made it clear that such thinking was detrimental to the democratic
principles for which the national movement ought to stand. It was
assumed that this piece had been written by an opponent of Nehru’s in the
Congress, or possibly by a communist; but Nehru had, in fact, written it
himself.^31 It could justifiably be said, perhaps, that he wrote it partly as
a warning to himself; for if Nehru was never in danger of becoming a
fascist, he certainly had tendencies towards an impatient authoritarianism
with people he regarded as his intellectual inferiors that he had the grace
to recognise himself.
Nehru now had a role to play in the left’s response to the victory in
the elections and its defeat over office acceptance. An analysis of the
elections brought with it some uncomfortable messages: the Congress had
failed to win over large sections of the people, notably Muslims, who had
voted against them. They had been unable even to find enough candidates
for Muslim seats, contesting only 58 of the 482 Muslim seats (they won
26 of them). Quite apart from the question of whether the Congress
accepted office or not, this had implications for its aspirations to be a mass
party. (As Congress president, Nehru found himself publicly defending an
anomalous situation: among the Muslims who were in the Congress were
a number of ulema, Muslim clerics whose activities during the election
campaigns and after tended towards the use of Muslim religious rhetoric.
These were people, Nehru said, who had been associated with the Congress
or the Khilafat movement and if it was true that some of them had
‘threatened to excommunicate Muslim voters’ for not voting for the
Congress’s candidates, this was ‘highly improper’. Nevertheless, they were
entitled to be in the Congress.^32 )
It was not, however, that the Muslim vote had gone en blocto any
other party: the Muslim League, for instance, had been surprised by its
dismal performance in the elections, particularly in the Muslim-majority
provinces. The North-West Frontier Province had returned a coalition
of the Congress and the Khudai Khidmatgar (‘Servants of God’), a non-
violent party largely of Pakhtoon ethnicity allied to the Gandhian wing of
Congress. The Punjab had voted Unionist, a loyalist party with strong
links with land ownership, dominated by Muslims, but with important
Hindu leaders; Bengal had been won by the Krishak Praja Party (KPP),
a pro-peasant party with a strongly Muslim membership (reflecting the
composition of the peasantry of eastern Bengal) – it was only here that the
Muslim League, still largely seen as a party of United Provinces land-88 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39