Montford Reforms

Initially, the Congress had two major groups. The Nationalists or Extremists (represented by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, and Sri Aurobindo) and the Moderates (represented by Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Dadabhai Naoroji) had differing views on gaining independence. The Nationalists were not happy with the ‘prayers, pleas, and petitions’ mode of fighting the British. They were more into direct action and formulated the Swaraj policy, crystallised clearly in the writings of Sri Aurobindo. This was a decade before Gandhi launched his movement. The Nationalists (or the Extremists) broke away from the Moderates in the 1907 Surat session of the Congress.

The colonial government introduced the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms (Montford in brief) in 1918 to gradually introduce self-governing institutions in British India. Montagu was the Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1922, and Lord Chelmsford was the Viceroy of India between 1916 and 1921. These constitutional reforms formed the basis of the Government of India Act of 1919. This was the outcome of one of the promises to India for gradual independence for the help rendered during the First World War. Many saw this as a move by the British to defuse militant nationalism and allow the moderates to come to the fore.

The important features of this act were that the Imperial Legislative Council was now to consist of two houses: the Central Legislative Assembly and the Council of State. The provinces were to follow the Dual Government System, or dyarchy. The provincial governments were divided into two parts: reserved subjects (under the direct control of the British government) and transferred subjects (under the control of Indian ministers). The reserved subjects included matters like defence, foreign affairs, and finance, while the transferred subjects included education, health, and local government.

However, most posts were by appointment, and only a small percentage of the population was eligible to vote or stand for elections. The most contentious point was the system of separate electorates for different religious communities, along with special provisions to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. This was a further communalization of politics. The Governor-General of each province, an appointee by the India Office, had the right to veto or validate any bill against the wishes of the partially elected council. Similarly, the Viceroy could override votes made by the Legislative Assembly. The Congress rejected it for the limited scope of self-rule and the communal electorate system, while the Muslim League supported it.

With the Montagu report of 1918, there was further division in Congress. The schism led to the even more moderate leaders forming the “Indian National Liberal Federation” in 1919. Surendra Nath Banerjee was the founder of this Federation, and its prominent leaders were Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, and M. R. Jayakar. Mazumdar says that Surendranath Banerji, the president, offered a weak justification for holding a separate Moderate Conference. Surendranath explains the difference between the Moderates and the other Congress leaders by saying,

“Our guiding principle is to cooperate when we can and criticise when we must. It is not ‘criticise when we can; cooperate when we must’.”

Mazumdar writes that this was a distorted view of Congress leaders like Tilak, who always upheld the principle of “Responsive Cooperation.”

The newly started Moderate organisation in Bengal held a Conference of the Bengal Moderates on August 30. Mazumdar writes that it is reasonable to hold that some of the Moderate leaders had given to Montagu the idea of organising a separate party to continue propaganda in favour of his proposals. Though this seems ungenerous, many facts point towards this view. The proof that Montagu regarded such a secession as an essential part of his scheme is in his own writings.

The conclusion, therefore, seems almost irresistible that the Moderate leaders seceded from the Congress at the suggestion, if not at the bidding, of Montagu, who regarded it as sine qua non for successfully launching the reforms. Mazumdar writes,

“The expulsion of the Extremists from the Congress in the 1907 Surat session and the secession of the Moderates from the Congress in 1918 were both due to the British policy of rallying the Moderates as against the Extremists, the strings pulled by Morley in one case and Montagu in the other.”

The Terror of The Gurkhas

Indians tend to be unaware that the Gurkhas formed a formidable fighting force in service of the British to keep Indians in fear. Sri Aurobindo mentions the violence of the Gurkhas against hapless Indians in his writings. Mazumdar mentions in one place the serious Gurkha outrage in Chittagong (Bengal). On October 20, 1921, the Court sentenced Congress leader J. M. Sen Gupta and seventeen others to rigorous imprisonment. Many people gathered at the railway station that very evening as news came that the transport would be by train. A big public procession proceeded there.

There was no disturbance of any kind, but suddenly a band of Gurkhas began to “assault the people right and left indiscriminately, mainly with the butt-end of the rifle.” As the people fled on all sides, the Gurkhas chased them all along and struck them all the way. The Gurkhas also attacked several carriages and struck severe blows upon their occupants, including a Zamindar who was also an Honorary Magistrate. One Gurkha party also fell upon the processionists and struck them. Together, they wounded more than one hundred people, some severely.

