left, and against socialists and communists outside the Congress. Birla
had powerful spokesmen within the Congress in men like Vallabhbhai
Patel and Bhulabhai Desai, right-wingers who identified themselves as
‘Gandhians’, which enabled them to speak for large numbers of the rank
and file who were still loyal to Gandhi.
In such equations, therefore, the British government also played a role
in enabling business to have a strong political voice. Since most often
for government to negotiate openly with Congress would be to concede
the latter too much legitimacy, an intermediary group could be useful.
This suited business well, enabling them to pose as a moderating influence
(though not averse to sharing the benefits, if any, of Congress agitations)
while attempting to secure smooth business conditions. The Congress’s
role, as business saw it, was to put pressure on the British government to
extract further concessions for business; its role was not supposed to be
to disrupt business conditions with support for labour agitation or wider
unrest. This was of course realised by the Congress left, confirming the
conviction that business was only provisionally anti-colonial. But it was
not merely the Congress left that did not trust Indian businessmen. The
British government also recognised the provisional and opportunist nature
of Indian businessmen’s support, and reserved the right to suspect the
worst of them.
The Congress was thus by this time beginning to provide the
acceptable face of political dissent. This has been attributed to capital-
ists and landlords occupying a pivotal role in Congress politics, a role
enhanced by the narrow property franchise of the 1935 Government of
India Act. While landlords were in a position to tilt the equation in
provincial politics, big business had more of an all-India influence, being
among the main financiers of the Congress organisation. And if the
moderating hand of property and the responsibilities of office could make
of the Congress the legitimating organisation of British imperialism, what
could be better than that? For if the pre-eminent national organisation
in India (whom the British were now willing to acknowledge represented
the majorityof the Indian people, even if not the minorities who the British
had to stay on to protect) was a party in government, was it possible to
claim any longer that Indians did not have self-rule?
‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39 85