The Post-War Upsurge and the INA Trials

In the last two years of British rule, two strands ran side by side: tortuous negotiations towards a transfer of power, and a wave of militant mass action. The captured INA soldiers were put on trial at the Red Fort and became national heroes. The agitation in their defence, three violent upsurges in the winter of 1945-46, and above all the Royal Indian Navy mutiny convinced the British that they could no longer rely on the army to hold India. The 1945-46 elections were fought on nationalist aims and set the stage for the endgame. This is a very high-yield topic.

When the war ended, the British brought the captured INA prisoners back to India. They blundered by deciding to hold public trials, dismissing hundreds from service and detaining around 7,000. They then compounded the folly by holding the first trial at the Red Fort, Delhi, in November 1945. In the dock together were a Hindu (Prem Kumar Sehgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz Khan) and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon). That combination gave the issue an "Indian versus British" colour.

The response was an unprecedented agitation:

• the Congress adopted a resolution supporting the INA cause (Bombay, September 1945) and organised a defence in court with Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, K.N. Katju, Nehru and Asaf Ali;
• an INA Relief and Enquiry Committee helped the men and their families, and funds were raised;
• the campaign spread far and wide. INA Day (12 November 1945) and INA Week were observed, with public meetings, pamphlets and even pro-INA feeling among government employees and the armed forces; and
• it was supported, in varying degrees, not only by the Congress but by the Muslim League, the Communists, the Akalis, the Justice Party, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS.

The central theme became the questioning of Britain's right to decide a matter concerning Indians. Britain grasped the danger and quietly remitted the first sentences.

Nationalist feeling boiled over into three violent confrontations in the winter of 1945-46, each following a similar three-stage pattern (a group defies authority and is repressed → the city joins in → the rest of the country expresses solidarity):

• 21 November 1945: in Calcutta, over the INA trials;
• 11 February 1946: in Calcutta, against the seven-year sentence on the INA officer Abdul Rashid (often given as Rashid Ali); and
• 18 February 1946: in Bombay, the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) revolt, backed on 22 February by a general strike of Bombay's workers in its support.

The RIN mutiny was the most dramatic. About 1,100 ratings of HMIS Talwar struck against racial discrimination (unequal pay), poor food, abuse by officers, the arrest of a rating for scrawling "Quit India" on the ship, the INA trials, and the use of Indian troops in Indonesia. They hoisted the tricolour, the crescent and the hammer-and-sickle together. Crowds and shopkeepers fed them, and crowds in Bombay battled the army in solidarity. The revolt spread to Karachi, Calcutta and Madras and involved dozens of ships and shore establishments. Sympathetic strikes followed in the Royal Indian Air Force and military stations across the country. Sardar Patel and Jinnah persuaded the ratings to surrender on 23 February with an assurance against victimisation.

The slogan "Quit India" that the rating scrawled on the ship came from the movement Gandhi launched in August 1942. On its eve, Gandhi gave each section of society a specific instruction:

• Government servants: do not resign your jobs, but openly declare your allegiance to the Congress.
• Soldiers: do not leave the army, but refuse to fire on your own people.
• Princes: accept the sovereignty of your own people.
• People of the princely states: declare yourselves part of the Indian nation, and support the ruler only if he is anti-British.

Note the careful calibration. Gandhi did not ask government servants to resign, and he did not ask soldiers to desert their posts. He asked both to stay where they were and shift their loyalty to the nation. Only the princes were asked to give something up: their claim to rule over their own people.

Significance. The upsurges showed the fearless militancy of the masses. Revolt in the armed forces had a great liberating effect, and the RIN revolt was seen as marking the end of British rule. They pushed the British towards concessions: restricting the INA trials to those accused of brutality (1 December 1946), remitting sentences, withdrawing Indian troops from Indo-China and Indonesia (February 1947), and deciding to send a parliamentary delegation and then the Cabinet Mission. Their limitations: they were short-lived, confined to a few urban centres, and the communal unity shown was more organisational than deep.

Elections to the central and provincial assemblies were held in the winter of 1945-46. The Congress campaign's most striking feature was that it sought to mobilise Indians against the British, glorifying the INA martyrs and the 1942 heroes, rather than merely appeal for votes.

The results:

• the Congress won about 91 per cent of the non-Muslim vote, 57 of 102 seats in the Central Assembly, and a majority in most provinces (except Bengal, Sindh and Punjab), including the NWFP and Assam, which were being claimed for Pakistan;
• the Muslim League won about 86.6 per cent of the Muslim vote, all 30 reserved seats in the Centre, and majorities in Bengal and Sindh, establishing itself, unlike in 1937, as the dominant party among Muslims.

The elections revealed communal voting. This was the result of separate electorates and a very limited franchise (less than 10 per cent of the provincial population could vote). It stood in sharp contrast to the anti-British unity of the upsurges, ominously foreshadowing Partition.

The upsurges and the election results convinced the new Labour government under Clement Attlee that the loyalty of the armed forces could no longer be assumed. In March 1946 it despatched the high-powered Cabinet Mission to negotiate the transfer of power, and the endgame began.