Birkenhead’s Speech In 1925 Which Clearly Defined the British Policy

Lord Birkenhead was the Secretary of State for India from 1924 to 1928. As a historical landmark of British policy towards India, even as late as 1925, Birkenhead’s speech is of great importance. Mazumdar cites a few extracts to give an idea of the mentality of British leaders:

“Of the 440 millions of British citizens, who constitute the British Empire, 320 million are Indian. The loss of India would mean a shrinkage in the Empire from 13,250,000 to less than 11,500,000 square miles. The fiduciary obligations which we undertook, in relation to the complex peoples of India, embracing as they do a population of 320 million, practising nine great religions and speaking 130 different speeches, have not been unfaithfully discharged. To talk of India as an entity is as absurd as to talk of Europe as an entity, yet the nationalist spirit which has created most of our difficulties in the last few years is based upon the aspirations and claims of a Nationalist India. There never has been such a nation. Whether there ever will be such a nation, the future alone can show…. If we withdraw from India tomorrow, the immediate consequences would be a struggle…between the Moslems and the Hindu population.”

This British policy towards India in 1925 continued for the next fifteen years. There was no vital difference between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in this respect. Lord Oliver wholeheartedly endorsed the views of Birkenhead and felt sure that Birkenhead’s speech “would be a message of encouragement and sympathy to India for which the community would be grateful to him.”

Mazumdar writes that Churchill dinned into the ears of the British public that India maintained one out of every five in Britain and that England could maintain her position of supremacy only if she could control the resources of India to her benefit. So, there was a deadly struggle in the British mind between the abstract love of liberty and the instinct of self-preservation, writes Mazumdar. He continues,

“It was the pitting of the two most powerful forces in human nature against each other, and the result was a grim tragedy. However, the hammer blows of Hitler forced Britain to relax her grip on India.”

The British Period of The Early 20^th Century in India Summed Up

Mazumdar writes that, like autocracies in every age and in every part of the world, the Government of India continued a system of ruthless oppression in the name of law and order. Between 1908 and 1947, India’s governance was governed by a set of lawless laws. The bureaucracy resisted every demand in legislatures for the repeal of repressive laws, saying that it was the only way to maintain law and order. This only pointed to a failure of administration.

The Bengal Ordinance was a criminal law ordinance implemented to suppress revolutionary nationalism by the Jugantar group against the Raj in Bengal after 1922. Following the collapse of the nonviolent movement, the remnants of the Anushilan Samiti regathered under the leadership of Surya Sen and carried out a string of revolutionary attacks. The ordinance extended the extraordinary powers of the Regulation of 1818. It removed the rights of Habeas corpus, reintroduced indefinite and arbitrary detentions, and trial by tribunal without jury and without right of appeal. The ordinance was in force for five years, which saw the arrest of almost one hundred and fifty people, including Subhas Chandra Bose.

Sir Sankaran Nair, an ex-member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, sums up the iniquitous methods of the Government of India lucidly and unbiasedly. It was unbiased because if he had any, it would be in favour of the government, as he openly criticised Gandhiji. Mazumdar produces an extract from one of his articles after the promulgation of the Bengal Ordinance on October 25, 1924.

“When the Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon and the steps taken by Sir Bampfylde Fuller to suppress the protest against it threw Bengal into a ferment, the ‘agitators’ of Bengal were prosecuted before the ordinary civil courts of the country. In the majority of cases the prosecutions failed, because in the opinion of the High Court the case was supported by false witnesses; it was proved that they manufactured evidence in various ways—for example, by placing bullets in incriminating places, and by introducing bombs into the dwelling places of the accused. The High Court found also that certain District Magistrates lent their countenance to Police pressure on witnesses, and that Sessions Judges in many cases convicted against the evidence. All this appears in the published reports of the cases which are available to anyone who desires details.”

