world, particularly in Spain and China. He warned against a ‘European
complex’ that could not relate to events in Asia, but assured his audience
that these events had a strong bearing on the world situation. In many
of his speeches he spoke of China as a ‘sister nation’. He also dodged the
attentions of Nazi officials eager to meet him to clear up ‘misunder-
standings’, as they politely put it. Although British intelligence sources
reported that Nehru’s visit to Munich from August 6 to 8 had included a
visit to the headquarters of the Nazi Party, where he had long deliber-
ations with the officials there, the sources ruled out Nehru’s responding
to any overtures the Nazis might have made towards him because of
his honourable anti-fascist credentials.^35 He was in Europe to report the
Munich pact that condemned Czechoslovakia to Nazi dismemberment;
he had been in Prague to record the responses of the capital to the
negotiations that affected that country’s future.
In June 1938, Nehru, in Britain, met with politicians of the Labour
Party to discuss possible terms of a treaty for transfer of power to India
when Labour came to office. Sir Stafford Cripps, Harold Laski and other
Labour politicians, as well as Krishna Menon of the Independence for India
League, a campaigning organisation based in London, had a ‘weekend at
Filkins’, at Sir Stafford Cripps’ country seat, together. After much hard
bargaining, the terms included a constituent assembly to be elected on
universal adult franchise, but with communal constituencies plus other
reserved representation. Only those rulers of the Princely States who
accepted this electoral system could send representatives to the constituent
assembly, and the constitution that it brought into being would over-
ride existing British treaties with the princes. On economic issues, the
terms were particularly precise. There would be a British–Indian treaty
according to whose terms the Indian debt to Britain (considered by Indian
opinion to be forced lending to obtain higher returns on investment
than would have been possible elsewhere) would in part be cancelled.
A part of that debt (represented by assets within India evaluated by
an impartial tribunal) would be taken over by the government of inde-
pendent India. India would agree to buy British manufactured goods over
a period of years to an equivalent amount of the cancelled debt, protecting
British exports to India for a while.^36 These were concrete proposals; they
also contained an important concession to Britain. Indian debt was an
extremely touchy issue, and in 1931 the Congress had repudiated it as
properly belonging to Britain, not to India, as it required an independent
‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39 95