some form of socialism was still the only way forward. Support for the
USSR, for example, was the touchstone of a socialist’s legitimacy. While
most members of the Congress Socialists put a Nelsonian blind eye to
the telescope and praised the economic and technological miracles
of the Soviet Union, Nehru had never altogether been an unqualified
admirer; and news of Stalin’s purges had disturbed him as they had
disturbed many others. Personal experiences also played a role in his
apparent equivocation: Viren Chattopadhyay, who had been a regular, if
critical, correspondent of Nehru’s from Europe and the USSR, vanished
towards the end of the 1930s in one of the purges. Nehru’s anxious letters
to Chatto and his associates in trying to trace his friend yielded no
responses. Yet if Nehru was more circumspect in his praise of the USSR,
as the Congress’s main thinker on international matters, he could not slip
into an unreasoned anti-Soviet position, unlike many former believers.
But for a while at least, philosophical speculation and ideological
correctness were not permissible luxuries. Events were now to speed up to
an extent never before encountered in the Indian freedom struggle.THE IMPERIAL LEAD, 1939
The viceroy’s declaration of war on India’s behalf, although technically
legal, placed a central anomaly squarely in the public domain: self-
government, which the 1935 Act’s supporters had declared to have
substantially arrived, obviously did not apply to the matter of declaring
war. The Congress had to respond, or to be seen to respond, although the
anomaly was not a new one – reserve powers under the Act had always
remained in the hands of the viceroy and his provincial governors.
Given that he was one of the few Congressmen who could under-
stand international affairs, Jawaharlal now had to play a central role in
Congress as a whole (when the war broke out, he had been in China on
a long-planned solidarity visit, and the Congress’s meetings on how to
respond to this situation had been put on hold until his return). It was
Nehru’s demand that the Congress Working Committee put forward on
September 15: an immediate declaration of Indian independence should
be the basis of support for the British war effort. On October 17, the
viceroy repeated the by-now familiar vague promises of future dominion
status. He added that after the war consultations would take place with
‘representatives of the several communities’ and with a consultative group104 THE END OF THE RAJ