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![General Editor’s Preface
It gives me great pleasure to place in the hands of readers the tenth and last volume of the
Towards Freedom series of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). The project taken
up by the Council many years ago is at last approaching completion. Since the volumes in the
series have been published at intervals of months and sometimes years, a part of the General
Editor’s duty has been to state at the beginning of each volume the objective and the general
guiding principles of this endeavour. I shall address that task first and then share with the
readers a few thoughts which crossed my mind as I read the present volume.
The agenda of an endeavour such as this series defines itself in part through editorial practice
and partly through attempts towards a statement of objectives. The historical context in which
this project developed initially is generally known. While we must not overestimate the influence
of that historical conjuncture on the academic inputs which went into the making of the project’s
agenda, one has to take that into account as one of the formative factors. After the vertiginous
years leading to 1947, there came a time when historians turned their attention to those years
and archives began to acquire and provide access to source materials. The last years of‘British
India’ began to be addressed by professional historians and indeed the theme attracted national
attention both in India and in Britain. InJune 1967, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson
made an important statement in this regard in the House of Commons: ‘In view of the great
interest now being shown in historical circles in the last days of British rule in India ... [there
would be published] documents from the India Office records on the Transfer of Power and
the events leading up to it.’* The announcement included the assurance that ‘the editors will
be independent historians who will be given unrestrained access to the records, and freedom
to select and edit the documents for publication’. The outcome of the project thus framed at
the highest level in England was the series known as The Transfer ofPower, edited by Nicholas
Mansergh, Smuts Professor of the History of the British Commonwealth at Cambridge. In
addition to the announcement made in Parliament, Mansergh, as the ‘Editor-in-Chief’, stated
that the ‘purpose of the series’ was ‘to make available to scholars in convenient printed form
the more important British historical records relating to the transfer of power in India’.^
Arguably, there is an obvious inadequacy in the notion that all that happened in 1947 was
a ‘transfer of power’. In Indian perception the attainment of independence was a significant
moment in the history of the struggle against British rule in the subcontinent. The representation
of the emergence of independent India and Pakistan as transfer of power, solely an alteration of
constitutional relations, tended towards the occlusion of that history. The focus on the legalistic
‘ Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, House of Commons, Vol. 749, 30June 1967, cols 147-8.
^ Nicholas Mansergh, ed., ‘Foreword’, The Transfer ofPower, Vol. VI, London, 1976, p. viii.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-17-320.jpg)
![xiv General Editor’s Preface
was the conflict between the politics of exclusion and its contestation through the endeavours
to be inclusive—and this was a conflict which left its mark at every level, on the personal
life of the victims of discrimination or violence, on politics at the level of communities, and
ultimately on the founding principles of the newly emerging sovereign states. That conflict
meant innumerable multilateral negotiations between majorities and minorities as they were
perceived in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, caste status, and so on. All I need to do,
given the very exhaustive documentation in the following pages, is to highlight what may be
considered to be two frequently unasked questions: How was Independence imagined? And how
was Partition negotiated towards general acceptance?{ I fail to ask those questions I shall miss the
wood for the tree. The documents in this collection covering the days fromJanuary 1 toJune
2, 1947, throw a shaft of light on these questions.
‘We are actors today in a great historical drama,’ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in one
of the earliest meetings of Constituent Assembly. ‘We are involved in it and therefore we are
unable to perceive the large contours of it.’*’ This was a perspicacious comment worthy of a
philosopher. Few others could distance themselves from the immediate context and reflect
upon the larger perspective. But that perspective was writ large in the initial move of the
Constituent Assembly in January 1947, in the ‘objectives resolution’. The words concerning
the constitution to be made were bold and evocative of the long struggle that preceded the
formation of the Constituent Assembly: ‘[A]11 power and authority of the sovereign Independent
India, its constituent parts and organs of government, are derived from the people ...justice,
social, economic and political, equality of status, of opportunity, and before the law; freedom
of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action, subject to law
and public morality ... adequate safeguards ... for minorities, backward class.Nehru in his
speech on the resolution reminded the Constituent Assembly of the past pledges looking
towards Independence: ‘I felt the past crowding around me, and I also felt the future taking
shape. We stood on the razor’s edge of the present... I felt that we were coming to the end of
an age, I had a sense of our forebears watching this undertaking of ours ...”** ***
While Independence was bathed in the light of a historical vision of this kind, occasionally
it was also a moment that was perceived in terms of the mechanics of what was called in
bureaucratic language the transfer of power and the continuity of administration. That discourse
naturally demands a lot of space in the documents which are reproduced here. Rajendra Prasad,
on the post-Independence status of that issue in a memorandum to Nehru on 18 February
1947, says:
The problem of administrative machinery and its strength must be viewed in the perspective
that, from June 1948 onwards India ... will be free from the foreign element in all the branches
of its services ... Stories of weakening of the administration, depletion of cadres, interference,
corruption and inefficiency are a common tale in a large number of provinces in India today ...
The problem of administrative strength, administrative efficiency, and administrative tradition
is on a par with the problem of constitution-making...*^
** Sir S.Radhakrishnan’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 20 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 2.
(References below, unless specified otherwise, are to the present collection of documents. Part 1 of Towards Freedom
1947.)
‘Objectives Resolution’, Chapter 1, Document No. 5.
" J.Nehru’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 22 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 5.
*** Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru, 18 Febmary 1947, Chapter 3, Document No. 20.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-22-320.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface xv
Prasad, President of the Constituent Assembly, added that apart from constitution-making what
demanded attention was that, as many British civil servants had said for the past hundred years,
‘the purposes of the state are translated to the common man and woman in the factory or the
field by the actions, the activities, the vigour and the character of the district administrator who
is the symbol of government’s authority to them’.'^
Thus independence meant taking care of the nuts and bolts of the administrative machinery,
not just the general constitutional principles, and Prasad believes that this aspect has not
‘received the consideration it deserves’. About this time the Viceroy writes to a British civil
servant working in India that the Indian National Congress (INC) ‘have shown signs lately
of realizing the value of your services’ (that is, of the Indian Civil Service [ICS]); the INC
Working Committee, it was reported, approached some British ICS officers ‘to stay after the
transfer of power’.Another interesting aspect of the impending situation was the British Indian
authorities’ perception of the policies of the Indian government of India: for example. Viceroy
Wavell writes to Pethick-Lawrence inJanuary 1947: ‘There is no doubt that the Congress High
Command are becoming sobered by responsibility.’ Wavell cites the ‘recent action which has
been taken against the communists’ and says: ‘Sooner or later the High Command [of the
Congress] will have to face up to its own Left-Wing and other revolutionary influences, and
each time it makes a tentative move to do so it is forced into a more realistic appreciation of
what government of a great country really means.Viceroy Wavell seems to have accepted
the plausible view, expressed by Liaquat Ali Khan when the budget met with stiff Congress
opposition, that Indian ‘Big Business’ was in close alliance with other Congress members,
especially Vallabhbhai Patel.'*’ Around this time the British authorities in India happily note
that ‘the Congress government in Bombay had decided that the only way to deal with the
Communists was to resort [to] the detention without trial ... it is a strange volteface irom their
old attitude to such executive measures ... [and] “imperialistic” methods’.'^ We see in some of
the documents in this collection a new stage in the process that began in 1939—the transition
from the politics of aspiration to the politics of governance. This was also part of the meaning
of independence now being read by the actors we see on the stage of history. Jawaharlal
Nehru writes somewhat impatiently to a minor Congress leader who raised questions about
the principles of the Congress: ‘It is no good talking in terms of principles when decisions
have to be made.’"*
There was another facet of the idea of independence as well. B.R. Ambedkar asked in
memorable words: ‘What can swaraj mean to the untouchables?’ Will it mean that ‘under
swaraj the Legislature and Executive will also be in the hands of the Hindus’, that is, the
dominant upper castes? If so, ‘under swaraj the untouchables will have no way of escape from
the destiny of degradation which Hindus and Hinduism have fixed for them’.’" Consider again
the memorandum to the Minorities Sub-Committee from the All-India Adi-Hindu Depressed
“ Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru, 18 February 1947, Chapter 3, Document No. 20.
Viceroy Wavell to Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Chapter 2, Document No. 34.
Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 29January 1947, Chapter 2, Document No. 34.
Wavell’s journal, dated 18 March 1947, Chapter 4, Document No. 21.
Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Chapter 2, Document No. 34.
Nehru to Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, 23 May 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 25.
B.R.Ambedkar’s Memorandum on Rights of Minorities and Scheduled Castes, 24 March 1947, Chapter 13,
Document No. 1.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-23-320.jpg)
![xvi General Editor’s Preface
Classes Association: they ‘look forward to the emancipation of the depressed classes in the
Constitution of a self-governing India’. It was argued that the system of representation in
the legislatures till 1947 did not ensure ‘any guarantee for the return [in elections] of the real
representatives of the Scheduled Castes’ and proposals were made for post-1947 constitutional
provisions towards that end.^*’ Thus the prospect of independence raised many expectations:
political freedom, it was expected, would also bring in its wake freedom from caste oppression.
Both the earlier pledges made by the Congress to the nation and the immediate circumstances (in
particular the abstention of the Muslim League from participation in the Constituent Assembly)
made the political leadership acutely conscious and diligent in the pursuit of protection of
minorities. There were voices against this trend. ‘The minority problem should not and must
not overshadow the main issue, that of Independence of India.’^' When a Constituent Assembly
member spoke thus, he was not alone. Nor was he talking in terms of generalities, because he
went on to speak of ‘under representation’ of the majority Hindu population. ‘It is very very
unfortunate that the minority communities do not demand mere [^27] justice, equity and fair
play’ but also extraordinary safeguards and weightage. Apart from a few such dissenting voices
there were, of course, differences in approach within the scheduled caste leadership. Sometimes
these differences remained unstated; sometimes they were brought into the open. For instance,
HJ. Khandekar says on Ambedkar: ‘I hope, God grant him a little more good sense, he will
give up the demand for separate electorates and also stop saying henceforth “I am not a Hindu”
which he has been telling up till now.’^^ There were also inevitably wrangling over numbers,
to adequately represent the various categories of scheduled castes. As S. Nagappa said on that
question, sometimes a community was ‘over-represented’ and some castes were so under¬
represented that the representatives were unable to ‘fight for their community interests’.^^
However, on the whole the tendency of that discourse was not narrowly to focus on
adversarial positions within but to take an inclusive stance to broaden the ambit of the
constitutional protection to cover a great many communities as ‘minorities’. Jagjivan Ram
was farsighted in putting the scheduled castes’ demands in a larger agenda addressing the
minorities. The safeguards for the minorities he proposed covered not just the scheduled
castes but also ‘religious and racial minorities (for example, Christians and Aboriginals)’ as
well as linguistic and cultural minorities. He was one of the earliest proponents of a Minorities
Commission and suggested the institution of such bodies ‘in the Centre and in every Province’,
that is, the Indian union as well as the states.^^ Perhaps the most vocal of the minorities was
the Sikh community. For instance, leaders of the community argued that the province of
Punjab not only ‘was and must remain the homeland and the holy land of the Sikhs’, but also
that Sikhs were entitled to ‘safeguards for the members of minorities’ in India and the future
constitution must contain ‘safeguards for the protection of their religion, language, and culture
as well as social and economic rights’.^^ Or again Baldev Singh’s letter to Viceroy Mountbatten
Memorandum to the Minorities Sub-Committee, Constituent Assembly, from the All-India Adi-Hindu Depressed
Classes Association, 13 April 1947, Chapter 13, Document No. 10.
B.Das’sspeech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7.
HJ.Kliandekar’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 21 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 4.
S.Nagappa’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7.
Ram’s note of 3 April 1947 on Safeguards for Minorities and Scheduled Castes, Chapter 13, Document
No. 6.
Memorandum on Sikhs by Ujjal Singh and Harnam Singh, March/April 1947, Mountbatten Papers, Chapter 13,
Document No. 5.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-24-320.jpg)
![xviii General Editor’s Preface
It has often been said that 1947 saw the abandonment of the Gandhian position against
the partition of India, a partition that went against the grain of the rejection of the two nations
theory’ by Gandhi and his followers in the Congress. That interpretation overlooks the nuances
of the Gandhian position. In February 1947 Gandhi, in remote riot-affected Noakhali, is reported
to have said: Tf the Hindus, who formed the majority in the whole of India, desired to keep
everyone united by means of compulsion, he [Gandhi] would resist it... He was as much against
forced partition as against forced unity’; he was personally against partition, but he conceded
that ‘according to some ... the time had now come when such a division had become desirable
in the interest of peace’.^^ Again, he spoke of the same principle of freedom of choice in April
1947: ‘Are the Muslims fighting for Pakistan? ... By force they cannot have an inch of land.
By persuasion they may have the whole of India.A few days later in riot-torn Bihar he said
again: ‘The Hindus of west Bengal have decided that Bengal should be divided ... why do
the Hindus want separation?’ And he added: it was for Shahid Suhrawardy to persuade the
Hindus to be part of Pakistan.In these and some other statements of Gandhi—particularly
those made at prayer meetings, where he speaks as if he is talking to himself—presents a line
of thinking which was quite consistent with his basic philosophy. He emphasizes freedom of
choice and rejects coercion in any form as a means of preserving territorial unity. Given this
position, there was no question of Gandhi’s ‘conversion’ to a pro-partition position, because
he always prioritized intrinsic freedom over territorial sovereignty.
While Mahatma Gandhi’s digits of discourse were in this regard totally different from those
of other political leaders, it is also clear that his heart did not accept partition. He continued to
say in the months leading to partition how repugnant it was. Early in April 1947 he said: ‘I am
aware of the fact that there is a large section [of opinion in India] in favour of the vivisection
of India. Who cares for the nation today? Everyone wants to realize his ambition and grab
power by creating dissensions.’^^ ‘India is on the threshold of independence. But this is not the
independence I want. To my mind it may be no independence if India is partitioned and the
minorities do not enjoy security, protection, and equal treatment.’^^ The hugely controversial
proposal he made early in April 1947 to Viceroy Mountbatten to offer the Prime Minister’s
position to M.A. Jinnah, was arguably a desperate effort to preserve India’s unity, although
a different interpretation of that action was possible, as Mountbatten suggested half in jest
when he said that he saw in it ‘wily old Gandhi’.^*’ What is amply clear is his isolation among
the political leaders around him: ‘I am sorry to say that I failed to carry any of them with me
except Badshah Khan,’ he wrote to Mountbatten on 11 April 1947, and hence his request ‘to
omit me from your consideration’.^^ And beyond the circle of the circumspect political leaders,
he met with the stiffest open opposition: in the prayer meetings he held in Noakhali, Patna,
or New Delhi, he repeatedly referred to thousands of letters he received condemning his
Gandhi’s speech at prayer meeting, Haimchar, Noakhali District, 28 February 1947, Collected Works ofMahatma
Gandhi, hereafter cited as CWMG (EB), Delhi, Publications Divisions, Government of India, 1999, vol.94, pp. 57-8.
Speech at prayer meeting, 9 April 1947, New Delhi, ibid., p. 273.
Speech at prayer meeting, 14 April 1947, Patna, ibid., p. 309.
Gandhi at interview with Sir M.Darling at Bhangi Colony, Gandhi’s residence in Delhi at that time, 8 April 1947,
CWMG, vol. 94, p. 261.
Gandhi to Y.M.Dadoo and G.M.Naicker, 11 April 1947, ibid., p. 286.
Mountbatten’s note on meeting with Gandhi, 1 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 1.
Gandhi to Mountbatten, 11 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 11.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-26-320.jpg)
![XX General Editor Preface
But we have previously stated that we are not going to compel any part [of India] against its
will. If that unfortunately leads to a division, then we accept it... If we can have a united India
straight away without such division, that will, of course be very welcome.He points to the
need to ‘think realistically’ and confides to Asaf Ali that he finds ‘Mountbatten’s approach is
friendly and he wants to go ahead fast’. On the other hand, Nehru writes, the situation is ‘tense
and volcanic’ in Punjab and Bengal, there is ‘tremendous demand’ from Hindu and Sikhs for
partition of Bengal and Punjab, arms are being made or smuggled in to prepare for a civil war,
many ofthe Muslim leaders are against partition of Bengal and Punjab.^'^ The threat of communal
conflict, almost tantamount to civil war, has been extensively documented in this volume along
with the parallel narrative of communal politics. The police reports indicate a new trend; riots
spread from towns to rural areas and there the savagery of both sides was unprecedented while
police action was difficult.There appears to be a perception in British official circles that
on the partition question Nehru was amenable to be reluctantly persuaded to part ways with
Gandhi. An interesting example of this belief at the highest level is Mountbatten’s conversation
with Winston Churchill. At this interview Churchill happened to be in bed and mulling over
in his mind the Indian problem. Churchill, Mountbatten recalls, ‘asked me if I foresaw any
difficulties, particularly with Mr. Gandhi. I told him that I doubted whether he would create
any difficulty which would not be dealt with by Patel and Nehru’.Although Nehru was willing
to accept the idea of partition, faced with the prospect of a civil war, he played a crucially
important role in writing a devastating note against Mountbatten’s ‘Plan Balkan’ which would
have virtually divided India into a congeries of small political entities, putting to an end the
Indian Union. That note of 11 May 1947, perhaps the single most important document in this
collection, was an intervention that changed the course of events altogether.
As regards secessionism, the stance ofthe Muslim League remained in this period relentlessly
consistent with its earlier politics. Right in the beginning of his viceroyalty Mountbatten held
meetings with Jinnah, not less than six times between 5 April and 11 April 1947. ‘He had
brought all possible arguments to bear on Mr. Jinnah ... Mr Jinnah had not been able in his
presence to adduce one single feasible argument in favour of Pakistan. In fact he had offered
no counter-arguments. He gave the impression that he was not listening. He was impossible to
argue with.’'^*^ The long conversations served only to confirm Mountbatten’s first impression that
Jinnah was ‘in a most frigid, haughty and disdainful frame of mind’. AllJinnah had to say was
that ‘there was only one solution—a “surgical operation” on India’.It seems probable that the
Viceroy had formed a prejudice againstjinnah, because he was unreasonably expectingjinnah
to abandon the agenda which brought him to the forefront of Indian politics. Mountbatten’s
interview with Liaquat Ali Khan yielded an equally inflexible answer, through, unlikeJinnah,
he ‘smiled engagingly’. After having dealt with Congress members in the Interim Government,
Liaquat Ali felt that ‘the position now [is] so intolerable that ifYour Excellency was only prepared
Nehru to Ashafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, 23 May 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 25.
Nehru to Asaf Ali, 14 May 1947, Chapter 16, Document No. 7.
EvanJenkins to Wavell, 17 March 1947, Chapter 8, Document No. 27.
Record of interview between Mountbatten and Winston Churchill, 22 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed..,T7ie Transfer
ofPower, HMSO, London, Vol. X, p.945.
Note by Nehru on the draft proposals, 11 May 1947, Chapter 16, Document No. 2.
Mountbatten’s statement at the 13th staff meeting, 11 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 18.
Record of interview between Mountbatten andjinnah, 5-6 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 14.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-28-320.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface xxi
to let the Muslim League have the Sind Desert, I would still prefer to accept that and have a
separate Muslim State When Lady Edwina Mountbatten had an interview with Ms Fatima
Jinnah, who was supposed to be very influential in the League in matters of state, ‘she made
frequent references to the fact that “the Muslims would fight for separation and their rights,
if these were not agreed to’”.^^ The upshot of these encounters was favourable to Jinnah and
when Mountbatten began to talk to the leaders on the other side, it is obvious from the records
that his object was to assess the degree of resistance to or compliance with a non-negotiable
first premise: India shall be divided. The question was only as follows: Would the Congress,
Mountbatten asked over and again, ‘accept voluntarily a decision which virtually abandoned
the idea of India’s unity if that were the only way that I could transfer power without a risk
of civil war’?^^ Rajendra Prasad’s answer to that question was typical of the usual response of
Congress leaders Mountbatten talked to: ‘He did not see ... any alternative [to partition] but
to transfer power in any manner which would not involve civil war.’ After this first round of
interviews Mountbatten seems to have made up his mind: he was keen to advertise to the
world that ‘it had always been and would remain his main desire to hand over power to an
unified India’, but ‘when it became apparent that the retention of any form of an united India
would start civil war ... he had regretfully been obliged to give up this ideal This decision
was confided by him to his closest aides and advisers on 11 April 1947. In negotiating the
process of partition the Muslim League, no doubt, suffered disappointments, in particular in
the division of Punjab and Bengal and the failure in securing access to Calcutta. Mountbatten
had his moment of revenge when he declared toJinnah that a ‘moth-eaten Pakistan ... was all
that I could offer him’.^"^ It will be perhaps incorrect to accept in toto Mountbatten’s tendency
to explain the historic decision of partition in terms of personalities; rather than give credit
to or to blame the intransigence ofJinnah alone, we need to look at the mindset that had
developed in the Muslim League and the long-term trends in inter-communal conflict and
the politics of exclusion.
If this is how the Muslim League and the Congress negotiated and came to terms with
the idea of partition, what of the other participants in the political arena? That takes us to the
smaller players in politics and the provinces. There is a vast array of data in the documents in
this volume on that discourse and the groundswell of communalism. It is neither necessary nor
possible to plumb those depths, given the limits of the present ‘Preface’. However, the role of
the Hindu Mahasabha the traditional proponent of‘Akhand Hindusthan’, merits attention; in
Bengal the Mahasabha leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee took the lead in promoting the idea of
partition of Bengal in the teeth of opposition of the proponents of ‘United Bengal’. The latter
included Sarat Chandra Bose, important in his own right and as the brother of Subhas Chandra
Bose, and H.S. Suhrawardy, then the Premier of Bengal, as well as the leader of the Congress
Legislature Party, Kiran Shankar Roy. That campaign lasted while many minor leaders in the
Congress in Bengal dithered till just a fortnight before 15 August 1947; on the other hand the
Record of interview between Mountbatten and Liaquat Ali Khan, 3 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 11.
Record of interview between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Ms Fatima Jinnah, 24 April 1947, Chapter 14,
Document No. 26.
Interview between Mountbatten and Rajendra Prasad, 10 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 15.
Minutes of Viceroy’s 13thstaff meeting, 11 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 18.
Interview between Mountbatten andJinnah, 10 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 17.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-29-320.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface xxiii
of Bengal and the leader of the Congress legislature party carried that to the Viceroy.'’^ A day
before that memorandum was submitted S.R Mookerjee wrote a skillfully drafted letter to the
Viceroy recommending partition. He argued that if the demand for homeland for 24 per cent
of India’s Muslim population was legitimate, 45 per cent of Bengal’s population being Hindu
had an equally legitimate claim. Further, he built a case uponjinnah’s argument in justification
of partition: ‘Mr. Jinnah’s claim for Pakistan is based on the theory that Hindu and Muslims
are two separate nations ... [T]he same logic and argument applicable to Pakistan also apply
to the partition of Bengal.’®^ And, he added, that the League was guided by ‘fanatical notions
of separate nationhood ... [But] we do not want to be cut off from the rest of India’.
From May 1947 onwards, S.P. Mookeijee was no longer leading a pro-partition agitation; he
became one of many leaders swimming with the current moving inexorably towards partition.
Mookerjee remained a defender of the Hindu community, as in the past. In his speeches in
the Legislative Assembly of Bengal on the Noakhali riots he had highlighted desecration
of ‘symbols of Hindu religious worship’ and mass conversion to Islam, which in his view,
was ‘more horrible than even physical death’.Such a stance was not adopted by Congress
legislators, but the general political climate and the news media encouraged the rhetoric of
communal polarization. A handful of political leaders who were proponents of‘United Bengal’,
namely Sarat Chandra Bose, Kiran Sankar Roy, Abul Hashim, and a doubtful ally. Shahid
Suhrawardy, were up against a climate of opinion that was adverse to their counsel of avoiding
partition.^’'’ In a recently published series of letters in the private papers collection ofJinnah,
we see Suhrawardy confiding to Liaquat Ali Khan of the Muslim League in May 1947: ‘Even
the Hindus of East Bengal, who do not count in the voting, are supporting the partition with
death staring them on the face ... it is impossible to arouse Hindu opinion against it.’^® Hindu
Mahasabha had lost in Bengal every seat except one, that of S.R Mookerjee, in the general
election of 1946, but in 1947 the Mahasabha had the last laugh. After all, dividing people was
a game that communalism, Hindu or Muslim, excelled in.
However, the storyline, as they say in the film world, is not just about partition, it was
about independence, and anticipations of independence can be sensed in the documents
in this volume. A little bit of the exhilaration of that moment is captured by Nehru when,
reflecting on the Government’s policy statement of 20 February 1947, he recalled in his letter
to his mentor, Gandhi, ‘our oft-repeated demand for quitting India. It may not be so exactly
as we would have liked it. But the real thing is that they have finally decided and announced
that they are quitting’.*’^ The Congress declared: ‘The end of an era is at hand and a new age
will soon begin.‘We are here’, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in the Constituent Assembly,
“ Record of interview between Mountbatten and K.S.Roy, 3 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed., Transfer ofPower,
Vol. X, pp.556-8.
Mookerjee to Mountbatten, 2 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed.. Transfer ofPower, Vol. X, p. 556-8.
Mookerjee’s speech on Noakhali and Chandpur riots. Proceedings of Bengal Legislative Assembly, vol. 72, no. 1,
1947, in S.P.Mookerjee, Selected Speeches in Bengal Legislative Assembly 1937-1947, Calcutta, 2002, pp 68-71.
“ Cf. Partha Sarathi Gupta, ‘Who Divided the Bengalees?’; A.G.Noorani, ‘United Bengal Plan; Pipe Dream or
Missed Opportunity’; Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘The Division of Hearts : Mahatma Gandhi and the Partition of Bengal,
1947’, in Amrik Singh, ed.. The Partition in Retrospect, New Delhi, 2000.
H.S.Suhrawardy to Liaquat Ali Khan, 23 May 1947, Qaid-e-Azm papers. File no. 458, p. 80, in Harun-or-Rashid,
ed.. Inside Bengal Politics, 1936-1947: Unpublished Correspondence ofPartition Leaders, Dhaka, 2003, pp. 86-7.
Nehru to Gandhi, 24 February 1947, Chapter 5, Document No. 5.
Congress Working Committee Resolution, Delhi, 6-8 March 1947, Chapter 5, Document No. 15.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-31-320.jpg)
![XXvi Editor’s Introduction
Looking ahead at the political prospects in India once the war ended, the Viceroy underlined
the primacy of a successful settlement of the Indian question. This was believed to be essential
for the future security of the Empire, to ensure British prestige in the East, and to keep India
within the Commonwealth.^
When the national leaders came out ofjail after long prison terms at the end of the War and
toured the country, they assured their audiences that it was a matter of time before the British
would go, maybe as early as two to five years. By early 1946 the British in turn made it clear
that their days in India were numbered. The Secretary of State said as much in his speech on
New Year’s Day, 1946. Along with other Congress leaders, Gandhiji realized that the imperial
rulers were sincere in the declaration of their intention to ‘quit’ in favour of independent rule
by Indians and in turn tried to convince the people of this.'^
However, the time for exploring avenues for settlement was running out. By mid-1946 a
point had been reached where government had the responsibility to keep the peace but little
power to do so. The Viceroy commented on the prospect of a revolt by the Congress, this time
assisted by its own governments in power in the provinces: ‘We could still probably suppress
such a revolt... [but] have nothing to put in its place and should be driven to an almost entirely
official rule, for which the necessary numbers of efficient officials do not exist.’^
When given the option of staying on in India by changing the basis of rule to coercion,
British Prime Minister Attlee argued against it on the following grounds: lack of administrative
machinery to carry out a policy of rule by coercion; lack of troops owing to other international
commitments; adverse opinion in the Labour Party; questionable loyalty of the Indian troops
and the unwillingness of British troops to serve; adverse world opinion; and an uncomfortable
position in UNO.®
As colonial rule could not survive on the old basis for long, a graceful withdrawal from
India became the overarching aim of policy makers. Of course, the digits of the post imperial
relationship had to be negotiated and modalities of transfer of power worked out. Eor the
British government it was important that withdrawal be presented not as forced dissolution
of imperial power but as a step forward in the planned devolution of power. A revised draft
of a statement of policy dated 2 January 1947 set out His Majesty’s Government’s (HMG’s)
proposed statement as ‘the final stage in their achievement of self government’, which ‘for the
past thirty years...has been the policy of successive British governments.’^
A new Viceroy was accordingly appointed as part of a new policy initiative. So Mountbatten
went out to India not only as the new Viceroy but also the last Viceroy, with the terminal date
for British departure announced for 30 June 1948. Mountbatten even claimed in later years
that he introduced the idea of the time limit and that if he had not done so the British may
well still be out there! But many before Mountbatten had spoken of a time limit, including
Wavell and Attlee, and members of the Cabinet had argued, from different points of view, for
having a specific date for withdrawal and its announcement. Eor Mountbatten to claim sole
^ Wavell to War Cabinet India Committee, 26 March 1945, Nicholas Mansergh, ed.. Constitutional Relations between
Great Britain and India, Transfer ofPower (hereafter TOP), 1942-47, Vol. V, H.M.S.O., 1974, p.733.
* Hindustan Times, 24 February 1946.
^ 27 December 1945, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, TOP, Vol. VI, 1976, p. 688.
^ Note c. 13 November 1946, TOP, Vol. IX, 1980, p. 68.
" TOP, Vol. IX, pp. 441-3.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/85/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-34-320.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface
It gives me great pleasure to place in the hands of readers the tenth and last volume of the
Towards Freedom series of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). The project taken
up by the Council many years ago is at last approaching completion. Since the volumes in the
series have been published at intervals of months and sometimes years, a part of the General
Editor’s duty has been to state at the beginning of each volume the objective and the general
guiding principles of this endeavour. I shall address that task first and then share with the
readers a few thoughts which crossed my mind as I read the present volume.
The agenda of an endeavour such as this series defines itself in part through editorial practice
and partly through attempts towards a statement of objectives. The historical context in which
this project developed initially is generally known. While we must not overestimate the influence
of that historical conjuncture on the academic inputs which went into the making of the project’s
agenda, one has to take that into account as one of the formative factors. After the vertiginous
years leading to 1947, there came a time when historians turned their attention to those years
and archives began to acquire and provide access to source materials. The last years of‘British
India’ began to be addressed by professional historians and indeed the theme attracted national
attention both in India and in Britain. InJune 1967, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson
made an important statement in this regard in the House of Commons: ‘In view of the great
interest now being shown in historical circles in the last days of British rule in India ... [there
would be published] documents from the India Office records on the Transfer of Power and
the events leading up to it.’* The announcement included the assurance that ‘the editors will
be independent historians who will be given unrestrained access to the records, and freedom
to select and edit the documents for publication’. The outcome of the project thus framed at
the highest level in England was the series known as The Transfer ofPower, edited by Nicholas
Mansergh, Smuts Professor of the History of the British Commonwealth at Cambridge. In
addition to the announcement made in Parliament, Mansergh, as the ‘Editor-in-Chief’, stated
that the ‘purpose of the series’ was ‘to make available to scholars in convenient printed form
the more important British historical records relating to the transfer of power in India’.^
Arguably, there is an obvious inadequacy in the notion that all that happened in 1947 was
a ‘transfer of power’. In Indian perception the attainment of independence was a significant
moment in the history of the struggle against British rule in the subcontinent. The representation
of the emergence of independent India and Pakistan as transfer of power, solely an alteration of
constitutional relations, tended towards the occlusion of that history. The focus on the legalistic
‘ Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, House of Commons, Vol. 749, 30June 1967, cols 147-8.
^ Nicholas Mansergh, ed., ‘Foreword’, The Transfer ofPower, Vol. VI, London, 1976, p. viii.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-17-2048.jpg)
![xiv General Editor’s Preface
was the conflict between the politics of exclusion and its contestation through the endeavours
to be inclusive—and this was a conflict which left its mark at every level, on the personal
life of the victims of discrimination or violence, on politics at the level of communities, and
ultimately on the founding principles of the newly emerging sovereign states. That conflict
meant innumerable multilateral negotiations between majorities and minorities as they were
perceived in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, caste status, and so on. All I need to do,
given the very exhaustive documentation in the following pages, is to highlight what may be
considered to be two frequently unasked questions: How was Independence imagined? And how
was Partition negotiated towards general acceptance?{ I fail to ask those questions I shall miss the
wood for the tree. The documents in this collection covering the days fromJanuary 1 toJune
2, 1947, throw a shaft of light on these questions.
‘We are actors today in a great historical drama,’ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in one
of the earliest meetings of Constituent Assembly. ‘We are involved in it and therefore we are
unable to perceive the large contours of it.’*’ This was a perspicacious comment worthy of a
philosopher. Few others could distance themselves from the immediate context and reflect
upon the larger perspective. But that perspective was writ large in the initial move of the
Constituent Assembly in January 1947, in the ‘objectives resolution’. The words concerning
the constitution to be made were bold and evocative of the long struggle that preceded the
formation of the Constituent Assembly: ‘[A]11 power and authority of the sovereign Independent
India, its constituent parts and organs of government, are derived from the people ...justice,
social, economic and political, equality of status, of opportunity, and before the law; freedom
of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action, subject to law
and public morality ... adequate safeguards ... for minorities, backward class.Nehru in his
speech on the resolution reminded the Constituent Assembly of the past pledges looking
towards Independence: ‘I felt the past crowding around me, and I also felt the future taking
shape. We stood on the razor’s edge of the present... I felt that we were coming to the end of
an age, I had a sense of our forebears watching this undertaking of ours ...”** ***
While Independence was bathed in the light of a historical vision of this kind, occasionally
it was also a moment that was perceived in terms of the mechanics of what was called in
bureaucratic language the transfer of power and the continuity of administration. That discourse
naturally demands a lot of space in the documents which are reproduced here. Rajendra Prasad,
on the post-Independence status of that issue in a memorandum to Nehru on 18 February
1947, says:
The problem of administrative machinery and its strength must be viewed in the perspective
that, from June 1948 onwards India ... will be free from the foreign element in all the branches
of its services ... Stories of weakening of the administration, depletion of cadres, interference,
corruption and inefficiency are a common tale in a large number of provinces in India today ...
The problem of administrative strength, administrative efficiency, and administrative tradition
is on a par with the problem of constitution-making...*^
** Sir S.Radhakrishnan’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 20 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 2.
(References below, unless specified otherwise, are to the present collection of documents. Part 1 of Towards Freedom
1947.)
‘Objectives Resolution’, Chapter 1, Document No. 5.
" J.Nehru’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 22 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 5.
*** Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru, 18 Febmary 1947, Chapter 3, Document No. 20.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-22-2048.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface xv
Prasad, President of the Constituent Assembly, added that apart from constitution-making what
demanded attention was that, as many British civil servants had said for the past hundred years,
‘the purposes of the state are translated to the common man and woman in the factory or the
field by the actions, the activities, the vigour and the character of the district administrator who
is the symbol of government’s authority to them’.'^
Thus independence meant taking care of the nuts and bolts of the administrative machinery,
not just the general constitutional principles, and Prasad believes that this aspect has not
‘received the consideration it deserves’. About this time the Viceroy writes to a British civil
servant working in India that the Indian National Congress (INC) ‘have shown signs lately
of realizing the value of your services’ (that is, of the Indian Civil Service [ICS]); the INC
Working Committee, it was reported, approached some British ICS officers ‘to stay after the
transfer of power’.Another interesting aspect of the impending situation was the British Indian
authorities’ perception of the policies of the Indian government of India: for example. Viceroy
Wavell writes to Pethick-Lawrence inJanuary 1947: ‘There is no doubt that the Congress High
Command are becoming sobered by responsibility.’ Wavell cites the ‘recent action which has
been taken against the communists’ and says: ‘Sooner or later the High Command [of the
Congress] will have to face up to its own Left-Wing and other revolutionary influences, and
each time it makes a tentative move to do so it is forced into a more realistic appreciation of
what government of a great country really means.Viceroy Wavell seems to have accepted
the plausible view, expressed by Liaquat Ali Khan when the budget met with stiff Congress
opposition, that Indian ‘Big Business’ was in close alliance with other Congress members,
especially Vallabhbhai Patel.'*’ Around this time the British authorities in India happily note
that ‘the Congress government in Bombay had decided that the only way to deal with the
Communists was to resort [to] the detention without trial ... it is a strange volteface irom their
old attitude to such executive measures ... [and] “imperialistic” methods’.'^ We see in some of
the documents in this collection a new stage in the process that began in 1939—the transition
from the politics of aspiration to the politics of governance. This was also part of the meaning
of independence now being read by the actors we see on the stage of history. Jawaharlal
Nehru writes somewhat impatiently to a minor Congress leader who raised questions about
the principles of the Congress: ‘It is no good talking in terms of principles when decisions
have to be made.’"*
There was another facet of the idea of independence as well. B.R. Ambedkar asked in
memorable words: ‘What can swaraj mean to the untouchables?’ Will it mean that ‘under
swaraj the Legislature and Executive will also be in the hands of the Hindus’, that is, the
dominant upper castes? If so, ‘under swaraj the untouchables will have no way of escape from
the destiny of degradation which Hindus and Hinduism have fixed for them’.’" Consider again
the memorandum to the Minorities Sub-Committee from the All-India Adi-Hindu Depressed
“ Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru, 18 February 1947, Chapter 3, Document No. 20.
Viceroy Wavell to Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Chapter 2, Document No. 34.
Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 29January 1947, Chapter 2, Document No. 34.
Wavell’s journal, dated 18 March 1947, Chapter 4, Document No. 21.
Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Chapter 2, Document No. 34.
Nehru to Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, 23 May 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 25.
B.R.Ambedkar’s Memorandum on Rights of Minorities and Scheduled Castes, 24 March 1947, Chapter 13,
Document No. 1.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-23-2048.jpg)
![xvi General Editor’s Preface
Classes Association: they ‘look forward to the emancipation of the depressed classes in the
Constitution of a self-governing India’. It was argued that the system of representation in
the legislatures till 1947 did not ensure ‘any guarantee for the return [in elections] of the real
representatives of the Scheduled Castes’ and proposals were made for post-1947 constitutional
provisions towards that end.^*’ Thus the prospect of independence raised many expectations:
political freedom, it was expected, would also bring in its wake freedom from caste oppression.
Both the earlier pledges made by the Congress to the nation and the immediate circumstances (in
particular the abstention of the Muslim League from participation in the Constituent Assembly)
made the political leadership acutely conscious and diligent in the pursuit of protection of
minorities. There were voices against this trend. ‘The minority problem should not and must
not overshadow the main issue, that of Independence of India.’^' When a Constituent Assembly
member spoke thus, he was not alone. Nor was he talking in terms of generalities, because he
went on to speak of ‘under representation’ of the majority Hindu population. ‘It is very very
unfortunate that the minority communities do not demand mere [^27] justice, equity and fair
play’ but also extraordinary safeguards and weightage. Apart from a few such dissenting voices
there were, of course, differences in approach within the scheduled caste leadership. Sometimes
these differences remained unstated; sometimes they were brought into the open. For instance,
HJ. Khandekar says on Ambedkar: ‘I hope, God grant him a little more good sense, he will
give up the demand for separate electorates and also stop saying henceforth “I am not a Hindu”
which he has been telling up till now.’^^ There were also inevitably wrangling over numbers,
to adequately represent the various categories of scheduled castes. As S. Nagappa said on that
question, sometimes a community was ‘over-represented’ and some castes were so under¬
represented that the representatives were unable to ‘fight for their community interests’.^^
However, on the whole the tendency of that discourse was not narrowly to focus on
adversarial positions within but to take an inclusive stance to broaden the ambit of the
constitutional protection to cover a great many communities as ‘minorities’. Jagjivan Ram
was farsighted in putting the scheduled castes’ demands in a larger agenda addressing the
minorities. The safeguards for the minorities he proposed covered not just the scheduled
castes but also ‘religious and racial minorities (for example, Christians and Aboriginals)’ as
well as linguistic and cultural minorities. He was one of the earliest proponents of a Minorities
Commission and suggested the institution of such bodies ‘in the Centre and in every Province’,
that is, the Indian union as well as the states.^^ Perhaps the most vocal of the minorities was
the Sikh community. For instance, leaders of the community argued that the province of
Punjab not only ‘was and must remain the homeland and the holy land of the Sikhs’, but also
that Sikhs were entitled to ‘safeguards for the members of minorities’ in India and the future
constitution must contain ‘safeguards for the protection of their religion, language, and culture
as well as social and economic rights’.^^ Or again Baldev Singh’s letter to Viceroy Mountbatten
Memorandum to the Minorities Sub-Committee, Constituent Assembly, from the All-India Adi-Hindu Depressed
Classes Association, 13 April 1947, Chapter 13, Document No. 10.
B.Das’sspeech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7.
HJ.Kliandekar’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 21 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 4.
S.Nagappa’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7.
Ram’s note of 3 April 1947 on Safeguards for Minorities and Scheduled Castes, Chapter 13, Document
No. 6.
Memorandum on Sikhs by Ujjal Singh and Harnam Singh, March/April 1947, Mountbatten Papers, Chapter 13,
Document No. 5.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-24-2048.jpg)
![xviii General Editor’s Preface
It has often been said that 1947 saw the abandonment of the Gandhian position against
the partition of India, a partition that went against the grain of the rejection of the two nations
theory’ by Gandhi and his followers in the Congress. That interpretation overlooks the nuances
of the Gandhian position. In February 1947 Gandhi, in remote riot-affected Noakhali, is reported
to have said: Tf the Hindus, who formed the majority in the whole of India, desired to keep
everyone united by means of compulsion, he [Gandhi] would resist it... He was as much against
forced partition as against forced unity’; he was personally against partition, but he conceded
that ‘according to some ... the time had now come when such a division had become desirable
in the interest of peace’.^^ Again, he spoke of the same principle of freedom of choice in April
1947: ‘Are the Muslims fighting for Pakistan? ... By force they cannot have an inch of land.
By persuasion they may have the whole of India.A few days later in riot-torn Bihar he said
again: ‘The Hindus of west Bengal have decided that Bengal should be divided ... why do
the Hindus want separation?’ And he added: it was for Shahid Suhrawardy to persuade the
Hindus to be part of Pakistan.In these and some other statements of Gandhi—particularly
those made at prayer meetings, where he speaks as if he is talking to himself—presents a line
of thinking which was quite consistent with his basic philosophy. He emphasizes freedom of
choice and rejects coercion in any form as a means of preserving territorial unity. Given this
position, there was no question of Gandhi’s ‘conversion’ to a pro-partition position, because
he always prioritized intrinsic freedom over territorial sovereignty.
While Mahatma Gandhi’s digits of discourse were in this regard totally different from those
of other political leaders, it is also clear that his heart did not accept partition. He continued to
say in the months leading to partition how repugnant it was. Early in April 1947 he said: ‘I am
aware of the fact that there is a large section [of opinion in India] in favour of the vivisection
of India. Who cares for the nation today? Everyone wants to realize his ambition and grab
power by creating dissensions.’^^ ‘India is on the threshold of independence. But this is not the
independence I want. To my mind it may be no independence if India is partitioned and the
minorities do not enjoy security, protection, and equal treatment.’^^ The hugely controversial
proposal he made early in April 1947 to Viceroy Mountbatten to offer the Prime Minister’s
position to M.A. Jinnah, was arguably a desperate effort to preserve India’s unity, although
a different interpretation of that action was possible, as Mountbatten suggested half in jest
when he said that he saw in it ‘wily old Gandhi’.^*’ What is amply clear is his isolation among
the political leaders around him: ‘I am sorry to say that I failed to carry any of them with me
except Badshah Khan,’ he wrote to Mountbatten on 11 April 1947, and hence his request ‘to
omit me from your consideration’.^^ And beyond the circle of the circumspect political leaders,
he met with the stiffest open opposition: in the prayer meetings he held in Noakhali, Patna,
or New Delhi, he repeatedly referred to thousands of letters he received condemning his
Gandhi’s speech at prayer meeting, Haimchar, Noakhali District, 28 February 1947, Collected Works ofMahatma
Gandhi, hereafter cited as CWMG (EB), Delhi, Publications Divisions, Government of India, 1999, vol.94, pp. 57-8.
Speech at prayer meeting, 9 April 1947, New Delhi, ibid., p. 273.
Speech at prayer meeting, 14 April 1947, Patna, ibid., p. 309.
Gandhi at interview with Sir M.Darling at Bhangi Colony, Gandhi’s residence in Delhi at that time, 8 April 1947,
CWMG, vol. 94, p. 261.
Gandhi to Y.M.Dadoo and G.M.Naicker, 11 April 1947, ibid., p. 286.
Mountbatten’s note on meeting with Gandhi, 1 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 1.
Gandhi to Mountbatten, 11 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 11.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-26-2048.jpg)
![XX General Editor Preface
But we have previously stated that we are not going to compel any part [of India] against its
will. If that unfortunately leads to a division, then we accept it... If we can have a united India
straight away without such division, that will, of course be very welcome.He points to the
need to ‘think realistically’ and confides to Asaf Ali that he finds ‘Mountbatten’s approach is
friendly and he wants to go ahead fast’. On the other hand, Nehru writes, the situation is ‘tense
and volcanic’ in Punjab and Bengal, there is ‘tremendous demand’ from Hindu and Sikhs for
partition of Bengal and Punjab, arms are being made or smuggled in to prepare for a civil war,
many ofthe Muslim leaders are against partition of Bengal and Punjab.^'^ The threat of communal
conflict, almost tantamount to civil war, has been extensively documented in this volume along
with the parallel narrative of communal politics. The police reports indicate a new trend; riots
spread from towns to rural areas and there the savagery of both sides was unprecedented while
police action was difficult.There appears to be a perception in British official circles that
on the partition question Nehru was amenable to be reluctantly persuaded to part ways with
Gandhi. An interesting example of this belief at the highest level is Mountbatten’s conversation
with Winston Churchill. At this interview Churchill happened to be in bed and mulling over
in his mind the Indian problem. Churchill, Mountbatten recalls, ‘asked me if I foresaw any
difficulties, particularly with Mr. Gandhi. I told him that I doubted whether he would create
any difficulty which would not be dealt with by Patel and Nehru’.Although Nehru was willing
to accept the idea of partition, faced with the prospect of a civil war, he played a crucially
important role in writing a devastating note against Mountbatten’s ‘Plan Balkan’ which would
have virtually divided India into a congeries of small political entities, putting to an end the
Indian Union. That note of 11 May 1947, perhaps the single most important document in this
collection, was an intervention that changed the course of events altogether.
As regards secessionism, the stance ofthe Muslim League remained in this period relentlessly
consistent with its earlier politics. Right in the beginning of his viceroyalty Mountbatten held
meetings with Jinnah, not less than six times between 5 April and 11 April 1947. ‘He had
brought all possible arguments to bear on Mr. Jinnah ... Mr Jinnah had not been able in his
presence to adduce one single feasible argument in favour of Pakistan. In fact he had offered
no counter-arguments. He gave the impression that he was not listening. He was impossible to
argue with.’'^*^ The long conversations served only to confirm Mountbatten’s first impression that
Jinnah was ‘in a most frigid, haughty and disdainful frame of mind’. AllJinnah had to say was
that ‘there was only one solution—a “surgical operation” on India’.It seems probable that the
Viceroy had formed a prejudice againstjinnah, because he was unreasonably expectingjinnah
to abandon the agenda which brought him to the forefront of Indian politics. Mountbatten’s
interview with Liaquat Ali Khan yielded an equally inflexible answer, through, unlikeJinnah,
he ‘smiled engagingly’. After having dealt with Congress members in the Interim Government,
Liaquat Ali felt that ‘the position now [is] so intolerable that ifYour Excellency was only prepared
Nehru to Ashafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, 23 May 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 25.
Nehru to Asaf Ali, 14 May 1947, Chapter 16, Document No. 7.
EvanJenkins to Wavell, 17 March 1947, Chapter 8, Document No. 27.
Record of interview between Mountbatten and Winston Churchill, 22 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed..,T7ie Transfer
ofPower, HMSO, London, Vol. X, p.945.
Note by Nehru on the draft proposals, 11 May 1947, Chapter 16, Document No. 2.
Mountbatten’s statement at the 13th staff meeting, 11 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 18.
Record of interview between Mountbatten andjinnah, 5-6 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 14.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-28-2048.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface xxi
to let the Muslim League have the Sind Desert, I would still prefer to accept that and have a
separate Muslim State When Lady Edwina Mountbatten had an interview with Ms Fatima
Jinnah, who was supposed to be very influential in the League in matters of state, ‘she made
frequent references to the fact that “the Muslims would fight for separation and their rights,
if these were not agreed to’”.^^ The upshot of these encounters was favourable to Jinnah and
when Mountbatten began to talk to the leaders on the other side, it is obvious from the records
that his object was to assess the degree of resistance to or compliance with a non-negotiable
first premise: India shall be divided. The question was only as follows: Would the Congress,
Mountbatten asked over and again, ‘accept voluntarily a decision which virtually abandoned
the idea of India’s unity if that were the only way that I could transfer power without a risk
of civil war’?^^ Rajendra Prasad’s answer to that question was typical of the usual response of
Congress leaders Mountbatten talked to: ‘He did not see ... any alternative [to partition] but
to transfer power in any manner which would not involve civil war.’ After this first round of
interviews Mountbatten seems to have made up his mind: he was keen to advertise to the
world that ‘it had always been and would remain his main desire to hand over power to an
unified India’, but ‘when it became apparent that the retention of any form of an united India
would start civil war ... he had regretfully been obliged to give up this ideal This decision
was confided by him to his closest aides and advisers on 11 April 1947. In negotiating the
process of partition the Muslim League, no doubt, suffered disappointments, in particular in
the division of Punjab and Bengal and the failure in securing access to Calcutta. Mountbatten
had his moment of revenge when he declared toJinnah that a ‘moth-eaten Pakistan ... was all
that I could offer him’.^"^ It will be perhaps incorrect to accept in toto Mountbatten’s tendency
to explain the historic decision of partition in terms of personalities; rather than give credit
to or to blame the intransigence ofJinnah alone, we need to look at the mindset that had
developed in the Muslim League and the long-term trends in inter-communal conflict and
the politics of exclusion.
If this is how the Muslim League and the Congress negotiated and came to terms with
the idea of partition, what of the other participants in the political arena? That takes us to the
smaller players in politics and the provinces. There is a vast array of data in the documents in
this volume on that discourse and the groundswell of communalism. It is neither necessary nor
possible to plumb those depths, given the limits of the present ‘Preface’. However, the role of
the Hindu Mahasabha the traditional proponent of‘Akhand Hindusthan’, merits attention; in
Bengal the Mahasabha leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee took the lead in promoting the idea of
partition of Bengal in the teeth of opposition of the proponents of ‘United Bengal’. The latter
included Sarat Chandra Bose, important in his own right and as the brother of Subhas Chandra
Bose, and H.S. Suhrawardy, then the Premier of Bengal, as well as the leader of the Congress
Legislature Party, Kiran Shankar Roy. That campaign lasted while many minor leaders in the
Congress in Bengal dithered till just a fortnight before 15 August 1947; on the other hand the
Record of interview between Mountbatten and Liaquat Ali Khan, 3 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 11.
Record of interview between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Ms Fatima Jinnah, 24 April 1947, Chapter 14,
Document No. 26.
Interview between Mountbatten and Rajendra Prasad, 10 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 15.
Minutes of Viceroy’s 13thstaff meeting, 11 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 18.
Interview between Mountbatten andJinnah, 10 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 17.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-29-2048.jpg)
![General Editor’s Preface xxiii
of Bengal and the leader of the Congress legislature party carried that to the Viceroy.'’^ A day
before that memorandum was submitted S.R Mookerjee wrote a skillfully drafted letter to the
Viceroy recommending partition. He argued that if the demand for homeland for 24 per cent
of India’s Muslim population was legitimate, 45 per cent of Bengal’s population being Hindu
had an equally legitimate claim. Further, he built a case uponjinnah’s argument in justification
of partition: ‘Mr. Jinnah’s claim for Pakistan is based on the theory that Hindu and Muslims
are two separate nations ... [T]he same logic and argument applicable to Pakistan also apply
to the partition of Bengal.’®^ And, he added, that the League was guided by ‘fanatical notions
of separate nationhood ... [But] we do not want to be cut off from the rest of India’.
From May 1947 onwards, S.P. Mookeijee was no longer leading a pro-partition agitation; he
became one of many leaders swimming with the current moving inexorably towards partition.
Mookerjee remained a defender of the Hindu community, as in the past. In his speeches in
the Legislative Assembly of Bengal on the Noakhali riots he had highlighted desecration
of ‘symbols of Hindu religious worship’ and mass conversion to Islam, which in his view,
was ‘more horrible than even physical death’.Such a stance was not adopted by Congress
legislators, but the general political climate and the news media encouraged the rhetoric of
communal polarization. A handful of political leaders who were proponents of‘United Bengal’,
namely Sarat Chandra Bose, Kiran Sankar Roy, Abul Hashim, and a doubtful ally. Shahid
Suhrawardy, were up against a climate of opinion that was adverse to their counsel of avoiding
partition.^’'’ In a recently published series of letters in the private papers collection ofJinnah,
we see Suhrawardy confiding to Liaquat Ali Khan of the Muslim League in May 1947: ‘Even
the Hindus of East Bengal, who do not count in the voting, are supporting the partition with
death staring them on the face ... it is impossible to arouse Hindu opinion against it.’^® Hindu
Mahasabha had lost in Bengal every seat except one, that of S.R Mookerjee, in the general
election of 1946, but in 1947 the Mahasabha had the last laugh. After all, dividing people was
a game that communalism, Hindu or Muslim, excelled in.
However, the storyline, as they say in the film world, is not just about partition, it was
about independence, and anticipations of independence can be sensed in the documents
in this volume. A little bit of the exhilaration of that moment is captured by Nehru when,
reflecting on the Government’s policy statement of 20 February 1947, he recalled in his letter
to his mentor, Gandhi, ‘our oft-repeated demand for quitting India. It may not be so exactly
as we would have liked it. But the real thing is that they have finally decided and announced
that they are quitting’.*’^ The Congress declared: ‘The end of an era is at hand and a new age
will soon begin.‘We are here’, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in the Constituent Assembly,
“ Record of interview between Mountbatten and K.S.Roy, 3 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed., Transfer ofPower,
Vol. X, pp.556-8.
Mookerjee to Mountbatten, 2 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed.. Transfer ofPower, Vol. X, p. 556-8.
Mookerjee’s speech on Noakhali and Chandpur riots. Proceedings of Bengal Legislative Assembly, vol. 72, no. 1,
1947, in S.P.Mookerjee, Selected Speeches in Bengal Legislative Assembly 1937-1947, Calcutta, 2002, pp 68-71.
“ Cf. Partha Sarathi Gupta, ‘Who Divided the Bengalees?’; A.G.Noorani, ‘United Bengal Plan; Pipe Dream or
Missed Opportunity’; Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘The Division of Hearts : Mahatma Gandhi and the Partition of Bengal,
1947’, in Amrik Singh, ed.. The Partition in Retrospect, New Delhi, 2000.
H.S.Suhrawardy to Liaquat Ali Khan, 23 May 1947, Qaid-e-Azm papers. File no. 458, p. 80, in Harun-or-Rashid,
ed.. Inside Bengal Politics, 1936-1947: Unpublished Correspondence ofPartition Leaders, Dhaka, 2003, pp. 86-7.
Nehru to Gandhi, 24 February 1947, Chapter 5, Document No. 5.
Congress Working Committee Resolution, Delhi, 6-8 March 1947, Chapter 5, Document No. 15.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-31-2048.jpg)
![XXvi Editor’s Introduction
Looking ahead at the political prospects in India once the war ended, the Viceroy underlined
the primacy of a successful settlement of the Indian question. This was believed to be essential
for the future security of the Empire, to ensure British prestige in the East, and to keep India
within the Commonwealth.^
When the national leaders came out ofjail after long prison terms at the end of the War and
toured the country, they assured their audiences that it was a matter of time before the British
would go, maybe as early as two to five years. By early 1946 the British in turn made it clear
that their days in India were numbered. The Secretary of State said as much in his speech on
New Year’s Day, 1946. Along with other Congress leaders, Gandhiji realized that the imperial
rulers were sincere in the declaration of their intention to ‘quit’ in favour of independent rule
by Indians and in turn tried to convince the people of this.'^
However, the time for exploring avenues for settlement was running out. By mid-1946 a
point had been reached where government had the responsibility to keep the peace but little
power to do so. The Viceroy commented on the prospect of a revolt by the Congress, this time
assisted by its own governments in power in the provinces: ‘We could still probably suppress
such a revolt... [but] have nothing to put in its place and should be driven to an almost entirely
official rule, for which the necessary numbers of efficient officials do not exist.’^
When given the option of staying on in India by changing the basis of rule to coercion,
British Prime Minister Attlee argued against it on the following grounds: lack of administrative
machinery to carry out a policy of rule by coercion; lack of troops owing to other international
commitments; adverse opinion in the Labour Party; questionable loyalty of the Indian troops
and the unwillingness of British troops to serve; adverse world opinion; and an uncomfortable
position in UNO.®
As colonial rule could not survive on the old basis for long, a graceful withdrawal from
India became the overarching aim of policy makers. Of course, the digits of the post imperial
relationship had to be negotiated and modalities of transfer of power worked out. Eor the
British government it was important that withdrawal be presented not as forced dissolution
of imperial power but as a step forward in the planned devolution of power. A revised draft
of a statement of policy dated 2 January 1947 set out His Majesty’s Government’s (HMG’s)
proposed statement as ‘the final stage in their achievement of self government’, which ‘for the
past thirty years...has been the policy of successive British governments.’^
A new Viceroy was accordingly appointed as part of a new policy initiative. So Mountbatten
went out to India not only as the new Viceroy but also the last Viceroy, with the terminal date
for British departure announced for 30 June 1948. Mountbatten even claimed in later years
that he introduced the idea of the time limit and that if he had not done so the British may
well still be out there! But many before Mountbatten had spoken of a time limit, including
Wavell and Attlee, and members of the Cabinet had argued, from different points of view, for
having a specific date for withdrawal and its announcement. Eor Mountbatten to claim sole
^ Wavell to War Cabinet India Committee, 26 March 1945, Nicholas Mansergh, ed.. Constitutional Relations between
Great Britain and India, Transfer ofPower (hereafter TOP), 1942-47, Vol. V, H.M.S.O., 1974, p.733.
