South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

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State before Partition: India’s Interim Government

under Wavell

Rakesh Ankit

To cite this article: Rakesh Ankit (2019): State before Partition: India’s Interim Government under
Wavell, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2019.1556890

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1556890

Published online: 03 Feb 2019.

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SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1556890

ARTICLE

State before Partition: India’s Interim Government

under Wavell
Rakesh Ankit
Department of Politics and International Studies, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This paper is a study of the Interim Government in British India, British India; cabinet;
formed during the penultimate viceroyalty of Archibald Wavell, Congress; Independence;
from September 1946 to March 1947. It tries to throw light on Interim Government;
Muslim League;
major and minor personalities and micro and macro processes at Partition; Wavell
work in this improbable interlude and, thus, probes an overshad-
owed ministerial and bureaucratic set-up in the lead-up to
Partition. This understudied set-up constituted yet another com-
pelling ‘space before Partition’ which would continue to affect
the Indian state after Partition. Simultaneously, the paper seeks to
complicate the teleology and inevitability of Partition by showing
this interim arrangement at work, which belied its name. Bringing
together official texts and the personal interpretations of many
participants, it approaches the period as liminal, albeit one with
limitless possibilities at this juncture, of which what followed in
1947 was but one.

Introduction
I wonder if any country ever had a government like the Congress–Muslim League
coalition, which ruled India from October 1946 to August 1947. We functioned like a
little parliament … . On matters of day-to-day administration, there was seldom any
difference … .1
Thus wrote Dr. John Matthai, a prominent non-Congress, non-Muslim League
member of that government called the Interim Government; and yet, it remains
among the least studied aspects of pre-Partition India. Appearing too late in the
imperial narrative to prevent Independence and Partition, and set up as a straw-
man, subsequently knocked down, for failing to prevent them, it has been rendered
remote in the recent history-writing on the contemporary subcontinent.2 While at

CONTACT Rakesh Ankit [email protected]

1. Unpublished manuscript, Dr. John Matthai Papers, Acc. no. R-10824 (microfilm), pp. 1–8, Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library (hereafter NMML), Delhi.
2. An exception is Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, ‘The Interim Government in India in 1946–47: A Fresh Light’, in
Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, Vol. 62, no. 2 (2014), pp. 7–32; and Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, Wavell
and the Dying Days of the Raj: Britain’s Penultimate Viceroy in India (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012),
albeit in relation to Partition as an ‘irony’. See Anirudh Deshpande, ‘Review of Chawla, Mohammad Iqbal, Wavell
and the Dying Days of the Raj: Britain’s Penultimate Viceroy in India’, H-Net Reviews, H-Asia, Jan. 2014 [http://
www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id¼37909 accessed 17 May 2018].

ß 2019 South Asian Studies Association of Australia

2 R. ANKIT

one time the Interim Government was used for dialectical purposes by scholars of
the end games of empire, namely the struggle for independence, the origins of
Partition and the demand for Pakistan, subsequent strands of scholarship on prov-
inces, localities and memories around 1947 had minimal use for it.3 The latest
trend of studying the Indian and Pakistani states as they emerged from the long
shadow of 1947 confines it to being merely a backdrop or a curtain-raiser.4 This
evasion of the Interim Government, especially its six months under the viceroyalty
of Archibald Wavell, hints at, if anything, its elusive nature and the need to take a
closer look at it, using diverse sources. Seeking to do that, this article argues that it
is erroneous to look upon the Interim Government only through the prism of
Partition. In its own way, it was a moment of political accommodation in the tran-
sition from Empire to dominions in British India. Confronting social divisions and
economic crises, and coexisting with the colonial state apparatus, its personalities,
priorities and policies, related to post-war reconstruction, deserve attention beside
the politics of Partition. The tense relationships between Indians and Britons,
between the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League, and
between politicals and officials, bedevilled the Interim Government, the ‘State before
Partition’, making its beleaguered existence more rather than less remarkable.
Subsequent readings of, and from the vantage of, Partition, have shrouded any pur-
suits of its ‘pure particular’, poised as it was for possibilities (not all unrealised)
and persistent with continuities (quite a few prolonged)—what Paul Schroeder
described as ‘seeing them from the inside through empathetic understanding’.5
The seeds of the Interim Government were contained in the idea of the expan-
sion and Indianisation of the Viceroy’s Executive Council (cabinet), which was
under consideration well before the end of World War II.6 However it could only
be broadcast publicly in the aftermath of ‘the wartime shift of mood’.7 Since the
failure of the 1942 Cripps Mission, the subsequent launch of the Congress’ Quit
India movement and the consequent imprisonment of its leadership, Britain’s
Indian problem had been growing;8 the growth of the Muslim League and the
activities of the now-legalised Communist Party of India only exacerbated it. Thus,
the June 1945 Simla Conference, sanctioned by British Conservative Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and Secretary of State for India Leo Amery, and the
February–June 1946 Cabinet Mission, sent by their Labour successors, Clement
Attlee and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, were both responses to the deteriorating
circumstances.9

3. See Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh (eds), The Partition of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
4. See Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees,
Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); and Taylor Sherman, William Gould and Sarah
Ansari (eds), From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, 1947–70 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014).
5. Paul Schroeder, ‘History and International Relations Theory: Not Use or Abuse, but Fit or Misfit’, in International
Security, Vol. 22, no. 1 (1997), p. 66.
6. On Wavell’s role, see Victoria Schofield, Wavell: Soldier & Statesman (London: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2010).
7. Kenneth Morgan, Labour in Power: 1945–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 20.
8. See R.J. Moore, Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1983).
9. On the Cabinet Mission, see Peter Clarke, The Cripps Version (London: Allen Lane, 2002).
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 3

The Interim Government was the first among the few outcomes of the Cabinet
Mission. Its proposed three-tier system of government, ‘with an Indian union to deal
with foreign affairs, defence, communications, and relevant areas of finance’,10 seem-
ingly vindicated Wavell, who had ‘tried hard to persuade [the Indians] that real com-
munal issues often do not arise in practical administration’.11 To Matthai too, it
represented a ‘recognition on the part of the Congress that the main problems facing
the country were not political in character but were concerned with daily needs’.12
This creed of political acceptance and power accommodation—however liminal and
limited—is highlighted by this paper, much as it heralded the establishment of the
Interim Government. In the victorious aftermath of the elections of winter 1945–46,
in which the Congress Party took office in eight out of eleven provinces, and amidst
the worsening communal climate of summer 1946, an arrangement that ‘was to work
on communal representation’ was less than grudgingly accepted by the Congress high
command. And, when faced ‘with the fait accompli of a functioning government’, the
Muslim League acquiesced too.13
This spirit was reflected in the reconstitution of the Viceroy’s Executive Council,
which the incoming Indian members wished to call a cabinet instead.14 Its leading
personalities were the Congress’ big five—Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Abul
Kalam Azad, Rajendra Prasad and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari—and, when they
entered the Council later in October 1946, the Muslim League’s nominees—Liaquat
Ali Khan, Ibrahim Ismail Chundrigar, Abdur Rab Nishtar, Ghazanfar Ali Khan and
Jogendra Nath Mandal. They were joined by Matthai, Baldev Singh and Cooverji
Hormusji Bhabha, representatives of the Christians, Sikhs and Parsis, respectively, in
what can be called an elite ‘consociational’ collection.15 Consociationalism, a ‘power-
sharing system’ applied to post-1947 India with its representative coalition, propor-
tional civil service, federal autonomy and provincial ministries, can also be utilised to
understand India immediately pre-1947.16 This attempt ‘to avoid bitterness and create
an atmosphere conducive to cooperation’ was neither easy nor did it last, but that
does not mean that it was not there.17 It is this process of accord, as attempted via
the Interim Government, whose working out—however little and late—is investigated
by this paper. Rajagopalachari, for instance, urged his Congress colleagues in the cen-
tral legislature to sit ‘openly behind [the] government bench’ and support the coali-
tion.18 This support was necessary too, given the ‘fear of labour militancy’ and
‘popular politics’ among the colonial and national leadership alike19—similar spots on

