5
Finance Minister of Bengal, 1941–42
By 1941, Abul Kashem Fazlul Haq had been in power as Chief Minister for more than three years, but as it appears he was far from happy, or even comfortable. Dr Mookerjee, in a diary entry, observed his state as follows: ‘Haq discovered towards the latter half of 1941 how dangerous his position had become. Left to himself he is one of the most lovable personalities one may think of. He indeed shines in the company he keeps. A good batch of friends and followers may help him to do enormous good to his people and country. A bad lot may lead him to hell. As I said of him once, he is at once an asset and a liability of no mean order.’
Haq had in fact played, much against his better judgement, into the hands of persons who posed as his friends but were really his arch-enemies. This was bound to be because his Krishak Praja Party was basically a party of peasants who happened to be largely Muslim. It had little to do with Islam. At the same time, the Muslim League was first and last a Muslim communal party, manned by big landowners of the community. It was not entirely his fault that he had been catapulted into such an unenviable state. It is quite true that, as Dr Mookerjee had put it, he was ‘dying for power’, but he was pushed into the lap of the Muslim League by the Congress refusing to form a coalition with him in 1937 in Bengal. In order to become Chief Minister, he had betrayed his party and joined hands with Nazimuddin and Suhrawardy under the banner of the League. The League stalwarts, who never liked Haq, fully utilized him as their convenient tool for stabilizing their position, and that of the League as defenders of Islam, and even made him move the Pakistan Resolution at the League’s Lahore session in March 1940. Haq was also forced or induced to openly justify all the anti-Hindu misdeeds of the ministry committed through the dishonest machinations of the communal Leaguers.
Dr Mookerjee records in a diary entry, dated 6 December 1945 (when he was lying ill in Calcutta after the election trip to Barrackpore—see Chapter 8), ‘We wanted to check the growing tendency among the Scheduled Castes people to regard themselves outside the Hindu fold—their antagonism to Caste Hindus was being slowly nurtured on political consideration—Caste Hindus were the enemies of the Scheduled Castes’ progress etc. We wanted that Hindu solidarity must grow; we wanted that caste prejudices should disappear. We therefore declared that we should not indicate our castes but call ourselves Hindus in our census returns. This was bitterly opposed by a section of Scheduled Castes people. Still our propaganda had great educative value. We not only got all Hindus to take an active interest in the census but united them as far as possible.’ Premier Haq, egged on by the Leaguers, discovered in the Mahasabha’s work in the census operations ‘a sinister design to reduce the Muslims of Bengal to a minority’1 and carried on a very bitter propaganda campaign against it.
As soon as Haq discovered that he was going to be stabbed in the back by his colleagues and some co-workers, he began machinations to get out of the ministry, but in a way which would reinstall him as premier. Dr Mookerjee, on the other hand, thought it necessary in Bengal’s wider interests, as that of India’s, to keep the League out of power by befriending and strengthening Haq and mustering together all the non-Congress Hindu forces in the legislature. In Dr Mookerjee’s diary, he records that Sarat Bose was, at that time, a Congress rebel and the master of his own group. He was also trusted by the Muslims. He was therefore free to take a decision irrespective of the dictates of their central leadership, and it was mainly through his efforts that Haq decided to bring about the breakdown of his own ministry. Probably both factors, namely Dr Mookerjee’s efforts and Haq’s eagerness to get rid of the Leaguers were responsible for the ultimate downfall of the League ministry.
Meanwhile, a definite majority of members, numbering about 127, had signed and declared their readiness to follow Haq. The official Congress party under Kiran Sankar Roy’s leadership was also not in favour of the League. The anti-League legislators threw out a challenge to Sir John Herbert, the Governor of Bengal. Whatever his personal desire or the advice of the ICS clique might have been, Herbert did not dare flout the will of the majority of the legislature, and ultimately decided to ask Haq to form the ministry.
On 7 December, Haq submitted the resignation of his coalition ministry. Of the 127 legislators who had declared their readiness to follow Haq, the Nawab of Dacca was one. He was till then with the League and was not elected the party leader, and was nursing a grudge. Ispahani (of the 1943 famine notoriety—see Chapter 6) called Fazlul Haq ‘the old fox . . . the black sheep of Barisal’, and Jinnah expelled both Haq and the Nawab from the League, saying that they had been ‘weeded out’. Herbert could no longer hold off the formation of a new cabinet under Haq. After a brief and abortive flirtation with the idea of an Azizul Haque-led ‘War Cabinet’, on or about 10 December, he decided to summon Haq to form the ministry and the latter accepted the invitation.
It was a foregone conclusion that Sarat Bose would be a leading member of the cabinet. Herbert, however, was not in favour of this and told Dr Mookerjee that Bose should be dissuaded and that the first batch of ministers should consist of Haq, the Nawab of Dacca and Dr Mookerjee. Meanwhile, on 7 December, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, and the next day, the Allied powers declared war on Japan. On 11 December, there was a sudden bombshell when Sarat Bose was arrested on the orders of the Government of India under Regulation III ‘due to suspicion regarding his contacts with Japan’. The progressive coalition ministry was sworn in on 12 December. Dr Mookerjee became finance minister, the only representative from his party. Upendranath Barman was the sole scheduled-caste minister (from the Rajbangshi community) and there was no agreement regarding the name of the second scheduled-caste member who had to be a Namasudra man.2 The Bose group was represented by two ministers, Santosh Bose and Pramatha Banerjee. The Muslim names were chosen by agreement, though Dr Mookerjee could not discover the real reason for the selection of Abdul Karim, who, according to him,3 was ‘old but entirely honest. His brain often failed him.’ The newspapers were out with information regarding the personnel of the ministry.
Fazlul Haq initially faced a lot of opposition from his party colleagues regarding the inclusion of Dr Mookerjee in the cabinet because of his pro-Hindu credentials and his trenchant criticism of Haq when he was blindly pursuing the anti-Hindu policies of the Muslim League. In reply to this opposition, Haq told Abul Mansur Ahmad,4 one of his closest associates, ‘Listen Abul Mansur, you do not know Dr Mookerjee, I do. He is the son of Sir Asutosh. It doesn’t matter that he belongs to the Hindu Mahasabha. You will not find a more liberal person or a better well-wisher of Muslims among Hindus. If you trust me, you must trust him too.’
Abul Mansur Ahmad has remarked in his autobiography that once he got to know Dr Mookerjee during his interactions in the ministry, he found every word of what Haq said to be true. Despite being a Mahasabha leader, Dr Mookerjee, according to Ahmad, was liberal towards Muslims. Driven by this impression, Ahmad wrote an editorial in his popular (among Muslims) journal Nabajug, asking Dr Mookerjee to embark on a political tour of the whole of Bengal, starting from his own district of Mymensingh. He said that he would ensure that there would be no upsets in the meetings, but Dr Mookerjee would have to ensure that he won the confidence of the Muslims. Ahmad had further observed that he was confident he could do it.
These were the circumstances under which the second Haq ministry was formed. And Dr Mookerjee, within just two years of his entering mainstream politics, belonging to a party that had hitherto practically no support in the province, became the finance minister of the Bengal Presidency. Not many have been able to match this achievement.
There was intense relief in the public mind, especially among Hindus, at the termination of the League ministry, which had caused immense injury to them between 1937 and 1941 and had also retarded the real progress of Bengal as a whole. For the first time, the ministry depended for its existence on the combined support of elected Hindu and Muslim members and was backed by Anglo-Indians and Indian Christians as well. The League party under Sir Nazimuddin had, as its allies, the European members of the house who never liked a strong Hindu–Muslim combination in the province.
Entry into the Bengal government at that crucial time was the beginning of a new and very significant chapter in Dr Mookerjee’s life. Bengal had so far known him as an educationist. His association with the Hindu Mahasabha was frowned upon by many of the Congress-brand nationalists who doubted his wisdom in joining hands with Haq. However, the determined fight he put up against the hostile British government and unsympathetic bureaucracy not only silenced his critics but also raised his stature as a practical and far-seeing politician, a capable administrator and, above all, an arch-nationalist.
From the beginning Dr Mookerjee was aware of the plight of the coalition government. He realized that ‘a difficult and rugged path full of obstacles’ lay ahead. He doubted if he could really do any solid work. The absence of Sarat Bose, who would have brought a good deal of prestige and strength to the new government, was a real handicap. ‘But even this,’ says Dr Mookerjee, ‘did not break our solidarity and we were determined to give the province a real choice to recover its lost position.’ Disturbed by the fact that the ministers were interacting with Bose frequently in the Presidency Jail at Calcutta, Herbert, with the help of the Government of India, managed to get him transferred to Mercara in Coorg, a small Indian state in south India. Bose thereupon issued instructions that the ministers of his party should resign. The ministry could not remain in office for a day without the active support of the Bose group. The Nawab of Dacca and Santosh Bose, however, went to Mercara and persuaded Bose to suspend his judgement for the time being. Dr Mookerjee himself went to Delhi to meet the viceroy and home member Sir Reginald Maxwell about Bose’s release, or trial, or transfer to Bengal but they were adamant and nothing could be done.
