major achievement had been to convince Churchill of the need for such
an initiative; at any rate, in July 1945, the landslide Labour victory in
Britain removed Churchill from the equation. In August 1945, elections
were announced for the coming winter in India.
The Labour government had a concrete commitment to Indian inde-
pendence, with the obvious corollaries that had been discussed with Nehru
at Filkins in 1938: a transfer of power would have to safeguard some
long-term British interests, otherwise no British government could
support it. Within the Congress, it was clear who Labour would prefer to
deal with: Jawaharlal Nehru. But Nehru was not himself, by this time, the
best possible negotiator. Still thinking in terms of principles, and often
refusing to surrender the moral high ground, Nehru could make blunders
that a more pragmatic negotiator could avoid.
If Nehru was, as most people accepted, going to be a main protagonist
in the endgame, he had to be briefed by persons more in touch with the
outside world than someone just emerging from prison. During the Simla
conference, on June 27 and 28, 1945, Z.A. Ahmad of the Communist
Party of India was delegated to brief Nehru on what had been going on,
and to sound him out on his views. Ahmad drew attention to Nehru’s
description of the CPI’s refusal to support the Quit India Movement as
due to their being virtually Soviet agents. Nehru was distinctly uncom-
fortable; he averred that he had not intended to make such a statement
but had been cornered by the press into saying something. Breaking
through the discomfort barrier, Nehru put his cards on the table: he was
influential in the Congress partly due to his mass popularity and partly
because he was ‘internationally better known’ and had ‘better contacts
than anyone else’; nevertheless he was ‘in a sense quite alone’. On his side,
he felt that the CPI, who had accepted the demand for Pakistan, wanted
the Congress to surrender to all Jinnah’s demands; but Jinnah did not
actually want a settlement, and was not making a concrete demand that
could be responded to. (Nehru’s distrust of Jinnah led him to refuse to
concede honourable intentions to any of Jinnah’s pronouncements; and
this distrust seems to have been well-founded: he did not say what he
meant, put his cards on the table or conduct transparent negotiations.)
Moreover, concessions to Jinnah on Pakistan – and here Nehru was at his
most disarmingly honest – would split the Congress: ‘There is a strong
anti-Pakistan Hindu opinion inside the Congress which would go over to
the Hindu [Maha]Sabha.’^24
THE END OF THE RAJ 123