10. Morgan, Labour in Power, p. 222.

11. Wavell to Attlee, 1 Aug. 1946, PREM 8/554, The National Archives (henceforth TNA), Kew/Richmond/London.
12. Matthai manuscript, pp. 1–8, NMML.
13. Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 131–2.
14. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 10 Sept. 1946, L/PO/10/23, India Office Records, British Library, London
(henceforth IOR).
15. See Ian Talbot, ‘Back to the Future? The Punjab Unionist Model of Consociational Democracy for Contemporary
India and Pakistan’, in International Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol. 3, no. 1 (1996), pp. 65–73.
16. Arend Lijphart, ‘The Puzzle of Indian Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation’, in The American Political
Science Review, Vol. 90, no. 2 (1996), pp. 258–9.
17. Gadgil to Rajagopalachari, 19 Oct. 1946, Subject File no. 39, C. Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
18. Rajagopalachari to Gadgil, 21 Oct. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
19. Sumit Sarkar, ‘Popular Movements and National Leadership, 1945–47’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 17,
nos. 14–16 (1982), p. 682-ii.
4 R. ANKIT

both the ‘setting sun’ and ‘rising sun’ of India in the interim.20 These spots, which
this paper seeks to illuminate in the narrative that follows, coalesced around the fol-
lowing themes: (1) the provision of food and clothing; (2) trade, tariffs and taxes; (3)
troop movements and labour welfare; and (4) education, investment and
infrastructure.

September–October 1946: Strains, stresses and skirmishes

The day before its formation on 2 September 1946, Nehru wrote to Wavell that the
Interim Government, ‘though within the terms of the existing law, [is] in nature and
formation different from its predecessors’. By way of agreement, Wavell enhanced the
status of the incoming members by ending ‘the practice of [senior civil servants] hav-
ing [direct] access to the Viceroy’.21 It was clear to both sides that the old order was
being displaced, even if its successor was not yet clear to either. The first file that
Wavell received from his new Council was from Nehru. On the touchy topic of the
treatment of Indians in South Africa, Pethick-Lawrence had written to Wavell that
the South African government ‘might be persuaded [into] a new agreement [if New
Delhi] would drop their reference to the United Nations’.22 Now, however, as the
new External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations council member, Nehru was
‘quite definite’ that he would not approach Prime Minister General Jan Smuts.23 In
London, Nehru’s view fed Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin’s concerns about Nehru’s
lack of readiness ‘to accept a measure of United Kingdom control in foreign affairs’;24
in June 1946, Bevin had received a note on the ‘situation in India and its possible
effects upon [the UK’s] Foreign Relations’ with Russia, the Arab states, Egypt, Persia,
the Far East and Indonesia and, above all, the withdrawal of Indian troops
from abroad.25
The first cabinet meeting of the Interim Government took place on 4 September
1946 and, in Wavell’s words, went ‘smoothly and reasonably’.26 Some of the first sub-
stantial problems that attracted the cabinet’s attention were issues that would plague
the post-1947 Nehru government too, that is food policy, especially the question of
imports from near (Burma) and far (Argentina, Canada and Australia); policy on
Indian troops, chiefly the presence of Indian soldiers from Indonesia to Iraq; and
trade policy, basically the question of import duties and export charges and the prep-
aration and passage of a bribery and corruption bill. Above all, as Rajagopalachari
impressed upon council member Jagjivan Ram, ‘we must step up production … . The
distress in regard to food and clothing calls for [it]’.27 Wavell was impressed with

20. S.D. Nargolwala, ‘Civil Servants Had to Be Generalists and Specialists’, in Raj K. Nigam (ed.), Memoirs of Old
Mandarins of India (New Delhi: Documentation Centre for Corporate & Business Policy Research, 1985), p. 243.
21. Nehru to Wavell and Wavell’s note, 1 Sept. 1946, item nos. 237 and 238, in Nicholas Mansergh, E.W.R. Lumby
and Penderel Moon (eds), The Transfer of Power 1942–7 (hereafter TOP), Vol. VIII (London: HMSO, 1979),
pp. 380–4.
22. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 21 Aug. 1946, L/PJ/8/305, IOR.
23. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 3 Sept. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
24. Cabinet CM (46) 79th, 4 Sept. 1946, L/PS/12/4631, IOR.
25. 14 June 1946, FO 371/59778, TNA.
26. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 4 Sept. 1946, p. 346.
27. Rajagopalachari to Ram, 12 Sept. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 5

Jagjivan Ram’s grasp of the contentious subjects dealt with by his Department of
Labour such as the ‘resettlement of soldiers, labour unrest, [and] position of the
Scheduled Castes’, while Matthai, whom Wavell considered ‘the most capable and
intelligent of Ministers’, apprised the viceroy about India’s poor financial position
and the consequent ‘serious danger of inflation’.28 Matthai’s presence in the interim
cabinet in the crucial portfolio of finance was a result of Nehru having invited him,
given his experience in ‘administration, business and economics’, and his being from
a minority community that provided the political justification.29 J.R.D. Tata,
Matthai’s employer, claimed to be ‘indirectly contributing to this great purpose’ in
releasing him for the cabinet position.30 Under Matthai and later Liaquat, the
Finance Department fashioned economic policy around the five pillars of inflation,
taxation, borrowing, balances and foreign exchange.31
The Interim Government also had an eclectic institutional inheritance, and the
bureaucratic apparatus did not remain external to its new political masters, but came
to be entwined with it.32 In this, like much else, the interregnum foreshadowed the
early Nehruvian regime. For instance, the critical Labour Department had been bifur-
cated into a Department of Labour and a Department of Works, Mines and Power.
The labour section was headed by Shamaldharee Lall of the Indian Civil Service (ICS,
1919) as secretary, while the latter had the Englishman, H.C. Prior, of the ICS head-
ing its bureaucracy.33 Lall had been with the Labour Department since 1944 under
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, before Jagjivan Ram’s tenure. He had been instrumental in the
establishment of the civil pioneer corps, employment exchanges, labour health insur-
ance and the miners’ provident fund. Started in response to war-time demands and
shepherded by Ambedkar, all of these measures were continued under the Interim
Government. Lall had been ‘apprehensive [of Ram’s] attitude to the work determined
by his [politically opposed] predecessor’, but was pleasantly surprised when Ram
‘dispelled [his] doubts and fears’.34 This was despite the fact that while Ambedkar’s
views had been influenced by war exigencies that demanded the ‘maintenance of
“morale” among workers and a “peaceful” settlement of disputes with state interven-
tion’, Jagjivan Ram emphasised the ‘maintenance of “discipline” and “nationalism”
among the workers’.35
Conflicts too were an integral part of this institutional inheritance, especially the
nature of provincial ministries and the role of provincial governors. Objecting to the
conduct of Governor Robert Francis Mudie with respect to Congress–League jockey-
ing in Sindh, Nehru insisted that provincial governors were responsible to the
governor-general and ‘through him’ to the Interim Government.36 When Wavell

28. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 13 and 17 Sept. 1946, pp. 350–1.
29. Matthai manuscript, pp. 1–8, NMML.
30. Tata to Matthai, 3 Sept. 1946, Matthai Papers, Acc. no. R-10824, NMML.
31. S. Jagannathan to Tarlok Singh, 18 Sept. 1946, File no. 17 (38)/48-PMS, National Archives of India, Delhi
(henceforth NAI).
32. See Rotem Geva, ‘The Scramble for Houses: Violence, a Factionalized State, and Informal Economy in Post-
Partition Delhi’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 51, no. 3 (2017), pp. 769–824.
33. 6 April 1946, File no. F.14/2/46-R, NAI.
34. Shamaldharee Lall, ‘An Indian Civil Servant’, in Kewal L. Panjabi (ed.), The Civil Servant in India (Bombay:
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965), p. 19.
35. Shivangi Jaiswal, ‘Caste and Labour in the Official Discourse of India, 1942–52’, in Labour & Development, Vol.
21, no. 1 (2014), pp. 55–6.
6 R. ANKIT

replied that the governor-general’s control over provincial governors was only ‘in his
personal capacity’, Nehru argued that ‘in view of the change at the centre … the old
position undergoes change’.37 George Abell (ICS, 1928), Wavell’s private secretary,
felt that in their first days in government, the Congress underappreciated ‘the extent
of provincial autonomy’ in the 1935 Government of India Act.38 Anticipating these
early problems, Pethick-Lawrence had cautioned Wavell that ‘our present position in
India do[es] not permit of your authority being exercised against the majority of your
council except for the … protection of minorities, maintenance of services, foreign
treaty engagements’.39 The India Office followed up with a circular reminding various
departments that ‘it is His Majesty’s Government’s declared intention to treat the
Interim Government as if it were … a Dominion’.40
Adding to this uneasy coexistence between Congress leaders and colonial officials
were the workings of the Defence and Foreign (Political) Departments. Nehru had
been aggrieved that his desire for the ‘withdrawal of Indian troops’ from overseas,
especially from Burma, Indonesia and Iraq, had brought little response from
Commander-in-Chief Claude Auchinleck. He was further annoyed when a request
was made direct to London on behalf of the Interim Government to ‘retain British
troops [in India] for a longer period’, bypassing him and Defence Member Baldev
Singh. In a cabinet meeting on 18 September 1946, Nehru urged Wavell to inform
London ‘of our feeling that Indian troops should not be used against Burmans and,
in any case, not for the suppression of industrial strikes or political movement’.
When Wavell tried to deflect Nehru by bringing up the ‘considerable number of
[civilian] Indians in Burma [who] have to be given protection’, Nehru responded by
broadening the question and asking for an examination of ‘the larger quantities of
Indian troops being sent abroad for various purposes’.41 He complained to Wavell
that it was ‘difficult to function in the dark’ with regard to the workings of both the
Defence and Foreign (Political) Departments. The latter department looked after the
princely states and frontier areas.42 Nehru’s difficult visit there in October 1946, how-
ever, saw him admit that ‘at the present moment … it would not be right to consider
any basic changes’.43 In turn, the India Office worried about Nehru’s ‘intention to
secure control of paramountcy during the interim period’, and cautioned Wavell
about ‘interference in [the princely] states by [the] interim government’.44
The number of Indian troops serving outside India in September 1946 demon-
strates the extent of the challenge for Nehru and the concern for London: Japan
(11,400), Hong Kong (5,800), Malaya (now Malaysia) (59,000), Burma (Myanmar)
(78,500), Siam (Thailand) (4,000), Borneo (1,000), Ceylon (Sri Lanka) (1,500), Iraq
(16,000), Middle East (12,500) and Italy (400).45 Nehru wrote to Stafford Cripps, the
36. Nehru to Wavell, 5 Sept. 1946, item no. 259, TOP, Volume VIII, p. 422.

37. Nehru–Wavell exchange, 8 Sept. 1946, item nos. 280 and 281, TOP, Volume VIII, pp. 448–9.
38. George Abell to Wavell, 5 Sept. 1946, item no. 262, TOP, Volume VIII, p. 425.
39. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 6 Sept. 1946, L/PO/10/26, IOR.
40. Monteath’s note, 16 Sept. 1946, L/PJ/7/4933, IOR.
41. 18 Sept. 1946, File no. 114/CF/46, NAI.
42. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 18 Sept. 1946, L/WS/1/1052, IOR.
43. Nehru to Olaf Caroe, 16 Nov. 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru (post-1947) Papers, File no. 1, NMML.
44. 15–29 Nov. 1946, L/PS/13/1830, IOR.
45. Auchinleck’s note, 5 Sept. 1946, PREM 8/541/6, TNA.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 7

India hand in Attlee’s cabinet, to remind him that ‘the one thing that is absolutely
necessary is for people to realise that we are not just caretakers for a brief period’.46
The India Office put it in another way: ‘Important that India is worthily represented
abroad and not as a vote in Britain’s pocket … why [should] Indian troops be used in
Indonesia as peacemakers for the Dutch … why is it a part of India’s duties to police
Iraq’.47 In mid October 1946, Nehru directly approached Premier General Aung San
over the matter of Indian troops in Burma.48 Nehru’s letter to Wavell further illus-
trates the constrained coexistence of British officialdom and Indian politicals in the
realm of external affairs49 during the Interim Government. He wrote: ‘I am not
unaware of our relations with HMG (His Majesty’s Government). But I do not
understand how those relations come in the way of our conferring with the present
government of Burma on a common matter of interest’.50
The withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia was also related to the question
of importing Indonesian rice; approaching Pethick-Lawrence directly, Nehru warned
him that ‘it would be unfortunate if [the] impression were to [be] gain[ed] that HMG
preferred to risk starvation in India rather than take negligible military risks [in] pro-
viding transport for rice’.51 Consequently, Wavell was urged to make ‘liberal conces-
sions in all matters, where it is in any case inevitable’.52
Meanwhile, efforts continued to get the Muslim League into the Interim
Government. B.N. Rau, a friend of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, wrote to the Quaid-e-
Azam that:
The problems which confront us today are problems which concern Hindus and
Muslims alike. In foreign affairs, whether in Indonesia or South Africa or the Middle-
East or the NWF, there is no cleavage between Nehru’s views and those of the Muslim
League; in the domestic sphere, our main problems are putting an end to the fratricidal
strife, procuring adequate supplies of food and planning power and irrigation projects.
In none of these matters, there is any divergence of interest or policy between Hindus
and Muslims … 53
In the second half of September, new discords emerged. Wavell ‘disliked’ Nehru’s
proposal to have his friend V.K. Krishna Menon visit Europe as his ‘personal repre-
sentative’; and he considered Menon carrying a personal message about procuring
wheat from Nehru to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov especially ‘ill-
advised and ill-timed’.54 In London, Pethick-Lawrence too was ‘far from happy about
the embarrassing Krishna Menon’, especially his meeting with Molotov regarding
wheat, but he was unable to persuade the Attlee Cabinet to divert 100,000 tons of
Canadian wheat to India.55

