mainly, to British records). The rationale was clear: Quit India was to
be described as a Hindu movement, and nothing should be done that
might create cross-sectarian solidarity (Muhammad Ali Jinnah, for the
Muslim League, did not support the movement, so at least the successful
detaching of elite Muslim leadership from potential opposition had been
successfully achieved). As in 1857, large parts of the country had to be
re-conquered; at the height of the movement, fifty-seven and a half
battalions were in action against the internal threat. In 1857, of course,
there had been no planes to bomb or machine-gun people from the air,
unlike in 1942 when this was done as a legitimate means of crowd control.
During and after the Quit India Movement, India was treated not as an
ally but as an occupied country.JAIL 1942–5
As events unfolded, the Congress leaders remained out of the loop.
Jawaharlal remained in jail; Gandhi, now in his 70s, was given the more
luxurious prison of the Aga Khan’s palace, where nevertheless his fast from
February 10, 1943, broken after 21 days, managed to become the focal
point of British imperial politics: if Gandhi died, would it be possible
to hold an India that knew he had died in British custody? Gandhi’s fast
had been, as he put it, both a self-purificatory exercise and a protest against
the government’s accusation that he had been personally responsible for
the violence of the Quit India Movement. British propaganda had sought
to cast the Congress leaders as defeatist and at worst pro-Japanese and
pro-fascist. Nehru, in prison, following events on the outside, had time to
contemplate the irony of events: he, a premature anti-fascist, was in jail,
with many appeasers-turned-opponents of fascism now accusing him and
the rest of the Congress of being pro-fascist.
For nearly three crucial years, from 1942 to 1945, Nehru remained in
prison. He used the time, as usual, to further his intellectual development,
in a burst of activity from April to September 1944 writing his Discovery
of India. This was a book clearly written in anticipation of independence,
and was a clarificatory endeavour as much for himself as for a potential
public. It was also Nehru’s last major statement of his ideological position
made with the benefit of leisure – asked in January 1950 whether he was
writing another book, he replied, ‘How could I be? I’ve not been in jail of
late.’^21 The text was a strange conglomeration of diverse styles and genres.118 THE END OF THE RAJ