“The Indian Government availed themselves of the opportunity of the War to pass the Defence of India Act, which it is now sought to review. Under this Act, a man might be arrested and kept indefinitely in jail (or interned in a particular locality) without being brought to trial. For those who were to be tried, new courts were or could be constituted and new laws of evidence or procedure were prescribed. The Rowlatt Act, a repetition of the Defence of India Act, was responsible for an agitation unexampled in India. The Punjab rose in fury: Amritsar, Lahore, Jallianwala massacres, indiscriminate arrests, trials and convictions which recall the days of Jeffreys in England followed…. India lost faith in England…. Then the Labour Party came into power. In India there were great hopes… Events have belied these expectations… But no one expected they would go farther and revive a measure which has been responsible for a terrible conflagration and has destroyed England’s moral supremacy and Englishmen’s influence for good. This Act, as I have pointed out, would destroy freedom of speech, of the Press, and of the person. Trials would become a farce.”

Bertrand Russell

Mazumdar writes that he has taken great pains to ascertain the truth from many respectable persons who are still living, who have personal experience, and who have no motive to misrepresent the British Government or exaggerate their iniquities. All evidence indicates that, under the pretext of suppressing revolutionary crimes, the British government in India adopted the most unscrupulous methods. Such methods would shock the civilised world. Special interest attaches itself to Bertrand Russell, who visited India after the ruthless suppression of the Civil Disobedience of 1930. Russell compares the British atrocities in India to those of the Germans in Western Europe during the First World War. There is also the testimony of European and American correspondents of newspapers who published accounts of what they saw.

The Case of General Dyer and The Jalianwala Bagh Episode

Mazumdar writes,

“The whole episode of Dyer—his brutal measures, the light punishment inflicted upon him, the condonation of his conduct by the House of Lords, the favourable verdict by a British judge, and the acclamation of praise with which his inhuman conduct was greeted by Englishmen and English women, both in India and England—illustrates, as nothing else could, the racial arrogance of the English people and the little regard or consideration which they had for Indians as a whole.”

Non-Official Britishers in India

RC Mazumdar indicts the Anglo-Indians for their pro-British sympathies. He writes,

“The non-official British population of India who may be referred to as Anglo-Indians for the sake of convenience, constituted an unofficial wing of the British bureaucracy in India. They were the greatest enemies of the true interest of India, for the very simple and obvious reason that as India politically advanced, their material power and prestige almost necessarily declined. The Anglo-Indians of the nineteenth century could afford to be generous or indifferent to the Indians as they had no reasonable apprehensions of any political regeneration of India. The Anglo-Indians of the twentieth century were faced with a national reawakening of the Indians, of the portents and possibilities of which their local knowledge made them fully conscious.”

The Tyranny of The British

The repressive actions of the government fall broadly into two categories. The first is a series of ordinances that practically suspended all the normal laws safeguarding the life, property, and personal liberty of the Indians and placed them under the regime of executive orders. The most important among these were:

1. The Bengal Emergency Powers (Supplementary) Ordinance of January 2, 1932
2. Emergency Powers, Unlawful Instigation, and Prevention of Molestation and Boycotting Ordinances, all passed in January 1932—three in number.
3. Amending Ordinances nos. 7 and 8 of 1932—two in number.
4. The Special Powers Ordinance of 1932
5. Three Bengal Emergency Powers Ordinances, Nos. 9, 11, and 12, were passed, respectively, on May 28, June 30, and July 20, 1932.

The second class comprised the actual measures taken against individuals, groups, and organisations to put down Civil Disobedience. A report of a visiting delegation refers to ten Ordinances that were in force at the time they visited India. The delegation observes:

“It would appear not merely from what actually goes on in India, but from the decisions of courts that the rights that the Indian subject enjoys are in fact determined by the acts of ‘competent’ authorities in India, in which category would come all executive orders and Acts. As against executive authority and “suspicion” and orders of the “Local Government” the subject has no rights in India.”

Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Osborn, in his book Must England Lose India? quotes an official who tells him:

“I give you my word that after some of my punitive police have been stationed in a village for a few days, the spirit of the toughest of the political agitators is broken.’ Lieutenant Colonel Osborn inquired, ‘How?’ ‘Well, they will help themselves to everything. Within twenty-four hours, there will not be a virgin or a four-anna piece left in that village.’”

The Churchill Speech Which Finally Convinced the Indians About the Perfidious Albion

The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941. The Charter provided a broad statement of U.S. and British war aims. Issued jointly by Britain and the U.S.A., it declared, among other things, that “they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-Government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.” Indians heartily approved this clause.

