Nehru was now placed in an awkward position: he knew quite clearly
that some of the ‘reactionary’ policies he had been writing to provincial
premiers about related to communal tendencies in the ministries, but he
had to maintain public solidarity with the Congress. Nehru was willing
publicly to acknowledge that there had been problems, but tried to
separate the ministries’ activities from those of small sections of underlings
- this was a disingenuous argument, given that in private he could
acknowledge just what was happening. The Muslim League and its allies
were definitely opportunistically using the ‘atrocities’ stories. But to some
extent they were true – even though he could hardly have been expected
to take any action without evidence. He could, however, take refuge in
the fact that the Muslim leadership seemed more interested in indicting
the Congress than in addressing the grievances of those suffering: it was
less the suffering that was important than its appropriation for political
gain. He decided to publish his correspondence with League and KPP
leaders – indicating that there was a willingness on the Congress’s side to
do something if the allegations could be substantiated.
On Nehru’s part, at least, there was still a certain wilful blindness with
regard to dealing with the communal problem. When, in late 1939,
Nehru’s old friend Syed Mahmud, a CSP member, suggested that the
Congress ministry in Bihar (of which Mahmud was himself a member)
should share power with minorities, Nehru reacted sharply, assuming
Mahmud meant sharing power with the Muslim League, and accused him
of a ‘reactionary outlook’. In December, when the ministries no longer
existed (having resigned in protest against the viceroy’s unilateral decla-
ration of war on India’s behalf), Mahmud clarified: the Congress had
severely misgoverned the province and had failed to win the confidence of
minorities, not merely Muslims, but also lower castes and Christians. ‘The
Congress is full of provincialism, caste prejudices and [Hindu] revivalism,’
he wrote.^33 If the Congress had offered to share power with allminorities,
not just Muslims, and not with the Muslim League, this might have
generated more confidence. Nehru repeated his charge that Mahmud’s
suggestions were ‘reactionary’: a ‘progressive’ government could not be
formed on a communal basis – of Hindu or Muslim majorities or
minorities. The communal problem was, in fact, ‘a very minor problem.
The real problem is a political problem – the conflict between an advanced
organisation like the Congress and a politically reactionary organisation
like the League’ – which merely exploited religion to create communal
‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39 93