* Hindustan Times, 24 February 1946.
^ 27 December 1945, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, TOP, Vol. VI, 1976, p. 688.
^ Note c. 13 November 1946, TOP, Vol. IX, 1980, p. 68.
" TOP, Vol. IX, pp. 441-3.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19085898-250514124854-ad9a03ba/75/Towards-Freedom-Documents-On-The-Movement-For-Independence-In-India-1947-Part-1-Sucheta-Mahajan-34-2048.jpg)
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- 6. TOWARDS FREEDOM Documents onthe Movement for Independence in India, 1947 Part 1 Going beyond the legalistic notion of independence as a ‘transfer of power’, the Towards Freedom series documents within the overarching framework of the ‘movement for independence’ the largely unaddressed discourses on the struggles for social justice, economic empowerment, and cultural autonomy. Through meticulously selected historical material from the period 1937-47, relating to the activities, attitudes, and ideas of diverse sections of Indian society, it brings to the fore the varied contributions to the attainment of independence. This volume, published in three parts, systematically covers the major socio-political developments during 1947, the year that saw the end of colonial rule and the emergence of two nation states. The first part pertains to the main political developments that took place in the three-way conflict between imperialist, nationalist, and communal forces. This story continues in the second part, which takes up the question of the princely states, the settlement of boundaries, and the rehabilitation of refugees, while the third traverses the issues of caste, religious minorities, language and literature, educational policy, the position of women, the future of the Congress organization, the functioning of provincial ministries, the economic consequences of partition, and the peasant and working class movements. The documents in this part present multiple points of view, represented by a range of sources, from newspapers, private papers, institutional collections, speeches, and writings of principal players to colonial archives. The striking level of popular involvement in important issues is reflected in the delightful letters to the editors, maps of proposed boundary lines, cartoons with acerbic wit, and quaint advertisements, such as the one for a balm, titled ‘Freedom from Pain’, evidently inspired by the impending freedom of the country!
- 7. Digitized by theInternet Archive in 2018 with funding from Public. Resource.Org https://archive.org/details/towardsfreedomdo01maha
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- 10. ICHR: Towards Freedom GeneralEditor Volume Editor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya Sucheta Mahajan
- 11. Towards Freedom Documents onthe Movement for Independence in India 1947 Part 1 Edited by Sucheta Mahajan With a Preface by the General Editor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya Indian Council of Historical Research OXrORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
- 12. OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford UniversityPress is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001, India © Indian Council of Historical Research 2013 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN-13: 978-0-19-808397-9 ISBN-10: 0-19-808397-1 Typeset in Berthold Baskerville 11.5/14 by Le Studio Graphique, Gurgaon 122 001 Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110 020
- 13. To my parents, Vidyadharand Savitri
- 14. • il‘ tT.7^ t d ■ ■ ?(IU- H'hB- '"V ■ =-y r,--*" ••' _ **, J ?■*■“ I 1. .. 1«sp^’ ♦ / ---‘Mi T f ‘ 4 (w ol YoV,dV. Iswiii ■’ *■ .ii-.. ’.4m 1/l0 '• % -^iMP
- 15. Contents General Editor’s Prefaceix Editor’s Introduction xxv Acknowledgements Ixxi List ofAbbreviations Ixxv Calendar ofDocuments Ixxvii Section I: 1 January 1947 to 22 March 1947 1. Constituent Assembly 3 2. Political Developments in Early 1947 82 3. Functioning of the Interim Government 139 4. The Last Viceroy 173 5. Statement of 20 February 1947 and Its Aftermath 214 6. Communalism: General 247 7. Civil Disobedience Movements by the Muslim League 276 8. Communalism: Provinces 362 9. Demand FOR Partition 518 10. Volunteer Organizations 561 11. Minorities 583 12. Refugees 591 Section II: 23 March 1947 to 2 June 1947 13. Constituent Assembly 619 14. Interim Government 725 15. Exploring Political Alternatives 737 16. Making of the 3June Plan 792 17. Contending with Communalism 843
- 16. viii Contents 18. Communalism:Provinces 872 19. Muslim League Civil Disobedience Movements 1046 IN Assam and NWFP 20. Division OF Punjab 1113 21. Bengal: United or Divided 1152 22. Exercising Options: Referendum in 1232 North-West Frontier Province and Sylhet 23. Minority Groups and Displaced Populations 1241 24. Volunteer Organizations 1263 About the Editors 1285 Index 1286
- 17. General Editor’s Preface Itgives me great pleasure to place in the hands of readers the tenth and last volume of the Towards Freedom series of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). The project taken up by the Council many years ago is at last approaching completion. Since the volumes in the series have been published at intervals of months and sometimes years, a part of the General Editor’s duty has been to state at the beginning of each volume the objective and the general guiding principles of this endeavour. I shall address that task first and then share with the readers a few thoughts which crossed my mind as I read the present volume. The agenda of an endeavour such as this series defines itself in part through editorial practice and partly through attempts towards a statement of objectives. The historical context in which this project developed initially is generally known. While we must not overestimate the influence of that historical conjuncture on the academic inputs which went into the making of the project’s agenda, one has to take that into account as one of the formative factors. After the vertiginous years leading to 1947, there came a time when historians turned their attention to those years and archives began to acquire and provide access to source materials. The last years of‘British India’ began to be addressed by professional historians and indeed the theme attracted national attention both in India and in Britain. InJune 1967, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson made an important statement in this regard in the House of Commons: ‘In view of the great interest now being shown in historical circles in the last days of British rule in India ... [there would be published] documents from the India Office records on the Transfer of Power and the events leading up to it.’* The announcement included the assurance that ‘the editors will be independent historians who will be given unrestrained access to the records, and freedom to select and edit the documents for publication’. The outcome of the project thus framed at the highest level in England was the series known as The Transfer ofPower, edited by Nicholas Mansergh, Smuts Professor of the History of the British Commonwealth at Cambridge. In addition to the announcement made in Parliament, Mansergh, as the ‘Editor-in-Chief’, stated that the ‘purpose of the series’ was ‘to make available to scholars in convenient printed form the more important British historical records relating to the transfer of power in India’.^ Arguably, there is an obvious inadequacy in the notion that all that happened in 1947 was a ‘transfer of power’. In Indian perception the attainment of independence was a significant moment in the history of the struggle against British rule in the subcontinent. The representation of the emergence of independent India and Pakistan as transfer of power, solely an alteration of constitutional relations, tended towards the occlusion of that history. The focus on the legalistic ‘ Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, House of Commons, Vol. 749, 30June 1967, cols 147-8. ^ Nicholas Mansergh, ed., ‘Foreword’, The Transfer ofPower, Vol. VI, London, 1976, p. viii.
- 18. X General Editor’sPreface notion of power transfer, and the discourse of modalities of transfer, marginalized the more significant part of the historical processes at work. Likewise, the self-imposed limitations of the British documentation enterprise left many issues unaddressed: the project was to select documents from British state papers relating to the constitutional arrangements from the Cripps Mission of 1942 to 15 August 1947. In that discourse, in the official archives and the Viceroys’ papers, the Indian voice was recorded only in terms of a few important spokesmen of political parties who were present during negotiations with the British Indian government. The Indian institutions, personalities, and events were included in the documentation only to the extent that the official papers took cognizance of them. That is not to say that the task of documentation in the twelve volumes produced between 1970 and 1983 by the HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office) was not competently handled by Professor Mansergh and his editorial assistants. These volumes were products of the best of British scholarship. But the initial conception of the project was delimited to certain issues and historical sources. I recall that in 1971 when I invited Sir Penderel Moon, a brilliant officer of the Indian Civil Service and later a member of Mansergh’s editorial team, to a seminar at St Antony’s College, Oxford, a number of us questioned him about this and he pointed out that perhaps we had not paid attention to the subtitle of the Mansergh volumes, ‘Constitutional Relations between Britain and India’. Clearly the agenda for any Indian endeavour towards the documentation of the years leading to independence in 1947 would be different. How it would be different was suggested by Professor Sarvepalli Gopal in a luminous editorial preface to the first volume produced under the present project. He said that the projected volumes aimed to ‘present, within limits set by the sources, documents relating to the activities, attitudes and ideas of the diverse classes and sections of Indian society, all of which contributed to the attainment of Indian independence with partition’.^ It is significant that the title chosen for this series was ‘Towards Freedom’. While the sub¬ title emphasizes the focus upon the ‘movement for independence’, the title evokes discourses in other domains as well—the struggle for social justice, for economic empowerment against exploitation, and for cultural autonomy. These were also prominent discourses within the overarching framework of the Indian people’s struggle for freedom. One is reminded of the words of Mahatma Gandhi in an essay he wrote in the Harijan a few days before his death, on 27 January 1948: ‘The Congress has won political freedom but it has yet to win economic freedom, social and moral freedom.’^ This awareness of different categories of freedom allows space for a conception of the freedom struggle far wider in amplitude than the textbook approach to the struggle for independence from British rule. It makes a struggle for freedoms of many kinds thinkable. And it broadens the idea of a history of freedom struggle. This is how I understand the choice of the title for this series: Towards Freedom. To sum it up, the present series of volumes focuses upon not just the legal processes of the transfer of power and the overtly political activities which brought that about, but also the struggle for freedom in different domains—economic, social, and cultural. The agenda of ^ S. Gopal, ‘General Editor’s Preface’, in Partha Sarathi Gupta, ed.. Towards Freedom 1943-44, Delhi, 1997, p. vii. * M.K. Gandhi, ‘Congress Position’, Harijan, 1 February 1948, Collected Works ofMahatma Gandhi, Vol. 90, p. 497. Also see ‘His Last Will and Testament’, Harijan, 15 February 1948, where he spoke of economic, social, and moral dimensions of independence, beyond the political independence which had been attained, ibid., p. 526. This document was written c. 29January 1948, shortly before Gandhi’s death, and it was also referred to in the AICC papers as ‘Draft Constitution of the Congress’.
- 19. General Editor’s Prefacexi the series, therefore, is open to the entry of themes relating to the struggle of the peasantry, the working classes, and different sections of people as well as to a broad spectrum of political organizations who in their own light worked towards attainment of freedom. To anyone interested in the craft ofhistory, a pertinent question will be how the documentation will reflect this agenda. The selection of appropriate documents is not an easy task. We are here looking at long-term historical processes such as the slowly evolving ideas about nationhood or class solidarity; the dynamics of popular participation in political movements; the links being forged between movements of the peasantry, the industrial labour, and the freedom struggle; the youth and student movements vis-a-vis the political parties; the changing social hierarchy in caste terms in relation to electoral and agitational politics; the gender relationships evolving from the traditional patriarchal structure towards developments that had liberating potentials; the anti-feudal and anti-British movement in the princely states; and the interface between all these trends in the ideational and cultural domains. The instantiation of these long-term processes through events as reflected in documents is the task at hand. The documents reflect fragments of the events which constitute links in the chain of certain historical processes of long duration. It was decided years ago, at an early stage of this project, to distribute the work among editors on a purely chronological basis, that is, each of the volumes in the series would relate to a particular year assigned to an editor. This opened the project to the possibility that the long-term processes would be lost sight of in the depiction of the particularities of the year each editor was taking care of. I incurred unpopularity in the ICHR when I suggested many years ago that a thematic division of labour between the various editors, rather than a chronological one assigning one year to each, would have been a better organizing principle.^ I will not elaborate that point again. Whatever the drawbacks or merits of the chronological frame for assigning editorial responsibility might have been, it has been in operation for twenty years and hopefully it will enable us to complete the task before us. For the volume editors the limitation of chronological framework has probably been an irksome constraint. On the whole, the volume editors, each a distinguished historian, bore with fortitude the limits set on their temporal range, and they situate the particular historical conjuncture of a given year in the broader perspective of the long-term processes as they see them in the introduction to the volume. The Editor’s Introduction is thus a bridge between the narrative of events and the narrative of the freedom struggle as he or she sees it. It also provides a space for the presentation of his or her approach to the themes and issues the volume addresses and the explication of that approach. As regards the sources from which the documents are collected for the volumes in this series. Professor Sarvepalli Gopal, in his General Editor’s Preface, remarked in 1997; ‘Although some of the volumes contain documents drawn from regional language sources, a fully comprehensive selection from these sources merit a separate project.’^ This was an accurate prediction of the future output, that is, the volumes which are coming out now. In deciding on what non-English and regional language sources will be collected, the volume editors have exercised their judgement in deploying the research assistance they were provided. Judging by volumes produced till now and the manuscripts now being received from editors and being ^ S. Bhattacharya, ‘The Empire on Borrowed Time: Towards Freedom 1943-44’, The Book Review, Vol. XXII (January-February 1998): pp. 24-5. Gopal, ‘General Editor’s Preface’, in P.S. Gupta ed., Towards Freedom 1943-44, p. vii.
- 20. xii General Editor'sPreface processed in the editorial office at the ICHR, the editors possibly felt that on most of the themes addressed there exists sufficient source material in English and in translation. A more systematic search for and selection of non-English sources would have made this collection more complete, but it was evidently not found to be feasible. We are committed to completing the project undertaken in 1988-89 as soon as possible, in keeping with the schedule that had been planned. This would help limit the editors’ scope for new source searches. One more point needs to be made about the sources. Probably, in the last decade of the Raj, especially during the World War, perspicacious observers began to sense a debilitation of the imperial powers and the impending decolonization process on a global scale, and the consequent shift in the power relationships—this altered their perception of the politics of independence struggle radically. This was happening globally in old empires, among the people and leaders in the imperial metropolises as well as their colonial peripheries. On the latter process we do have some documentation in the present series, but not much on the shift in the imperial metropolis. This is because ab initio the project was meant to be mainly for the collection of sources in India. This was probably because it was clear from the beginning that we have our hands full if we look at the Indian archival sources alone. The mass and density of archival sources generated by the Government in India will be evident to even a layman who glances at the following pages. Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, unlike similar enterprises in England, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to collect sources throwing light on the last days of the British Raj, this series includes a great many activities and events which are not overtly political or constitutional. A few words on the editorial apparatus in these volumes may be in order. The chapters are thematically organized while the sequence of placement of documents in each chapter is strictly chronological. There are two guides for the reader, first the Calendar of Documents indicating the subject of each document and the source, and second, the Index at the end of the volume. An effort has been made to make the volumes as ‘reader-friendly’ as possible. In some collections of this nature the editorial practice has been to provide a synoptic account of the contents of each document. This has not been the pattern in this series chiefly because it would increase the size of the volumes. As it is, each volume in the series is quite bulky and the editors who tried to trim the size down are to be applauded. I would like to put on record the annoying delays this project was subjected to on account of political interference to the detriment of academic autonomy. One result of such interference was that the ICHR authorities appointed no successor to the General Editor, Professor Sarvepalli Gopal, when he passed away in April 2002; in fact, all work on the project was suspended for about five years. I was asked in 2006 to take up the task initiated by Professor Gopal, my senior colleague at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Upon accepting this position, an honorary one, my first task was to assemble an editorial team at the ICHR and to request the editors of the different volumes to resume the work. The dismption in the production ofthe volumes in the series for several years was tantamount to political censorship of academic work. It is interesting to note here that the British developed a system which prevented political parties’ interference in such matters. The British project for the documentation of the Transfer ofPower processed through a mechanism which ensured inter-party consensus in parliament.^ Eor this purpose a standing inter-party group of Privy ' Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, House of Commons, Vol. 733, col. 1706.
- 21. General Editor’s Prefacexiii Counsellors was appointed and it included a minister of the ruling party and representatives of the Conservative Party as well as the Liberal Party; thus, once the project was passed by that committee, the task was left to experts duly appointed and no political interference occurred. In the light of what happened in our country on account of governmental changes, one might say that there was much that was commendable in the mechanism devised in Britain. It is hoped that the agenda outlined above makes it amply clear what have been and remain the principles of documentation in the Towards Freedom series. The editors of the volumes have had the freedom to exercise their choice within certain parameters and they focus upon the themes which emerge from the selected documents. An editor of a volume in this series stated what most other editors would endorse: this is not ‘an attempt to provide materials for an “official” or “definitive” statement on the history of the freedom movement’.” I accepted the responsibility of being the General Editor of this series since I believe that although the Government of India has funded this enterprise, like many other research projects and institutions in this country, the output of the project is the work of autonomous minds of scholars guided by standards of the discipline of historiography. As I have said in the beginning, not only agenda statements like the one I have attempted now, but practice has defined principles as well, and that is how an academic community works. * In the days when India was hurtling forward to the tryst with destiny, in the first seven months of 1947, what were the trends in India’s polity and civil society? That question is addressed by the enormous mass of evidence very competently marshalled by the editor of the present volume. In the present part (Part I, comprising Section One covering events of 1 January 1947 to 22 March 1947, and Section Two covering 23 March 1947 to 2 June 1947) there is thorough documentation of events up to the momentous Transfer of Power plan of the HMG (His Majesty’s Government) of 3June 1947. Compared to the previous volumes in this series, in this volume on 1947 the intensity of focus on events, both in the central arena of New Delhi as well as in various parts of the two emerging sovereign states, is much greater. We thought that a close-up picture and a concentrated study of this order was required because in those days the long-term trends in Indian polity and society reached a climactic point. Much that was below the surface in politics, and invisible even to the discerning eye, began to be seen as if the turbulence of those days brought them to the surface. It was a moment of revelation, not always of the uplifting kind. That is why this volume needs to be larger than other ones in this series though it covers a smaller span of time than any other volume. I have said that in this small span of time we see in microcosm, so to speak, the long¬ term trends which go back far into history. What are these trends? First, the battle for the mind of the people of India between secessionism and the idea of an integTally united India. Second, there was a complex interplay between two processes: the process desired by the British ‘Home’ authorities and their Indian agents for a withdrawal with least damage to the interests they represented and imperial principles they upheld, and on the other hand the two major contestants in India, the Congress and the League, for the best possible outcome for themselves in the post-1947 scenario. That boils down to a trilateral dialogue. The third trend ** Basudev Chatterjee, ed., Towards Freedom 7938, Delhi, 1999, p. Ivii.
- 22. xiv General Editor’sPreface was the conflict between the politics of exclusion and its contestation through the endeavours to be inclusive—and this was a conflict which left its mark at every level, on the personal life of the victims of discrimination or violence, on politics at the level of communities, and ultimately on the founding principles of the newly emerging sovereign states. That conflict meant innumerable multilateral negotiations between majorities and minorities as they were perceived in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, caste status, and so on. All I need to do, given the very exhaustive documentation in the following pages, is to highlight what may be considered to be two frequently unasked questions: How was Independence imagined? And how was Partition negotiated towards general acceptance?{ I fail to ask those questions I shall miss the wood for the tree. The documents in this collection covering the days fromJanuary 1 toJune 2, 1947, throw a shaft of light on these questions. ‘We are actors today in a great historical drama,’ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in one of the earliest meetings of Constituent Assembly. ‘We are involved in it and therefore we are unable to perceive the large contours of it.’*’ This was a perspicacious comment worthy of a philosopher. Few others could distance themselves from the immediate context and reflect upon the larger perspective. But that perspective was writ large in the initial move of the Constituent Assembly in January 1947, in the ‘objectives resolution’. The words concerning the constitution to be made were bold and evocative of the long struggle that preceded the formation of the Constituent Assembly: ‘[A]11 power and authority of the sovereign Independent India, its constituent parts and organs of government, are derived from the people ...justice, social, economic and political, equality of status, of opportunity, and before the law; freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action, subject to law and public morality ... adequate safeguards ... for minorities, backward class.Nehru in his speech on the resolution reminded the Constituent Assembly of the past pledges looking towards Independence: ‘I felt the past crowding around me, and I also felt the future taking shape. We stood on the razor’s edge of the present... I felt that we were coming to the end of an age, I had a sense of our forebears watching this undertaking of ours ...”** *** While Independence was bathed in the light of a historical vision of this kind, occasionally it was also a moment that was perceived in terms of the mechanics of what was called in bureaucratic language the transfer of power and the continuity of administration. That discourse naturally demands a lot of space in the documents which are reproduced here. Rajendra Prasad, on the post-Independence status of that issue in a memorandum to Nehru on 18 February 1947, says: The problem of administrative machinery and its strength must be viewed in the perspective that, from June 1948 onwards India ... will be free from the foreign element in all the branches of its services ... Stories of weakening of the administration, depletion of cadres, interference, corruption and inefficiency are a common tale in a large number of provinces in India today ... The problem of administrative strength, administrative efficiency, and administrative tradition is on a par with the problem of constitution-making...*^ ** Sir S.Radhakrishnan’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 20 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 2. (References below, unless specified otherwise, are to the present collection of documents. Part 1 of Towards Freedom 1947.) ‘Objectives Resolution’, Chapter 1, Document No. 5. " J.Nehru’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 22 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 5. *** Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru, 18 Febmary 1947, Chapter 3, Document No. 20.
- 23. General Editor’s Prefacexv Prasad, President of the Constituent Assembly, added that apart from constitution-making what demanded attention was that, as many British civil servants had said for the past hundred years, ‘the purposes of the state are translated to the common man and woman in the factory or the field by the actions, the activities, the vigour and the character of the district administrator who is the symbol of government’s authority to them’.'^ Thus independence meant taking care of the nuts and bolts of the administrative machinery, not just the general constitutional principles, and Prasad believes that this aspect has not ‘received the consideration it deserves’. About this time the Viceroy writes to a British civil servant working in India that the Indian National Congress (INC) ‘have shown signs lately of realizing the value of your services’ (that is, of the Indian Civil Service [ICS]); the INC Working Committee, it was reported, approached some British ICS officers ‘to stay after the transfer of power’.Another interesting aspect of the impending situation was the British Indian authorities’ perception of the policies of the Indian government of India: for example. Viceroy Wavell writes to Pethick-Lawrence inJanuary 1947: ‘There is no doubt that the Congress High Command are becoming sobered by responsibility.’ Wavell cites the ‘recent action which has been taken against the communists’ and says: ‘Sooner or later the High Command [of the Congress] will have to face up to its own Left-Wing and other revolutionary influences, and each time it makes a tentative move to do so it is forced into a more realistic appreciation of what government of a great country really means.Viceroy Wavell seems to have accepted the plausible view, expressed by Liaquat Ali Khan when the budget met with stiff Congress opposition, that Indian ‘Big Business’ was in close alliance with other Congress members, especially Vallabhbhai Patel.'*’ Around this time the British authorities in India happily note that ‘the Congress government in Bombay had decided that the only way to deal with the Communists was to resort [to] the detention without trial ... it is a strange volteface irom their old attitude to such executive measures ... [and] “imperialistic” methods’.'^ We see in some of the documents in this collection a new stage in the process that began in 1939—the transition from the politics of aspiration to the politics of governance. This was also part of the meaning of independence now being read by the actors we see on the stage of history. Jawaharlal Nehru writes somewhat impatiently to a minor Congress leader who raised questions about the principles of the Congress: ‘It is no good talking in terms of principles when decisions have to be made.’"* There was another facet of the idea of independence as well. B.R. Ambedkar asked in memorable words: ‘What can swaraj mean to the untouchables?’ Will it mean that ‘under swaraj the Legislature and Executive will also be in the hands of the Hindus’, that is, the dominant upper castes? If so, ‘under swaraj the untouchables will have no way of escape from the destiny of degradation which Hindus and Hinduism have fixed for them’.’" Consider again the memorandum to the Minorities Sub-Committee from the All-India Adi-Hindu Depressed “ Rajendra Prasad’s note to Nehru, 18 February 1947, Chapter 3, Document No. 20. Viceroy Wavell to Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Chapter 2, Document No. 34. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 29January 1947, Chapter 2, Document No. 34. Wavell’s journal, dated 18 March 1947, Chapter 4, Document No. 21. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Chapter 2, Document No. 34. Nehru to Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, 23 May 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 25. B.R.Ambedkar’s Memorandum on Rights of Minorities and Scheduled Castes, 24 March 1947, Chapter 13, Document No. 1.
- 24. xvi General Editor’sPreface Classes Association: they ‘look forward to the emancipation of the depressed classes in the Constitution of a self-governing India’. It was argued that the system of representation in the legislatures till 1947 did not ensure ‘any guarantee for the return [in elections] of the real representatives of the Scheduled Castes’ and proposals were made for post-1947 constitutional provisions towards that end.^*’ Thus the prospect of independence raised many expectations: political freedom, it was expected, would also bring in its wake freedom from caste oppression. Both the earlier pledges made by the Congress to the nation and the immediate circumstances (in particular the abstention of the Muslim League from participation in the Constituent Assembly) made the political leadership acutely conscious and diligent in the pursuit of protection of minorities. There were voices against this trend. ‘The minority problem should not and must not overshadow the main issue, that of Independence of India.’^' When a Constituent Assembly member spoke thus, he was not alone. Nor was he talking in terms of generalities, because he went on to speak of ‘under representation’ of the majority Hindu population. ‘It is very very unfortunate that the minority communities do not demand mere [^27] justice, equity and fair play’ but also extraordinary safeguards and weightage. Apart from a few such dissenting voices there were, of course, differences in approach within the scheduled caste leadership. Sometimes these differences remained unstated; sometimes they were brought into the open. For instance, HJ. Khandekar says on Ambedkar: ‘I hope, God grant him a little more good sense, he will give up the demand for separate electorates and also stop saying henceforth “I am not a Hindu” which he has been telling up till now.’^^ There were also inevitably wrangling over numbers, to adequately represent the various categories of scheduled castes. As S. Nagappa said on that question, sometimes a community was ‘over-represented’ and some castes were so under¬ represented that the representatives were unable to ‘fight for their community interests’.^^ However, on the whole the tendency of that discourse was not narrowly to focus on adversarial positions within but to take an inclusive stance to broaden the ambit of the constitutional protection to cover a great many communities as ‘minorities’. Jagjivan Ram was farsighted in putting the scheduled castes’ demands in a larger agenda addressing the minorities. The safeguards for the minorities he proposed covered not just the scheduled castes but also ‘religious and racial minorities (for example, Christians and Aboriginals)’ as well as linguistic and cultural minorities. He was one of the earliest proponents of a Minorities Commission and suggested the institution of such bodies ‘in the Centre and in every Province’, that is, the Indian union as well as the states.^^ Perhaps the most vocal of the minorities was the Sikh community. For instance, leaders of the community argued that the province of Punjab not only ‘was and must remain the homeland and the holy land of the Sikhs’, but also that Sikhs were entitled to ‘safeguards for the members of minorities’ in India and the future constitution must contain ‘safeguards for the protection of their religion, language, and culture as well as social and economic rights’.^^ Or again Baldev Singh’s letter to Viceroy Mountbatten Memorandum to the Minorities Sub-Committee, Constituent Assembly, from the All-India Adi-Hindu Depressed Classes Association, 13 April 1947, Chapter 13, Document No. 10. B.Das’sspeech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7. HJ.Kliandekar’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 21 January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 4. S.Nagappa’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7. Ram’s note of 3 April 1947 on Safeguards for Minorities and Scheduled Castes, Chapter 13, Document No. 6. Memorandum on Sikhs by Ujjal Singh and Harnam Singh, March/April 1947, Mountbatten Papers, Chapter 13, Document No. 5.
- 25. General Editor’s Prefacexvii on 2 June 1947: if division of Punjab is unavoidable, Sikhs must be ‘given the same right in communal matters as has been accorded to the other two major communities’. Further, ‘we have so far not been assured equal rights with others in either the existing or the proposed new Constituent Assembly. We request you to see that this is done’.^® The Anglo-Indian community’s response to the question of protection as a minority community in post-independence India provides an example and an explanation of the rapid proliferation of minority grievances and resultant lobbying in political circles. Frank Anthony, representing that community in the Constituent Assembly, says; ‘I have always been reluctant, although a communal leader, to pursue communal hares and I am even more reluctant to enter into any communal dog fights ... But so long as you have a committee on minorities, so long as other minorities are insisting on their rights, alleged or real, then, certain minorities, particularly the smaller minorities have, in self-defence to ask for certain representation’ of their own rights.^^ Immediately after that speech a scheduled caste leader from Madras expressed his disapproval of too much importance being given to the Anglo-Indians and Parsis who were by no stretch of imagination oppressed minorities.^^ Thus there was a good deal of conflict between the claimants to minority status and protection under the future Constitution of post-independence India. At the other end stood some North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) tribes, meeting at the Mohmandjirga in April 1947, who opted out of that game of the minority communities: ‘We are independent and will remain so, we will never recognize anybody’s suzerainty over us. We, Mohmands, and also other independent tribes record our deep annoyance against the British and the Hindus The prospect of independence touched the minds at all levels from the Constituent Assembly to tribalJirgas in the remotest margin of India. Independence meant different things to different people at this historical conjuncture. That is what one learns when one is looking for the answer to the question, ‘How was Independence imagined and understood?’ Independence came to the Indian people with a rider, the partition of India, that is to say the secession of some part of the people who were indivisible in nationalist imagination. That brings us to the discourse of partition. The dialectics of secessionism and integrationism is played out in the early part of the year 1947, in the efforts to preserve unity and to avoid partition. Who were involved in that last-ditch battle? Who stood for India’s unity, or made what looked like mere gestures towards the idea of keeping the subcontinent and the Hindu and Muslim communities united? Preeminently it was Mahatma Gandhi. He was one man who was not merely making empty gestures when he proposed to Viceroy Mountbatten that M.A. Jinnah be invited to form government as Prime Minister, ‘so long as all the measures that MrJinnah’s cabinet brings forward are in the interests of the Indian people as a whole’. Gandhiji’s ideas on this issue can be traced in his statements dispersed in various sites, often showing his angst, his perception of the threat to the ideal of Indian’s unity, and his effort to reconcile himself with the pragmatic position of the Congress which began to accept partition of India as a viable alternative. Baldev Singh to Mountbatten, 2June 1947, Mountbatten Papers, Chapter 16, Document No. 39. F.R.Anthony’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7. S.Nagappa’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 24January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 7. Report of the Intelligence Bureau, Home Dept, 11 April 1947, on the Mohmand Jirga at Ziarat Ghakai on 28 March 1947, Chapter 13, Document No. 8. H.L. Ismay to Gandhi, 6 April 1947, Draft Outline of Gandhi’s Scheme, Chapter 14, Document No. 8.
