act together. This would defeat British divide and rule strategies as well
as attempts by Indian vested interests to exploit the masses.
From 1937 to 1939, Nehru, from the higher ranks of the Congress’s
central organisation, sought a role as the conscience of the ministries.
To Govind Ballabh Pant, premier of the United Provinces, he repeatedly
complained of the ‘reactionary’ policies of his ministry. To B.G. Kher,
premier of Bombay, he wrote in 1939 reprimanding him on his statements
equating the communists’ position on class struggle with communal
organisations’ preaching of religious hatred, and pointed out that this was
not consistent with Congress policy (the CPI were still allies in a Popular
Front). To the rest of the Congress, he spoke at length on the importance
of not getting sidetracked by provincial government or the powers of
patronage accompanying political office, and of keeping an eye on the
main goal of independence. These interventions did little more than set
out his frustrations at the turn of political events on paper.
One problem now had to be centrally addressed: the emergence
of strong political forces outside the Congress, and the emergence of
specifically Muslim politics. Waverers who in the early 1930s might
have joined a Congress reoriented towards the left now saw the necessity
to stay outside an organisation that tended towards the right. Internal
groups within the Congress now included organisations like the Congress
Nationalist Party, right wing, with strong tendencies towards Hindu sec-
tarianism, run by Madan Mohan Malaviya and the Benares Hindu
University group; many Congressmen were also members of the Hindu
Mahasabha, which was a frankly sectarian organisation. Hindu groups,
moreover, were becoming more and more influenced by fascist para-
military organisations and had themselves built up such organisations,
notably the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – a national ‘volunteer
corps’ that wore khaki shorts and paraded in Brown Shirt style. The
Congress contained enough people with dual membership of or dual
loyalties to such organisations. Without a leftward reorientation, minori-
ties would be justified in having nothing to do with the Congress.
The Congress, clearly, had to work for more support from the masses,
to politicise them and bring them in behind the Congress for the interim
goal of independence and, from the left’s point of view, the longer-term
goal of socialism. So, in 1937, the Congress launched its ‘Mass Contact
Programme’, with Nehru as one of its main protagonists, attempting to
bring the Congress more closely in contact with those sections of the90 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39