi.
On 16 May, the Cabinet Mission, with the 'full approval of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom', published their recommendations for the speedy implementation of a new constitution. Their plan envisaged two stages: the long-term plan for the setting up of a constitution-making body and the short-term plan of the formation of an 'interim government having the support of the major political parties'. On the question of the partition of India, the Cabinet Mission's recommendations were quite emphatic—they were firmly averse to it. Apart from this the recommendations were very ambiguous and convoluted. Many were at total divergence with previous clauses. In all, it was a most confusing document, trying desperately to please all. To the Congress it offered a common Centre and the freedom of choice to the provinces to form groups or not. To the Muslim League it offered the prospect of 'Muslim zones' to be formed in the north-west and north-east of India by making it obligatory for the representatives of the provinces to sit in sections to settle the provincial constitutions. To the princes it offered release from paramountcy which was not to be transferred to the successor government. To the Sikhs it held out the prospect of preserving intact the integrity of their homeland.
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