Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India 1947, Part 1

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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!

SUCHETA MAHAJAN, the Editor of this volume, is Professor of History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was Gillespie Visiting Professor at the College of Wooster, Ohio, and Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and the Rockefeller Bellagio Center in Italy. She is an editor of Studies in History, the journal of the centre where she teaches.

SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA, the General Editor of the Towards Freedom series, is former Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi. He was earlier Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, and Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

It gives me great pleasure to place in the hands of readers the tenth and last volume of the Tcards 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. In June 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 of Poteer, 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.

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 II, 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.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages