Transfer of Power published in the 1970s by the British government. However, historians in India soon realised that it was not enough to challenge the inadequacy of the “transfer of power” perspective that whittled down the historic struggles of the Indian people against colonialism. One also had t
o match the impeccable scholarship and high editorial standards set by Editor, Nicholas Mansergh, and his team in England. Consequently the government- funded Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) set up a team of India’s most well-known historians and assigned them to prepare similar volumes on the decade before 1947. However, this is not the end of the story. With the BJP in power, the project was halted, although volumes by two historians had already been published. This was a sordid tale of attack on academic autonomy, an attempt at scuttling inconvenient truths about the past, especially the Indian right wing’s abetment and support of communalism and rioting in the last years of British rule.
Challenges
The General Editor of the series, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, who took over after Founding Editor S. Gopal’s death and governments had changed again, briefly dwells on the troubled history of these volumes. He also sets out the agenda of the entire series cogently. One methodological challenge which confronted historians was the limitations of a chronological approach. A solution seems to have been found in grouping documents thematically for the years concerned. The other challenge was to move away from the excessive preoccupation with “high politics”, a principal concern of the Mansergh volumes. This meant throwing the net over a much wider array of documents than that found conveniently in government archives. Bhattacharya has written that this series has not attempted in a serious way to tap regional sources i.e. material in languages other than English. Admittedly a limitation, the huge task of hunting, collating and translating have been left to future historians interested in the subject.
Tumultuous year
Sumit Sarkar’s volume focuses on a single year, 1946 — tumultuous and full of possibilities. Yet the tragedy as Sarkar hints was that most people in the subcontinent did not know what fate awaited them in the coming year. Spurred by the enthusiasm for the Indian National Army (INA) soldiers on trial and the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) strike, Bombay and Calcutta witnessed Hindu-Muslim fraternisation to an unprecedented degree. Peasant (e.g. Tebhaga in Bengal, Telangana in Hyderabad) and labour struggles (e.g. the postal strike of July 1946) were also widespread. Viceroy Wavell scribbled in his journal that India was on “The edge of a volcano.” In the Princely States, despite repression, popular movements often took radical stands. Standard histories, Sarkar points out, are happy to limit 1946 to the Cabinet Mission proposals or the elections to the Constituent Assembly; elections in which only 10 per cent of India’s population voted.
But popular politics influenced elite strategies significantly. The ruling classes both British and Indian were unable to ignore pressures “from below”. Although fraternisation soon turned into bloody war on the streets, Sarkar highlights some of the abiding gains of these years. The British quietly abandoned any hopes of holding out longer particularly since the loyalty of Indians in the army was wavering. Indian leaders, on the other hand, in an unprecedented move voted for universal adult franchise in the Constituent Assembly. This was a radical step towards empowerment that came directly out of years of popular struggle against colonial rule. It was also this move that finally dissolved all borders within independent India in 1949, successfully integrating Princely States into the Union. And finally perhaps truly far-reaching was the Indian state’s adoption of secularism, a product of the same struggles.
Focus on class
One trend for militant struggles in 1946 was the focus on class. Sarkar explains that this is not to be understood as a waning of “national” issues, but an indication of the many hues that popular struggles took on in these years. For this reason viewing history exclusively through the lens of “national” versus “imperial” has proved unproductive.
Another interesting insight is about Gandhiji’s amazing fortitude and courage during communal carnage. Sarkar surmises that internal strifes within Indian society only strengthened Gandhiji’s resolve to follow the path of non-violence unwaveringly. This is a significant shift from earlier interpretations which criticised the Mahatma’s “restraining” role in popular politics.
Academics, students, amateur dabblers in history will find a wealth of documents in this massive volume which runs close to a thousand pages. Another accompanying volume of documents dedicated to the history of struggles in the Princely States is soon to be published. One can’t help admiring the enormous work that has gone into the making of this volume.
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