The nine-and-a-half years between the appointment of the Simon Commission in November 1927 and the formation of popular ministries in the provinces in July 1937 were full of complex and often contradictory political developments. The national movement, deliberately and insultingly ignored through the setting-up of an all-white Commission to consider the next instalment of constitutional changes, fought its way through the First Civil Disobedience campaign to a position of near-equality with the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931. This was followed by a major British counter-offensive under Willingdon and Ramsay Macdonald's National Government, which had apparently smashed the Congress by 1933-34. The victory was soon proved illusory, however, by the sweeping Congress electoral triumph of March 1937 which for the first time gave the national movement some real, though very partial, control over the state machinery at the provincial level.
The general advance of Indian nationalism, despite the obvious ups and downs, was remarkable enough, but it remained a process full of contradictions. These have been illuminated by a recent study of the United Provinces by Gyan Pandey. (The Ascendancy of the Congress in UP, 1926- 34) The pattern already vaguely discernable in 1919-22 becomes clearer in the 1930s: the advance and consolidation of the Congress organization meant also the assimilation and curbing of more elemental and potentially radical lower-class outbursts. The Congress, as we noted at the beginning of this volume, while fighting the Raj was also becoming the Raj, foreshadowing the great but incomplete transformation of 1947. This was not just a question of party organization throttling lower-level spontaneity; what was involved was the gradual establishment of a kind of hegemony (never absolute or unqualified, however, as we shall see) of bourgeois and dominant- peasant groups over the national movement. The
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Congress repeatedly aroused expectations and aspirations which it could not satisfy, and so the development of a Left challenge through trade unions, Kisan Sabhas, radical student
organizations, Congress Socialists and Communists, and Right-Left confrontations within the Congress organization itself increasingly became an important part of the country's life from the mid-1930s onwards. The disillusionment of radical middle-class youth with Gandhian
constraints—which found initial expression through a last outburst of terrorism in Bengal and Punjab between 1928 and 1934—was also contributing significantly to the growth of the Left by the end of this period, as revolutionaries abandoned the path of individual violence for mass struggle and Marxism.
As in earlier periods, political awakening often also took sectional forms, and an increasingly cornered British government tried to utilize these more than ever before. Thus developed a 'crisis of Indian unity' which R.J. Moore rightly relates (in a book of that title) to the basic British strategy of 'devolution' of power by stages. The post-1857 utilization of princes against
nationalism found its logical conclusion in the 'Federation' moves of the 1930s, where the offer of responsible government at the Centre (subject to numerous 'reservations' and 'safeguards') was firmly tied up with the creation of a powerful nominated princely contingent in the Central Assembly. All-out attempts were made, as before, to encourage Muslim fears of Hindu
domination, while the very legitimate and natural resentments of the 'untouchables' which were finding expression through Ambedkar's movement were played off against nationalist demands for a quick advance towards independence. Yet another facet of colonialist strategy was the encouragement of tribal separatism in regions like Chota Nagpur, and the 1935 Act gave provincial Governors 'discretionary powers' of administering 'backward' tribal areas without consulting the popular ministers.
The national movement sought to counter such divide-and-rule methods with varying degrees of success. States' peoples movements against princely autocracy gathered increasing momentum, though the Congress leadership (and particularly Gandhi) for long hesitated in giving open support to agitations which in the context of the near-total lack of political rights and rampant 256
feudal oppression characteristic of many states had considerable socially radical potentialities. Though Ambedkar's movement could not be assimilated, Gandhi from 1932 onwards devoted the bulk of his time to work among the Harijans, and the Congress in the 1930s did succeed in rallying to its cause non-Brahman intermediate caste movements in regions like Maharashtra, Mysore, and (to a lesser extent) Tamilnadu. Tribal support was sought to be mobilized through welfare activities, and forest satyagrahas became an important component of Civil Disobedience. As for the Muslims, hindsight has sometimes traced the decisive break back to the Nehru Report discussions of 1928-29, and certainly the community kept largely aloof from Civil Disobedience except in the North-West Frontier Province. But perhaps the situation really remained open for quite some time longer, for Jinnah's League could win only 109 out of the 482 Muslim seats in the 1937 elections, and in any case, as we shall see, Jinnah himself became an uncompromising communalist only after repeated rebuffs from aggressive Hindu leaders like Moonje, Jayakar and Malaviya. In the crucial Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab, the League lost in 1937 not to the Congress, but to predominantly Muslim regional parties (Krishak-Praja and Unionist) which claimed to espouse the cause of peasants against landlords or urban traders and moneylenders. Congress failure to develop radical agrarian programmes was particularly marked in both provinces, and in the long run proved disastrous for the unity of the country.
The 'Cambridge school' in recent years has sought to revive interest in the constitution-making processes of the 1930s— which progress of research on broader political and social movements had made into a rather unfashionable subject—by suggesting a direct causal link between British policies and the ups and downs of the national movement. 'Gandhi's all-India role was in part made possible by the British', argues Judith Brown in her latest book (Gandhi and Civil Disobedience, 1977, p. 12) echoing Willingdon's assessment that the Mahatma's 'influence has varied greatly with the treatment that he has received from the Government'. (Viceroy to Secretary of State, 25 June 1932, Templewood [Hoare] Collection) The Congress revived after the Simon Commission made constitutional changes an immediate national issue, Irwin gave Gandhi a new stature by talking with
him as an equal, British use of Ambedkar made Gandhi concentrate on Harijans, and
Willingdon's refusal to hold any negotiations whatsoever with the Congress led to the nationalist collapse of 1932-33. Yet, as in the case of the alleged link of the Montford Reforms with the upsurge of 1919-22, a closer look raises doubts about this entire thesis, for British polices often changed in response to nationalist pressures rather than vice-versa. If the all-white Simon Commission, setup during a period of ebb-tide for nationalism, planned a retreat from Montagu liberalism in several respects, the nationalist revival from 1928 onwards soon compelled Irwin to make his 'offer' of 31 October 1929 and Ramsay Macdonald to hold out the promise of some kind of responsible government at the Centre in January 1931. The millions who participated in Civil Disobedience could have had little understanding of, or interest in, the constitutional niceties being debated at the Round Table Conferences. Yet it was their pressure and heroic self- sacrifice, above all, which forced Irwin to negotiate with Gandhi and turned the apparent
Congress defeat of 1932-33 into the sweeping electoral victory of 1937. History was not made by elite-politicians alone, whether British or Indian.