- 26. xviii General Editor’sPreface It has often been said that 1947 saw the abandonment of the Gandhian position against the partition of India, a partition that went against the grain of the rejection of the two nations theory’ by Gandhi and his followers in the Congress. That interpretation overlooks the nuances of the Gandhian position. In February 1947 Gandhi, in remote riot-affected Noakhali, is reported to have said: Tf the Hindus, who formed the majority in the whole of India, desired to keep everyone united by means of compulsion, he [Gandhi] would resist it... He was as much against forced partition as against forced unity’; he was personally against partition, but he conceded that ‘according to some ... the time had now come when such a division had become desirable in the interest of peace’.^^ Again, he spoke of the same principle of freedom of choice in April 1947: ‘Are the Muslims fighting for Pakistan? ... By force they cannot have an inch of land. By persuasion they may have the whole of India.A few days later in riot-torn Bihar he said again: ‘The Hindus of west Bengal have decided that Bengal should be divided ... why do the Hindus want separation?’ And he added: it was for Shahid Suhrawardy to persuade the Hindus to be part of Pakistan.In these and some other statements of Gandhi—particularly those made at prayer meetings, where he speaks as if he is talking to himself—presents a line of thinking which was quite consistent with his basic philosophy. He emphasizes freedom of choice and rejects coercion in any form as a means of preserving territorial unity. Given this position, there was no question of Gandhi’s ‘conversion’ to a pro-partition position, because he always prioritized intrinsic freedom over territorial sovereignty. While Mahatma Gandhi’s digits of discourse were in this regard totally different from those of other political leaders, it is also clear that his heart did not accept partition. He continued to say in the months leading to partition how repugnant it was. Early in April 1947 he said: ‘I am aware of the fact that there is a large section [of opinion in India] in favour of the vivisection of India. Who cares for the nation today? Everyone wants to realize his ambition and grab power by creating dissensions.’^^ ‘India is on the threshold of independence. But this is not the independence I want. To my mind it may be no independence if India is partitioned and the minorities do not enjoy security, protection, and equal treatment.’^^ The hugely controversial proposal he made early in April 1947 to Viceroy Mountbatten to offer the Prime Minister’s position to M.A. Jinnah, was arguably a desperate effort to preserve India’s unity, although a different interpretation of that action was possible, as Mountbatten suggested half in jest when he said that he saw in it ‘wily old Gandhi’.^*’ What is amply clear is his isolation among the political leaders around him: ‘I am sorry to say that I failed to carry any of them with me except Badshah Khan,’ he wrote to Mountbatten on 11 April 1947, and hence his request ‘to omit me from your consideration’.^^ And beyond the circle of the circumspect political leaders, he met with the stiffest open opposition: in the prayer meetings he held in Noakhali, Patna, or New Delhi, he repeatedly referred to thousands of letters he received condemning his Gandhi’s speech at prayer meeting, Haimchar, Noakhali District, 28 February 1947, Collected Works ofMahatma Gandhi, hereafter cited as CWMG (EB), Delhi, Publications Divisions, Government of India, 1999, vol.94, pp. 57-8. Speech at prayer meeting, 9 April 1947, New Delhi, ibid., p. 273. Speech at prayer meeting, 14 April 1947, Patna, ibid., p. 309. Gandhi at interview with Sir M.Darling at Bhangi Colony, Gandhi’s residence in Delhi at that time, 8 April 1947, CWMG, vol. 94, p. 261. Gandhi to Y.M.Dadoo and G.M.Naicker, 11 April 1947, ibid., p. 286. Mountbatten’s note on meeting with Gandhi, 1 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 1. Gandhi to Mountbatten, 11 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 11.
- 27. General Editor’s Prefacexix ‘betrayal’ of Hindus and casting doubts on the sincerity and efficacy of his effort to befriend the Muslims. At this juncture we hear a sad cry from his heart at a prayer meeting: ‘How can I carry conviction with the people by mere words if the sixty years of my public life have failed to convince them?’^^ As for the Congress leaders other than Gandhi, it was Abdul Ghaffar Khan who stood by him in trying to avoid partition, unless there was a popular mandate in its favour. Ghaffar Khan was no time-server, he was a political prisoner for twelve years in British India and later for fifteen years in post-independence Pakistan. In this first quarter of 1947 he struggled against the surge of communal fury in the Frontier; in the middle of March 1947 he and Gandhi addressed many meetings in Bihar. A week after the Working Committee accepted the partitioning of Punjab, Ghaffar Khan said: ‘I find myself surrounded by darkness, which increases the more I think of the future of India ... If India is burned down, all will lose, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians.’ And he went on to add: ‘The Muslim League wants Partition. They can have it only through love and willing consent.’^^ In the middle of May, Ghaffar Khan returned to the Frontier, once again confronting the violent Muslim League opposition to him, and declared: ‘Some people mislead you in the name of Islam ... What gains will Islam and the Muslims reap from these riots and the slaughter of children, women and the aged? And how are the Pakhtuns going to be benefited?’^® From then on, Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s aim was to put forward the idea of Pakhtun autonomy as a counter to the Muslims’ tendency to identity themselves with Pakistan. This was the only strategy then available to him. In Part II of this volume that story will unfold. Finally, objectivity demands that we recognize thatJawaharlal Nehru and a few others probably did not abandon the idea of the fundamental unity of India in their heart, but their pragmatic mind dictated the acceptance of an inevitable partition. It appears that Gandhi and Ghaffar Khan were not consulted when Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, Nehru, and the Working Committee of the Congress resolved to recommend the partition of Punjab on 8 March 1947. Nehru writes to Viceroy Wavell on 9 March 1947: ‘The Muslim League openly want to make the whole of the Punjab a Pakistan area and wish to use a League minority to that end. As I have written to you separately, a proper and fair solution of this differently appears to be the division of the Punjab into predominantly Muslim area and a predominantly non-Muslim area. The Congress has recommended this...’^* It is interesting to note that Gandhi writes to Nehru on 20 March 1947 about that Congress resolution on Punjab partition saying, ‘I know nothing about it’, and reiterates his opposition to ‘the two nations theory’.^^ That fact that partition in principle was thus conceded by the Congress and Nehru, while Gandhi knew nothing about it, instantiates the disconnection between the two. At the same time, it is true that Nehru often reiterated his faith in India’s unity which was the theme of the book he published the previous year. The Discovery of India (1946). And that is why perhaps, as will be evident from some documents here, Gandhi’s faith in Nehru remained unshakable. In the documents in this volume we find Jawaharlal Nehru in a pragmatic mood about the impending partition. ‘The Congress has stood for the Union of India and still stands for it. Speech at prayer meeting, 28 Apinl 1947, Patna, ibid., p. 207. Ghaffar Khan’s speech on 16 March 1947, Rajmohan Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan: Non-violent Badshah ofthe Pakhtuns, Penguin, New Delhi, 2004, p. 175. Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s speech at Shabqadar, Rajmohan Gandhi, ibid., p. 181. Nehru to Wavell, 9 March 1947, Ghapter 7, Document No. 50. Gandhi to Nehru, 20 March, 1947, Chapter 9, Document No. 14.
- 28. XX General EditorPreface But we have previously stated that we are not going to compel any part [of India] against its will. If that unfortunately leads to a division, then we accept it... If we can have a united India straight away without such division, that will, of course be very welcome.He points to the need to ‘think realistically’ and confides to Asaf Ali that he finds ‘Mountbatten’s approach is friendly and he wants to go ahead fast’. On the other hand, Nehru writes, the situation is ‘tense and volcanic’ in Punjab and Bengal, there is ‘tremendous demand’ from Hindu and Sikhs for partition of Bengal and Punjab, arms are being made or smuggled in to prepare for a civil war, many ofthe Muslim leaders are against partition of Bengal and Punjab.^'^ The threat of communal conflict, almost tantamount to civil war, has been extensively documented in this volume along with the parallel narrative of communal politics. The police reports indicate a new trend; riots spread from towns to rural areas and there the savagery of both sides was unprecedented while police action was difficult.There appears to be a perception in British official circles that on the partition question Nehru was amenable to be reluctantly persuaded to part ways with Gandhi. An interesting example of this belief at the highest level is Mountbatten’s conversation with Winston Churchill. At this interview Churchill happened to be in bed and mulling over in his mind the Indian problem. Churchill, Mountbatten recalls, ‘asked me if I foresaw any difficulties, particularly with Mr. Gandhi. I told him that I doubted whether he would create any difficulty which would not be dealt with by Patel and Nehru’.Although Nehru was willing to accept the idea of partition, faced with the prospect of a civil war, he played a crucially important role in writing a devastating note against Mountbatten’s ‘Plan Balkan’ which would have virtually divided India into a congeries of small political entities, putting to an end the Indian Union. That note of 11 May 1947, perhaps the single most important document in this collection, was an intervention that changed the course of events altogether. As regards secessionism, the stance ofthe Muslim League remained in this period relentlessly consistent with its earlier politics. Right in the beginning of his viceroyalty Mountbatten held meetings with Jinnah, not less than six times between 5 April and 11 April 1947. ‘He had brought all possible arguments to bear on Mr. Jinnah ... Mr Jinnah had not been able in his presence to adduce one single feasible argument in favour of Pakistan. In fact he had offered no counter-arguments. He gave the impression that he was not listening. He was impossible to argue with.’'^*^ The long conversations served only to confirm Mountbatten’s first impression that Jinnah was ‘in a most frigid, haughty and disdainful frame of mind’. AllJinnah had to say was that ‘there was only one solution—a “surgical operation” on India’.It seems probable that the Viceroy had formed a prejudice againstjinnah, because he was unreasonably expectingjinnah to abandon the agenda which brought him to the forefront of Indian politics. Mountbatten’s interview with Liaquat Ali Khan yielded an equally inflexible answer, through, unlikeJinnah, he ‘smiled engagingly’. After having dealt with Congress members in the Interim Government, Liaquat Ali felt that ‘the position now [is] so intolerable that ifYour Excellency was only prepared Nehru to Ashafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, 23 May 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 25. Nehru to Asaf Ali, 14 May 1947, Chapter 16, Document No. 7. EvanJenkins to Wavell, 17 March 1947, Chapter 8, Document No. 27. Record of interview between Mountbatten and Winston Churchill, 22 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed..,T7ie Transfer ofPower, HMSO, London, Vol. X, p.945. Note by Nehru on the draft proposals, 11 May 1947, Chapter 16, Document No. 2. Mountbatten’s statement at the 13th staff meeting, 11 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 18. Record of interview between Mountbatten andjinnah, 5-6 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 14.
- 29. General Editor’s Prefacexxi to let the Muslim League have the Sind Desert, I would still prefer to accept that and have a separate Muslim State When Lady Edwina Mountbatten had an interview with Ms Fatima Jinnah, who was supposed to be very influential in the League in matters of state, ‘she made frequent references to the fact that “the Muslims would fight for separation and their rights, if these were not agreed to’”.^^ The upshot of these encounters was favourable to Jinnah and when Mountbatten began to talk to the leaders on the other side, it is obvious from the records that his object was to assess the degree of resistance to or compliance with a non-negotiable first premise: India shall be divided. The question was only as follows: Would the Congress, Mountbatten asked over and again, ‘accept voluntarily a decision which virtually abandoned the idea of India’s unity if that were the only way that I could transfer power without a risk of civil war’?^^ Rajendra Prasad’s answer to that question was typical of the usual response of Congress leaders Mountbatten talked to: ‘He did not see ... any alternative [to partition] but to transfer power in any manner which would not involve civil war.’ After this first round of interviews Mountbatten seems to have made up his mind: he was keen to advertise to the world that ‘it had always been and would remain his main desire to hand over power to an unified India’, but ‘when it became apparent that the retention of any form of an united India would start civil war ... he had regretfully been obliged to give up this ideal This decision was confided by him to his closest aides and advisers on 11 April 1947. In negotiating the process of partition the Muslim League, no doubt, suffered disappointments, in particular in the division of Punjab and Bengal and the failure in securing access to Calcutta. Mountbatten had his moment of revenge when he declared toJinnah that a ‘moth-eaten Pakistan ... was all that I could offer him’.^"^ It will be perhaps incorrect to accept in toto Mountbatten’s tendency to explain the historic decision of partition in terms of personalities; rather than give credit to or to blame the intransigence ofJinnah alone, we need to look at the mindset that had developed in the Muslim League and the long-term trends in inter-communal conflict and the politics of exclusion. If this is how the Muslim League and the Congress negotiated and came to terms with the idea of partition, what of the other participants in the political arena? That takes us to the smaller players in politics and the provinces. There is a vast array of data in the documents in this volume on that discourse and the groundswell of communalism. It is neither necessary nor possible to plumb those depths, given the limits of the present ‘Preface’. However, the role of the Hindu Mahasabha the traditional proponent of‘Akhand Hindusthan’, merits attention; in Bengal the Mahasabha leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee took the lead in promoting the idea of partition of Bengal in the teeth of opposition of the proponents of ‘United Bengal’. The latter included Sarat Chandra Bose, important in his own right and as the brother of Subhas Chandra Bose, and H.S. Suhrawardy, then the Premier of Bengal, as well as the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Kiran Shankar Roy. That campaign lasted while many minor leaders in the Congress in Bengal dithered till just a fortnight before 15 August 1947; on the other hand the Record of interview between Mountbatten and Liaquat Ali Khan, 3 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 11. Record of interview between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Ms Fatima Jinnah, 24 April 1947, Chapter 14, Document No. 26. Interview between Mountbatten and Rajendra Prasad, 10 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 15. Minutes of Viceroy’s 13thstaff meeting, 11 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 18. Interview between Mountbatten andJinnah, 10 April 1947, Chapter 15, Document No. 17.
- 30. xxii General Editor’sPreface Punjab partition was a settled question from the beginning of March 1947 when the Congress recommended that course of action. Soon after that decision by the Congress, on 11 March 1947 B.S. Moonje, presumably speaking on behalf of Hindu Mahasabha, opposed the partition of Punjab and declared that it would be ‘wise to stick out for Akhand Hindusthan, being prepared boldly to face bloodshed, rapine, loot, arson.S.P. Mookerjee and the Hindu Mahasabha had been stout opponents of the notion of Pakistan and they did not accept the idea of freedom of accession. When the Cripps Mission was in India, Sir Stafford Cripps received a Hindu Mahasabha delegation which was led by V.D. Savarkar and included S.P. Mookerjee along with B.S. Moonje. In his personal note Cripps writes that their inflexible position was met with very firm declaration from Cripps that in his view the right of non-accession was fundamental.^*' However, when in 1947 partition was evidently imminent, Mookerjee and the Mahasabha reversed their stand and demanded the right of non-accession to Pakistan for areas which had a Hindu majority, particularly areas located in the western part of Bengal. This reversal of position was announced in the middle of March 1947 at the Hindu Mahasabha conference chaired by S.P. Mookerjee; a similar stand was taken in March 1947 by a large delegation of Bengal politicians in the legislature who met Nehru and Patel to convince them that a separate state of West Bengal was a desideratum in the prevailing political context.*'' Curiously, as late as April 1947, V.D. Savarkar maintained the rhetoric of Akhand Bharat: ‘To frustrate the vivisection of our Akhand Hindusthan we must first vivisect their Pakistan.^^ Mookerjee, with the authority of his father. Sir Asutosh Mookerjee, and the Hindu Bengali lobby behind him, said: ‘The mere mention of the word partition need not throw us into a fainting fit... If Bengal’s constitution is left to be determined by a body of persons the majority of whom are dominated by the Muslim League policy ... we can expect no protection whatsoever from their hands. Our only salvation in such circumstances lies in demanding for ourselves a separate province Within the Congress High Command Mookeijee had a sympathetic soul in Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Early in April 1947 Patel advised Mountbatten that it would be best for the Viceroy to announce straight away that Bengal would be partitioned.*’*^ There is evidence that Patel was in active correspondence with S.P. Mookeijee and some other Bengal leaders.**' However, Mookeijee’s political clout in Bengal was reduced by the defeat of thirty of the thirty-one candidates the Hindu Mahasabha had put up in the general election of 1946—Mookerjee was the only successful candidate to retain his seat in the Bengal Legislative Assembly. His source of strength was not the party he led but the large number of pro-partitionists among the Legislative Assembly members; seventy-four of them, all non- Muslim members, signed a memorandum to the Viceroy requesting steps towards the partition “ B.S. Moonje, 11 March 1947, Chapter 9, Document No. 11. Sir Stafford Cripps, ‘My Interview with the Hindu Mahasabha’, March 1942, in N.Mansergh, ed., Transfer of Power, Vol. I, Document No. 415. Ananda Bazar Patrika, 12 March 1947 and 18 March 1947. Statement by V.D. Savarkar, 2 April 1947, Chapter 17, Document No. 3. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s statement, 19 March 1947, Chapter 9, Document No. 9. “ Record of interview between Mountbatten and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, 12 April 1947, in N.Mansergh, ed.. Transfer ofPower, Vol. X, p. 214. Patel to Mookeijee, 17 May 1947; to K.C. Neogy, 13 May 1947; to B. Roy, 23 May 1947, etc., in Durga Das, ed., Sardar PateVsCorrespondence, Ahmedabad, 1972, Vol. IV.
- 31. General Editor’s Prefacexxiii of Bengal and the leader of the Congress legislature party carried that to the Viceroy.'’^ A day before that memorandum was submitted S.R Mookerjee wrote a skillfully drafted letter to the Viceroy recommending partition. He argued that if the demand for homeland for 24 per cent of India’s Muslim population was legitimate, 45 per cent of Bengal’s population being Hindu had an equally legitimate claim. Further, he built a case uponjinnah’s argument in justification of partition: ‘Mr. Jinnah’s claim for Pakistan is based on the theory that Hindu and Muslims are two separate nations ... [T]he same logic and argument applicable to Pakistan also apply to the partition of Bengal.’®^ And, he added, that the League was guided by ‘fanatical notions of separate nationhood ... [But] we do not want to be cut off from the rest of India’. From May 1947 onwards, S.P. Mookeijee was no longer leading a pro-partition agitation; he became one of many leaders swimming with the current moving inexorably towards partition. Mookerjee remained a defender of the Hindu community, as in the past. In his speeches in the Legislative Assembly of Bengal on the Noakhali riots he had highlighted desecration of ‘symbols of Hindu religious worship’ and mass conversion to Islam, which in his view, was ‘more horrible than even physical death’.Such a stance was not adopted by Congress legislators, but the general political climate and the news media encouraged the rhetoric of communal polarization. A handful of political leaders who were proponents of‘United Bengal’, namely Sarat Chandra Bose, Kiran Sankar Roy, Abul Hashim, and a doubtful ally. Shahid Suhrawardy, were up against a climate of opinion that was adverse to their counsel of avoiding partition.^’'’ In a recently published series of letters in the private papers collection ofJinnah, we see Suhrawardy confiding to Liaquat Ali Khan of the Muslim League in May 1947: ‘Even the Hindus of East Bengal, who do not count in the voting, are supporting the partition with death staring them on the face ... it is impossible to arouse Hindu opinion against it.’^® Hindu Mahasabha had lost in Bengal every seat except one, that of S.R Mookerjee, in the general election of 1946, but in 1947 the Mahasabha had the last laugh. After all, dividing people was a game that communalism, Hindu or Muslim, excelled in. However, the storyline, as they say in the film world, is not just about partition, it was about independence, and anticipations of independence can be sensed in the documents in this volume. A little bit of the exhilaration of that moment is captured by Nehru when, reflecting on the Government’s policy statement of 20 February 1947, he recalled in his letter to his mentor, Gandhi, ‘our oft-repeated demand for quitting India. It may not be so exactly as we would have liked it. But the real thing is that they have finally decided and announced that they are quitting’.*’^ The Congress declared: ‘The end of an era is at hand and a new age will soon begin.‘We are here’, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in the Constituent Assembly, “ Record of interview between Mountbatten and K.S.Roy, 3 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed., Transfer ofPower, Vol. X, pp.556-8. Mookerjee to Mountbatten, 2 May 1947, in N. Mansergh, ed.. Transfer ofPower, Vol. X, p. 556-8. Mookerjee’s speech on Noakhali and Chandpur riots. Proceedings of Bengal Legislative Assembly, vol. 72, no. 1, 1947, in S.P.Mookerjee, Selected Speeches in Bengal Legislative Assembly 1937-1947, Calcutta, 2002, pp 68-71. “ Cf. Partha Sarathi Gupta, ‘Who Divided the Bengalees?’; A.G.Noorani, ‘United Bengal Plan; Pipe Dream or Missed Opportunity’; Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘The Division of Hearts : Mahatma Gandhi and the Partition of Bengal, 1947’, in Amrik Singh, ed.. The Partition in Retrospect, New Delhi, 2000. H.S.Suhrawardy to Liaquat Ali Khan, 23 May 1947, Qaid-e-Azm papers. File no. 458, p. 80, in Harun-or-Rashid, ed.. Inside Bengal Politics, 1936-1947: Unpublished Correspondence ofPartition Leaders, Dhaka, 2003, pp. 86-7. Nehru to Gandhi, 24 February 1947, Chapter 5, Document No. 5. Congress Working Committee Resolution, Delhi, 6-8 March 1947, Chapter 5, Document No. 15.
- 32. xxiv General Editor’sPreface ‘working for the establishment of Swaraj for all the Indian people ... We are here to bring about real satisfaction of the fundamental needs of the common man of this country, irrespective of race, religion or community.’*’^ While witnessing the momentous events documented in this volume, such were the intimations of the new age that India awaited. * * * A big project such as this incurs many debts. I would like to thank the editor of this volume, Sucheta Mahajan; the research assistants and the editorial team at the ICHR; Arjun Dev, who acted as the coordinator of the project; and Amit K. Gupta, who was co-editor of one volume and a consultant in respect of several volumes in this series. The Chairman of the ICHR, Basudev Chatterji, edited a volume in the Towards Freedom series some years ago and is now playing an important role in pushing forward our efforts to complete the series. From the data generated by the publishers it seems that since 2006 when this project was effectively revived and I was asked to be the General Editor, the total output has been as follows: over eight thousand pages of text consisting of documents, and about six hundred pages of editorial research aids such as calendars of documents, biographical notes, and so on, have been produced in nine bulky tomes. These figures do not mean very much since these productions are best evaluated in terms of the extent to which research has been facilitated. That is to be seen in the future but for the present it is a matter of some satisfaction that documents hitherto dispersed in many archives and depositories have been made easily accessible and that a project that began three decades ago is nearing completion. Needless to say, the Editorial Committee which has met from time to time was of great help. As the General Editor I would like to put on record my indebtedness to my distinguished fellow-editors in charge of different volumes, other than those mentioned above: Partha Sarathi Gupta, Bimal Prasad, Bipan Chandra, K.N. Panikkar, Sumit Sarkar, and Mushirul Hasan. I would also like to thank the Oxford University Press, New Delhi, for their cooperation. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya General Editor ® Radhakrishnan’s speech in the Constituent Assembly, 20January 1947, Chapter 1, Document No. 2.
- 33. Editor’s Introduction Nineteen forty-seven,the year covered by the present volume, was no ordinary year. Two momentous developments stood out, independence and partition. The movement for independence reached its conclusion and new nation states emerged. Important issues to do with nation-building which had been raised during the years of struggle now demanded they be addressed. What would be the nature of the polity? Would India be a secular state or a Hindu rashtra, following upon Pakistan’s creation on a communal basis? What would be the place of minorities in the new state? How would the princely states integrate into the very different polity of erstwhile British India? How would the anti-colonial movement, which had operated as a broad front, transform into an ideologically distinct party? One of the obvious questions associated with the year 1947 is why the British decided to quit. However, those looking for answers to why the British quit are unlikely to find them in the immediate context of 1947. They would be best off looking for these answers in the long term, in the years of protracted mass struggle against colonial rule. By 1947 what was left to decide were the modalities of to whom and how power was to be handed over. By the end of World War H, the success of the national movement in the struggle for hegemony over the minds of the Indian people was evident. Nationalist fervour was at a high pitch and the anti-colonial movement had reached hitherto unpoliticized sections and areas. The pillars of the colonial state, the army and the bureaucracy, were weakened at their base. At the end of the war, the civil services stood depleted, weary from wartime service and handling nationalist agitations, most recently the 1942 movement. Imperialist hegemony had gradually but firmly been eroded and, equally important, was recognized by the colonial officials and the people to be so.^ The nationalist strategy of struggle-truce-struggle^—phases of struggle alternating with phases of non-struggle—reduced colonial policy to a mess of contradictions. Repression and conciliation alternated as two poles of policy. When non-violent movements were met with repression, the power behind the government stood exposed. Conversely, the government was seen to be too weak when it went in for a truce. Loyalists deserted the sinking ship, as did Indian officials. For loyalists it was a crisis of faith; for the services, the dilemma was one of action. The same set of officials had to implement both poles of policy, repression and conciliation, and found this very confusing and demoralizing. * This section draws upon the understanding elaborated in Sucheta Mahajan, Independence & Partition: The Erosion ofColonial Power in India, New Delhi, Sage, 2000. ^ Bipan Chandra, Indian National Movement: Long Term Dynamics, New Delhi, Vikas Publishing, 1988.
- 34. XXvi Editor’s Introduction Lookingahead at the political prospects in India once the war ended, the Viceroy underlined the primacy of a successful settlement of the Indian question. This was believed to be essential for the future security of the Empire, to ensure British prestige in the East, and to keep India within the Commonwealth.^ When the national leaders came out ofjail after long prison terms at the end of the War and toured the country, they assured their audiences that it was a matter of time before the British would go, maybe as early as two to five years. By early 1946 the British in turn made it clear that their days in India were numbered. The Secretary of State said as much in his speech on New Year’s Day, 1946. Along with other Congress leaders, Gandhiji realized that the imperial rulers were sincere in the declaration of their intention to ‘quit’ in favour of independent rule by Indians and in turn tried to convince the people of this.'^ However, the time for exploring avenues for settlement was running out. By mid-1946 a point had been reached where government had the responsibility to keep the peace but little power to do so. The Viceroy commented on the prospect of a revolt by the Congress, this time assisted by its own governments in power in the provinces: ‘We could still probably suppress such a revolt... [but] have nothing to put in its place and should be driven to an almost entirely official rule, for which the necessary numbers of efficient officials do not exist.’^ When given the option of staying on in India by changing the basis of rule to coercion, British Prime Minister Attlee argued against it on the following grounds: lack of administrative machinery to carry out a policy of rule by coercion; lack of troops owing to other international commitments; adverse opinion in the Labour Party; questionable loyalty of the Indian troops and the unwillingness of British troops to serve; adverse world opinion; and an uncomfortable position in UNO.® As colonial rule could not survive on the old basis for long, a graceful withdrawal from India became the overarching aim of policy makers. Of course, the digits of the post imperial relationship had to be negotiated and modalities of transfer of power worked out. Eor the British government it was important that withdrawal be presented not as forced dissolution of imperial power but as a step forward in the planned devolution of power. A revised draft of a statement of policy dated 2 January 1947 set out His Majesty’s Government’s (HMG’s) proposed statement as ‘the final stage in their achievement of self government’, which ‘for the past thirty years...has been the policy of successive British governments.’^ A new Viceroy was accordingly appointed as part of a new policy initiative. So Mountbatten went out to India not only as the new Viceroy but also the last Viceroy, with the terminal date for British departure announced for 30 June 1948. Mountbatten even claimed in later years that he introduced the idea of the time limit and that if he had not done so the British may well still be out there! But many before Mountbatten had spoken of a time limit, including Wavell and Attlee, and members of the Cabinet had argued, from different points of view, for having a specific date for withdrawal and its announcement. Eor Mountbatten to claim sole ^ Wavell to War Cabinet India Committee, 26 March 1945, Nicholas Mansergh, ed.. Constitutional Relations between Great Britain and India, Transfer ofPower (hereafter TOP), 1942-47, Vol. V, H.M.S.O., 1974, p.733. * Hindustan Times, 24 February 1946. ^ 27 December 1945, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, TOP, Vol. VI, 1976, p. 688. ^ Note c. 13 November 1946, TOP, Vol. IX, 1980, p. 68. " TOP, Vol. IX, pp. 441-3.
