THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIAdeclaration he immediately tendered his resignation which, of course, the
cabinet did not want to accept at this juncture. Churchill was in a fix, but
he was suddenly saved from making a difficult choice.
Sir Stafford Cripps appeared as a deus ex machina and offered to fly to
India as representative of the war cabinet in order to negotiate a viable
compromise. Cripps had served as British ambassador to the Soviet Union
and was credited with having won that country as an ally. He had just
joined the war cabinet and a further success in India could have built him
up as a serious rival to Churchill. Thus Churchill could hardly wish that
Cripps should solve the Indian problem; for the time being, however,
Cripps’s initiative provided a convenient alibi. Cripps took up his mission
with great confidence. He was a friend of Nehru and in 1938 he had made
some plans for a future transfer of power with Nehru and his Labour Party
colleagues. He had then visited India in December 1939 and had clearly
stated his sympathy with that country’s political aspirations. He now
cherished a secret hope that he might be able to dislodge the conservative
viceroy with the help of the Congress, or that he would at least be able to
dictate the terms according to which the viceroy had to conduct his
business.
Although Cripps carefully avoided any conflict with Linlithgow and
informed him of every step of his negotiations, the viceroy sensed what
was going on and sabotaged the mission at its decisive stage. Cripps had
almost succeeded in getting the Congress leaders into a wartime national
government, which was to function just like the British war cabinet with
the viceroy acting like a constitutional monarch. Of course, the
constitution as such could not be changed then and there but within the
given framework this kind of national government could be established by
convention. If at this stage the viceroy had come forward with a statement
that he would be willing to work such a scheme, the Congress would have
joined the national government; instead, Linlithgow kept his mouth shut
and wrote to Churchill complaining that Cripps intended to deprive him of
his constitutional powers.
This killed the ‘Cripps offer’; in a final round of talks Nehru and Azad
noticed that Cripps could not give definitive answers to specific questions:
he had obviously promised more than he could deliver. Cripps, on the
other hand, felt that the Congress should have taken the risk of entering
the national government, because once they were in it a threat of
resignation would have given them enough leverage to keep Linlithgow in
line. But Linlithgow, who was in office and who had already threatened to
resign, had by far the greater leverage. Cripps returned home embittered
and disappointed: he was peeved at the pusillanimity of the Congress
leaders. Churchill and Linlithgow, however, were glad to see Cripps’s
discomfiture. No further declaration was required and Roosevelt had to
keep quiet. In fact, Roosevelt’s personal representative, Colonel Johnson,