THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONGRESS: ‘WRECKING’
THE CONSTITUTION OR RUNNING THE EMPIRE?One of the first tasks of the new left coalition in the Congress was to
address the problem of the new Government of India Act of 1935. The
CSP’s line on the Act was to denounce the ‘slave constitution’ and refuse
to have anything to do with it. But the Congress was under consider-
able pressure to work with the Constitution from business leaders and
landlords. There was consequently considerable pressure from the right
wing of the Congress to accept office under the terms of the 1935 Act.
Power, they believed, was being offered to them and should be accepted.
The left’s first proposal was to refuse to participate in the elections. Any
participation was an acknowledgement of the validity of the constitution,
which ought not to be legitimised in any way. They were defeated on this.
It was then suggested that to win the elections and then refuse to fill the
seats or form the government would destroy the constitutional machinery,
demonstrating the Congress’s popular support while exposing the fact that
the constitution could not be accepted by the vast majority of people.
(Nehru had, in the end, drafted the Congress’s election manifesto, which
inter aliarejected the 1935 Constitution without specifying how this
could be done by contesting the elections.) In the end, neither happened;
the elections, held in January and February of 1937, led to massive
Congress victories. The Congress contested 1,161 out of a total of 1,585
seats and won 716 of them. Then, from April 1937, the Congress pro-
ceeded to run the governments of nine out of eleven of the provinces of
British India, six of these on its own, and three in coalition.
Nehru had argued that office acceptance ‘would inevitably mean
our co-operation in some measure with the repressive apparatus of
imperialism, and we would become partners in this repression and in the
exploitation of our people.’^28 His prophecy came true (he had the remark-
able capacity to identify the implications of a particular position and yet
be completely unable to extricate either himself or the Congress from
them). During the ‘Ministry period’, the Congress was at war with itself,
its right–left divide clearly manifesting itself. Ministries tended to be
drawn from the right; the left had a few representatives, but often found
itself effectively in opposition – not in the House, where effective
opposition was made extremely difficult, but outside it. Some Congress
ministries actively worked with their British governors and the police to86 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39