- 35. Editor’s Introduction xxvii creditis clearly without substance. That he insisted on its public announcement is closer to what actually happeiied. When the year opened, two developments had taken place. The first was that Nehru and Jinnah had been to London for talks to tease out the contradiction between their varied readings of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Congress saw the scheme as an alternative to partition and accepted the plan without accepting compulsory grouping of provinces. This was partly because Assam and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), both with Congress inclinations, were placed in the zones in the east and north west which would make up the future Pakistan. In contrast, the Muslim League was all for compulsory grouping of provinces and accepted the Mission scheme in as much as it implied Pakistan. It is not surprising that there was trouble given the opposed perceptions of the scheme by the two principal parties. The second development was that the Congress had gone ahead and convened the constitution making body for its area, given the Muslim League’s refusal to join the Constituent Assembly. But the impasse remained despite Congress accepting HMG’s pro-League interpretation of the Mission scheme in the 6 December 1946 statement.^ The deadlock in the Interim Government also continued. With the options available exhausted, new initiatives were needed. The Interim Government was an arena where civil war by other means was waged by the League. ‘Non-cooperate from within’ was Nehru’s phrase for League’s stance in the Interim Government.*^ The intention of the League seems to have been to open battle on every front in pursuit of the end of Pakistan. Appointments made by Congress ministers were questioned and policy decisions hotly debated. Congress members in the Interim Government found the functioning of the government to be severely compromised. Patel demanded that Leaguers should resign from the government given their intemperate speech.*** This went on till 5 February 1947 when Congress members demanded resignation of League members.** Though disruptionist tactics of the League members was the main ground for this demand, it was also pointed out that the Muslim League had refused to join the Constituent Assembly which had convened on 9 December 1946. This implied an ambiguous acceptance of the Mission Plan on its part. This in turn meant framing of the constitution was obstructed. The League only accepted the short-term aspects of the Plan, namely the formation of an Interim Government, which it used to reach its goal of Pakistan. When the Muslim League Working Committee met at Karachi on 31 January 1947, it asked for the dissolution of the Plan.**^ This, despite the fact that the 6 December 1946 statement by the government had accepted the interpretation of the League on the vexed issue of grouping and asked Congress to assure that there would be a set procedure for the Constituent Assembly. A few days before independence, Patel spoke about his experience in office in the Interim Government. As the Muslim League created deadlocks and were obstructionist, therefore Congress leaders decided that it was best to control some part of the country rather than have Part I, Chapter 3, Document No. 24. “ 13 October 1946, Selected Works ofJawaharlal Nehru, 2nd series (hereafter SWJN), Vol. 1, 1984, p. 21. 26January 1947, Part 1, Chapter 7, Document No. 1. “ Part 1, Chapter 3, Document No. 14. Part 1, Chapter 2, Document No. 35.
- 36. xxviii Editor’s Introduction itswrit run thinly over the whole country.Non-cooperation by the League in the Interim Government closed one more door and took the country closer to partition. Apart from announcing a policy initiative, an additional factor behind HMG making the 20 February statement was the Congress demand that Muslim League join the Constituent Assembly or leave the Interim Government.''^ His Majesty’s Government hoped the impending February statement would gain time to answer the Congress demand that Muslim League leave the Constituent Assembly. Accordingly the government’s answer to Nehru’s demand was that he should await the policy statement soon to be announced. The constitutional crisis on the cards was staved off by the 20 February 1947 statement.'^ Nehru appealed to Liaquat Ali Khan, the League leader, to meet and discuss differences as the British were fading out of the picture but got no response."’ The statement was double edged—on the one hand it was a response to the decline of authority of the colonial state and its instruments; on the other it was a notice to the League that agreement had to be worked out by the given time limit. The government wanted to convey the message that it was no longer willing to let the League hold the constitutional process to ransom.'^ The statement was not clear about the government to which power was to be transferred. Was it the government emanating from the Constituent Assembly? Would India be united or divided? The League took the cue from the proviso in the statement that in the absence of agreement at the centre, power would be handed over to the authority at the helm in the provinces. The League duly made a bid for power in the Punjab, toppled the coalition government, and set that province on the path to civil war. Congress was convinced of the intention of the British to quit. Gandhiji said that the Congress provinces if wise will get what they want.'" * * Another aspect that changed in these months was the force of the strategic undertow to the evolution of political policy. Prior to 1947 all policy pronouncements or political settlements were conditional on ensuring military or strategic interests of Britain in the post-imperial scenario. A fixed date for withdrawal meant a change in the game, as it left no scope for awaiting protection of post-imperial strategic interests. The sequence now would be, as Ismay spelt out at a meeting of ministers of HMG, ‘Military arrangements in India must follow the political situation.’"* Over time the realization dawned that a military treaty was unlikely and British interests were best safeguarded by promoting friendly relations, preferably within the Commonwealth. Congress was in a dilemma about whether India should be in the Commonwealth or not because Congress had always stood for complete independence. In mid-April Nehru and his 11 August 1947, Part 2, Chapter 2, Document No. 77. “ Congress members of the Interim Government to Viceroy, 5 February 1947, Part 1, Chapter 3, Document No. 14. Part 1, Chapter 5. 9 March 1947, Part 1, Chapter 3, Document No. 23. Part 1, Chapter 5, Document No. 1. 24 February 1947, Collected Works ofMahatma Gandhi (hereafter CWMG), Vol. 87, Publications Division, 1983, p. 12. 18 March 1947, TOP, Vol. 9, p. 984.
- 37. Editor’s Introduction xxix colleagueshad sought clarification on this issue from the government: Can one be a member of the Commonwealth while being an independent state? On the British side, the question was: Could the grant of immediate domimon status get India to join the Commonwealth? This was the British hope, predicated on the Congress realization that it might be useful for British troops to stay on for a while till their own armed forces were in place, for which being in the Commonwealth would help. But Mountbatten dishonestly said at one point that the British were not interested in India being in the Commonwealth. This was a bargaining tactic.^*^ In reality, India being in the Commonwealth would present Britain in a good light in the eyes of people across the world. Also Commonwealth as a transitional institutional arrangement would suit the British as much or more than the Congress. His Majesty’s Government’s assessment of their strategic interests in the subcontinent after independence inclined them to cooperate with the Congress rather than prop up communal forces as they had done in the past. However, the British never pitched fully for united India; they modified their preference for united India on strategic grounds to having alliances with two dominions, both of whom would be partners in Commonwealth defence.^* While Pakistan would be an active partner, India would provide bases, as in the case of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. * * The move towards partition is documented in the chapter which details how the new Viceroy explores political alternatives for a couple of months after coming out to India. After discussions with Indian leaders, he realized the Mission Plan was a dead horse. In particular, he found Jinnah stubborn about getting Pakistan and impossible to argue with. The alternatives before Mountbatten appeared to be shrinking and he came around to the view that partition was on the cards. The date for withdrawal was brought forward by Mountbatten to 15 August with announcement of Boundary Awards fixed for after 15 August. When the date of 15 August 1947 was announced, there were only 72 days to quit and divide. The early date for transfer of power was intended, first, to get Congress to agi'ee to dominion status and, second, to enable the British government to escape responsibility for the worsening communal situation. The concern of the government was primarily how best to come out of the continuing crisis in the eyes of world public opinion. They did not care what happened to Indians. Policy preferences before HMG were a gracious, smooth withdrawal and getting benefits from both dominions, India and Pakistan. It could be said that partition was not only the closing scene of Divide and Rule but also the first act of the drama of Commonwealth diplomacy. The intention was to showcase HMG’s intentions in the best possible way. Show of impartiality and fair play was vital, especially as world opinion was not convinced of the Mountbatten painted a very grim picture to V.K.K. Menon about Pakistan becoming stronger militarily if it stayed in the British Commonwealth and then argued that the only way India could prevent that was by being in the Commonwealth themselves (22 April 1947, Record of Interview between Mountbatten and V.K.K. Menon, Part 1, Chapter 15, Document No. 25). Also see Nye to Mountbatten, Part 1, Chapter 15, Document No. 35. A Brief for Negotiations on India’s Defence Requirements prepared by the Chiefs of Staff of Britain was enclosed in Secretary of State to PM, 24July 1947, TOP, Vol. XII, 1983, pp. 314-21.
- 38. XXX Editor’s Introduction necessityof partition. So, since an agreed solution had not been reached, what was an award was dressed up as an agreed solution. A point worth noting is that the 3 June Plan was an award, whatever its projection by the British as a plan agreed to by Congress and League. The British professed that they tried their best to keep India united; in fact they took the easy way out of pleasing everyone, as Gandhiji pointed out to Mountbatten: T suggest that the attempt to please all parties is a fruitless and thankless task. In the course of our conversation I suggested that equal praise bestowed on both the parties was not meant. No praise would have been the right thing.’^^ The British did not really make a bid for unity; they only dressed up division as maximum possible unity. As the main proposition of the Congress, namely unity, was not accepted, the British were all for meeting all its minor demands (for example, its stance on Hyderabad or on Andaman and Nicobar Islands) In mid-April 1947, at a conference of governors, it was decided that provinces can join only India or Pakistan—no option of independence was given to them. His Majesty’s Government was not happy with closure of the option of independence, given its emphasis on presenting the mode of transfer of power as emanating from Indian and not British will. The Viceroy on his part was clear that partition must be limited to two successor states, and not lead to Balkanisation.^'*^ Mountbatten proposed that he be Governor-General ofboth India and Pakistan^'^ to ensure a modicum of unity between the two dominions by virtue of his being a common link. He was confident thatJinnah would welcome Mountbatten’s presence, butJinnah decided to be Governor-General himself in order to show his independence from the British^*’ and refused to relent because he did not wish to appear to be appeasing the British. Ajoint defence machinery was set up to act as a link between the dominions.^^ But the Kashmir conflict in October 1947 put paid to all prospects of joint defence. The joint defence machinery did not last beyond December 1947. The documents on the stance of the political parties on the partition of India highlight an issue which continues to be contested—why Congress and Gandhiji accepted partition. Depending on the ideological bent of the writer, partition is either attributed to the British policy of divide and rule or the age-old rift between Hindus and Muslims. Some left wing writers have described independence as a deal between the metropolitan and Indian bourgeoisie for which the nation paid the price of partition. Or else that Congress leaders chose to have a strong Centre rather than share power with the League. Or that partition took place because of the Congress leaders’ lust for quick and easy power, leaving the people betrayed and Gandhiji no longer wishing to live for 125 years. There was one moot point which was most debated in the public domain and which Gandhiji, Nehru, and other leaders had to repeatedly explain and defend. Why was partition 10/11 June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 33 (A), Document No. 13. Part 2, Chapter 28. Governors’ Conference, 16 April 1947, TOP, Vol. X, 1981, pp. 269-79. Part 2, Chapter 30. 3 July 1947, Part 2, Chapter 30, Document No. 1. Record of Interview^ between Mountbatten and Gandhiji, Part 2, Chapter 27, Document No. 6.
- 39. Editor’s Introduction xxxi acceptedby Congress and Gandhiji after years of their resolute opposition to the two-nation theory and the politics ofJinnah and the Muslim League? This partly explains the extensive documentation on the Congress relative to the Muslim League, whose stance on partition did not require explanation as it flowed from its earlier politics. Also the stance of the Muslim League is documented in different chapters on the division of Punjab and Bengal, on communalism in the provinces, and on exploring political alternatives. The complete picture can be pieced together by aggregating the documents dispersed across the chapters, which have not been organized according to parties, but on thematic lines, such as the League’s stance, as well as of the Socialists and Communists. The documents in the present selection indicate that Gandhiji’s position was different from Congress’ but not opposed to it. Gandhiji’s nuanced position is evident in his proposal to the Viceroy that Jinnah be Prime Minister, embedded in the hope that this would satisfy his ambition and wean him away from his insistence on Pakistan.^^ Mountbatten noted that this pleasedJinnah’s vanity.^"' However, the Congress leaders saw the proposal as fraught with too much risk. If the Congress opted out of the constitutional arena, that would leave it open to reactionary forces. Also, many followers would see it as betrayal by the party.^** Further, the prospect of Pakistan could not be averted by appeasingjinnah since even he could no longer call it off. Accordingly, Gandhiji withdrew his offer.^' When Gandhiji and Jinnah issued a direct appeal for peace in mid-April 1947,^^ Patel pertinently pointed out to the Viceroy that Direct Action had to be withdrawn for the peace appeal to be effective.^^ Patel implied that the appeal for peace byjinnah was not sincere, an assessment shared by Gandhiji.^^ By the summer of 1947 the realization had dawned on Congress leaders that conciliation of communalism was futile. Nehru describedJinnah as always wanting more even after accepting what he gets.^'^ Elsewhere he said ofJinnah, ‘We are up against something which is neither political, nor economic, nor reasonable, nor logical.’^*’ Patel was clear that there would be no more appeasement of the Muslim League. He also pointed out that new India would not have communal weightages or communal electorates.^^ An alternative to partition was imposing unity by force. P.D. Tandon, Congress leader and Speaker of the United Provinces (UP) Assembly, was an active proponent of this view,^*^ as was Ram Ratan Gupta, Congressman from Kanpur.'^® Both condemned the ‘betrayal’ by the Congress in accepting partition and argued for imposing unity. But Congress leaders chose to accept Pakistan rather than compel unity. Part 1, Chapter 15, Document No. 1. 9 April 1947, TOP, Vol. X, pp. 163-4. Nehru’s meeting with the Viceroy, Part 1, Chapter 14, Document No. 10. Part 1, Chapter 14, Document No. 10. Part 1, Chapter 17, Document No. 9. ;)3 p Chapter 17, Document No. 11. Prayer Meeting, 1 May 1947, CWMG, Vol. 87, p. 394. Nehru to Mieville, 25 May 1947, Part 1, Chapter 16, Document No. 28. Nehru to Hydari, 24 May 1947, Part 1, Chapter 19 (A), Document No. 24. Patel to N.V Gadgil, 23 June 1947, Sardar’s Letters Mostly Unknown, Vol. 2, 1977, p. 230. 4June 1947, Typed note. P. D. Tandon Papers, Group 13, S. No. 361, National Archives of India (NAI). 19July 1947, P.D. Tandon Papers, Part II, File No. 231, NAI.
- 40. xxxii Editor’s Introduction Nehruwas clear that use of the sword and the lathi could not stem the communal forces— rather, the ensuing civil war would have long term consequences. He stressed this in his speech at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session on 15 June 1947.^° A couple of months earlier, Congress President Kripalani had told the Viceroy, ‘Rather than have a battle we shall let them have their Pakistan.It must be remembered that as Congress did not have state power, the option of unity by force meant hghting it out on the streets against volunteer armies of the communal forces. Hence when partition seem^ed inevitable. Congress tried to find a way of accepting the undesirable, not as a communal demand, but as a principle based on self-determination.'^^ Gandhiji stated that the decision had been arrived at after taking into account the views of the people of all communities, be they Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus. Nehru explained partition as the outcome of the will of some sections to not be part of India.'^^ At the Congress Working Committee meeting on 1June 1947, Congress President Kripalani reminded the gathering that since 1942 it had been accepted that no part of India would be forced to stay on in India against its will.^^ At the session of the AICC on 15 June 1947, he again said that acceptance of partition flowed from the clause of no coercion in the Congress resolution on the Cripps Plan.^^ The fact that the settlement was final was seen as crucial by Congress leaders in accepting partition.'**’ Though Patel pinned his hopes on the partition award on the ground that there was no further uncertainty, he also expressed his dismay atjinnah taking a communal standpoint in his broadcast over All India Radio (AIR) and the All India Muslim League’s response being contradictory and evasive and hence unlikely to be the basis for settlement.^^ The hope of India and Pakistan being reunited after some years reconciled leaders to the reality of division.^® The expectation was that once passions subsided, common interests would draw people together and partition could be revoked. Hence Nehru appealed to people to not accept partition in their hearts.^** This was expressed in his trademark eloquent prose: ‘We have often to go through the valley of the shadow before we reach the sunlit mountain tops.’^* However, if the hope of reuniting was to be kept alive, any measure that cemented partition was to be avoided, be it dividing the army, transfer of population, or parliamentary sanction Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No, 48. 17 April 1947, Part 1, Chapter 15, Document No. 23. Nehru to Viceroy, reporting on the Congress Working Committee meeting, 1 May 1947; Part 1, Chapter 15, Document No. 33. Speech on 9 August 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 87. Part 1, Chapter 16, Document No. 33. Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 50. Congress President to Viceroy, 2 Jui'ie 1947, Part 1, Chapter 28, Document No. 37. Patel to B.M. Birla, 10June 47, Part 2, Chapter 34, Document No. 3. Patel to Mountbatten, 10June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 33. Patel to Bozman, 11 July 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 78, and Patel’s speech at Liberty Week Celebrations, 11 August 1947, Part 2, Chapter 27, Document No. 11. Part 2, Chapter 25, Document No. 61. Nehru to Cariappa, 29 April 1947, SW/N, 2nd series, Vol. 2, 1984, p. 377.
- 41. Editor’s Introduction xxxiii fortransfer of power to two dominions. Congress leaders too joined Mountbatten to oppose transfer of population.^^ The AICC resolution on the 3 June Plan made it clear that partition was accepted as a temporary measure that would bring violence to an end. This was again repeated in Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s speeches at the AICC meeting on 14-15June.^® Ironically, for a believer in ahimsa, Gandhiji had a lesser dread of civil war than his colleagues. He wrote; ‘Let British leave India to anarchy, rather than as a cock pit between two organized armies. The one positive aspect of partition for Congress was that they would get a free hand in the rest of the country. Nehru spoke of 80 or 90 per cent of India moving forward according to the map of India he had in mind and added: ‘Those who stand as an obstacle in our way should go their way.’^^ Patel spelt out further what this freedom could be used for—to consolidate the armed forces and have a strong central government.'^®Jayaprakash Narayan, the socialist leader, also appreciated the ‘emergence of a strong Union Centre’ following upon the Partition Award and its concomitant division of provinces.®^ If the hope was unity at the centre, the apprehension was the opposite. Nehru was concerned that the Plan shown to him in early May 1947 held out the spectre of fragmentation. In other words, it would create many Ulsters in India as a large number of successor states would be allowed to emerge first and then given the option to unite.Free choice to provinces and states was insisted upon by HMG. But the Viceroy had been in favour of only two dominions in mid-April and accordingly, the 3 June Plan limited fragmentation to partition into two dominions. Congress then accepted partition on the grounds that it reflected the will of the people and that it was the only way out.®® On 4June, Gandhiji, after meeting the Viceroy and the Congress leaders, said at his daily prayer meeting that the Congress Working Committee had agreed to the vivisection of Hindustan not under any threat of violence or coercion but as there was no way of getting round the Muslim League.®® There was hope that partition was only temporary and could be reversed once the imperialists were out of the picture and once Muslim League realized its folly. Partition was seen by the leaders as better than civil war or Balkanization. This helped leaders accept it. Only options left were waging an anti-communal struggle and using force, both of which could not be taken up. In the end, partition was accepted by Congress as a recognition of the failure of its strategy to draw in most of the Muslim masses into the national movement. The letters and documents selected on this theme corroborate Gandhiji’s reading of the communal situation that both Hindus and Muslims had moved far away from non-violence. “ Nehru’s interview with Mountbatten, 10June, 1947, SWJE-, 2nd series, Vol. 3, 1984, p. 212; 7 July 1947, Part 2, Chapter 31, Document No. 29. Part 2, Chapter 26, Document Nos 51, 52. Harijan, 20July 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 82. Speech atJallianwala Bagh meeting, 13 April 1947, Part 3, Chapter 10, Document No. 6. ■'’® Patel to Neogy, 18June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 63. 25June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 68. Part 1, Chapter 16, Document No. 2. Nehru’s speech at AICC, 9 August 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 87. “ 4June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 9
- 42. xxxiv Editor's Introduction Hecould not oppose Congress, he said, because Congress represented the people of India who have become communal.**' He was asked by some colleagues and sundry elements during his prayer meetings why he did not start a mass movement. According to them, such a movement could either be against the British, whose fall out would be Hindu-Muslim unity or it could be an anti-communal movement. They believed that both movements would bring about unity. In reality, however, the possibility of anti-communal struggle was limited as cadres and the ordinary people were communalized. Gandhiji was aware of his limitations: T have never created a situation in my life...People say that I had created a situation, but I had done nothing except giving a shape to what was already there. Today I see no sign of such a healthy feeling. And therefore I shall have to wait until the time comes.’*’^ It has often been argued that Gandhiji was ignored in the parleys with the retreating imperial power. Gandhiji was believed to be helpless because of his disciples’ alleged lust for power. However, the position of the Congress leaders can best be understood in political rather than personal terms. They wanted early transfer of power to take the country forward out of the impasse created by non-cooperation by the League. As for Gandhiji’s ‘alienation’ from the Congress, the record seems to suggest otherwise. Gandhiji dismissed any rumours of his disenchantment with Nehru by speaking very highly of him: ‘He renounces things as easily as a snake its slough.’**'^ He was consulted on political developments when in Noakhali. Kripalani and Nehru went to meet him there and asked him to come to Delhi. When he came to Delhi he met the Viceroy and participated in the Congress Working Committee meetings of 1 May, 25 May, 2 June, and in the AICC of 14 and 15 June. Gandhiji put aside his principled objection to partition and enjoined on Congressmen to close ranks and fall behind Congress in accepting partition.**^ At the AICC session on 14June Gandhiji explained: Our constitution permits it and your duty demands it that if you feel that the Working Committee is in the wrong you should remove it, you should revolt and assume all power. You have a perfect right to do so, if you feel that you have the strength. But I do not find that strength in us today. If you had it I would also be with you and if I felt strong enough myself I would, alone, take up the flag of revolt. But today I do not see the conditions for doing so.®^ * The acceptance of partition by the Congress and Gandhiji was the culmination of a long and arduous period during which all the major leaders of the Congress tried very hard to counter the League’s concerted attempts to create communal violence and prevent agreement on the issue of united India. While the early months of the year saw Nehru and Patel dealing with the League’s stalling tactics endorsed by the British government, Gandhiji toured the riot affected 9June 1947 prayer meeting. Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 30. “ N.K. Bose, ‘My Experiences as a Gandhian-IP, in M.P. Sinha (ed.) Contemporary Relevance of Gandhi, Bombay, Nachiketa Publications Ltd., 1970, p. 53; Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 30. Gandhiji to Manu, 14June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 47. '’■* Gandhiji to Prabhavati Narayan, 30June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 73. Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 47.
- 43. Editor’s Introduction xxxv areasof Noakhali and Bihar. He tried to provide a healing balm to the victims of both Hindu and Muslim communal violence. His efforts and methods were widely reported and debated. Nehru appealed to Gandhiji when the latter was in Noakhali: ‘But I have an overwhelming feeling that vital decisions are being made and will be made in Delhi affecting the whole of our future as well as of course the present, and your presence at such a moment is necessary.’*’® Gandhiji acceded to his request subsequently but explained his position: ‘But I proceed the other way. I had learnt when still a child the formula, “As in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm.’”®^ While Gandhiji’s efforts were heroic, their impact was limited, as even his disciples accepted.®*^ Hindu refugees were slow to return to their villages or cast off fear. Muslims in turn continued to be hostile to him in Noakhali and elsewhere.®*^ His critics commented on the futility of his method of non-violence and the politics of change of heart.Even some of his own colleagues felt his kind of politics had not yet thrown up a strategy that could counter communal frenzy.^* Taking off from the Noakhali tragedy the Hindu Mahasabha time and again called upon Hindus to rise to their own self-defence.^^ Gandhiji’s tour in Bihar and Noakhali not only reflected his efforts at combating communalism with weapons of non-violence and ‘satyagraha’ but also the feelings of fear and distrust that were mutual to both the communities. Complaints of Hindus in Noakhali and Muslims in Bihar were alike and the politics of communalism permeated every aspect of human life, including relief and rehabilitation work, as refugee camps turned into centres of further propaganda and hate speech. Amidst all of this, there were also a small crop of nationalists, both within Hindus and Muslims, who had stood the test of time, braving personal loss and treachery by their colleagues. Ample documents cover Gandhiji and his struggle against Hindu communalism, especially in Bihar. The success of Muslim League’s Direct Action in Calcutta and Noakhali further strengthened Hindu communal forces as some Hindus came to feel the need to organize on communal lines.The Bihar riots were an example of this politics of reaction, which left 4300-700 killed, according to one estimate.^® The Bihar riots are sometimes perceived as having marked the communalisation of Congress on Hindu lines. In reality, the ministry was secular and only some individual Congressmen were affected by communal sentiment and prejudice. Gandhiji insisted on an enquiry commission and on staying in Bihar, despite murmurs that his doing so would reflect poorly on the functioning of the Congress ministry and the image of individual Congressmen. His presence acted as a catalyst to the Congress ministry, despite differences with them on “ Part 1, Chapter 6, Document No. 6. Part 2, Chapter 34, Document No. 10. G.D. Birla to Pyarelal, 18January 1947, Bapu: A Unique Association, Vol. 4, Bombay, 1977, p. 433. Part 1, Chapter 8 (A), Document No. 4. Part 2, Chapter 34, Document No. 5. Part 2, Chapter 34, Document No. 7. Part 1, Chapter 6, Document No. 7. Mridula Sarabhai’s eyewdtness account. Part 2, Chapter 35 (B), Document No. 3. Nehru to Viceroy, 17 April 1947, SWJN, 2nd series, Vol. 2, 1984, p. 94. Nehru to Suhrawardy, 1 January 1947, Part 1, Chapter 8 (B), Document No. 1.
- 44. xxxvi Editor's Introduction manyissues. The simple peasants of Bihar accepted him as their conscience, which helped them along the path of repentance.^*’ If we look at the challenge posed by Hindu communal forces, we find that it took two forms, majority assertion and minority fears. The first could be repressed sternly. But insecurity of minorities demanded something more than assurances. Hindu communal elements pressurised the Congress to place the interests of Hindus first and function as a Hindu body. After the creation of Pakistan on the basis of the two-nation theory it was not surprising that the demand for a Hindu rashtra, a Hindu state, became more strident. Even before the creation of Pakistan, Hindu communal organizations sensed an opportunity when in some places ordinary Hindus moved away from support to the Congress. This was largely because the policies of the Congress were perceived by some sections as anti-Hindu. One grievance was that Hindu rioters were selectively targeted for repression by the Congress ministries of UP and Bihar. Another grievance was that ministries continued pro-Muslim policies of the British government such as employment of greater proportion of. Muslims in services. The Hindu Mahasabha was heartened by the predicament the Congress found itself in— namely, facing the challenge of creation of Pakistan and the spread of communal sentiment within its own ranks. This opened up the threat of Hindu communal elements effecting an ideological shift in the Congress. The question posed to the Congress was why it continued to ‘sacrifice the Hindus for these handful of so-called nationalist Muslims’, who in any case were not loyal to the country?^*^ The demand then was for Congress to accept it was a Hindu, not a national, body. Interestingly, this was the same as the position of the government, that the Congress should accept that it was a caste Hindu body. Congress leaders had refused to do so, recognizing this was an issue of legitimacy of its national character, not one of pragmatism as made out by those who argued for this. Once Pakistan was announced, the Hindu Mahasabha called for ‘effective steps to build up a real and powerful Hindu state’.In the months after independence this demand was raised with greater clamour but firmly opposed. Patel spoke eloquently of how ‘the state must exist for all irrespective of caste and creed’.*^*^ Congress leaders knew that a Hindu state would be the real prize for communal forces. This would amount to accepting the two-nation theory, which the Congress had not agreed to even while it saw the creation of Pakistan as unavoidable in the given circumstances. This demand by the Hindu communal forces for a Hindu state was later linked with their call to murder Gandhiji and Nehru who were seen as opposing it. The relationship between Congress and Hindu communal elements was a complex one. At an individual level, there were failings but not so in the case of party, state governments, and at the level of the centre. The story was one of the Congress standing its ground and demonstrating resilience and optimism. Part 1, Chapter 9 (D), Document No. 39. ’’’’ Part 1, Chapter 8 (G), Document No. 7. ™ Man Mohan to G.B. Pant, 23June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 35 (G), Document No. 1. Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 27. Patel to B.M. Birla, 10June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 34, Document No. 3.