The second and major handicap of the new ministry was an unsympathetic bureaucracy, headed by a Governor—all open supporters of the Muslim League and terribly upset with their failure to have a League ministry. Their main grouse was that this ministry was capable of functioning without the support of the ‘European Group’, and thus that group could not influence the course of things as they could during the Haq-led League ministry. The British, moreover, fundamentally hated any cooperation between the Hindus and the Muslims and wanted the coalition government to fall. In matters affecting the economic and political welfare of the people, the ministry got little cooperation from Herbert, who pressed them again and again to abandon Fazlul Haq and to settle with the League. The Defence of India Rules had made the position of the Governor, who had direct access to the secretaries and district officers over the heads of the ministers, exceptionally strong vis-à-vis the ministry, whose powers were greatly circumscribed and who had little voice regarding the all-important questions of defence of the province against the impending Japanese invasion. At a time when the political situation in Bengal was uneasy, the state unfortunately happened to get a group of short-sighted, reactionary, unsympathetic and unresponsive British ICS men who vainly thought that by repression alone they could govern the country and whose administration fanned the communal flame and bowed to the will of Clive Street. Dr Mookerjee made home minister Haq pass orders which they thought were just and rational. But in a ‘regular tug of war’, they were outmanoeuvred by the Secretariat or vetoed by the Governor. Herbert accused Dr Mookerjee of interfering with the affairs of the home department which was not his own. Haq and he both replied that it was perfectly constitutional for them to have acted together on the grounds of joint responsibility. It thus turned out that Dr Mookerjee was the only really strong man in the ministry.
Dr Mookerjee’s stature as an educationist and leader of the intellectual elite of Bengal forced the Governor, hostile as he was, to show him respect. Haq had the highest regard for Dr Mookerjee not only because of his abilities but also because he held his father Sir Asutosh, from whom he had received his legal training, in the highest esteem. He looked upon the former as his gurubhai (disciples of the same guru or teacher). As a result, Dr Mookerjee soon began to be looked upon as the guiding spirit of the coalition ministry, and the ministry itself earned the sobriquet of ‘Syama–Haq’ ministry. Dr Mookerjee claimed that this ministry was indeed the first since the inception of British rule which had the solid backing of the people, including a considerable section of Muslims who were prepared to follow the leadership of Haq.
This claim, however, was only partially true. The League was undoubtedly the most important political force in the Muslim community. Haq, on the other hand, was definitely a leader with real mass appeal, but at the same time, he lacked the courage of his convictions. Because of this, he failed to organize Muslims under the banner of his own party. As for the Hindu ministers, apart from Dr Mookerjee, no one could really claim even minimum influence over his own community. In addition, the ‘Khadi group’ of the Congress, which had quite a following among Hindus, was not very friendly towards him and occasionally exhibited streaks of mischievousness towards the ministry.
Within a few days of his becoming a minister, another important event took place in 1941. The 23rd annual session of the Hindu Mahasabha was scheduled to be held in the end of December under the presidency of Veer Savarkar at Bhagalpur in Bihar, then under Governor’s rule after the resignation of the Congress ministry in 1939. The Bihar Governor Sir Thomas Stewart started voicing his concern from 19 May. As the Id festival of Muslims fell sometime towards the end of December and Bhagalpur happened to be perhaps the most communally disturbed city in Bihar, the government was not prepared to allow the session to be held during that period. Apart from the risk of serious communal trouble, another factor that weighed with the government was the proximity of Bhagalpur to Nepal and the known attitude of the Mahasabha towards Nepal as a counterblast to Jinnah’s Pakistan movement. The Mahasabha was prepared to shift the date by a few days so that the session and the Muslim festival might not clash with each other. But this gesture was misunderstood as a sign of weakness. On 26 September, the government issued a notification prohibiting the holding of the all–India conference in Bhagalpur between 1 December 1941 and 10 January 1942. On 3 October, president Savarkar requested the Bihar Governor to allow the Mahasabha to hold the session on any date from 1 January 1942 onwards but the Bihar government considered that 5 January was the earliest possible date on which the session could commence. At its meeting held in New Delhi on 11 October 1941, the All-India Working Committee of the Mahasabha considered all facts, and resolved that the session must be held at Bhagalpur from 24 to 27 December, three days in advance of the Id festival in spite of the ban and ordered arrangements accordingly. Savarkar then made a further representation to the viceroy to intervene so that they might be allowed to hold the session. The viceroy replied that the decision in the matter rested with the Governor of Bihar and that he was not prepared to interfere with his discretion on it.
