of representatives of Indian politicians and princely states – not elected
ones –to review the 1935 Act. This was far from adequate: only a free
India, Nehru reiterated, could participate in the war effort. ‘We have
no intention,’ he wrote, ‘of shouting Heil Hitler; neither do we intend to
shout British Imperialism Zindabad[Long Live British Imperialism].’^2
Meanwhile, the government was busy putting in place emergency
provisions and ordinances suppressing civil liberties and imposing
censorship.
After over a month of discussions the Congress came up with its
counter-move: its governments would resign from the provinces they
controlled, in protest at India’s being dragged into a war not of its
own choosing. On October 29–30, the Congress ministries resigned
(Muhammad Ali Jinnah, for the Muslim League, welcomed the resig-
nations as ‘deliverance’ for Muslims). The resignation decision, Gandhi
later wrote, ‘covered the fact that we were crumbling to pieces’;^3 it was
merely a prelude to the internal struggle on how to respond to the
war within the Congress. For now, Congress was back to being a party
of opposition. But Linlithgow’s apparent blunder was also a good way
of regaining British control: with the ministries having resigned, the
provinces were now ruled directly by their governors under Section 93 of
the 1935 Act, thereby restoring to the British government autocratic
control of most of British India. Discussions in official circles in the period
leading up to the resignations worked on the assumption that if the
Congress ministries did not resign, they would have to be dismissed, while
various other measures would have to be taken ‘to suppress and muzzle
hostile opinion’.^4 Some sections of the Government of India, among whose
numbers apparently the viceroy could be counted, believed that the war
was an opportunity to reverse the dangerous trend towards giving away
India to Indians, regarding this reversal ‘not merely as desirable, but also
as entirely practicable’.^5
Soon afterwards, Linlithgow invited Gandhi for talks, along with
Jinnah on behalf of the Muslim League. The invitation was a good example
of how colonial Indian politics still worked. Gandhi was, from 1934,
no longer formally a member of the Congress, and the League could
hardly, after its electoral showing in 1937, have claimed to represent
the majority of Muslims. Elected ministries did not need to be consulted,
but two individuals could be recognised as representatives for the pur-
poses of discussion regardless of their popular mandate or lack thereof.
THE END OF THE RAJ 105