- 45. Editor’s Introduction xxxvii Thechapters on communalism in the provinces include documents detailing communal ideology as well as communal outbreaks in some selected provinces. Punjab and Bengal, being the ‘scene of action’, are the provinces which generally receive maximum academic attention. However, the documentation of communalization in provinces other than these two, like Central Provinces and Berar, Madras, and Sindh, shows that communalism was not restricted only to the two provinces partitioned in 1947. Communal ideology, more than rioting, had spread widely across regions and areas of public activity and concern. For the Muslim League, this year saw a new kind of politics—the ‘civil disobedience’ movements in Punjab, NWFP, and Assam. Documents pertaining to these movements have been put together as part of the stories of these provinces which were seen as constituents of putative Pakistan and were hence conflict zones. This agitation saw an organized Muslim League attack on non-communal ministries led by Congress and its allies. These ministries had been formed after the provincial elections of 1946. However, since these areas were seen as parts of future Pakistan, the Muslim League operated with an urgency to assert its political hold over them. This urgency was exacerbated after HMG’s 20 February 1947 statement was issued. In this statement, the possibility of multiple successors to British authority was envisaged for the first time. It was stated that HMG would demit power by June 1948 to a central authority if all communities reached a compromise but should that not occur, it would consider transfer of power to provincial authorities. With its leaders in jail and its anti-government stand, these movements were manifestations of the extent to which Muslim League was able to mobilize its supporters for mass action. As one activist put it, it was an exciting time for Muslim League followers as their leaders were going to jail for the first time. League’s direct action in Punjab and NWFP came as a surprise to many, including Congress leaders, given Jinnah’s pursuit of constitutional methods till mid-1946. Nehru believed the League leaders were far too reactionary, and being landlords, opposed to social change, to dare to indulge in any form of direct action. Sapru, the Liberal statesman, was of the view thatjinnah could not resort to direct action.Jayakar, in turn, quoted Patel that Congress could create more trouble thanJinnah’s 100 mullahs.*^^ The ministries which the League movements sought to overthrow or besiege were those of the Unionists-Congress-Akalis in Punjab and Congress in Assam and NWFP. These ‘movements’ symbolized opposition to non-communal groupings and were, therefore, communal movements in terms of their immediate actions, interpretations, and undertones. The rhetoric and sharp opposition to coalition or Congress ministries was expressed in the pro-Muslim League press, for example. Dawn, and it fed into the communal atmosphere of the time. In Punjab, the ‘civil disobedience movement’ tied in with the communal rioting which started on 4 March 1947, a day after the Coalition Ministry resigned from office. The large- scale rioting rapidly overtook rural and urban areas of the province. The demand for a Muslim League ministry remained unfulfilled since the Governor refused to form a communal ministry amidst widespread communal rioting. Section 93 regime or Governor’s rule was imposed once the caretaker government resigned on 5 March. The attempts to form a ministry on the part of the Muslim League continued without success. After this, Punjab saw continual rioting till 81 7 April 1946, Jayakar Papers, File No. 866, S. No. 35, NAI.
- 46. xxxviii Editor’s Introduction itwas partitioned. The documents in this section detail the complex environment of political negotiations and widening communal tensions. In the case of NWFP, to begin with, at stake was the religious status of a girl whose Sikh husband was killed in the Hazara disturbances and who later married a Muslim. When she wished to return to being a Sikh, the League gave the call of Islam in danger. The target of the agitation was the Congress Premier in whose residence she had sought refuge.*^^ Pir Sahib of Manki Sharif, the League leader, gave a clarion call to all Muslims to oppose the government. Around March, the Khudai Khidmatgar movement picked up momentum, opposing the agitation of the League. Later they pursued the demand of ‘Pathanistan’ as an option in the referendum.^^ On the other hand, the League’s agitation went on for two months followed by more arrests.The Congress consistently complained against Governor Caroe who was clearly pro-League but to little avail.®® The League ‘movement’ reached a feverish pitch just before the announcement of the referendum and vitiated the atmosphere completely. In Assam, the issue of migrants from East Bengal and their settlement had been a matter of dispute since the decade of the 1920s. With the Cabinet Mission scheme of Grouping and Muslim League’s desire to have Assam in Pakistan as a contiguous area of Muslim majority, the provincial Muslim League increased its activity in Assam, riding on the issue of eviction of migrants. It criticized the drive to evict illegal immigrants, mostly Muslim, as communally motivated and blamed the government for the sad plight of immigrants. It had a good following in the districts of Dhubri, Nowgong, and Tezpur, where it could easily mobilize from the large Muslim settlements and also from the neighbouring districts of Bengal. Giving the call for a civil disobedience movement, the method of Leaguers and Muslim National Guards was to publicly intimidate authorities through large gatherings and mass mobilization and deter any official procedure of eviction or arrest of any leader. Patel tried his best to salvage the situation by responding to the frantic call of the Assam Premier for military aid. He also wrote to Wavell in order to place the matter on official record. The documents relating to these Muslim League agitations have been placed together because of the nature of these struggles. The demonstrations, picketings, processions, public meetings, and mass arrests were weapons borrowed from the Congress armoury. The word ‘civil disobedience’ is a term of self-description used in Muslim League newspapers and by Muslim League leaders for this agitation, again taken from the Congress lexicon. The direct action or civil disobedience movement in Punjab led to the downfall of the coalition ministry in the midst of and followed by violence. This was the context of the Congress Working Committee’s 8 March resolution.®® Nehru explained to the Viceroy that if Muslims could not be coerced, non-Muslims could not be coerced too.®^ In the wake of the Rawalpindi riots, by the end of March 1947, the Governor could see clearly that the Sikhs preferred partition of the province to Muslim domination. On 2 April, Central Legislative Assembly members told Part 1, Chapter 7 (B), Document No. 1. Part 1, Chapter 7 (B), Document Nos 2, 3, 4. Part 1, Chapter 19 (B), Document No. 1. Part 1, Chapter 19 (B), Document No. 3. Part 1, Chapter 19 (B), Document Nos 7, 12. Part 1, Chapter 7 (C) and Chapter 19 (A). Part 1, Chapter 5, Document No. 19. ““ Part 1, Chapter 5, Document No. 19.
- 47. Editor’s Introduction xxxix Nehruthat partition was the only solution.^^' On 27 April, Baldev Singh, Defence member in the Interim Government, stated that the only solution was an immediate division of Punjab. In Bengal, the demand for partition of Bengal emerged from Hindus’ distrust of the Chief Minister after the riots in Calcutta and Noakhali in August and October 1946 respectively.^^ The Viceroy thought that the partition of provinces would reveal the limits of Pakistan and tried to convinceJinnah to this effect.Jinnah, on the other hand, saw the demand for partition of provinces as a bluff by Congress. In his meeting with the Viceroy on 8 April 1947, Jinnah tried to make a case against the partition of these provinces in the name of the inviolability of the cultural unity of Bengalis and Punjabis.^^ Mountbatten’s reply was thatjinnah’s arguments about Bengali and Punjabi culture applied even more to the whole of India and were so convincing that he was all for revising his ideas about the partition of India. This really drove the old gentleman quite mad, in Mountbatten’s words. In the words of the Viceroy, Jinnah demanded his Pakistan be made viable and threatened to demand the partition of Assam.^^ The situation—as Nehru understood it—was that if Punjab and Bengal do not come into the Constituent Assembly, while some parts of these provinces do, then it implied partition of Punjab and Bengal. This is how Nehru explained the decision of the Congress to demand the partition of the two provinces to Gandhiji.*^^ The division of provinces was the only answer to Pakistan as demanded by Jinnah.^'’ Later, Nehru quipped to Asaf Ali that obviously the two-nation theory was not meant to be applied in Punjab and Bengal.^*’ Actually, Nehru had anticipated the likelihood of a partition of Bengal and Punjab as early as 1945: Tf Pakistan is given, then parts of Punjab and Bengal, where the Hindu population is in a majority, will join Hindustan and both the Punjab and Bengal will have to be divided.’^^ Opposed to the demand for partition was the campaign for United Bengal, begun by Suhrawardy, the League Chief Minister of Bengal, and supported by the Viceroy.Nehru was against it, as he feared United Bengal would later ally with Pakistan. Patel said it was a trap to entice the naive into the Muslim League parlour.^'^ Sarat Bose, Congress leader from Bengal, was of the view that behind the demand for partition was Hindu Mahasabha support and the sentiments of Hindus against Suhrawardy’s government since the Calcutta riots. Sarat Bose warned Patel that future generations would condemn Congress for supporting division. Gandhiji was against partition on any account. He, therefore, saw a ray of hope in the United Bengal scheme, as it would question the two-nation theory. When faced with the apprehension of non-Muslims about Muslim domination, Gandhiji demanded that Suhrawardy convince the Hindus of his sincerity.‘°^ However, this did not happen till August 1947, when Part 1, Chapter 20, Document No. 3. Part 1, Chapter 21, Document No. 47. Mountbatten’s interview withJinnah, 8 April, 1947, TOP, Vol. X, 1981, p. 159. Part 1, Chapter 15, Document No. 17. 24 February 1947, Part 1, Chapter 5, Document No. 5. “ Nehru to Gandhiji, 25 March 1947, SWJN, 2nd series, Vol. 2, pp. 77-8. 14 May 1947, Part 1, Chapter 16, Document No. 7. Speech at Lahore, 26 August 1945, SWJN, 2nd Series, Vol. 14, 1981, p. 165. Part 1, Chapter 9 (B), Document No. 10; Part 1, Chapter 21, Document Nos 5, 20, 45, 55. Part 1, Chapter 21, Document No. 53. 100 Chapter 21, Document No. 57. Part 2, Chapter 32, Document No. 12.
- 48. xl Editor’s Introduction Suhrawardyneeded Gandhiji more than Gandhiji needed him (to ensure the protection of Calcutta Muslims). But the possibility of a united Bengal began to recede when its limits became apparent. K.C. Neogy, Congress member of the Constituent Assembly from Bengal, warned Patel that large sums were being spent to purchase votes for unity.'“^ P.B. Mukherji spoke of legislators being bribed.For Gandhiji, impure means tainted the end of unity for him. He said at his prayer meeting that he could no longer support United Bengal as it had been brought to his notice that votes were being bought by its proponents.Another weakness of the independent Bengal scheme was that it was a way of bringing in Pakistan through the backdoor. A letter calling upon ‘Muslim Bengal’ to sacrifice for the cause tellingly referred to United Bengal as Azad Pakistan. By the end of May 1947, there was already division within the League in Bengal and the matter was referred toJinnah who came out against Independent Bengal. On 9June 1947 All India Muslim League Council accepted the 3rdJune plan, which included partitiori of Bengal, though making it a point to say it was not in favour of the partition of the province but accepted it as part of the plan as a whole. The Viceroy’s stance was in the end crucial as he was the one who would include unity or partition of Bengal in the plan being formulated. While the plan sketched on 10 April 1947 included partition of Punjab and Bengal, by 1 May 1947 provinces were first allowed to opt for independence, then a week later for partition. However, when shown these draft proposals, Nehru expressed his apprehensions about likely Balkanization in the proposed schedule of successor states first separating and then coming together. The Viceroy then moved away from providing the option of independence, as he was of the view that if the British fell foul of Congress, it would be impossible to continue to run the country. On 20 June 1947, Bengal legislators voted for partition of Bengal, 58 for, 21 against. Support to demand for partition of provinces by Congress did not prove to be an answer to the demand of Pakistan, as was hoped. Worse, it opened the Congress to the charge of giving in to Hindu communal sentiments. Curzon must be chuckling in his grave, remarked the Bengal Governor to the Viceroy, referring to the Congress opposition to partition in 1905. Having been proved powerless to change the state of affairs in Bengal, the Congress had no alternative to offer to those who argued that partition was the only solution in the context of a communal League government in Bengal. Gandhiji pointed out the dangers of forsaking the principle of unity, even if only tactically. For him, undivided India had to be upheld without any compromise. Given the impending departure of the British, the politically sensitive areas were the territories contested by the Muslim League and Congress—namely, Bengal, Punjab, NWFP, and Assam. The situation was very complex and became messier as the momentum towards 102 2^ Chapter 35 (A), Document No. 12. 11 June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 32, Document No. 11. 9June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 32, Document No. 8. Gandhiji to Sarat Bose, 8June 1947, Part 2, Chapter 32, Document No. 5. 106 pgj.^ p Chapter 21, Document No. 34. Part 2, Chapter 26, Document No. 29. Viceroy’s ninth miscellaneous meeting, 1 May 1947, TOP, Vol. X, p. 511. 7 March 1947, cited in Mahajan, Independence and Partition, p. 276.
- 49. Editor’s Introduction xli divisiongathered pace. Alternative political imaginings were at hand, be they in the form of United Bengal or Pathanistan. For instance, in NWFP, the Governor claimed that if an election was held, the Congress would win but if a referendum was held, the Muslim League would win. This was because the election was about the issue of governance whereas being part of India or not was a question complicated by the existence of a political strand favouring independence. In the NWFP referendum, a demand for giving three choices—India, Pakistan, Pathanistan—was put forth. Pathanistan was sought to be used as a counter to Pakistan once it became clear that the province could not be part of India. Pathan autonomy and independence in a free Pathanistan as against assured Punjabi domination in Pakistan was the primary demand—an idea which continues to have currency. But the ruling out of the independence option in Bengal precluded its acceptance in NWFP. Assam’s reaction to the 3June Plan was complex. There seems to have been general relief at the final rejection of the Cabinet Mission scheme since that would have entailed grouping with Bengal."^ In Sylhet, the League began to mobilize the Muslim National Guards on the ground that the referendum could not be held fairly under the provincial Congress ministry in Assam. The documents selected in this volume provide accounts of these processes of political mobilization as well as the politics around the referendum.Accounts of protests, counter protests, rigging, and rioting indicate how the referendum was vitiated by communal politics and also ended up reinforcing it. In Punjab, after the elections of 1946, some amount of negotiations between Akalis and Muslim League had been carried out with a possible coalition in mind. This had been unsuccessful and Akalis joined with Unionists and Congress to form a coalition ministry. The Governor of Punjab, even till late May 1947, was advocating a Muslim-Sikh compromise as the only logical solution to Punjab’s problems. However, the Muslim League agitation against the Ministry alienated the Sikhs and undercut the chances of any settlement. The Sikh demand for a separate non-Muslim province in Punjab became more determined—though doubts beset Akali leaders about their position in a separate non-Muslim Punjab to be demarcated by a boundary commission. Hence, appeals were made to the Viceroy to keep Sikh interests in mind while etching the boundary line and faith was pinned on the sentence in the 3 June statement which declared that factors other than population would also guide the drawing of the boundary. The Sikhs hoped that property, religious places, revenue, and interests in canal colonies would be taken into account in their favour. All this added to the fluidity of the political situation.’ The chapter on Boundary Commissions”^ covers the setting up of commissions to demarcate partitioned areas and their mode of operation. The Census of 1941 was taken as the base and population was the criterion for demarcation. The documents span the debate over the unit of territory that was to be taken for demarcation—the village or the thana—and the politics behind it. In the course of demarcation of territory, rivers and shrines were also taken into 110 p^j-j 2^ Chapter 26, Document No. 19. Part 2, Chapter 33 (B). Part 2, Chapter 29 (A). Part 2, Chapter 29.
- 50. xlii Editor’s Introduction considerationalong with population. The documents carry extensive memoranda from different communities and entities expressing their concerns to the commissions. The entire operation was both botched and rushed, with the inept handling of the Chairman, Radcliffe, immortalized in the poem ‘Partition’ by W.H. Auden.^*'* Delaying announcement of the Boundary Commission awards to a period after the date of independence compounded the chaos and mayhem as many a village and town did not know which side of the border it was on. People found themselves on the wrong side of the border on 15 August 1947—flags of both India and Pakistan were flown in regions contested by both communities, Muslim and Hindu. * * * However, the above story of the colonial-national-communal conflict does not exhaust the diverse themes covered by the documents selected in the first two parts of these volumes. The documents also span the themes of the Constituent Assembly, India Independence Bill, minorities, refugees, volunteer bodies, and princely states. Like independence and partition and other related institutions like the Commonwealth, Constituent Assembly is again not a routine annual occurrence but special to 1947. It came into being only in December 1946, since when it was a bone of contention between the Congress and the Muslim League, with the League dismissing it as unrepresentative and Congress demanding that the League join or else quit the Interim Government. Gandhiji’s perspective was somewhat different from that of his colleagues. In his view, the Constituent Assembly should not function under British auspices; it should be convened when Congress has the strength to convene it for the whole country. A major issue with regard to the Constituent Assembly was one of representation, a need which was accentuated since it had sovereign powers and functioned as the Legislative Assembly upon transfer of power till new elections could be held and a new government set¬ up. Secondly, the major concern was the future shape of the Indian polity, to decide which the initial debates and discussions were held in the Assembly. The nature of Centre-state relations in future India was also a much-debated issue in the Assembly, reflecting concern with the autonomy of provinces and the extent of central powers.^'® As a result, diverse groups and communities sought representation in this assembly. This anxiety related to representation is another facet which makes this year different. The imminence of freedom and sovereignty elicited demands for representation and claims to minority or other kinds of special status by many groups and communities. In this sense it can be said that the Constituent Assembly was, in this period at least, a political body and not merely a forum for drawing up of the constitution by experts. A detailed selection from the debates on fundamental rights has been included in the volume since the issues continue to be of relevance today. For instance, the discussions regarding the right to practise religion as a fundamental right flow from an anxiety to reassure the minorities about the secular credentials of the state. The committees which discussed these Dated May 1966, W.H. Auden, Collected Poems, Random House, 1976, p. 604. 3 and 17 December 1946, CWMG, Vol. 86, 1982, pp. 184-5, 235. *'® Part 1, Chapter 1, Document No. 8.
- 51. Editor’s Introduction xliii issuesdisplayed a fascinating diversity of opinion on the nature and terms of safeguards to be provided for minorities. The debate on abolition of zamindari in the Constituent Assembly in the volume has been included for the diversity of political and ideological strands which it represents. Abolition was opposed by pointing out the developmental work undertaken by zflmindars. At the other end of the spectrum were Nehru and other socialists who had been demanding abolition of zamindari and nationalization for many years as measures necessary to start the economic reconstruction of free India. If K.M. Panikkar from Bikaner defended the zamindari system, Hasrat Mohani demanded that provinces of free India be made ‘republics’"^—the Constituent Assembly, in the period covered in this volume, appears to have been a political arena wherein the contemporary political issues and political ideologies found expression. Constituent Assembly debates have been presented unedited to preserve the unity of the documents and to give the reader a sense of the complex process of constitution making. Splitting sessions under thematic heads has been avoided consciously so as to preserve the thread of the debates. The structure of the committees and sub-committees appointed by the Constituent Assembly must be explained so that the context of the different memoranda may become clear. The Constituent Assembly of India appointed committees to look into matters holding vital importance for the future polity of India. As such, separate committees were appointed to look into the framing of the Constitution for the Union and the provinces, minority rights, fundamental rights, and so on. Committees which dealt with more than one subject, such as the Advisory Committees on Fundamental Rights, Minorities, and others, then appointed sub¬ committees to go into each individual subject. Thus, a sub-committee on minority rights was appointed to report on the nature of minority safeguards recommended for free India. Each of the committees as well as sub-committees held their meetings and debated these vital issues. In the period which this volume covers, only a few reports were tabled in the Constituent Assembly for discussion, like the Union Constitution Committee’s interim report, the report of the sub-committee on minorities, and so on. All these reports were placed before the Constituent Assembly and were discussed clause by clause, wherein many amendments were suggested and dealt with. The selection of documents presented here is both from the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly as well as from the papers of its committees and sub-committees. The selected documents point out the concerns of different communities regarding their minority status. It is interesting to note that no one community was a minority—in fact Hindus and Muslims both had a minority status depending on their location. In Bihar the minority community implied Muslims whereas in Punjab, Hindus and Sikhs were the minority. The chapters^^® on minorities and displaced populations in the volume cover not just religious minorities; recognizing the fluid nature of the term ‘minority’, any group/community that formed the smaller section of the population in an area has been included—such a group may not have been a religious community in every instance. Proceedings ofJuly session, Part 2, Chapter 25, Document Nos 1, 10. Constituent Assembly documents span Part 1, Chapters 1 and 13 and Part 2, Chapter 25. Part 1, Chapters 11 and 23 and Part 2, Chapter 36.
- 52. xliv Editor’s Introduction Furthermore,(religious or other) groups such as Nagas, Jains, Depressed Classes, and Scheduled Castes claimed minority status on demographic grounds—a claim noteworthy because it sought to alter the basis of minority status—from religious to primarily demographic. Different communities and groups, such as Adivasis, Catholics, Gurkhas, claimed minority status keeping in mind different entitlements. This was behind the representations that such groups made before the Constituent Assembly for minority status. These minority populations were very often also the ones being displaced on account of communal rioting. Refugee camps and other means of rehabilitation were also started in this period which have been documented in these volumes. Apart from the chapters exclusively on minorities and displaced populations, chapters on communalism in provinces too have documents on this theme. The documents selected for the chapters on volunteer bodiesdetail the growth and expansion of many such organizations affiliated to political parties in Bombay, Sindh, Orissa, Punjab, NWFP, and other provinces. The overall increase in their membership and activity is unmistakable. While, on the one hand, this growth signifies the deepening of communal tendencies, on the other, it also signifies a leaning towards violent methods for political ends. The increase in the membership of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and Muslim League National Guards (MLNG) in this period is linked to the increasing communalization of arenas close to the daily life of people. In Punjab, the involvement of RSS volunteers in refugee rehabilitation increased its popularity. The MLNG were at the forefront of the Muslim League-led ‘civil disobedience’ campaigns in Punjab, NWFP, and Assam. The growth of MLNG led to attempts at formation of Hindu Guards in UP. Similarly, Red Shirts, who operated on a nationalist, not communal platform, were involved in political activities in the NWFP. Most of these developments added to the prevailing communal tensions. The details of the membership and activity of these bodies have primarily come from fortnightly reports from the governments of the provinces. Selected documents unravel the process of the making of the India Independence Act'^^ passed by British Parliament of the United Kingdom on 20 July 1947 and the outcome of a consultative process involving the major parties, the Congress and the League. Some of their suggestions were incorporated in the draft. The strategic and military interests of the British, as in the case of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, had to be balanced against the opposition of the Congress to their being British bases. The term ‘independence’ was objected to by Churchill on the ground that power was to be transferred on the basis of dominion status. The princely states, comprising almost one-third of the area of the subcontinent, were vassal states and were administered through State Agencies and Residents in clusters. Comprising an entire section, the chapters on princely states (Part 2, Section 2) carry a diverse range of documents highlighting primarily how different states became part of the changes happening in provincial British India, whether it be popular peasant agitation, working class movements, communalism, or politics of partition. The documents highlight the movements for responsible government in the princely states, the representation of the princely states in the Constituent Assembly, and accession to the Unions. Part 2, Chapter 35. Part 1, Chapters 10 and 24 and Part 2, Chapter 37. Part 2, Chapter 28.
- 53. Editor’s Introduction xlv Inthe princely states, the movement for responsible government gathered momentum with the imminence of freedom. The peoples’ movements pressed for democratization of their domains. It is in this context that the All India States Peoples Conference (AISPC) sought to consolidate the widespread streams of resistance in the states. These movements met with stiff resistance from the princes. Some states’ rulers were visionaries and guided their people towards responsible government. But most princes were reactionary and stood as a solid wall blocking the path of political progress. With the paramount power receding, one would have expected the princes to see the writing on the wall. But this was rarely the case. Some even saw the end of paramountcy as a return to pre-paramountcy, that is, to sovereignty, refusing to recognize the altered nature of the reality. The issue of representation is another aspect of the political developments in the princely states. Different political groups, be it rulers or people, sought representation in the Constituent Assembly, the forum through which they could participate in the formulation of the future polity. The Chamber of Princes agreed to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan conditionally. However, even this Chamber of Princes did not have all the princes as its members. In fact, the big seven states had kept out, which together were entitled to 38 seats in the Constituent Assembly. The AISPC pointed out this basic flaw and questioned its locus standi as the representative body of princes. Its conditional acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan and dillydallying with joining the Constituent Assembly was criticized in the press. Representatives of different states began to raise their demand for greater representation, citing big population, importance of the state, and so on, as reasons. Then, there were also internal dissensions within the Chamber, as many diwarm and high officials within the states were looking to the Congress with an eye on appointments abroad. Representation in the Constituent Assembly culminated in the accession of the princely states to the Unions of India and Pakistan. However, this was not before many of the bigger states like Travancore and Hyderabad tried their best to negotiate their freedom outside both the proposed new dominions and maintain treaty relations on essential subjects with both Britain and the upcoming dominions. Eventually only accession to two unions took place as demanded by the Congress and its stand on the accession of Hyderabad and Travancore was accepted on the whole. Broadly the chapters map the long and winding road that was taken to bring these states into the Union of India and Pakistan. * * With impending freedom, communities of various kinds demanded recognition and representation. This was not only about fighting for loaves as often suggested. Many issues which were kept on the backburner—for instance, class—during the course of the freedom struggle now came to the fore with the end of colonialism. Hence, issues related to caste, labour, or agrarian relations acquired salience. This does not just involve positioning for better or more territory and resources. These issues had been there earlier too but were coming to the fore now, as was the question of zamindari. With British rule ending, the emergence of a new polity 123 2^ Chapters 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44.
- 54. xlvi Editor’s Introduction involvedboth fashioning of a new constitution and restructuring old institutions. This was part of the process of political churning which the old and new both had to go through. The selection of documents in Part 3 also covers a range of issues related to the society and economy, ranging from division of assets and institutions to debates about the form and direction of society, politics, economy, the role of the state, governance, and so on. The chapter on peasant movementsmostly covers the struggles of peasants and workers which were not against the departing imperialist power, but against feudal landowners and princely despots. Some ofthe main movements were the Tebhaga, Telengana, and Warli revolts. The demand of the Tebhaga movement was, quite literally, for two-thirds of the produce, plus storing paddy in the bargadads (sharecropper) storeroom. The Tebhaga struggle was special because of the participation of women and peasants from both Hindu and Muslim communities. Gandhiji lent support to the movement but warned against use of compulsion and violence. A massive struggle of the Warlis erupted in western India under the banner of the Kisan Sabha and the Communist Party. Warli tribals were caught in the landlord-moneylender-official nexus and suffered forced debt, slavery, and sexual exploitation. In the course of the movement, the Congress ministry was charged by the Communists with being soft on the zamindars, jungle contractors, and other intermediary elements and repressive against the peasants. The repression against the Telengana movement was most severe in Nalagonda in the state of Hyderabad. Martial law lasted for two months and untold miseries were unleashed by police authorities. The Punjab Kisan Morchas were the result ofyears ofwork by the Kisan Sabhas among the peasants in resistance to zamindars and communalism in western Punjab. A Kisan Sabha movement was organized in Karnataka in which activists were targeted and extemed as ‘goondas’ by the reserve police and Section 144 was enforced across the state. This is also the period when the Hind Kisan Sabha was formed which aimed for an agrarian revolution. This chapter carries a cache of documents highlighting lesser-known agrarian conflict between Mirasdars and Adi-Dravidas in Tanjore and jagirdars’ onslaught on tenants in Patiala. The chapter on working class movementsfocuses largely on wages, working conditions, taxes, and legislation. It carries accounts of workers’ strikes across the country as well as the different raids, arrests, and repressive measures against the Communist Party of India (CPI) and its allied organizations. The CPI presented the string of arrests of Communists as a sort of witch hunt against the party by the Congress. When the question was raised in the Constituent Assembly, Sardar Patel defended government action stating that the searches and arrests were in connection with a case of stolen defence documents and that appropriate procedure was being followed. In contrast to Communist-Congress clashes was a strike in Kanpur where Communist and Congressmen together led the agitation, which is covered by the documents in this selection. Apart from this, the Communist Party published elaborate comments on other labour issues in the year such as the Industrial Disputes Bill. The All India Trade Union Congress celebrated the 25th year of its formation. In 1947, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel set up the Indian National Trade Union Congress. Part 3, Chapter 47. Part 3, Chapter 48.