46. Nehru to Cripps, 20 Sept. 1946, CAB 127/143, TNA.

47. 18 Sept. 1946, L/PS/12/1174, IOR.
48. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 11 Oct. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
49. See Rakesh Ankit, ‘In the Twilight of Empire: Two Impressions of Britain and India at the United Nations,
1945–47’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 38, no. 4 (2015), pp. 574–88.
50. Nehru to Wavell, 11 Oct. 1946, item no. 438, TOP, Vol. VIII, pp. 707–8.
51. Nehru to Pethick-Lawrence, 19 Sept. 1946, L/PO/10/18, IOR.
52. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 20 Sept. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
53. B.N. Rau to Jinnah, 22 Sept. 1946, item no. 350, TOP, Volume VIII, p. 563.
54. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 23 Sept. 1946, L/PS/12/4045, IOR.
55. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 4 Oct. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
8 R. ANKIT

Nevertheless Pethick-Lawrence was busy with his own balancing act. He wanted to
protect the ‘discretionary powers’ of governors and the viceroy, but also thought it
‘desirable’ on occasion to consult the Interim Government ‘on matters falling in that
field’. He agreed that Nehru could not see all the important correspondence between
the Political Department and the princely states because that would be tantamount to
infringing paramountcy during the interim period, yet he wanted to invest Nehru’s
council membership with real meaning.
In internal affairs, a serious food shortage was now evident, with ‘more than 15
crores (150 million) people covered by food rationing schemes’.56 According to
Benjamin Seigel, ‘the ascent of the Interim Government cheered the departing imper-
ial administrators, now tasked with overseeing a transition to self-rule’.57 The growing
difference between the controlled price of cotton in India and the higher prices in
foreign markets was discussed by the Industries and Supplies Member
Rajagopalachari, Commerce Member Bhabha and Matthai on 4 October 1946.
Assisted by Purshottamdas Thakurdas, the president of the East India Cotton
Association, they decided that, given ‘the existing disparity’ and ‘to prevent uncertain
speculation’, ‘an export duty should be imposed’. They also agreed to discontinue
price controls over jute and jute goods, and to levy an enhanced duty on raw and
manufactured jute.58 Rajagopalachari felt that India ‘need not be concerned about los-
ing the market abroad … as the war-frightened world is inclined to self-sufficiency’.59
In October 1946 Bhabha penned an ambitious note that envisioned ‘long-term indus-
trialisation—tariff policy—trade expansion—commercial intelligence service—overseas
reciprocity [and] sanctions against South Africa’.60 He and his successor, Chundrigar,
would inaugurate India’s ‘post-war export policy’, particularly on cotton,61 which
aligned with the policy of the Industries and Supplies Department, where
Rajagopalachari was laying out broad aspects of ‘industrialisation’ and ‘import control
and regulation of essential articles’.62 Asaf Ali, next door in the Transport
Department, was emphasising ‘the economic and strategic indivisibility of the entire
geographical entity [of] British India and [the] Indian [Princely] States’.63 Ali’s rail-
way budget figures of early 1947 make for fascinating reading: they planned for ambi-
tious track relay and restoration, locomotive and coach construction, road-building,
anti-slump projects at ports, and financial aid for Hindustan Aircrafts Limited.

October–November 1946: A triumvirate government

From 12 October, negotiations on portfolios for Muslim League members of the
Interim Government dominated the political scene. Jinnah told Wavell that of the
four big departments (Home, Finance, External Affairs and Defence), he wanted

56. Statement by Rajagopalachari, 10 Oct. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
57. Benjamin Siegel, Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018), p. 60.
58. Notes by Y.N. Sukthankar and K.B. Lall, 19 and 23 Oct. 1946, File no. 75-XXI/46-C&G, NAI.
59. Note by Rajagopalachari, 9 Oct. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
60. 11 Oct. 1946, L/PJ/10/75, IOR.
61. Bhabha’s note (undated), Oct. 1946, File no. 17 (38)/48-PMS, NAI.
62. Note by Rajagopalachari, 27 Sept. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
63. Note by Asaf Ali, 13 Oct. 1946, File no. 17 (38)/48-PMS, NAI; words underlined in original.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 9

either External Affairs or Defence, and that he was prepared to leave Finance with
Matthai.64 However, Auchinleck informed Wavell that he would ‘prefer Baldev [to]
Jinnah’ for Defence.65 Baldev repaid this trust when he effusively wrote to Attlee in
December 1946 that it was ‘imperative that Auchinleck remains for 2–3 years’.66 It
was also clear that Nehru did not wish to give up External Affairs. This meant that
for the League to get one of the four big departments, Patel would have to be shifted
from the Home Department.67 Major structural initiatives, meanwhile, continued and
the cabinet approved Patel’s proposal for the formation of an Indian Administrative
Service and Nehru’s for its Foreign Service counterpart.68 These initiatives drew upon
Wavell’s scheme from August 1946 to refashion future services of the secretary of
state.69 It was also decided to allow Gandhi’s pet demand, removal of the duty on
salt, from 1 January 1947.70 Rajagopalachari reported that for the second half of 1946,
his Department of Industries and Supplies would be sending 1,520 tons of cloth to
Afghanistan, nearly the same to East Africa, 995 tons to Ceylon and 1,700 tons
to Burma.71
Even as Wavell persisted in his unsuccessful attempts to get Patel to leave Home
and accept a different portfolio,72 he and his Congress colleagues agreed to send a
‘first of its kind’ Indian delegation to the UN’s preparatory committee on trade and
employment. They also determined that nine Gurkha battalions officered by Indians
would be employed in the future Indian army, while also expressing displeasure at
the British government’s intention to continue to employ Gurkhas in the British
army.73 In the last week of October 1946, with Wavell continuing to try to ‘persuade
[Jinnah and Liaquat] not to insist on Home or Defence’,74 the Congress decided to
offer Finance and Commerce to the Muslim League instead, which Jinnah accepted.75
Rajagopalachari spoke for many when he wrote to Cripps that ‘in spite of doubts,
people in India on the whole welcome this decision’.76 For his part, and to smooth
over any frictions, Wavell ensured that in the order of precedence of the Interim
Government, the Muslim League members would not be listed last just because they
had ‘entered the government after the others’, as was the normal procedure.77
With the coalition finally in place, a cabinet co-ordination committee was created
for outstanding issues like the sterling balance negotiations. On this Wavell was
pleased to learn that both Patel and Liaquat adopted a similarly generous attitude