But Churchill hastened to dispel all hope and enthusiasm by declaring in the House of Commons on September 9, 1941, that the Atlantic Charter had no application to India, though, in his opinion, it was in full accord with British policy in India. If Britain had made a deliberate resolve to antagonise all sections of public opinion in India, she could not devise anything more suited to the purpose than this speech of Churchill, says Mazumdar.

Most Indians merely found in it a formal corroboration of what they had all along believed, namely, that the British never meant any real concession to India. British dishonesty, said Congress leaders, had now been nakedly exposed. The Liberals, including Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, who was the greatest champion of unconditional aid to British war efforts, felt shocked. The subsequent attitude of the Indians should be from the perspective of the situation created by Churchill’s speech. Henceforth, India would never trust or put any faith in the promise of ‘perfidious albion.’

Thus, the stand became that all payments for war help from India should be only in the form of cash without any credit. This was the real cause of the failure of the Cripps Mission in late 1942, which was the British offer of Dominion status for India if the latter provided manpower to fight for the British and the Allied powers.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Second World War

The dynamics of the Second World War played a huge role in the freedom movement in India. Most Indians are simply unaware of the role played by Churchill and American President Roosevelt. The Japanese invasion against the British led to the fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942.

Mazumdar explains how this brought home to everyone the danger to India. He writes,

“Churchill, however, did not move an inch. But Roosevelt, the President of the U.S., took a more realistic view of the situation and urged upon Churchill to settle matters with India. The help of U.S.A. was then the only hope for the safety of Britain, and Churchill could ignore Roosevelt’s advice only at his country’s peril. Still, he wavered until the fall of Rangoon revealed to him, for the first time, the desperate situation which faced Britain in the east. That the despatch of the Cripps Mission was mainly, if not wholly, due to the pressure of Roosevelt, was merely a conjecture at the time, but it has since been confirmed as a fact by the publication of the secret documents of the Foreign Office, U.S.A.”

The American Pressure on Churchill

On February 17, 1942, two days after the fall of Singapore, the Assistant Secretary of State, U.S.A., submitted a long memorandum that said,

“It seems to me that the State Department must immediately get to work on the changed situation in the Far East arising out of the fall of Singapore. The first item on the list ought to be to tackle the Indian problem in a large way… It would seem that the logical thing to do was to have Churchill announce in London that the British plans contemplated the introduction of India as a full partner in the United Nations.”

On February 25, 1942, the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate discussed Indian affairs. They were impressed by the manpower of India as a source of military strength but fully realised that:

“the Indians would not have the desire to fight just in order to prolong England’s mastery over them… Concerning India, the argument was that ‘we are participating on such a large scale and had done so much for England… We should demand that India be given a status of autonomy.’… The only way to get the people of India to fight was to get them to fight for India…The American people…would expect this Government to do everything within its power to obtain military participation by India…. even though we had to go to the extent of dictating to England what she should do with regard to India.”

Evidently, because of this report, Roosevelt sent on the very same day a cable to the U.S. ambassador in London suggesting that he or Averell Harriman, his special representative in London, should send him “a slant on what the Prime Minister thinks about the new relationship between Britain and India.” Harriman immediately saw Churchill, who promised to keep Roosevelt informed of the trend of discussions about India that were taking place.

Roosevelt’s Screws

On March 4, Churchill cabled:

“We are earnestly considering whether a declaration of Dominion Status after the war carrying with it if desired the right to secede should be made at this critical juncture. We must not on any account break with the Moslems who represent a hundred million people and the main army elements on which we must rely for the immediate fighting. We have also to consider our duty towards 30 to 40 million untouchables and our treaties with the Princes states (sic.) of India, perhaps 80 million. Naturally, we do not want to throw India into chaos on the eve of invasion.”

In reply, Roosevelt cabled a long message to Churchill on March 10. Churchill received it on the same day, and the very next day, he announced the Cripps Mission in Parliament. It is a reasonable inference that Churchill accepted the advice or suggestion of Roosevelt, though perhaps very grudgingly. According to Attlee, the Chairman of a Special Committee on India in the war-time Cabinet recommended the Cripps Mission. Attlee writes that “it was greatly to the credit of Winston Churchill that he accepted that (Cripps Mission) when he did not like the idea of any change really.”