- 55. Another Random ScribdDocument with Unrelated Content
- 56. In most instances,however, it follows beans or cucumbers, as the seed for this second potato crop is not usually planted until July or August. The seed for this crop is, as a rule, saved from the early crop, the small tubers being stored in a well-ventilated shed, where they are protected from the direct action of the sun and from storms until about ten days or two weeks before the time of planting, when they are spread thinly upon the ground and lightly covered with straw or litter to partially protect them from the sun. Under these conditions the tubers quickly "green" and all those suitable for seed will develop sprouts. As soon as the sprouts are visible, and before they are large enough to be rubbed off in handling, the potatoes are ready to plant. The product of this planting gives a crop of partially matured tubers which are held over winter for spring planting. This practice gives excellent results in many localities and is found to be more economical than the purchase of northern-grown seed. To what extent it is safe to follow this practice without renewing the seed from the North by the use of fully matured tubers has not been determined. Those following the method should carefully observe the quality and yield of the crop for the purpose of determining whether or not it is deteriorating under this treatment. In general, it is believed that it will be within the limits of good practice to secure every second or third year enough northern-grown seed to supply seed for the second crop; in fact, some of the most successful growers of potatoes who use second-crop seed get enough northern-grown seed each year to supply planting material for the second crop. In this practice it will be economy to err on the side of safety and obtain fresh seed frequently from reliable northern sources. In a majority of instances it is found that second-crop home-grown seed is slower to germinate and later in maturity than northern-grown seed, and as quick development is an important element in the crop at the South, growers are urged to consider this point carefully. Held-over Seed.—The consensus of opinion is that in southern localities it is impracticable to keep early potatoes from harvest time to the next season's planting period. The conclusions of those who have given this problem careful study are that the exposure of the tubers to the sun at harvest time is the chief factor in determining their keeping qualities. In other words, it is possible to keep potatoes in the extreme South from season to season provided the tubers are not exposed to the sun after being dug. They should be immediately carried to a protected place where there is ample ventilation and where they will receive only diffused light, such as a cyclone or other cellar, or the basement of a house, or even where brush protection will prevent the sun shining directly upon them. It is, of course, necessary that
- 57. the tubers bewell matured before being dug and that they be the product of disease-free plants. Plants killed by blight yield tubers which seldom keep well even under the most favorable conditions. Methods of Securing Extra-Early Potatoes.—One of the most important factors having an influence on the profitableness of market garden crops is that of earliness. A difference of two or three days or a week in placing a crop on the market often makes the difference between profit and loss, and the prices obtained for extra-early crops have stimulated cultural experiments with every kind of fruit and vegetables. Some interesting results along this line with potatoes have recently been reported by the Kansas and Rhode Island stations. At the Kansas Station seed tubers of four different varieties of medium-sized potatoes were placed in shallow boxes with the seed ends up in February. They were packed in sand, leaving the upper fourth of the tubers exposed, and the boxes were placed in a room with rather subdued light, having a temperature of 50° to 60° F. Vigorous sprouts soon pushed from the exposed eyes. The whole potatoes were planted in furrows in March in the same position they occupied in the boxes. The same varieties of potatoes taken from a storage cellar were planted in parallel rows. The sand-sprouted potatoes took the lead from the start in vigor and strength of top and produced potatoes the first of June, a week earlier than the storage-cellar potatoes. At the final digging they showed better potatoes and gave a 10 per cent larger total yield. In other experiments part of the potatoes was treated the same as in the first test, except that the sand was kept moistened, and the other part was placed in open boxes and kept in a light room having a temperature of 50° F. The tubers placed in sand developed strong sprouts and nearly all rooted. When planted in the field they outstripped both the tubers sprouted in open boxes and the storage-cellar tubers in vigor of growth. The tubers started in the open boxes gave earlier yields than were obtained from the storage-cellar tubers, but not as early as the tubers sprouted in moist sand. The tubers sprouted in moist sand produced table potatoes from 7 to 10 days earlier than the storage-cellar seed. At the Rhode Island Station medium-sized whole potatoes sprouted on racks, in a fairly warm and light room, gave a 27 per cent better yield at the first digging than potatoes kept in a cold cellar until planting time; and this was increased to 40 per cent at the final digging. The percentage of large tubers was also greater at each digging with the sprouted tubers. The results of these experiments are suggestive. The handling of seed potatoes in such manner as to secure strong, stocky sprouts before the tubers are planted out is shown to be an important factor in increasing both the earliness and the
- 58. total yield ofthe crop. By planting only well-sprouted seed, a full stand is assured. One of the objections to this method of growing potatoes is the large amount of space required for exposing the tubers to the light for sprouting. This objection has been overcome in part by the use of trays and racks. At the Rhode Island Station the rack used held 9 trays. Each tray was 3¾ feet long and 1½ feet wide, and would hold about 1 bushel of potatoes when spread out in a single layer for sprouting. The bottoms of the trays were made of pieces of lath placed about 1 inch apart. Nine trays were placed in a rack over each other, leaving about 9 inches of space between each tray. This method of arrangement has the advantage of securing a very uniform distribution of light, heat, and air for all the trays. It greatly facilitates the handling of the potatoes and lessens the danger of breaking off the sprouts and transferring to the field for planting. Another method of securing early potatoes in Rhode Island on a commercial scale is that of sprouting tubers in a cold frame and planting out as soon as danger of frost is past. The tubers are cut into pieces, not smaller than an English walnut, after rejecting the two or three eyes nearest the stem end, which have been found to start late. The pieces are placed side by side in the bed, skin side upward, and covered about 4 inches deep with fine, rich earth. Their growth can be controlled by proper regulation of the cold-frame sash. At planting time the tubers, the sprouts of which should be just breaking the surface of the soil, are carefully lifted with manure forks, separated by hand, and placed in well-fertilized rows, and entirely covered with soil; or, if danger of frost is past, they are placed with the apex of the sprout just at the surface of the soil. About 216 square feet of cold frame is required to sprout sufficient potatoes to plant an acre in 30 to 32 inch rows, 12 inches apart. Eight men can transplant an acre in a day. On the Island of Jersey, where early potatoes are raised in large quantities for the London market, the potatoes destined for seed are placed side by side in shallow boxes and stored, as soon as cold weather sets in, in a light and well-sheltered loft or shed, out of danger of frost. The position of the boxes is changed from time to time so that the sprouts will be of equal length and strength at the planting season. Medium-sized tubers selected from the best of the crop and allowed to lie in the field in the fall until they become greenish are used. Potatoes on Western Irrigated Farms.—With thorough cultivation, for potatoes planted the first of May, irrigation is seldom necessary until July.
- 59. Generally speaking irrigationwater is cold and it is highly important not to irrigate too frequently, since the water not only causes the soil to run together but lowers the temperature to a point that is not favorable to the growth of potatoes. Irrigation water is applied only when the condition of the plants indicates that they are in need of water, as by darkening of the foliage. Or one may dig down in the hill and press a handful of soil in the hand; if it fails to retain its form, irrigation is needed. Care should be taken not to wait until the ground is too dry, because one can not cover the whole field of potatoes in one day's irrigation, and some are likely to suffer for water before being reached. Experience shows that if potatoes are grown as rapidly as possible, so as to become strong and well established early in the season, they withstand the maximum of unfavorable weather conditions later on, when the hot dry winds becomes a menace to the crop. When the time for irrigation arrives, a V-shaped trench half-way between the rows should be opened in alternate middles with an 8 or 10 inch lister plow; that is, a narrow plow with a double mold-board which throws the dirt each way. In these furrows the irrigation water is run so that the soil will not become solidified by flooding, and the necessary amount of water may be properly distributed. For the second irrigation furrows are opened in the middles that were not opened at the first irrigation, and this alternation is continued for succeeding irrigations. At the head of each field is a feeder ditch from which the water is admitted to these irrigation furrows between the rows. It is essential that the right quantity of water be used, and that it be uniformly distributed. Cultivation should commence as soon after irrigation as the soil will permit so as to insure rapid and uniform growth without check. This will not only result in the production of smooth, uniform tubers of attractive appearance, which are always in demand at high prices, but will also result in large, profitable yields and at the same time keep the soil in good mechanical condition for future crops. Do not irrigate after August 10, so as to give fifty or sixty days for ripening in dry earth. There is no line of farming in the irrigated districts that gives such marvelous profits as that of scientific potato production. With scientific knowledge which can certainly be acquired by experiments in supplying perfectly balanced plant food and maintaining soil fertility, the scientific principles of which are similar to those used by every successful breeder in feeding and fitting prize-winning stock; and with the proper proportions of plant foods—phosphates, nitrogen, and potash—in the soil as found in many parts of the West; and by the use of clover and alfalfa, there is no reason for those who contemplate engaging in the potato industry to fear the outcome.
- 60. Too much stresscan not be put upon the value and importance of livestock in keeping up favorable soil conditions, as no country now known has been continuously successful in crop production without the use of manures from the feeding of forage and grain crops. Varieties.—Years of experience have demonstrated that comparatively few varieties of potatoes are really adapted to western or mountain conditions. Among the early varieties none has been so universally successful as the Early Ohio. This potato is of fine quality and uniform in size and shape, though not a heavy yielder. Another good potato, though not so early, is the Rose Seedling. For a medium to late variety, the Dalmeny Challenge, a Scotch variety, is being used quite extensively on the western slope of Colorado. For later varieties, the White Pearl and Rural New York No. 2 are more extensively used at Greeley, in the San Luis Valley, and in the Uncompahgre Valley; and the Perfect Peachblow is the favorite in the upper Grand Valley. PUMPKIN. The true pumpkin is hardly to be considered as a garden crop, and, as a rule, should be planted among the field corn. Plant where the hills of corn are missing and cultivate with the corn. However, some of the better sorts of pie pumpkins should be grown in the garden for cooking purposes, because they are productive and much superior in quality to the common field pumpkins.— (F. B. 255; Mich E. S. 20, 190.) RADISH. The radish is quite hardy and may be grown throughout the winter in hotbeds at the North, in cold frames in the latitudes of Washington, and in the open ground in the South. For the home garden the seed should be sown in the open ground as soon as the soil is moderately warm. Plant in drills 12 to 18 inches apart, and as soon as the plants are up thin them slightly to prevent crowding. Radishes require to be grown on a quick, rich soil, and some of the earlier sorts can be matured in two to three weeks after planting. If the radishes grow slowly they will have a pungent flavor and will not be fit for table use. For a constant supply successive plantings should be made every two weeks, as the roots lose their crispness and delicate flavor if allowed to remain long in the open ground. As a rule a large percentage of radish seed will grow, and it is often possible by careful sowing to avoid the necessity of thinning, the first radishes being pulled as soon as they are of
- 61. sufficient size fortable use, thus making room for those that are a little later. Radishes will not endure hot weather and are suited to early spring and late autumn planting. There are a number of varieties of winter radishes, the seed of which may be planted the latter part of summer and the roots pulled and stored for winter use. These roots should remain in the ground as long as possible without frosting and should then be dug and stored the same as turnips. This type of radish will not compare with the earlier summer varieties, which may be easily grown in a hotbed or cold frame during the winter. One ounce of radish seed is sufficient to plant 100 feet of row, and when grown on a large scale 10 to 12 pounds of seed will be required to the acre.—(F. B. 255, 295; U. Id. E. S. 10; Mich. E. S. 20; N. Car. E. S. 132.) RHUBARB (PIE PLANT). The soil for rhubarb should be deep, and there is little danger of having it too rich. Like asparagus the seedling plants of rhubarb can be grown and transplanted. Ten to twelve good hills are sufficient to produce all the rhubarb required by the average family, and these are most easily established by planting pieces of roots taken from another bed. Good roots may be secured from dealers and seedsmen at about $1.50 a dozen. The old hills may be divided in the early spring or late fall by digging away the earth on one side and cutting the hill in two with a sharp spade, the part removed being used to establish a new hill. The usual method of planting rhubarb is to set the plants in a single row along the garden fence, and the hills should be about 4 feet apart. If more than one row is planted the hills should be 3½ or 4 feet each way. The thick leaf stems are the part used, and none should be pulled from the plants the first year after setting. Rhubarb should receive the same treatment during winter as asparagus, and the plants should never be allowed to ripen seed. The roots may be brought into the greenhouse, pit, cold frame, or cellar during the winter and forced. Rhubarb does not thrive in warm climates. The use of rhubarb is principally during the early spring for making pies and sauces, and the stems may be canned for winter use.—(F. B. 255; N. Car. E. S. 132; U. Id. E. S. 10.) RUTA-BAGA (SWEDES). The culture of the ruta-baga is the same as for the turnip, except that the former requires more room and a longer period for its growth. The roots are quite hardy and will withstand considerable frost. The ruta-baga is used like
- 62. the turnip, andalso for stock feed. Two pounds of seed are required for one acre.—(F. B. 255; Mich. E. S. 6.) SALSIFY (VEGETABLE OYSTER). Sow seeds of salsify during the spring in the same manner as for parsnips or carrots. At the South, a sowing may be made in summer to produce roots for winter use. One ounce of seed is required to plant 100 feet of row, and on a large scale 10 pounds to the acre. After the plants are well established they should be thinned sufficiently to prevent their crowding. The cultivation should be the same as for parsnips or carrots, and frequent use of a wheel hoe will avoid the necessity for hand weeding. Salsify may be dug in the autumn and stored or allowed to remain in the ground during the winter, as its treatment is the same as for parsnips. Salsify is a biennial, and if the roots are not dug before the second season they will throw up stems and produce seed. It is of a weedy nature and care should be taken that it does not run wild by seeding freely. Salsify is deserving of more general cultivation, as it is one of the more desirable of the root crops for the garden. The uses of salsify are similar to those of the parsnip, and when boiled and afterwards coated with rolled crackers and fried in butter it has a decided oyster flavor, from which the name vegetable oyster is derived.—(F. B. 255, 295; N. Car. E. S. 132; Idaho E. S. 10.) SCOLYMUS. Scolymus is a vegetable with spiny, thistle-like leaves, from Spain, with roots much like a small parsnip and keeping equally well in winter.—(S. Dak. E. S. 68.) SKIRRET. This is called "Zuckerwurzel" (Sugar root) in Germany. The plump, fleshy roots are sweet and used boiled during winter, the same as Salsify.—(S. Dak. E. S. 68.) SORREL.
- 63. This plant resemblesthe weed "sour dock" of the fields. The leaves are large, tender and juicy, very broad and often 10 inches long, retaining the pleasant acid flavor of the original weed. Much prized in France where it is cultivated as a spring vegetable and used singly or mixed with spinach.— (Mich. E. S. 20; U. Idaho E. S. 10.) SPINACH. Spinach thrives in a rather cool climate and attains its best development in the Middle South, where it can be grown in the open ground during the winter. Large areas are grown near Norfolk, Va., cuttings being made at anytime during the winter when the fields are not frozen or covered with snow. When the weather moderates in the early spring the plants make a new growth, and a large crop of early greens is available. North of the latitude of Norfolk, spinach can be planted in the autumn and carried over winter by mulching with straw or leaves. Sow the seeds in drills 1 foot apart at the rate of 1 ounce to 100 feet of row or 10 to 12 pounds to the acre. To produce good spinach, a rich loam which will give the plants a quick growth is required. As ordinarily grown, it occupies the land during the autumn and winter only and does not interfere with summer cultivation. It is an easily grown garden crop, and there is, perhaps, no other of its kind that will give as good satisfaction. Three or four ounces of seed, planted in the autumn after a summer crop has been harvested from the land, will produce an abundance of greens for the average family during the late autumn and early spring. In gathering spinach the entire plant is removed rather than merely cutting off the leaves. The larger plants are selected first, and the smaller or later ones are thus given room to develop. No thinning is required if this plan of harvesting is practiced.—(F. B. 255; Mich. E. S. 20; U. Id. E. S. 10; N. C. E. S. 132.) SQUASH. There are two types of the squash, the bush varieties, which may be planted in hills 4 or 5 feet apart each way, and the running varieties, which will require from 8 to 16 feet for their development. Squashes may properly be grown in the garden, as 3 or 4 hills will produce all that are required for family use. They require practically the same soil and cultural methods as the muskmelon. A number of varieties are used during the summer in the same manner as vegetable marrow, but squashes are principally used during the
- 64. winter, in muchthe same way as pumpkins, to which they are superior in many respects. Squashes are also used extensively for pie purposes. The varieties known as Hubbard and Boston Marrow are most commonly grown. Squashes, like pumpkins, should be handled carefully to avoid bruising, and should be stored in a moderately warm but well ventilated room.—(F. B. 255; Mich. E. S. 190; S. Dak. E. S. 42, 68.) STACHYS. This vegetable, known to the botanists as Stachys sieboldi, has been introduced into America from Japan and has a number of different names, such as Japanese potato, Chinese artichoke, chorogi, etc., but the name stachys seems to have been adopted as the common one in this country. The plant is a small perennial belonging to the mint family and produces just below the ground a multitude of small, white, crisp edible tubers, varying from an inch to two and one-half inches in length, and about one-half an inch in thickness and marked by irregular spiral rings, which give them a corkscrew-like appearance. Stachys has been tested at the New York (Cornell) and a number of the other agricultural experiment stations, and proved so easy of cultivation and pleasant in taste (the flavor resembling artichokes) that the vegetable has made many friends and is now procurable at the markets in most of our larger cities. The agreeable quality is in considerable measure due to the crispness of the tubers, and as this disappears when they are exposed to the air they should be stored in sand or sawdust. They are ready for use when the plant dies down in the autumn, though they may be easily carried over the winter and are prepared for the table like potatoes or other vegetables, or may be eaten raw like radishes.—(F. B. 295.) SWEET BASIL. The leaves are used for flavoring purposes. SWEET CORN. Plant sweet corn as soon as the soil is warm in the spring, and make successive plantings every two weeks until July, or the same result can be attained to some extent by a careful selection of early, medium, and late
- 65. varieties. Plant theseeds in drills 3 feet apart and thin to a single stalk every 10 to 14 inches, or plant 5 to 6 seeds in hills 3 feet apart each way, and thin out to 3 to 5 stalks in a hill. Cover the seeds about 2 inches deep. Cultivate frequently and keep down all weeds, removing suckers from around the base of the stalk. Sweet corn should be planted on rich land, and the method of cultivation is practically the same as for field corn, but should be more thorough. There are a number of good early varieties, and for a midsummer and late sort there is none better than Stowell's Ever-green.—(F. B. 255; N. J. E. S. 199; S. Dak. E. S. 91.) SWEET MARJORAM. Leaves and ends of shoots used for seasoning. SWEET POTATO. Owing to the tropical nature of the sweet potato it naturally thrives best in the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast States, but it may be grown for home use as far north as southern New York and westward along that latitude to the Rocky Mountains. The climatic requirements for the production of sweet potatoes on a commercial scale are (1) a growing period of at least four and half months without frost, (2) warm nights and abundant sunshine during the day, and (3) a moderate rainfall during the growing period. Where irrigation is depended upon for the supply of moisture, the greatest quantity of water should be applied between the time the plants are set in the field and the time when the vines practically cover the ground. If too much water is applied during the latter part of the season the result may be an abundant growth of vine and a small yield of stringy potatoes. For some time before harvesting the crop the water should be withheld altogether, in order that the roots may ripen properly. Soil.—Sweet potatoes thrive on a moderately fertile sandy loam which does not contain an excess of organic matter. They are frequently grown upon almost pure sand, especially where the subsoil is a yellow clay. Soils containing considerable calcium or underlain with limestone are well adapted to the growing of the crop. The sweet potato is exceptional in that a fairly good crop can be grown upon soils that are too poor for the production of the majority of farm crops. Sweet potatoes yield a fair crop on the "worn-out"
- 66. tobacco and cottonlands of the South, especially when used in a rotation including some leguminous crop for increasing the humus in the soil. Like many other crops, the sweet potato thrives on newly cleared land, but the crop should not be planted continuously in the same place. With the sweet potato, as with other crops, rotation is the keynote of success. Good drainage is essential, the original idea of planting upon high ridges being for the purpose of securing better drainage. The surface soil should extend to a depth of 6 or 8 inches, and the subsoil should be of such a nature that it will carry off excessive moisture without leaching away the fertilizers applied to the land. Too great a depth of loose surface soil or an alluvial soil having no subsoil will produce long, irregular potatoes that are undesirable for marketing. Planting upon land having a loose, sandy surface soil underlain by a well-drained clay subsoil will tend to produce the type of rather thick, spindle-formed potato that commands the highest price. The depth of plowing is a prominent factor in the preparation of land for sweet potatoes, and on soils of too great depth before the subsoil is reached very shallow plowing should be practiced, leaving the soil firm beneath, against which the roots must force their way. If the surface soil is of insufficient depth, it should be gradually increased by plowing a little deeper each year or by subsoiling in the furrow behind the regular turning plow. Fertilizers.—The root portion of the plant is the part having the greatest value, though the foliage and vines have some value as food for certain kinds of stock. It has been found that an excessive amount of organic matter in the soil will frequently produce an abundant growth of vines at the expense of the roots. It has also been noted that the potatoes will be small and the yield unsatisfactory on soils that do not contain sufficient organic matter to produce a fair growth of vine. The use of stable manure as a fertilizer for sweet potatoes is recommended on lands that are deficient in organic matter. Heavy applications of fresh manure shortly before planting the land to sweet potatoes will stimulate not only the growth of weeds but also of the vines at the expense of the roots. Well-rotted stable manure may be used at the rate of 10 to 15 carloads to the acre, spread broadcast or beneath the ridges and harrowed into the soil, but it is always well to apply the manure with the crop grown the previous season. By this method the manure will become thoroughly incorporated with the soil and become somewhat reduced before the sweet potatoes are planted upon the land. Stable manure will be found most beneficial on worn-out soils, but on the more fertile soils its use should be restricted and the method of application carefully studied.
- 67. The sweet potatois one of the few crops that thrive equally as well (or better) upon commercial fertilizers as upon stable manure. A fertilizer for use on the majority of sweet potato lands should contain 3 to 6 per cent of nitrogen, 6 or 7 per cent of phosphoric acid, and 8 to 10 per cent of potash. Every grower should make a study of the requirements of his soil and apply the fertilizer that will give the best results. Many growers purchase the ingredients and mix their own special fertilizers, or use a standard fertilizer as a base and increase the percentage of certain elements by adding high-grade elementary ingredients. Some soils require that certain elements should be in a more available form than others; in the case of nitrogen it is often desirable to have a portion of that contained in the fertilizer quickly available and the remainder more slowly in order to feed the plants throughout the season. A mixture adapted to the growing of sweet potatoes on most soils may be made by combining the following: 200 pounds ofhigh-grade sulphate of ammonia, 25 per cent pure. 200 pounds ofdried blood, or 300 pounds of fish scrap. 1,200 pounds ofacid phosphate, 11 per cent pure. 400 pounds ofhigh-grade muriate of potash, 50 per cent pure. The quantity of fertilizer that may be profitably applied will be governed entirely by local conditions. Many growers do not depend upon commercial fertilizers, but merely apply from 200 to 300 pounds to each acre as a supplement to the organic matter and natural fertility of the soil. Others apply from 300 to 1,000 pounds, according to the condition of the soil, while a few growers use a ton to the acre. The general rule is to apply the fertilizer in the row where the crop is to be grown, but where large quantities are used it should be distributed at least ten days before planting and thoroughly incorporated with the soil. An application of 1,000 pounds of high-grade fertilizer placed in the row at planting time has been known to injure seriously or kill the plants. For the best results the fertilizer should be applied at least ten days before planting, or a portion of the fertilizer may be applied a month or more in advance and the remainder at the time of preparing the land for planting. Hardwood ashes are desirable for use on sweet potato land and may be applied at the rate of from 1,200 to 2,000 pounds to the acre. The value of wood ashes depends upon how much they have become leached, but hardwood ashes should contain from 6 to 8 per cent of available potash. Wood ashes also contain considerable lime. Where large quantities of any green crop are plowed into the soil there is a tendency to sourness, and occasional applications of from 1 to 2 tons of
- 68. lime to theacre are beneficial. The presence of an abundance of lime in soils devoted to the growing of sweet potatoes hastens the maturity of the crop and increases the yield. On poor soils the lime and potash work together to produce potatoes of uniform size and shape, but on rich or alluvial soils the tendency is toward the production of over-large and irregular roots. The lime should be applied the previous season, or at least the autumn before planting the land to sweet potatoes. Propagation of Plants.—The more common varieties of the sweet potato have for a great many years been propagated by cuttings, or sets, taken either from the potatoes themselves or from growing vines, and as a result the plants have ceased to flower and produce seed. The greater portion of the commercial crop is grown from sets, or "draws," produced by sprouting medium-sized potatoes in a warm bed of soil. Where only a small area of sweet potatoes is to be grown for home use, the necessary plants can generally be secured from some one who makes a business of growing them. If an acre or more is to be planted it will in most cases be more economical to prepare a bed and grow the plants. The method of starting the plants will depend upon the locality and the acreage to be planted, the essentials being a bed of warm earth and a covering to protect the young plants during the early springtime. Selection of Seed.—The potatoes that are to serve as seed from which to grow the plants for the next season's crop should always be selected at the time of digging and housing the crop. For seed purposes it is the custom to select the medium or undersized potatoes, such as are too small for marketing. Those potatoes that will pass through a 2-inch ring or can be circled by the thumb and first finger of a man having a hand of average size are used for seed purposes. The seed potatoes should be uniform in size and of the shape desired in the following year's crop. The seed should be free from cuts, bruises, decay, or disease of any kind. Throughout the handling of the seed potatoes they should not receive any treatment that would break eggs. The seed should always be handled and kept separate from the regular crop. The oftener the seed is handled the greater the danger of decay, and it should not be sorted over until everything is ready for bedding. The best seed is grown from cuttings taken from the regular plants after they have begun to form vines. These cuttings produce large numbers of medium or small-sized potatoes that are free from diseases and adapted for use as seed the following year.
- 69. Hotbeds.—Toward the northernpart of the area over which sweet potatoes are grown it is necessary to start the plants in a hotbed in order that the length of season may be sufficient to mature the crop. The roots that are too small for marketing are used for seed, and these are bedded close together in the hotbed and covered with about 2 inches of sand or fine soil, such as leaf mold. The seed should be bedded about five or six weeks before it will be safe to set the plants in the open ground, which is usually about May 15 or May 20. Toward the last the hotbed should be ventilated very freely in order to harden off the plants. Drawing the Sets.—As a general rule sweet potato plants are set in the field shortly after a rain. In order to avoid delay in planting, the hands should begin to get out the sets as soon as the rain ceases falling and place them in crates or baskets ready for transportation to the field. The sets are not all produced at once, and only those that have formed good roots are "drawn," the others being left until later. In drawing the sets the seed potato is held down with one hand while the plants are removed with the thumb and finger of the other hand. It often happens that five or six plants will cling together at the base, and these should be separated in order to avoid loss of time in the field. The roots should all be kept in one direction, and if the tops are long or irregular they may be trimmed off even by means of a knife. While drawing the sets it is a good plan to have at hand a large pail or tub containing water to which there has been added a quantity of clay and cow manure which has been stirred until it forms a thin slime. As the plants are pulled from the bed they are taken in small bunches and their roots dipped into this mixture. This process, termed "puddling," covers the roots with a coating which not only prevents their becoming dry in handling but insures a direct contact with the soil when they are planted in the field or garden. After removing the sets that are ready, the bed should be watered to settle the soil where it has become disturbed and then left for the younger plants to develop. Packing for Shipment.—In preparing sweet potato plants for shipment or for sale, they are "drawn" from the bed and tied in bunches of 100 each with soft string. Sweet potato plants will not withstand excessive moisture and should always be packed while the tops are dry. A little damp moss or paper may be placed in the crate or basket and the roots bedded in it, but the tops should remain dry and have free ventilation. If the roots of sweet potato plants are carefully puddled without the mixture coming in contact with the tops, they will keep in good condition for a week or ten days.
- 70. Preparation of Land.—Thecharacter of soil devoted to sweet potato culture is generally quite easy to prepare. In preparing land for planting to sweet potatoes the plowing and fitting are practically the same as for corn. It should be borne in mind, however, that the work necessary for thorough preparation will be well repaid by the increased ease in handling the crop later. It is always desirable that a crop like sweet potatoes be grown as a part of the regular farm rotation. In the northern portion of the sweet-potato- growing area the crop will occupy the land the entire growing season, and a three or four year rotation should be practiced. Where the climate will permit, a crop of early snap beans, peas, or cabbage may precede the sweet potatoes, but in any case the land should not be planted to sweet potatoes oftener than once every three years. A good rotation is to devote the land to corn one year, sowing crimson clover in the alleys between the rows at the time the corn is given the last cultivation. During the following spring the crimson clover should be turned under and sweet potatoes planted; then in the autumn, after the potatoes are harvested, the land may be plowed, fitted and sown to rye or winter oats with plenty of grass seed. In this way a crop of grain may be obtained during the time that the grass is becoming established. Allow the land to remain in grass one or two years and then repeat the rotation. Where corn is followed by sweet potatoes in the rotation, stable manure should be applied while fitting the land for the corn, and commercial fertilizers should be applied with the sweet potato crop. The usual depth of plowing in preparing land for corn will prove satisfactory for sweet potatoes. The fact that sweet potatoes are not planted in the field until quite late in the spring makes it possible for the grower to select a time when conditions are favorable for the preparation of the land. Plowing may be deferred until the soil has become sufficiently dry to break up fine and mellow. It is important that the land should be harrowed within a few hours after plowing; further fitting may be deferred until later, and if the soil is inclined to be lumpy the work of pulverizing may best be done shortly after a shower and while the lumps are mellow. When the primary work of preparation is finished, the soil should be mellow to a depth of 6 or 7 inches and the surface smooth and even. Subsequent handling of the soil preparatory to planting will depend upon whether ridge or level culture is to be followed. Preparation for Planting.—After plowing and fitting the land it is generally allowed to lie several days before being put in shape for planting. If level culture is to be practiced, the only thing necessary will be to run the harrow over the soil once and then mark in both directions at the desired distances
- 71. for planting. Themarking is generally done with either a one-horse plow, a flat-soled marker, or a disk marker. The disk marker is well adapted to this work, as it throws up a slight ridge which furnishes fresh earth in which to plant. Some growers who practice level culture mark the ground with a small one-horse plow and throw up a slight ridge upon which to plant; behind the plow a roller is used to compress this ridge to a low, flat elevation. Where the more universal ridge method of planting is employed the soil is thrown up by means of a turning plow or a disk machine. The ridges should be made at least one week before planting, in order that the soil may become settled and compact. The majority of sweet-potato growers make the ridges whenever the land is in good condition to work and then either roll or drag the tops just ahead of the planters. Setting the Plants.—The success of the crop depends largely upon the way in which the plants start after being removed from the bed and set in the field or garden. Practical growers always plan to set the plants during a "season" or period when the conditions are suitable to a quick start into growth, either just before a rain or as soon afterward as the soil can be worked. The method of setting will depend entirely upon local conditions and the acreage to be grown, the essential features, however, being to get the roots in contact with moist earth and the soil firmly pressed about the plants. The use of water around the roots of the plants is desirable under most circumstances, as it not only moistens the soil but assists in settling it about the roots. A large quantity of water is not necessary, one-half pint to each plant being generally considered sufficient. Where level culture is practiced, the plants are set from 24 to 30 inches apart in each direction. On the eastern shore of Virginia the greater portion of the crop is planted 24 inches apart each way, requiring about 11,000 plants to an acre. By planting 30 inches apart each way, only about 7,000 plants are required to set one acre. Where the crop is grown on ridges it is customary to have the ridges from 36 to 42 inches apart from center to center and to place the plants 14 to 18 inches apart in the row. By this method an acre will require from 8,000 to 12,500 plants. An acre of good sweet potato land will readily support 9,000 to 11,000 plants, and the number most commonly planted by the several methods will fall within these figures. Cultivation.—The methods of handling a crop of sweet potatoes do not differ materially from those employed with ordinary farm and garden crops. Within a few days after planting, a sweep or one-horse plow should be run in the alleys to break out the strip of earth left in ridging. The loose earth in the
- 72. alleys should beworked toward the rows until a broad, flat ridge is formed upon which a small-tooth cultivator can be run quite close to the plants. After each rain or irrigation the soil should receive a shallow cultivation, and during dry weather frequent cultivations are necessary in order to retain moisture. About two hand hoeings are generally necessary in order to keep the rows free from weeds and the soil loose around the plants. As hand labor is expensive, it should be the aim to perform the greater part of the work by means of horse tools. Where sweet potatoes are planted in check rows and worked in both directions the hand work required will be reduced to a minimum, but a certain amount of hoeing is always necessary. When the vines begin to interfere with further cultivation the crop may be "laid by," i. e., given a final working in which the soil is drawn well up over the ridges and the vines then allowed to take full possession of the land. To do this it is often necessary to turn the vines first to one side of the row and then to the other by means of a stick or a wooden rake. After "laying by," very little attention is required until time for harvesting the crop. Harvesting.—The harvesting and marketing of sweet potatoes direct from the field begins about the middle of August and continues until the crop is all disposed of or placed in storage for winter marketing. During the early part of the harvesting season the yield is light, but as a rule the prices paid are good. The supply for home use and those potatoes that are to be kept in storage should not be dug until just before frost. In the localities where frosts do not occur until quite late in the season the sweet potatoes ripen and the vines show a slight tinge of yellow when ready for handling. Effect of frost.—The foliage of the sweet potato is very tender and is easily injured by frost. A light frosting of the leaves will do no harm, but should the vines become frozen before digging they should be cut away to prevent the frozen sap passing down to the roots and injuring them. Where there is a heavy yield of potatoes the soil is frequently cracked or the ends of the potatoes protrude above ground and are liable to injury from severe frost. If on account of rainy weather or for any other cause the potatoes can not be dug before frost or immediately afterwards, the vines should be cut away and the potatoes removed at the first opportunity. If cold weather continues it may be necessary to draw a little extra soil over the hills to protect the potatoes, or the vines may be piled in a ridge over the row. A very slight frosting of the potatoes will cause them to decay within a short time after being placed in storage.
- 73. It is desirablethat the soil should be comparatively dry at the time of harvesting sweet potatoes, and bright, drying weather is essential to the proper handling of the crop. Sweet potatoes differ from Irish potatoes in that they are not so easily injured by sunlight. However, they should not be exposed for any length of time if the sunshine is very warm. During the handling in the field it should be the purpose to remove all soil and surface moisture from the potatoes. Sweet potatoes should not lie exposed upon the surface of the ground during the night. Grading and Packing.—In sorting sweet potatoes preparatory to packing, about four grades are recognized, as fancy, primes, seconds and culls. Those packed as fancy include only the most select, both in size and shape. The primes include all those adapted to general first-class trade, while the seconds include the smaller and more irregular stock which goes to a lower priced trade. The culls are not marketed unless good stock is exceedingly scarce, and as a rule are used for feeding to hogs. Sweet potatoes are usually shipped in barrels holding eleven pecks each. Some markets require that the barrels be faced and headed, while for others the tops are slightly rounded and covered with burlap. Small lots of extra-fancy sweet potatoes are sometimes shipped in one-bushel crates having raised tops; also in patent folding crates. Throughout the process of handling care must be exercised to see that the sweet potatoes do not become bruised, for upon this their shipping and keeping qualities greatly depend. Storage.—Unlike most perishable products, the sweet potato requires warmth and a dry atmosphere while in storage. The method of storing will depend both upon the locality and the quantity of potatoes to be cared for. The temperature and conditions of a rather cool living room are admirably adapted for keeping sweet potatoes intended for home use in the North, while in the South they may be placed in pits or stored in outdoor cellars. The home supply may be placed in crates and stored in a loft over the kitchen part of the dwelling. Sweet potatoes should not be stored in bags or in barrels without ventilation. The seed stock for planting the following year should be selected and stored separately in a small bin. As the potatoes are separated into their respective grades they are put into baskets and carried to the bins. Some growers prefer to do the grading in the field, but this necessitates the employment of a larger percentage of expert labor and delays the work of getting the potatoes hauled to the storehouse. Women and children can pick up the potatoes in the field, and two or three experienced men can do the
- 74. sorting and gradingat the house in a much shorter time and in a more satisfactory manner. Before starting to fill a bin, 2 or 3 inches of dry pine needles, straw, or chaff should be placed upon the floor. Beginning at the back of the bin the potatoes are piled to a depth of 30 or 40 inches until the entire floor space is covered and a number of slats are required to be placed across the doorway opening. A few grain bags filled with straw should be placed upon the potatoes at intervals from front to back of the bin, and upon these planks on which the men may walk while carrying in the next layer of potatoes may be laid. In this way a bin may be filled to a depth of 8 or 9 feet by about three layers. By dumping them in layers the potatoes have an opportunity to become thoroughly dry before a new layer is placed over them. Temperature and Ventilation of Storage Houses.—Two or three days before beginning to bring in the potatoes, the storage house should be thoroughly cleaned and the heating appliance put in working order and started, in order to have the house both warm and dry when the crop comes in. Throughout the time of storing and for about ten days after the potatoes are all in the bins a temperature of 85° or 90° F. should be maintained in the house, with plenty of ventilation. This constitutes what is known as the sweating or curing process, and the keeping qualities of the potatoes depend upon the thoroughness with which this part of the work is done. Wood-burning stoves are frequently employed for heating sweet potato storage houses, but a hot- water boiler with coils of pipes along the walls of the building is very satisfactory. After the crop is all in and thoroughly cured, the temperature of the storage house should be gradually lowered and may vary between 55° and 65° F., but considerable ventilation should be maintained. Sweet potatoes should be handled very carefully and as few times as possible, the essentials to good keeping being a reasonable degree of warmth, a dry atmosphere, and careful handling. Great care should be taken with the seed for the next year's planting to see that it is carefully handled and properly stored. While a temperature of 80° or 85° F. is required to properly start the seed into growth in the spring, a higher temperature during a long period of time in storage is liable to injure or even kill the buds. Potatoes intended for seed should not be stored in too great quantities, and where but a small supply is needed they can often be kept buried in dry sand after having first been thoroughly cured. The sand used for this purpose should be baked to insure the driving off of moisture, and may be placed around the potatoes while slightly warm. In
- 75. controlling the ventilationof the storage house during the winter months, outside air should be admitted only when quite dry and when its temperature is lower than that of the air in the storage house. If warm, moist air is admitted considerable moisture will be deposited upon the potatoes, thus injuring their keeping qualities. Loss from Shrinkage in Storage.—Under proper storage conditions sweet potatoes will shrink from 6 to 10 per cent, but the loss in weight will be greater if the temperature of the house is carried too high. If the potatoes are not mature when dug from the field the loss from shrinkage may be as much as 15 per cent, and immature stock should be marketed early in the winter. Marketing During Winter Months.—For marketing from outside pits it is desirable to have the quantity stored in one pit small enough to permit of all being removed at one time. The potatoes may be removed from outdoor cellars as desired. In marketing from heated storage houses the potatoes should not be disturbed until they are barreled or crated, and then they should be placed directly upon the market and sold without delay. When shipping during cold weather the barrels should at least be lined with paper, and a covering of heavy brown paper over the outside of the barrels will form a safeguard. If the potatoes are shipped in carload lots during the winter the cars should be either of the regular refrigerator type or felt lined. Varieties.—Of the large number of varieties of the sweet potato there are not more than ten that are now of great commercial importance in the United States. For the markets that require a dry, mealy-fleshed potato those varieties belonging to the Jersey group are suitable. For the southern trade and where a moist-fleshed potato is desired those commonly designated as yams are in demand. Among the Jerseys that are extensively grown are the Big-Stem Jersey, the Yellow Jersey and the Red Jersey. The principal varieties of the yam group are the Southern Queen, the Pumpkin Yam, the Georgia, the Florida, and the Red Bermuda. Of the varieties mentioned there are a large number of special strains, known under many local names. In the selection of varieties for home use one must be governed largely by locality. As a rule those of the Jersey group will thrive farther north than those of the so-called yam types. For market purposes the particular variety or strain grown in the vicinity should first be selected, and afterward other varieties may be experimented with in a small way.—(F. B. 255, 295, 324; Tuskegee E. S. 2, 10, 17; Ariz. E. S. 86; N. Mex. E. S. 70; S. Car. E. S. 5, 136; S. Dak. E. S. 91.)
- 76. SWISS CHARD. The parteaten is not the root, but the midrib of the leaf which is prepared much the same as asparagus. The flavor is distinct from that of the ordinary beet root. Give the same culture as required for beets. The soil should be richer. In the fall cover with straw. This will aid an early growth and help blanch the stems. This is a very valuable plant and should be cultivated more extensively. THYME. The leaves are used for seasoning, and a tea is also made therefrom for nervous headache. TOMATOES. Because of the tropical origin of the tomato it requires a long season for its growth and development, and on this account it is necessary in the Northern States, in order to secure paying crops, to resort to methods which lengthen the growing season. It is much easier for the gardener to accomplish this while the plant is small than when it is large, and because early fruits are as a rule more valuable than late ones it is of advantage to the gardener to secure his crop as early in the season as practicable. The season is, therefore, lengthened at the beginning rather than at the end. This is accomplished by sowing seeds in hotbeds or greenhouses several weeks in advance of the time when they could be safely planted in the open. The Tomato as a Field Crop at the North.—East of the Mississippi River and north of the latitude of Washington, D. C., the tomato is handled as an annual, the seeds being sown in hotbeds about the middle of March. The young plants, as soon as they have developed their first true leaves, are transplanted to stand about 2 inches apart each way and are allowed to develop in these quarters until they have attained a height of from 4 to 6 inches and the leaves begin to crowd considerably. They are then transplanted to pots, 3 or 4 inches in diameter. Training Plants to Stakes.—For earliest returns it is desirable to train forced plants to a single stem by tying them to a stake 4 or 5 feet in height. These stakes should be driven firmly into the ground beside the plants and the plants carefully tied to them to prevent whipping and to keep the fruits off
- 77. the ground. Allside shoots should be kept pinched out and only the central leading stem allowed to develop to bring larger results. If the plants are to be trained in this way they can be set from 18 inches to 2 feet apart in the row, and about 3½ to 4 feet between the rows. Training Plants on Frames.—Another plan sometimes followed in the training of tomatoes is to place a flaring frame, about 18 inches square at the base and 24 inches square at the top over the plants before they begin to spread. The shoots as they become heavy with fruit fall over against the sides of the rack and are prevented from coming in contact with the earth. For a kitchen garden where but few plants are grown this is a very satisfactory plan. The plants can be set somewhat closer than is the case where no supports are provided. For commercial plantations, however, the cost of the frames is prohibitive. The common commercial practice is to place the plants about 4 feet apart each way in check rows so as to allow them to be cultivated in both directions. Under intensive cultivation in a small garden, however, the first method, that of tying the vines to stakes, will be found very satisfactory. Where tomatoes are grown on a large scale and where the product brings only a small price per bushel, expensive methods of handling and training can not be profitably followed. The common practice in growing tomatoes for the general market and for canning purposes in localities north of New York City is to sow the seed very thinly in a hotbed about March 15 and allow the plants to grow slowly without transplanting them until they can be put in the field about June 1. The plants, even with the most careful attention, when grown under these conditions will become long and thin stemmed, with a small tuft of leaves at the top. Setting the Plants.—Plants more than a foot high which have been grown under these conditions should be treated somewhat as follows: Instead of attempting to set the plant deeply and maintain it in an upright position, remove all except three or four of the top-most leaves about the growing point. Dig a shallow trench along the row—a trench 3 or 4 inches deep— slightly sloping from a deep point at one end to the surface of the ground at the other. Place the bare stem of the tomato and the root in this trench, with the root in the deepest portion, cover the stem throughout its length with fresh soil, and pack this firmly. Under these conditions the plant will take root throughout the length of the buried stem, and in a short time the added root system which is thus given the plant will force it into vigorous growth. Plants of this character which are to be grown on an extensive scale are never
- 78. trained. They areallowed to grow at will, and the fruits are gathered as they ripen without special attention to keep them off the ground or otherwise to care for them. Length of Season.—The season of fruit production is longer in the higher than in the lower latitudes. This is a rather interesting and unexpected condition. Normally one would expect to find that the tomato would begin maturing its fruit earlier and would continue bearing longer in the latitude of the city of Washington than it would in the latitude of Boston; but this is not the case. Tomatoes in the latitude of Washington and south of this point come into bearing, quickly produce a heavy flush of fruit, and then refuse to do more, and in order to have a continuous supply throughout the season it is necessary for market gardeners and truckers to plant seeds in succession so as to keep up a continuous supply. Fertilizers.—Since the tomato is grown exclusively for its fruit, those fertilizers which induce a large growth of plant and foliage are not desirable in the production of this crop. Soils vary greatly in regard to the quantity of available plant food they contain. The use of a fertilizer is determined largely by the character, mechanical condition, and composition of the soil. If a soil is deficient in all the essential elements of plant food—nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid—the application of any one or even two of them will not materially influence the yield of the crop. On the other hand, on soils deficient only in potash or phosphoric acid, or both, little would be gained by adding nitrogen, which is already in excess, to the other element or elements to be applied. Economy of operation, as well as the general effect upon the soil, must also be considered. This may be influenced by the character of the season, but should be based on the increased yield and increased net receipts of the crop. As a general rule, readily soluble, "quick-acting" fertilizers which produce an early growth and early ripening of the crop are most desirable. Heavy dressings of stable manure tend to produce too much vine, and are seldom or never employed. If stable manure is used it is at a moderate rate, usually not more than one or two shovelfuls to a plant. This, if well decomposed and thoroughly incorporated with the soil, is very stimulating to the young plant and consequently very beneficial. Any fertilizer used should be applied, in part at least, at the time the plants are transplanted to the field. Cultivation.—As soon as the young seedling plants from the hotbed or greenhouse are transferred to the field they should be given clean cultivation with implements which stir the surface of the soil but do not produce ridges
- 79. or furrows. Whenthe plants are set in check rows 4 feet apart each way it is possible in field culture to keep the plantation almost free from weeds by the use of horse hoes. If, however, the plants are set so that cultivation can be carried on only in one direction, hand hoeing will be necessary to keep down weeds between the plants in the row. Where land is not expensive, and where labor costs heavily, the cost of producing a crop of tomatoes can be decidedly lessened by planting in check rows and carrying on the cultivation by horsepower. The grower should bear in mind, however, that the object of cultivation is not merely to kill weeds. The destruction of weeds is an important factor and in itself sufficient to justify clean culture, but the preservation of a soil mulch for the purpose of husbanding the moisture of the soil during periods of drought is of even greater value. With care in the choice of implements both results can be attained with the same expenditure of labor. Harvesting and Marketing.—The fruits should be gathered two or three times a week if the tomato is grown as a truck crop. When used for canning purposes the harvesting periods need not be quite so close, and when the fruits are to be shipped some distance they should be gathered as soon as partially colored, instead of allowing them to become colored on the vine. The fruit of the tomato is velvet green up to the time the ripening process begins, and at this stage, if the products are to be shipped long distances, the fruits should be harvested. For home markets, however, the fruits should be allowed to ripen upon the plant. In harvesting, none except sound fruits of a similar stage of maturity should be harvested and packed in any one receptacle. Leaky fruits and deformed fruits should be rejected. In packing tomatoes for the market, those that are symmetrical in form and uniform in size and of a like degree of ripeness should be selected for filling any one receptacle. Varieties for the North.—There are a large number of sorts of tomatoes, each one possessing some points of merit or difference which distinguish it from all others. These differences enable the intelligent cultivator to select sorts for special purposes, as well as for special soils and climates. The varying demands of the markets and the different soil and climatic conditions presented in the various sections of the United States where the tomato is grown can only be satisfied by a variety list as variable as are the conditions. Early ripening sorts are frequently irregular in shape, have comparatively thin walls, large seed cavities, and numerous seeds. The fruit is apt to color
- 80. and ripen unevenly,remaining green around the stem, or to contain a hard green core. Later-ripening sorts, while not all superior to the others, have as a rule thicker and firmer walls, smaller seed cavities, and few seeds. The most highly developed varieties now make few seeds and ripen evenly. These characteristics of the fruits are important factors in determining their fitness for special purposes. Medium-sized, smooth, spherical fruits, which ripen evenly and have small seed cavities and thick walls are especially suited to long-distance shipment. These qualities should enter into every sort selected to the greatest possible degree consistent with earliness, lateness, heavy yield, or any other special quality which gives the variety a marked commercial advantage. The following list is made up of varieties possessing some markedly distinct character, such as earliness, great size, purple, red, or yellow color, dwarf habit, etc.: Early Ripening Varieties.—Sparks' Earliana, Atlantic Prize, Early Freedom. Large-Fruited Varieties.—Ponderosa, Beefsteak. Purple-Fruited Varieties.—Beauty, Acme, Imperial. Red-Fruited Varieties.—Favorite (late), Honor Bright, Matchless, Stone, Royal Red, New Jersey. Yellow-Fruited Varieties.—Golden Queen, Lemon Blush. Dwarf or Tree Types.—Dwarf Champion, Station Upright Tree, Aristocrat. Potato-Leaf Types.—Livingston's Potato-Leaf, Mikado, Turner's Hybrid. The Tomato as a Field Crop at the South.—Commercial tomato growing in the Southern States is almost exclusively confined to the production of tomatoes at a season when they can not be grown at the North, except in greenhouses. On this account the commercial production of this crop is restricted to areas where there is very little, if any, freezing during the winter months. Time of Planting.—At the extreme southern limit of the commercial cultivation of this crop in Florida the plants are grown so as to be ready for setting in the open about December 1. The date of seed sowing advances as the cultivation of the crop progresses northward, so that in northern Florida the seeds are sown early in January and the young plants placed in the field in March. Where frost conditions do not form barriers against the production of seedling plants in the open, the seed beds for the young plants are
- 81. prepared in somesheltered situation where partial shade can be given and where the seed bed can be frequently watered. The young plants, as soon as they have attained the proper size—that is, from 6 to 10 inches in height—are transferred to the field in practically the same manner as are the hotbed- grown plants produced for general field culture at the North, and except for a specially early crop they are not transplanted or potted. The young seedlings in the cold frame will require careful attention in the way of watering and ventilation; otherwise many plants will be lost by damping off or from sun- scorching during bright days unless the sash are lifted or entirely removed. Yield.—The yield of fruit in the South, under the conditions mentioned, is much less than it is in regions having the long growing periods characteristic of higher latitudes. Yields vary from 75 to 250 bushels to the acre, but the high price obtained for the fruits which are thus produced at a season when the sole competition comes from the products of northern greenhouses renders the crop, when well handled, very remunerative. Soil.—The soil which is preferred for the production of this crop is one which contains a comparatively high percentage of sand. In this region sandy loam or a sandy soil is preferred to bottom land for the cultivation of tomatoes. An area with a gentle slope to the south is considered more desirable than that with other exposure. If a wind-break can be secured along the north and west sides of the area very early crops can frequently be preserved through a wind-storm when the temperature, while not low enough to freeze the plants, will, when accompanied by a high wind, chill and destroy them. Varieties for the South.—In the South, where the tomato is handled as a short-season crop, certain varieties are found to give best results in certain districts. Along the Atlantic seaboard the growers of tomatoes use such sorts as Beauty, Stone, Perfection, Aristocrat, and Paragon. In the truck regions of eastern Texas the Dwarf Champion is perhaps more universally grown than any other variety, but in this same region the Success is found to be a more profitable late-season or fall crop than the Champion. Forcing Tomatoes.—In the forcing of plants, which means the growing of a plant out of its natural season and in an artificial environment, the first requirement for success is a properly constructed protective structure or greenhouse. Because of the tropical nature of the tomato more than ordinary provisions must be made in order to meet the demands of this crop. In the forcing of most vegetables a lower temperature and benches without bottom heat are satisfactory, but with the tomato the house must be piped so as to
- 82. maintain a minimumtemperature of 65 degrees F., and the benches should be so constructed as to admit of applying bottom heat. Type of Greenhouse.—The type of house that is generally employed for the forcing of tomatoes is the even-span or a three-fourths span house. If the even-span house is used it is preferable to have the ridge running north and south; if the three-fourths span house is employed it is best to have the long side sloping toward the south. The tomato when grown in the forcing house, because of its long fruiting season and the fact that its clusters of fruit are borne one above the other, requires a considerable amount of head room. Low houses are therefore not desirable in the production of this crop. The side walls of a house designed for the forcing of tomatoes should be at least 4 feet in height, and the distance from the top of the middle bench to the ridge of the house should be at least 10 feet. Soil.—The soil for the production of this crop should be well decomposed loam, made, if possible, from sods from an old pasture, the soil of which is a rather light clay loam or a heavy sandy loam. With this should be incorporated about one-fourth its bulk of well-rotted stable manure, preferably cow manure. By composting these two materials for from four to six months before they are required for use a very satisfactory soil for the forcing of tomatoes will result. Care should be exercised to allow the soil that is used for forcing tomatoes to be frozen each year. The depth of soil required for the successful growth of tomatoes is considerably more than that employed for roses, although the temperature and other requirements are very similar to those demanded by the rose. While 4 or 5 inches of soil are adequate to produce a crop of roses, the soil for tomatoes should be at least 6 or 8 inches in depth; 8 inches is preferable. It is not well to allow the soil to remain in the greenhouse longer than a single season. It becomes somewhat exhausted and is likely to become infested with injurious forms of life, particularly nematodes, which cause root-knots upon the tomato plants, thus defeating the work of the gardener. This trouble, however, can be easily overcome by subjecting the soil to freezing. Seedling Plants.—Two types of plants are used for forcing purposes— seedling plants and cutting plants. The former are, of course, seedlings grown from seed especially sown for the purpose of raising plants to be grown in a greenhouse. It is customary in the latitude of New York and northward to sow the seed for a forcing crop of tomatoes in the month of August. The young seedling plants, as soon as they develop the first true leaves, are then transplanted from the seed bed to small pots, preferably 3-inch pots. They
- 83. are planted deeplyat this time and are kept growing rapidly but not sufficiently to produce a soft, succulent growth. As soon as the 3-inch pots are filled with roots the plants are shifted to 4-inch pots, and when the plants have attained a height of 12 or 15 inches, and have developed their first blossoms, they are usually placed on the benches of the greenhouse, where they are to produce their crop. The plants are then set 15 or 18 inches apart each way in a soil prepared as previously described. Cutting Plants.—Cuttings should be taken from strong, healthy, vigorous- growing plants in the field, and placed in the cutting bed about the last of August, where they will quickly take root. As soon as the roots have developed to a length of from one-half to 1 inch the young plants are shifted to 3 or 4 inch pots, where they are allowed to develop until the blossom buds are well formed or the blossoms have expanded, when they should be planted on the bench where they are to mature their crop, in like manner as noted for seedling plants. Pollination.—In the field, where the tomato plants are exposed to the action of wind and to the visits of insects, no special attention is necessary in order to secure the pollination of the flowers and the setting of the fruits. Under the conditions existing in a greenhouse, however, it is necessary to artificially pollinate the flowers of the tomato; otherwise only a very small percentage of fruits will set and the object of the work will be defeated. It is therefore necessary to allow the temperature of the house to become quite high in the middle of the day on bright sunshiny days while the plants are in bloom, and to pass through the house at this time with a little stick, 18 inches or 2 feet in length, with which to strike the supporting strings or wires and thus to set the plants in motion and liberate the pollen and cause it to fertilize the flowers. A more satisfactory way, however, is to use a watch glass, 1¼ or 1-12 inches in diameter, embedded in putty, at the end of a handle composed of a light material, preferably white pine, which shall be 12 or 18 inches long. Grasp this spatula in the left hand and, with a light pine stick of equal length in the right hand, pass through the house, tapping each open flower lightly with the wand, at the same time holding the watch glass under the flowers to catch the pollen. Before removing the watch glass from this position lift it sufficiently to cause the stigma of the flower to dip into the pollen contained in the glass. By carefully going through the house from day to day during the blooming period nearly 90 per cent of the blossoms which develop can be caused to set. During dark, cloudy, stormy weather, however, a smaller percentage of plants will be fertilized than during bright, comparatively dry weather. The conditions in the greenhouse can not be modified so as to
- 84. entirely overcome theadverse conditions existing on the outside, although with care much can be done in this direction. Manuring.—It is desirable to keep plants of the tomato which are designed for forcing growing at a moderately rapid rate throughout the whole forcing period. Growth should be strong and robust at all times, yet slow enough to produce close-jointed plants which bear their fruit clusters at near intervals. There is considerable difference in varieties of tomatoes in this respect, and those which naturally bear their fruit clusters close together should be selected for forcing purposes. The manuring of the plants should, therefore, take a form which will be conducive to this strong, vigorous growth, yet not sufficiently heavy to produce plants which run to wood at the expense of fruit bearing. Ventilating and Watering.—If careful attention is given to keeping the plants in a healthy condition by never allowing them to suffer from overwatering or from becoming too dry, and if sufficient ventilation is given without allowing draughts of cold air upon the plants, much can be done to prevent the development of mildew. If the plants are to be sprayed it should be done once a week or once in ten days, and then only in the mornings of bright days. Ordinarily, however, the atmosphere of the house should be kept dry rather than moist, as a very moist atmosphere is liable to produce a soft, succulent growth, which brings on a disease known to gardeners as œdema. This, however, can be prevented by care in keeping the house rather dry. The temperature of the house, too, should not be allowed to fluctuate through too wide a range. The night temperature for tomatoes should range between 65° and 68° F., while the day temperature should run from 70° to 80° F. Varieties for Forcing.—The comparatively limited use of tomatoes for forcing purposes in this country has not resulted in the development of many sorts especially suited for this purpose. The Lorillard is the one American sort which is now almost exclusively confined to this use, and it is perhaps more generally cultivated in forcing houses than any other single variety. The Tomato as a Field Crop for Canneries.—Owing to the fact that in canned tomatoes it is difficult for the average consumer to note any deficiencies in the appearance of the original fruit, many labor under the delusion that any variety will answer for this purpose. This is a mistaken idea, as quality in canned goods is now an important factor, and it is quite as necessary that a good quality of product should be used for canning as for growing for the early or general market, although from the field side it is natural that tonnage should be a primary consideration.
- 85. In the matterof varieties, as in the case of early tomatoes, too much dependence should not be placed upon the name or upon the fact that a neighboring farmer secures good results from a given variety. There are so many variations in the character of soils, even in the same locality, which exert an influence upon the size and quality of crop that the best variety is usually one that is, in part at least, developed by the individual grower. The main point is to select varieties that produce large, smooth, solid fruits, which do not remain green or crack on the shaded side near the stem. Those which possess size as their chief characteristic are frequently of poor quality, as they are likely to possess large seed cavities and to ripen unevenly. The conditions in some sections are such as to prevent the canners from making as much distinction between good and poor varieties as they would like. Canneries are in a measure obliged to receive all that come, unless they can control absolutely the land upon which the crop is grown. The variation in the quality of the crops of different farmers will make a difference of from 25 to 40 cans on a ton of fruit, or from 6 to 10 per cent—a very considerable item. In good seasons and with good fruit 400 cans may be regarded as the maximum number to be derived from a ton, though late in the season, and with poor varieties, as already stated, the pack from a ton is very much less. The interests of the grower and the canner are really identical in this regard. An improvement in the quality of the fruit will result in an improvement of the canned product and a consequent increase in the price of both the raw and manufactured products. Less expense is involved in growing suitable plants for cannery purposes than for other crops. This is due to the fact that earliness is not so important a factor as it is in the market garden crop. Fertilizing and Cultivating the Soil.—In manuring and fertilizing, the character of the crop and the season of its growth should be remembered. Hence, recommendations that were made for an early crop do not apply in all cases except perhaps on the poorer classes of soils. In the first place, the plants are not put in the soil until summer, when the conditions are most favorable for the rapid change of organic forms of nitrogen into nitrates, and thus, if the soil has been manured or is naturally rich in vegetable matter, the additional application of nitrogen in immediately available forms is not so important. In the second place, the object of the growth is not early maturity, but the largest yield of mature fruit. Setting and Cultivating the Plants.—The plants should be set from 4 to 4½ feet apart each way and cultivation should begin immediately. The first cultivation should be deep, in order to conserve the moisture, and each
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