64. Wavell’s note, 12 Oct. 1946, item no. 435, and Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 13 Oct. 1946, item no. 439, TOP,
Volume VIII, pp. 704–5, 709.
65. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 12 Oct. 1946, p. 357.
66. Baldev Singh to Attlee, 12 Dec. 1946, PREM 8/583, TNA.
67. Wavell’s note, 14 Oct. 1946, item no. 448, TOP, Volume VIII, pp. 721–2.
68. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 15 Oct. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
69. 9 Oct. 1946, File no. 127/CF/46, PMS, NAI.
70. 15 Oct. 1946, File no. 131/CF/46, PMS, NAI.
71. Rajagopalachari to Nehru, 12 Oct. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
72. Wavell’s note, 16 Oct. 1946, item no. 471, Wavell to Nehru and Wavell’s note, 22 Oct. 1946, item nos. 489 and
490, TOP, Volume VIII, pp. 742, 763–4.
73. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 18 and 30 Oct. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
74. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 24 Oct. 1946, pp. 362–3.
75. See item nos. 494–6, 503–4, 506 and 509, TOP, Volume VIII, pp. 777–85, 800–4.
76. Rajagopalachari to Cripps, 16 Oct. 1946, Subject File no. 39, Rajagopalachari Papers (V Instalment), NMML.
77. Abell to Eric Coates, 30 Oct. 1946, File no. F.23 (3)-H/46, PMS, NAI.
10 R. ANKIT

towards London.78 On the eve of the swearing-in of the Muslim League Members,
Wavell’s thoughts summed up the ‘ominous auspices’ under which the interim coali-
tion had been formed: ‘riots in East Bengal, restlessness in Bombay and Calcutta,
deep mistrust between party leaders … . That an agreement has been reached at all is
something of an achievement’.79 His hope was that ‘things may improve under pres-
sure of events’, and early signs were encouraging: Nehru and Liaquat sat side-by-side
in the Assembly, and on the bench next to them were Patel, Chundrigar and Asaf
Ali. Liaquat had been ‘quite sensible’ at the press conference after taking his oath
and, on the first afternoon, Matthai had ‘backed up a speech by Liaquat on a reso-
lution on Bretton Woods’.80 Jinnah had asked his colleagues to work ‘for the man in
the street’, while Liaquat had stated that ‘nowhere in the world does a Government
like the present Interim Government of India exist, and we have come into [it] with
the intention of working with our colleagues’.81 On 30 October, Wavell chaired the
first meeting of the new expanded cabinet at which the chief item was the creation of
a committee to consult with the princely states about their administration.82 From
London, the India Office sent its best wishes by getting 59,000 tons of cereals from
America for the last quarter of 1946.83
This cross-communal accommodation, potentially facilitating administration, could
not have been more timely, for the biggest crisis that the interim coalition faced was
a country-wide food shortage.84 The Rajendra Prasad-led Food Department developed
schemes to ‘conserve food resources’, ‘intensify food procurement’, and eventually to
implement ‘rationing’.85 The result was that India had managed to postpone famine
despite having not imported any food for six months even though there was a short-
age of seven million tons of food grains.86 The second significant arena of work was
in the Labour Department. Three days after Ram assumed office, he was given a note
on ‘industrial disputes’ that would commence with ‘a wave of strike fever in the
country’, and which suggested a ‘political solution’: ‘a committee to be created of
members of Labour, Finance, Industries and Supplies in place of the current
“Industrial Disputes Committee”, made [up] of officials, [i.e. a] bureaucratic turf war
[with] no political leadership’.87 The Labour Department also drafted four important
measures for the Legislative Assembly’s winter session: (1) an industrial disputes bill;
(2) an amendment to the Factories Act; (3) a Coal Mines Labour Welfare Fund; and
(4) workmen’s state insurance. Two other bills that had been stuck in the legislative
pipeline were reworked: the Minimum Wages Bill and an amendment to the Trade
Unions Act.88 All six bills were considered necessary because even before the

78. See item nos. 527–9, TOP, Volume VIII, pp. 834–8.
79. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 25 Oct. 1946, p. 364.
80. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 30 Oct. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
81. Hector Bolitho, Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan (London: John Murray, 1954), p. 168.
82. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 30 Oct. 1946, pp. 367–8.
83. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 1 Nov. 1946, L/E/8/4120, IOR.
84. See Sunil Amrith, ‘Food and Welfare in India, c. 1900–1950’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.
50, no. 4 (2008), pp. 1010–35.
85. See File nos. RP-1086/2, RP-1000/56 and RP-1085 (Vol. III), Ministry of Food, 1946, NAI.
86. R.A. Gopalaswami, ‘Initiatives and Implementation in ICS’, in Raj K. Nigam (ed.), Memoirs of Old Mandarins of
India (New Delhi: Documentation Centre for Corporate & Business Policy Research, 1985), p. 83.
87. Note by T.H. Burney, 5 Sept. 1946, File no. 17 (38)/48-PMS, NAI.
88. Note by V.K.R. Menon (undated), Oct. 1946, File no. 127/CF/46-PMS, NAI.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 11

formation of the Interim Government, there had been a feeling that not only was ‘the
labour situation becoming increasingly dangerous … it may fall … under Communist
and Congress left-wing influence’.89

November 1946–February 1947: Working time

As November 1946 began, Wavell’s reports to London usually contained ‘one cheerful
item’ which related to the functioning of the interim cabinet: ‘not on party lines at
all’.90 The harmonious meetings in New Delhi were in stark contrast to the devastat-
ing communal clashes in Bengal and Bihar. When Nehru, Liaquat, Patel and Nishtar
flew together to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Patna in the first week of November,
Wavell reflected upon ‘this getting together [as] the most hopeful feature of the polit-
ical situation for a long time’.
When they returned, the cabinet turned to proposals ‘for encouraging small sav-
ings, establishment of a Price Fixing Committee, rules for the admission of foreigners
into India, instructions to India’s UN delegation about trying to secure a seat for
India on the Security Council, demobilisation and establishment of a Railway
Protection Force’.91 In the second week of November another cabinet meeting dis-
cussed the civil aviation agreement with America. The Americans ‘were allowed to
operate three routes across India’, but New Delhi would retain ‘control over the cap-
acity of the services’.92 Matthai encouraged Wavell by telling him that if the coalition
‘could keep together for the next month or two [the situation] might turn out all
right’.93 Matthai was now in charge of the Department of Works, Mines and Power,
which carried out preparatory works on the Damodar, Mahanadi and Kosi river proj-
ects that would pave the way to India’s post-war industrialisation.94
R.N. Banerjee (ICS, 1918), Nehru’s secretary in the Commonwealth Relations
office, recalled with regret that while ‘a great deal has been said on a system of div-
ided responsibility’, not a lot had been said on the ‘inter-ministerial … business of
government department[s]’.95 As J.M. Lobo-Prabhu (ICS, 1928) put it: ‘whoever was
on top, the other ranks were engaged as usual with their work’.96 In the third week
of November, with regard to the ‘savage communal violence’ in Bengal, Bihar and the
United Provinces (UP), Wavell wrote that the cabinet had sensibly sanctioned admin-
istrative help for these provinces.97 But as the coalition cabinet finished its first
month, Wavell added a note of caution: ‘if only the leaders were as reasonable outside
cabinet as inside it’.98 Nevertheless, during the winter session of the Assembly,

89. 9 Aug. 1946, File no. 12/7/46-Poll (I), Home, NAI.

90. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 5 Nov. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
91. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 3 and 6 Nov. 1946, pp. 369–73.
92. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 13 Nov. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
93. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 12 Nov. 1946, p. 376.
94. Note by B.K. Gokhale, 27 Aug. 1946, File no. 17 (38)/48-PMS, NAI.
95. R.N. Banerjee, ‘Three Decades in the ICS’, in Raj K. Nigam (ed.), Memoirs of Old Mandarins of India (New Delhi:
Documentation Centre for Corporate & Business Policy Research, 1985), p. 19.
96. J.M. Lobo-Prabhu, ‘Commitment to Covenant and Country’, in Raj K. Nigam (ed.), Memoirs of Old Mandarins of
India (New Delhi: Documentation Centre for Corporate & Business Policy Research, 1985), pp. 186–7.
97. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 22 Nov. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
98. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 27 Nov. 1946, p. 383.
12 R. ANKIT

‘a good deal of business had been transacted’.99 In December, while Wavell—along

with some of the Indian leadership—was in London for a meeting on the future
Constituent Assembly,100 John Colville reported that ‘in spite of the state of party
feeling, all the cabinet meetings [were] correct and peaceful’.101 And there was some
humour too: at one cabinet meeting, Patel said that ‘whoever else might resign, he
had no intentions [of doing so]’.102 Indeed, as B. Shiva Rao, the noted journalist with
deep access to Congress circles reported to the liberal Tej Bahadur Sapru, ‘the transi-
tion stage will be longer than we think [and] the interim government must press for-
ward with getting as much power as it can’.103 Nevertheless the biggest concern was
the ‘famine threat’, with Prasad asking for ‘Turkish wheat urgently’.104
The first cabinet meeting of 1947 was held on 3 January and discussed the simple
matter of requisitioning jute to pay for Argentinian grain, as well as the ‘stormy’ affair
of the ordinance on censorship of the press. As Matthai wrote, this was emerging as
the principal cause of dispute within the administration of the Home Department.105
The cabinet met again the next day to discuss ‘a threatened strike in the Government
Presses’.106 Soon, Liaquat was preparing budget estimates, and the cabinet was discus-
sing the report on the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, passing the coal report and raising
possibilities of thorium and uranium extraction in Travancore.107 From 6 to 18
January, the Asiatic Regional Conference on labour for Southeast Asia was held in
New Delhi, serving as a precursor to the Asian Relations Conference.108 In mid
January, Nehru and Liaquat put their heads together on the question of the release of
the imprisoned members of the Indian National Army (INA), control of frontier
tribesmen, withdrawal of British troops from India, and the Damodar and Mahanadi
valley projects.109 Wavell noted that the ‘Congress [seems] sobered by responsibil-
ity’.110 There was another cabinet reshuffle after Asaf Ali was appointed as India’s first
ambassador to America, and Abul Kalam Azad entered as Education Member.111 The
Education Department, led by Azad, envisioned Indian education, post-1947, in a five-
year plan which outlined an impressive educational expenditure. Notwithstanding
India’s internal turmoil, international opportunities for students had continued in
1946–47, with over one hundred students sent to both the United States and the
United Kingdom, supported by the government’s overseas scholarships scheme.112
The new cabinet met on 15 January 1948 and discussed ‘the report on planning’,
later to serve as a blueprint for independent India’s first five-year-plan.113 The next

99. 22 Nov. 1946, L/PJ/10/76, IOR.

100. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 234.
101. Colville to Pethick-Lawrence, 18 and 23 Dec. 1946, L/PO/10/23, IOR.
102. Colville to Pethick-Lawrence, 10 Dec. 1946, L/PJ/10/76, IOR.
103. Rao to Sapru, 18 Dec. 1946, Correspondences File, B. Shiva Rao Papers, NMML.
104. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 2 Jan. 1947, p. 404.
105. Matthai manuscript, pp. 1–8, NMML.
106. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 3–4 Jan. 1947, p. 405.
107. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 8 Jan. 1947, p. 407.
108. See FO 371/59605, TNA.
109. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 14 Jan. 1947, L/PO/10/24, IOR.
110. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 9 and 14 Jan. 1947, pp. 409–10.
111. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 22 Jan. 1947, L/PJ/10/76, IOR.
112. File no. 3-2/46 (ODI-1946), Education Department, NAI.
113. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 15 Jan. 1947, p. 411.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 13

cabinet meeting saw Baldev Singh recommend the release of all INA men and res-
toration of their pay for the period when they had been fighting the British in the
northeast. The cabinet was united on these concessions and wanted to announce
them before 23 January, when Sarat Chandra Bose intended to hold a meeting in
Calcutta in memory of his dead brother and INA leader, Subhas. This was one
matter on which Wavell, Auchinleck and London were ‘firm’ in their refusal in the
face of ‘Nehru-Liaquat-Baldev’s together[ness]’.114 There were other issues too on
which the three were united, including ‘labour trouble, railway and coal strike’. But
there were matters where ‘the communal element obtruded itself’ such as the press
ordinance, which the League was convinced was a ‘device of Patel’s to muzzle
Dawn’.115 Just as there were limits to the ‘freest possible hand’ that Wavell tried to
give his cabinet, so there were limits to ‘complete cooperation’ between the parties,
which would not occur until ‘a settlement [could be] arrived [at] on the general
political situation’.116 But Wavell faced the most difficulties in his last months over
the combined ‘demand for withdrawal of British troops’ and the ‘INA business’,
rather than any Congress–League squabble. Even so, after the Punjab Unionist gov-
ernment banned the Muslim League National Guard and the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on 24 January, which Wavell expected would produce
‘much communalism’, the cabinet meetings continued ‘in a peaceful atmosphere’,
passing essential items like rice procurement and wheat importation.117 Outbreaks
of communal violence under the Interim Government were queried in the
Legislative Assembly by A.E.H. Jaffer; the Home Department produced the follow-
ing official tally:
Orissa (no riots), Punjab (25 Hindus, 23 Moslems), Ajmer-Merwara (no riots), Sind (no
riots), Baluchistan (no riots), Bombay (449 Hindus, 440 Moslems), UP (257 Hindus,
850 Moslems), Assam (no riots), Central Province (no riots), Madras (3 Hindus, 3
Moslems), Delhi (11 Hindus and Sikhs, 19 Moslems), Bihar (272/594 Hindus, 4679/5094
Moslems), Bengal (except Mymensingh and Noakhali, 439 Hindus, 272 Muslims;
Mymensingh—23 Hindus, 71 Moslems, Noakhali—58 Hindus), NWFP (36 Hindus,
9 Moslems).118
A besieged Home Department was trying to expand the police force across the prov-
inces by giving financial assistance to Bengal, Punjab, Bihar, Orissa (now Odisha) and
the North-West Frontier Province in light of ‘unprecedented communal disturbances,
uncertain political future, increased influence of left-wing [and] spate of strikes and
agrarian disputes’.119
The next political crisis, triggered by the League’s rejection of the proposals for the
Constituent Assembly on 1 February 1947, came just as the budget session was begin-
ning. V.P. Menon, the Reforms Commissioner, told Wavell that ‘the Partition of
India is now inevitable’.120 Nehru himself brought up ‘the question of partitioning

114. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 24 Jan. 1947, L/PJ/10/76, IOR.

115. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 21 Jan. 1947, p. 413.
116. Wavell to Attlee, 17 Jan. 1947, PREM 8/554, TNA; and Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 18 Jan. 1947, L/PJ/10/
76, IOR.
117. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 22–24 Jan. and 27–30 Jan. 1947, pp. 414–5.
118. ‘Riots from 2-9-1946 to 15-1-1947’, 27 Feb. 1947, File no. 22/1/47-Poll (I), Home, NAI.
119. See Subject File no. 10, H.K. Mahtab Papers (I Instalment), NMML.
120. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 1 and 6 Feb. 1947, pp. 416–8.
14 R. ANKIT

Bengal and Punjab’ with Wavell and Krishna Menon.121 The Joint Planning
Committee chimed in with a despondent note: ‘The general situation may appear
more satisfactory than it was during most of 1946 … but the central government is
becoming ineffective’.122 The cabinet, however, was still capable of coming together
on long-term matters like ‘the strength of the post-war Indian army’, the budget fig-
ures which showed a deficit of Rs680 million, and an aviation agreement with the
Dutch.123 Wavell’s ‘judgement [was that] neither side [was] really anxious for an
open break’.124 This ambiguity was captured in Nehru’s letter to Azad: ‘We are now
in the midst of a very severe crisis … . We should allow matters to rest where they
are till we know definitely what is going to happen’.125 As regards ‘communal diffi-
culty’, it is worth quoting a reply from Rajagopalachari to H.S. Suhrawardy, the
Muslim League premier of Bengal, on the question of steel allotments for Bengal:
‘There [is no] reason why [communalism] should affect the existing scheme when
every stockist, Hindu or Muslim, can sell only to persons [with] permits’.126
In mid February, Wavell met Liaquat to discuss the budget, a key component of
which was its allocation for defence. Baldev and Auchinleck had sought Rs1,460 mil-
lion, but Liaquat and the Finance Department were offering only Rs900 million.
Wavell and the rest of the cabinet sided with Liaquat because India would ‘have to
speculate on a period of peace’. Finally, the question of the services of the secretary
of state, their withdrawal and compensation, was looming large. There were nineteen
departments in the Government of India in 1947, excluding political and legislative,
but including the Cabinet Secretariat. Fourteen of the secretary-ships were held by
British officers and five by Indians. Of the British, twelve were expected to leave in
1947 and their replacements in most cases would be Indian. Another matter, which
saw the Interim Government in ‘fairly lively’ action in February, was the question of
the post of Indian High Commissioner to the UK, and its transfer from the
Commerce Department to the External Affairs Department. While Nehru and
Chundrigar agreed that the incumbent, Samuel Ranganathan, had to go, they differed
on the new appointment.127 The League wanted to revisit a decision taken in
October, before it had joined the cabinet, that trade and consular representatives,
including the Indian High Commissioner in London, should be drawn from the new
Foreign Service in the enlarged and amalgamated department under Nehru. R.N.
Banerjee recalled this episode in a manner that captured all the ambiguities of that
interim era well: ‘Chundrigar, and Liaquat Ali Khan fought very ably seconded by
their Secretary, N.R. Pillai. The Commonwealth Relations Department’s case was not
put forward so vigorously … but for Matthai and Rajagopalachari coming to
the rescue … ’.128

121. Zachariah, Nehru, p. 133.

122. 31 Jan. 1947, L/PJ/10/77, IOR.
123. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 8 Feb. 1947, p. 418.
124. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 9 Feb. 1947, L/PJ/10/77, IOR.
125. Nehru to Azad, 14 Feb. 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru (post-1947) Papers, File no. 2, NMML.
126. Rajagopalachari to Suhrawardy, 18 Feb. 1947, Subject File no. 42, Rajagopalachari Papers (V
Instalment), NMML.
127. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 12 Feb. 1947, L/PO/10/24, IOR.
128. Oral History Transcripts, R.N. Banerjee (Acc. no. 366), p. 106, NMML.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 15

From mid February 1947, budget proposals overshadowed all else in matters of
governance, while Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s 20 February announcement of
British withdrawal from India by June 1948, along with the change of viceroy, domi-
nated political proceedings. To meet the deficit, the Finance Department had pro-
posed new taxes in the form of a business profits tax ‘estimated to produce thirty
crores, increase of one anna in Corporation Tax to produce four crores, a changed
super-tax to produce more than two crores, a Dividend Tax and a Capital Gains Tax
(equivalent to a tax on unearned increment) to produce more than three crores’.
Liaquat also proposed a ‘high-powered tribunal to deal with tax evasion’.129 This was
a follow-up to the Prevention of Corruption Bill, 1946, which had been presented in
the Assembly by Patel in October.130 On 17 February, after considering a variety of
Home and Information and Broadcasting matters with a ‘pleasant’ Patel, namely
‘the slowness of HMG in dealing with the question of the services, situation in the
Punjab, question of language on the All-India Radio, [and] enquiries into the
Calcutta and Bihar riots’, Wavell discussed the budget proposals with Nehru, Liaquat
and Matthai.131 The underlying idea behind the proposals, as Matthai agreed, was
that the excess profits tax had been removed ‘too early and it was necessary to find
fresh taxes in view of the large deficit’. During his tenure at the Finance Department,
he too had sought new ‘sources of revenue [because] industrial profits were still rul-
ing (sic) high and large-scale evasion was still [going on]’.132
Wavell’s last cabinet meeting before Attlee’s announcement about British with-
drawal was on 19 February 1947. It was long, and many items—tariffs on bicycles
and woodscrews, regulation of dentists, a note by Nehru on scientific manpower—
‘went almost hilariously’. The next day, the end of Wavell’s tenure was announced,
and a farewell mood descended. A ‘sorry’ Liaquat, ‘polite’ Nehru, ‘perturbed’ Baldev
and ‘nice’ Rajagopalachari and Azad met or wrote to him,133 and they made the
remainder of his cabinet meetings so ‘friendly’ that he wrote in his diary: ‘one would
never imagine from the atmosphere of discussion that each side was demanding the
withdrawal of the other’.134 Instead, the two sides approved together the immediate
withdrawal of Indian troops from Egypt and Palestine, the retention of 8,000–14,000
troops in Iraq for ‘guarding the stores at the Shiba base’, the withdrawal of 10,440
Indian occupation forces from Japan as soon as possible, and the return of troops
from Burma and Malaya ‘at their convenience’.135

February–March 1947: The crisis breaks

The Interim Government’s budget, which Liaquat presented on 28 February 1947, has
been subject to much adverse comment, more for its alleged politics than for the

129. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 12 Feb. 1947, p. 419.
130. See File no. F.8/47-R, 1947, NAI.
131. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 17 Feb. 1947, p. 421; and Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 19 Feb. 1947,
L/PJ/10/77, IOR.
132. Matthai manuscript, pp. 1–8, NMML.
133. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 19–20, 21 and 23 Feb. 1947, pp. 422–3.
134. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 26–27 Feb. 1947, p. 424.
135. 26 Feb. 1947, File no. 114/CF/46, Cabinet Secretariat, NAI.
16 R. ANKIT

