THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIAhad actively intervened in New Delhi at the time of the negotiations in
order to help Cripps. Churchill had resented this and had asked Roosevelt
about Johnson’s mandate—whereupon the US president denied that he had
authorised Johnson to intervene in this way. Thus Churchill had scored
another point and the American initiative was stymied.
After the rejection of the Cripps offer the Congress could not remain
passive; it had to give a suitable reply. The answer was the ‘Quit India
Resolution’ which called upon the British to leave India while there was
still time to save the country from the consequences of a destructive battle
with the Japanese, who were daily coming closer. Gandhi was supposed to
give emphasis to this resolution by designing a new campaign, but before
he could do so he and all the Congress leaders were imprisoned.
Linlithgow even proposed to deport all of them to Africa for the duration
of the war, but his governors advised him against this because they felt that
it would do more harm than good to British rule in India. The arrest of the
Congress leaders did not stop the campaign; on the contrary, the younger
nationalists who had resented Gandhi’s restraining influence now
unleashed a violent offensive.
In many parts of India they cut telegraph wires, dismantled rails,
stormed police stations and planted Congress flags on government offices.
Quite a few districts were completely in the hands of the rebels; in Bihar,
especially, the oppressed peasants were ready for violent action and the
government could no longer control the situation. But this so-called
‘August revolution’ did, indeed, not outlast the month of August 1942.
Soon thereafter the tide of the war turned in favour of the Allies and the
Japanese offensive lost its momentum.
The year 1943 was a very critical one for the Government of India
because it had to cope with the distribution of food grains, a task for
which it was not equipped. A Food Department had been established only
in December 1942 after the Japanese advance had led to price increases
which the government had tried to control in vain. There was actually no
shortage of supply as all the war years had good harvests, but the market
went out of gear as traders hoarded grain in expectation of further price
rises. Food grain procurement and storage by government agencies and
rationing in the cities were the only effective means of counteracting
hoarding and inflationary pressure. British India became an interventionist
state in the last years of the war. But before the interventionist machinery
was fully established, a terrible man-made famine killed about one million
people in Bengal in 1943 and many more died subsequently due to
malnutrition and diseases. In the former Congress provinces the British
bureaucracy was in full control and could cope with the problems of food
administration. But in Bengal there was still an ‘autonomous’ provincial
government which did not want to go against the interests of the grain
traders. The new viceroy, Lord Wavell, finally deployed units of the army