Sir Stafford Cripps Went to India in March 1942 and Again in March 1946, and the Papers Show Congress, the League and the Cabinet Each Reading the Same Offer Differently

Sir Stafford Cripps reached Delhi on 22 March 1942 with a draft declaration that promised an elected body to write India’s constitution once the war ended. He came back on 23 March 1946 as one of three Cabinet ministers, and on 16 May that Mission turned down Pakistan in writing and proposed a Union limited to three subjects. Neither visit produced the coalition government it was sent to form.

The sources are the Transfer of Power volumes (the British government’s published papers on the end of the Raj), Hansard, Maulana Azad’s memoir, Nehru’s Selected Works and the Jinnah Papers. Each reading of a disputed text is given with the name of the person who held it.

What Cripps carried in March 1942

Churchill told the Commons on 11 March 1942 that the War Cabinet had agreed conclusions it believed to be “a just and final solution,” and that Cripps, the Lord Privy Seal, had volunteered to test them in India. The draft declaration was published on 30 March. It described a new Indian Union with Dominion status, equal to the other Dominions “in every respect.”

When the fighting stopped, provincial elections would be held and the lower houses of the provincial legislatures would sit as one electoral college. By proportional representation it would choose a constitution-making body about a tenth of its own size, and the Indian States would be invited to send members in proportion to their population. Britain undertook to accept the constitution that body wrote, subject to a treaty protecting minorities and to one condition: a province “that is not prepared to accept the new Constitution” could keep its existing position, with a right to join later. Until then, the draft said, the British government “must inevitably bear the responsibility for and retain control and direction of the defence of India.”

The India Office’s own summary of the telegrams shows the text was disputed inside the government. Linlithgow, the Viceroy, called the local option pledge the fatal defect of the Cabinet’s March draft, and the Commander-in-Chief and the Governor of the Punjab feared it would be read as an acceptance of Pakistan. The War Cabinet kept the idea and sent Cripps, at his own suggestion, to explain the plan in person.

Three refusals in April 1942

The Congress Working Committee’s resolution, issued on 11 April, said self-determination was “accepted in principle” but that “real freedom may well become an illusion.” It called non-accession “an apple of discord,” though it added that it could not think of compelling any unit to stay in a Union against its “declared and established will.” Leaving defence in British hands, it said, would reduce Indian responsibility “to a farce and nullity.”

Azad, then Congress president, wrote in his memoir that at their first meeting Cripps told him the Viceroy would act as a constitutional head and the Council like a Cabinet, and that at the second Cripps said the legal position would not change. The India Office papers include a War Cabinet telegram of 6 April saying the Viceroy in Council “acts as a collective body responsible to the Secretary of State,” with “no misunderstanding” on that point. Cripps wrote to Azad on 10 April that a cabinet of party nominees who could not be removed “would in fact constitute an absolute dictatorship of the majority.” Azad replied on 11 April: “What we were told in our very first talk with you is now denied or explained away.”

Colonel Johnson, President Roosevelt’s personal representative, acted as an intermediary between Cripps and Congress on how defence functions would be divided. On 9 April the Cabinet told Cripps it was concerned that he was sidestepping the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief. On 10 April it told the Viceroy there could be “no question of any convention limiting in any way your powers,” and Congress rejected the offer that day. At a London press conference on 22 April Cripps said he raised the objection late because Congress had first made its claim in its final letter. From the British government’s side, he said, the offer was “a very good and satisfactory proposal.”

The Muslim League’s Working Committee also refused on 11 April. It noted with “gratification” that Pakistan was “recognised by implication” in the possibility of more than one Union, but said it had finally decided that the only solution was the “partition of India into independent zones.” It objected that the body Cripps described aimed at one Union, and that provinces formed “on no logical basis” were the wrong units to vote on staying out. Cripps had cabled London on 4 April that the League was “prepared to accept scheme as it stands.”

What the Cabinet Mission offered on 16 May 1946

Attlee told the Commons on 15 March 1946 that if India chose independence “she has a right to do so,” and added: “we cannot allow a minority to place a veto on the advance of the majority.” The Mission of Pethick-Lawrence, Cripps and A. V. Alexander had been announced on 19 February and reached India on 23 March. The Congress and the League met it at Simla from 5 to 12 May and failed to agree, and the Mission then issued its own plan.

Its statement of 16 May examined Pakistan first. By its table, the north-western area (Punjab, Sind, the Frontier and Baluchistan) was 62.07 percent Muslim and the north-eastern (Bengal and Assam) 51.69 percent, so either would hold large non-Muslim minorities. Citing also the army and the seven hundred miles between the two halves, it said it could not advise handing power to “two entirely separate sovereign States.”

The plan was a Union of India covering British India and the States, with three subjects: foreign affairs, defence and communications, and the money to pay for them. A major communal question would need a majority of each of the two main communities. Provincial assemblies would elect 292 members for British India, with up to 93 more for the States, and the British Indian members would meet in three Sections. Section A (six provinces, Madras to Orissa) had 187 seats, 20 of them Muslim. Section B (Punjab, the Frontier, Sind) had 35, 22 of them Muslim, and Section C (Bengal, Assam) had 70, 36 of them Muslim.

The Sections would draw up provincial constitutions and decide whether to form Groups, then everyone would reassemble to write the Union constitution. A province could leave its Group after the first general election under the new constitution. An interim government with Indians holding every portfolio, the War Member’s included, was to be set up at once.

One paragraph, four readings

The argument was over how paragraphs 15 and 19 fit together. Paragraph 15 said provinces “should be free to form Groups”; paragraph 19 said they would sit in Sections, and that the Sections would decide whether a Group constitution was set up.