economics it articulated.136 As Azad wrote in his memoirs: ‘We were not against
Liaquat Ali’s proposals in principle [but] having secured [our] assent, he proceeded
to frame [extreme] specific measures … ’.137 On 5 March, with the Congress Party
primed for the partition of Punjab,138 Nehru, Patel and Bhabha sent in minutes that
dissented from the record of the cabinet meeting of 28 February. It appeared to
Wavell that the Congress was now ‘trying to rat or hedge’ in the face of the budget’s
unpopularity with its ‘big business supporters’.139 Sarvepalli Gopal claimed in his
privileged biography of Nehru that ‘Liaquat introduced a wide-ranging budget with-
out full discussions with his colleagues or even Jawaharlal on at least the general
nature of his proposals’.140 But in contrast, Matthai recalled agreeing ‘with Liaquat
that the 1947 budget must proceed on the basis that war conditions still
persisted … Nehru agreed in the view I took’. He wrote:
In the way the tax proposals were embodied in his speech, Liaquat seemed to assume
the role of a Tribune of the People against the oppressors of the poor … . In the
conditions of early-1947 the taxes were logically justified but viewed against the
romantic background of the budget speech produced a psychological impression.141
From another vantage point, H.M. Patel (ICS, 1927), the then secretary to the
interim cabinet, recollected being ‘surprised at the subsequent developments because
special care was taken by us to explain to everybody the practice in regard to the
budget … and, no major objection was taken by anybody’. He continued: ‘there was
no real serious justification for the Congress to have made such a big issue … . There
was [nothing] that could be taken as attack on Hindu commerce’.142 However,
Wavell telegraphed Pethick-Lawrence:
Liaquat’s budget—considerable deficit—unanswerable justification for heavy taxation—
appeals to the Socialist in the Congress—popular support from all parties—Nehru and
Matthai had accepted the proposals but Birla’s HT (Hindustan Times) has voiced the
outcry of millionaires—comment in the assembly largely on non-party lines—the budget
is also a blow to British interests.143
This last point was repeatedly made on the floor of the Assembly by its European
members, who charged that the budget had ‘a social objective to soak the rich’, which
would produce ‘industrial insecurity’ and kill the ‘industrial goose that lay the golden
eggs by 25 percent taxation’. On 4 March 1947, Matthai had defended the budget
thus: ‘a popular government assuming power for the first time could not risk the
repercussions … that deficit budgets bring’. The differences over the budget have since
been called ‘the first confrontation between the newly emerging state and the Indian
capitalist class, which was striving hard to establish itself as the most important force

136. See ‘Liaquat Ali Khan’s 1947 Budget and the Corporate Response’, in Nasir Tyabji, Forging Capitalism in Nehru’s
India: Neocolonialism and the State, c. 1940–1970 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015), Chap. 3.
137. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1988), pp. 188–90.
138. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), p. 31.
139. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 5 Mar. 1947, p. 425.
140. S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Vol. 1, 1889–1947 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), p. 341.
141. Matthai manuscript, pp. 1–8, NMML.
142. Oral History Transcripts, H.M. Patel (Acc. no. 90), pp. 10–1, NMML.
143. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 5 Mar. 1947, L/PJ/10/78, IOR.
 SOUTH ASIA: JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES 17

in India within the power structure of the state’.144 With Liaquat prepared ‘to fight to
the last ditch’,145 the new taxation proposals and the Investigation Commission bill
were referred to the Select Committee; it produced a compromise by reducing the
proposed tax on business profits over Rs100,000 from 25 percent to 16 percent.146
Wavell’s final cabinet meeting was held on 19 March 1947 and was dominated by
the problem of the INA. He told his cabinet colleagues of his ‘intention to overrule,
in the light of [Auchinleck’s] views on the effect on morale of the army’, their deci-
sion to release the INA prisoners. Nehru warned him that his decision ‘would have
serious consequences’.147 Afterwards, Wavell wrote a long letter to Pethick-Lawrence
summing up the position on the budget and the situation in the cabinet: ‘It is a diffi-
cult business and expose[s] the unreality of our “coalition”’.148 The next day he gave
a ‘farewell dinner’ for his colleagues, where he ‘gathered from Liaquat that comprom-
ise on the budget [was] possible’. The departing viceroy’s last official meeting was
with the Finance Member on 22 March 1947, in which they agreed to the Select
Committee’s suggestion on taxation, pending the Congress’ support.149 Upon his
return to London, Wavell gave the following two-line review of the Interim
Government to the British cabinet’s India and Burma Committee: ‘Proceedings in the
Cabinet had been conducted in a friendly, good-humoured and practical manner.
This, however, had not drawn the Congress and Muslim League closer together’.150

Conclusion
And so it proved to be. But even the synoptic survey of the priorities and policies of
the Interim Government above shows it to be far from all that it has been perceived
as: a ‘paralysed farce’ or a ‘prelude to Partition’.151 Notwithstanding its over-remarked
personal antagonisms and ideological oppositions, the Interim Government was a
long way from being unworkable; its peculiar synthesis needs to be reflected upon
and its legacies in the panorama beyond Partition discussed.152 Headed by a British
viceroy, participated in by the Indian National Congress, the All-India Muslim
League and non-Congress, non-League representatives of the Sikh, Christian and
Parsi communities, and propped up by the British Indian civil service and army, the
Interim Government was a unique landmark in the history of modern India. It was
an intermediate passage between the ‘old’ of imperial legacies and the ‘new’ of
nation-building, and it needs to be investigated separately. It might not have been a
glowing example of unity and fraternity, but it was certainly an alternative attempt at

144. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, ‘Liaquat Ali Khan’s Budget of 1947–48: The Tryst with Destiny’, in Social Scientist,
Vol. 16, nos. 6/7 (1988), p. 86.
145. Liaquat to Jinnah, 13 Mar. 1947, item no. 124, in Z.H. Zaidi (ed.) Jinnah Papers, First Series, Vol. I, Part I
(Islamabad: Quaid-i-Azam Project, National Archives of Pakistan, 1993), pp. 237–8.
146. See File no. L/E/8/5502, IOR.
147. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 19 Mar. 1947, p. 431.
148. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 19 Mar. 1947, L/PJ/10/78, IOR.
149. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, 20–22 Mar. 1947, pp. 431–2.
150. IB (47) 16th Meeting, 28 Mar. 1947, L/PJ/10/78, IOR.
151. See Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Penderel Moon, Divide
and Quit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), p. 60; and Anita Inder Singh, The Origins of the
Partition of India, 1936–1947 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 203.
152. Here, I mean its post-1947 namesake—a similarly ‘hybrid’ arrangement.
18 R. ANKIT

sharing and exercising power despite being plagued by rival grass-roots pressures on
the Congress and the Muslim League. In the ‘advance’ towards Independence and
Partition, it was an inter-party, inter-provincial and inter-departmental impulse of
‘consolidation’. The gradualism and cautiousness of the colonial state apparatus
met the impatient and self-determining urges of post-colonial society in the
Interim Government; so too did the politics of Partition in the activities of the
Interim Government. At a time of collapse of inter-communal relations, the Interim
Government struggled valiantly as the ‘State before Partition’ in a multiplicity of roles
during a transitional phase. This fluid and transitory time is inadequately captured by
the firm historiography of the period, and hints at the need for a nuanced appreci-
ation of the complexity of the late 1940s. The Interim Government represented a dif-
ferent possibility juxtaposed against the perceived inevitability of Partition—a
Borgesian ‘garden of forking paths’. As the stressed ‘hybrid’ that it was, it proved to
be the apotheosis of ‘high politics’.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Dr. Pippa Virdee and Prof. Stephen Legg for the opportunity for this article. It
was written during a visiting CSMCH-IASH fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies
in the Humanities (IASH), Edinburgh, and I thank Dr. Talat Ahmed, Dr. Emile Chabal and
Dr. Ben Fletcher-Watson for making it possible. Prof. Legg and Prof. William Gould read the
draft on more than one occasion and I am thankful for their thoughtful observations. I am
immensely grateful to the two anonymous South Asia reviewers for their comprehensive com-
ments. Finally, I am indebted to Vivien Seyler for the kind care and detail with which she
checked, edited and improved the final draft.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.