Mazumdar concludes that all this fully supports the theory that Churchill’s decision was due to the pressure of Roosevelt. The recommendation of the Special Committee on India might also have the same influence. Roosevelt was highly interested in the fate of the Cripps Mission and sent Col. Louis A. Johnson as his representative to New Delhi to keep him informed about the progress of the negotiations between Cripps and the Indian leaders. Though Johnson had no official status to meddle in the affair, he played an important role as a peacemaker throughout the negotiations.

The Congress rejected his proposals and knew that the British were negotiating from a weaker position. In August 1942, the Congress working committee not only rejected the proposals but also launched the ‘Quit India’ movement and called for a ‘Do or Die’ movement for independence. In reaction, the British imprisoned practically the entire Congress leadership for the duration of the war. Jinnah, to whom Cripps had offered the right to opt out of a future union with India, supported the war effort with his fellow Muslims and gained status in British eyes. This was a great moment for Jinnah, who had more say as he remained free, and most Congress leaders were in jail.

When Atlee Fixed a Date for Indian Independence On 20^th February 1947

After the war, Winston Churchill lost the elections, and Clement Atlee from the Labour Party, more sympathetic towards the Indian cause, became the prime minister. Atlee fixed the date for the independence of India to be no later than June 1948. Winston Churchill condemned the handing over of the Government of India to the ‘political classes who were men of straw of whom in a few years no trace will remain.’ He concluded:

“Many have defended Britain against their foes, none can defend her against herself. But, at least, let us not add—by shameful flight, by a premature hurried scuttle—at least, let us not add to the pangs of sorrow so many of us feel, the taint and smear of shame.”

In winding up the debate, Prime Minister Attlee emphasised that ‘the dangers of delay, the dangers of hanging on, were as great as the dangers of going forward.’ He was sure that the whole House would wish godspeed to the new Viceroy in his great mission. ‘It is a mission, not as has been suggested, of betrayal on our part, it is a mission of fulfilment.’

Lord Mountbatten and his Incompetence

Lord Mountbatten assumed the offices of Viceroy and Governor-General on March 24, 1947. His immediate task was to restore peace among the two warring sections—the Congress and the Muslim League—both in his Executive Council and the country at large. He lost no time in arranging interviews with the party leaders. Mazumdar writes,

“Gandhi, in his second interview, on the first day of April, suggested that the Viceroy should dismiss the existing Cabinet and give Jinnah the option of forming a new one; that the selection of the members should be left entirely to Jinnah—they might be all Muslims, or all non-Muslims, or they might be representatives of all classes and creeds.”

Congress leaders most unceremoniously rejected it, and Gandhi had to withdraw it.

In March 1947, there were widespread riots known as the Rawalpindi massacre. There was widespread violence, massacres, and rapes of Hindus and Sikhs by Muslim mobs in the Rawalpindi Division of the Punjab Province. The Muslim League National Guards (the militant wing of the Muslim League), local cadres, and politicians of the League demobilised Muslim soldiers, local officials, and policemen who were responsible for instigating these riots, which left two thousand Sikhs and seven thousand Hindus dead and set off their mass exodus from Rawalpindi Division.

About 80,000 Sikhs and Hindus left the Division by the end of April. This was an ethnic cleansing and marked the beginning of systematic violence against women that accompanied the partition. Mazumdar writes that there was rampant sexual violence, rape, and forced conversions, with many women committing mass suicides along with their children and many killed by their male relatives for fear of abduction and rape. The events are sometimes referred to as the Rape of Rawalpindi.

Mazumdar, in a severe indictment, writes that Mountbatten was incompetent in handling the riots.

“The inactivity of Mountbatten in this respect is all the more strange, because he was so deeply impressed by the communal disturbances spreading like wildfire, that he felt that if the procedure for the transfer of power was not finalized quickly, there was a possibility that at least in some parts of the country there would be no authority to whom power could be transferred.”

He accordingly revised his tentative plan and sent it to London with Lord Ismay and George Abell on May 2.

“This was to transfer power to the Provincial Governments, leaving them to come together to form a Central Government, if and when they chose. The Princely States would also be free to make such arrangement as they wished in these conditions.”

The previous parts can be found at the following links:

History Of Freedom Movement: The View Of R.C. Mazumdar – Part 1

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement in India By R.C. Mazumdar – The Politics Of The Book – Part 2

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – The Muslim Politics – Part 3