8 THE REPUBLIC
Internal affairs: political and economic development
Apart from the carnage at the time of partition, the transfer of power was
a peaceful affair. The freedom movement had come to an end without a
dramatic triumph. There was no revolution. The institutional heritage of
British India was taken over as a going concern. The major heritage of the
freedom movement was the National Congress itself, which Gandhi had
organised with such great skill and devotion. Now that freedom had been
achieved, Gandhi advised that the National Congress should be dissolved
because he had never thought of it as a party but as a national forum. Free
India should now have political parties with their distinct programmes,
Gandhi argued. His advice went unheeded and the National Congress
survived as a large centrist party, though other parties did emerge on its
fringes in due course.
The Congress was the main support of the new republic and it was more
or less identified with that state. Since the Great Depression had pushed
substantial numbers of peasants into the arms of the Congress, it had a
fairly broad social base and tried its best to retain that base. No other
country which attained freedom through decolonisation had a political
organisation of such dimensions. The Muslim League—which had been
successful in the elections prior to partition and could be regarded as the
party which had established Pakistan—soon proved to be unstable and
ephemeral after its great leader, M.A.Jinnah, died in September 1948. The
Congress, on the other hand, was going strong under the leadership of
Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Nehru, Patel and the making of the Indian constitutionThough Nehru and Patel often did not see eye to eye and were identified
with the left and the right wing of the Congress respectively, their
different talents actually helped the new republic to get off to a good
start. Nehru was able to stir the imagination of the people, to reconcile
hopes and reality by making radical speeches but being nevertheless
cautious and moderate in practical politics. Patel was a superb