The Congress Working Committee’s resolution of 24 May saw “a marked discrepancy” and read paragraph 15 to mean that, “in the first instance,” each province would choose whether to belong to its Section. The Mission’s statement of 25 May said this “does not accord with the Delegation’s intentions,” and that grouping was “an essential feature of the scheme” which could be changed only “by agreement between the parties.” The Mission’s private minute of 21 May records a more guarded position. Pethick-Lawrence asked what power it had to stop the question of Groups being raised in the Assembly, and the minute records: “We could not make our Statement mandatory.”

Gandhi’s Harijan article of 26 May, sent in draft to the Mission before it appeared, called the statement “the best document the British Government could have produced in the circumstances.” He called it “an appeal and an advice” with “no compulsion in it” and asked whether Assam, “a predominantly Non-Muslim province,” should be placed in Section C against its will.

The League Council’s resolution of 6 June accepted the scheme because, in its words, “the basis and the foundation of Pakistan are inherent in the Mission’s Plan, by virtue of the compulsory grouping” of the six Muslim provinces in Sections B and C. It also claimed a right of secession “by implication.” On 25 June, in the Mission’s own minute, Pethick-Lawrence called that “definitely an interpretation,” and Alexander said the ten-year clause meant only that a party could move an amendment.

The Sikh Panthic Conference of 10 June, citing what it called the compulsory grouping of the provinces and a remark of Pethick-Lawrence’s, declared the recommendations “wholly unacceptable to the Sikhs.” Bipan Chandra and his co-authors write that the plan “was ambivalent on whether grouping was compulsory or optional,” and that the Mission “deliberately quibbled” in the hope of reconciling the two sides. Jinnah’s earlier career is in our account of Jinnah and the independence movement, and the argument over whether British policy produced Pakistan is in Britain, Jinnah and Pakistan.

The interim government in June

Jinnah’s statement of 27 June says Wavell told him at Simla and again on 3 June that the interim government would have five League members, five Congress, one Sikh and one Indian Christian or Anglo-Indian, with the main portfolios divided equally, and authorised him to tell the League’s Working Committee. The Council, he says, voted on 6 June on that understanding. Wavell wrote to him on 9 June: “There was no assurance on this point, but I told you, as I told the Congress, that this was what I had in mind.”

The statement of 16 June named 14 people, among them Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Rajagopalachari, Jagjivan Ram, Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan. Paragraph 8 said that if either major party refused, the Viceroy would form a government of those “willing to accept the Statement of May 16th.”

Azad’s letter of 25 June refused the interim proposals. It records that Wavell’s letter of 15 June counted six Congress Hindus, one of them from the Scheduled Castes, against five League Muslims and called that no “parity,” while Jinnah’s questions of 19 June had listed the Scheduled Castes among four minorities. Azad also objected that the Mission would not accept a Muslim chosen by Congress among its own nominees. The same letter accepted the 16 May constitution-making scheme: “While adhering to our views, we accept your proposals.”

At the Mission’s meeting with Jinnah that evening, Pethick-Lawrence said the Congress letter was an acceptance of the long-term plan and that the League’s resolution carried reservations of its own. Jinnah said the Congress reservations “broke the whole thing.” Wavell said the 16 June statement “fell to the ground” because Congress had refused, and that after an interval he would try again with those who had accepted the 16 May statement. Jinnah had understood that the Mission would go ahead with whichever party accepted, and his statement of 27 June said it was “in honour bound to go ahead.” On 26 June the Mission announced a caretaker government of officials and said it would leave India on 29 June.

Nehru’s press conference and the League’s withdrawal

Nehru, who had just succeeded Azad as Congress president, told a Bombay press conference on 10 July: “We have not committed ourselves on any single matter to anybody.” On grouping he said “there will be no grouping.” He said Section A would decide against it, and that Assam “will not tolerate it under any circumstances whatever.” Azad wrote later that this was “one of those unfortunate events which changed the course of history,” and put on record that “Jawaharlal’s statement was wrong.”

Cripps had told the Commons on 18 July that the Mission made it clear “it was an essential feature of the scheme that the provinces should go into sections,” and that the parties “cannot, of course, go outside the terms of what has been agreed.” On 29 July the League Council withdrew its acceptance of 6 June. Its resolution said neither Cripps nor Pethick-Lawrence had suggested “any means or machinery” to stop the Assembly exceeding the scheme, and it called the British conduct a breach of faith. A second resolution committed the League to “Direct Action to achieve Pakistan,” and the League’s Working Committee later called for a hartal and public meetings on 16 August.

The Jinnah Papers’ editors record a Hindu-Muslim riot of unprecedented intensity in Calcutta that day. Our account of the Constituent Assembly follows what happened to the body the Mission created.

How historians divide the blame

Chandra and his co-authors name Cripps’s inability to bargain, since he had been told not to go beyond the draft, as an important reason for the 1942 failure, and say that Churchill, Amery, Linlithgow and Wavell “constantly opposed and sabotaged” his efforts. The Transfer of Power papers show Linlithgow objecting to local option and reserving his position on the defence formula that Cripps and Johnson put to Congress. What Congress did next is in our account of the Quit India movement.

For 1946 they write that Jinnah “seized the opportunity” of Nehru’s speech to withdraw. The Constitution of India archive summarises Granville Austin’s view that the Mission was “foredoomed to failure” because outsiders should not have tried to mediate between the parties.

Chandra and his co-authors give 2 September 1946 as the day the interim government was formed with Congress members alone, and 26 October as the day the League entered it.