to some of the younger members of Congress. On the other hand, there
was a definite fear that Jawaharlal was leading Congress increasingly
towards the position of the communists; this fear united capitalists and
government. The increasing organisational success of the emerging Indian
communist movement had begun to create British panic, leading to
‘conspiracy’ cases against communists. By this time the British tendency
to attribute every form of unrest or anti-government activity to
‘Bolsheviks’ had subsided slightly in favour of a tactic that sought to
distinguish communists from non-communists with a view to divide and
rule; but the full weight of the state’s repressive machinery was always
available for use against communists.
From 1929 onwards, the infamous Meerut Conspiracy Case ran its
course. This was the culmination of a general trawl of India to find political
agitators who could be indicted, arrested and sentenced as communists;
various such agitators were rounded up, including a number of British
communists. The government had intended to prosecute Jawaharlal as
a communist himself, but they could not find the requisite evidence, in
part because the intercepted internal correspondence of communists
themselves revealed that they did not take Jawaharlal’s socialist statements
very seriously. Jawaharlal was, however, on the defence committee, as was
his father; but the defence committee did not last long, its demise
attributed by Jawaharlal to a lack of coordination: ‘There were different
types of people among these, with different types of defences, and often
there was an utter absence of harmony among them.’^7 The case eventually
led, five years later, to the banning of the Communist Party of India.
THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT
The Lahore Congress’s full session had authorised the All-India Congress
Committee to start a programme of civil disobedience at any point it
deemed fit – in effect, leaving decisions of timing and aims to Gandhi,
for civil disobedience was his own creation and most people agreed that
such tactics required Gandhi himself at the head. Gandhi, however,
seemed to be in no hurry to start a movement. Those sceptical of his
intentions have pointed out that in the years 1928 and 1929, with strikes
and labour militancy at its height, Gandhi’s starting up of a movement
would have led rapidly to a situation in which he could no longer control
its directions – and he was particularly keen on keeping control.
‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39 67