Around 23 December 1941, Dr Mookerjee, then finance minister of Bengal, suggested to the viceroy the possibility of curtailment of the period and certain details of the session as a compromise. But Stewart was averse to this solution, which, in his judgement, would have represented only a nominal concession by the Mahasabha, whose presidential address had already been issued, and who had then left themselves no time in which to negotiate. The government took active steps to prevent defiance of the ban. Dr Mookerjee’s diary says: ‘[E]nthusiasm was great in all parts of India and thousands flocked to Bhagalpur to attend the session in defiance of the ban. We made effective arrangements to give the movement a start from Bengal. Leaders like Moonje and Khaparde came to Calcutta and left for Bhagalpur from here. Savarkar the President-elect was arrested at Gaya. Other leaders were arrested in or near Bhagalpur. I had not disclosed what I was going to do.’
After Savarkar’s arrest, Dr Mookerjee decided to leave for Bhagalpur and accordingly spoke to the Governor, offering to resign his ministership in case Sir John Herbert felt embarrassed. In a commendable, though uncharacteristic, gesture the Governor did not ask for his resignation. Dr Mookerjee courted arrest at Colgong (now Kahalgaon, in the Bhagalpur district). While he was let off after four or five days, it was yet an ‘unprecedented’ act on the part of a minister in office ‘to violate a ban which he regarded as unjust and improper’ openly. Anyway, hundreds were arrested, and the enthusiasm was so tremendous that the greater the number of arrests, the more stubborn was the resistance offered.
The first task before Dr Mookerjee as a minister was to place the financial adjustment between Bengal and the central governments on a fair and reasonable basis. He was amazed to find that the main work of the finance department was to make elaborate rules for curtailing small items of expenditure, whereas many big items were swallowed easily, especially when they affected the interests of whites. His secretary, Walker, ‘a man of ability but little imagination’,5 at first tried to be dictatorial but very soon discovered who the boss was. A landmark incident in this regard is described below.
In January 1942, Walker and Dr Mookerjee went to New Delhi to attend a conference of finance ministers and advisers of Indian provinces, mainly to decide how contributions made by the Government of India to the provinces for war purposes would be calculated and adjusted. It was agreed that if previous sanctions of the Government of India were to be obtained on every matter before incurring expenditure, work would suffer from delay. In order to solve this impasse, it was unanimously agreed that either the provincial government should go on spending, with the adjustments being made periodically later on, or some officer representing the Government of India should remain on the spot and give his opinion immediately without referring the matter to Delhi. After the plenary session of the conference was over, it was decided that the finance department of India would consult the respective secretaries of the provinces and put into shape schemes, which would finally be examined by the finance member, Sir Jeremy Raisman, and the provincial ministers or advisers concerned.
According to this arrangement, when Dr Mookerjee went the next morning to the room of the finance member at the Imperial Secretariat, he was greeted by Raisman and Walker who stated that the arrangements had been completed and were waiting for his approval. Raisman smilingly told Dr Mookerjee that to simplify matters, the Government of India would be prepared to entrust to Walker, the provincial finance secretary, as their representative, the very responsible duty of approving provincial expenditure for which the Centre was taking either full responsibility or advancing big loans. Thinking at first that the idea was to place Walker’s services for the time being at the disposal of the Government of India, Dr Mookerjee inquired accordingly and was amazed to learn that the proposal was that Walker would discharge the dual function of continuing as his secretary and also scrutinizing and approving the relevant items of provincial expenditure for which the Centre was going to make payment. ‘In other words,’ so says his diary, ‘it was quite conceivable that a scheme which I as Finance Minister would approve as necessary in Bengal’s interest might be rejected or modified over my head by my own Secretary claiming to act as the representative of Delhi.’ Dr Mookerjee congratulated Raisman for being prepared to trust somebody in the Bengal government to act on behalf of the Government of India, but he added firmly that if this somebody was to be taken from Bengal, it must be the finance minister and not anybody else, and further that he was not prepared to have his decision altered by anyone who would continue to be his subordinate in the Bengal secretariat.
Not prepared for ‘this direct onslaught’, Raisman and his companions said that it would involve enormous labour, to which Dr Mookerjee replied that that was a matter to be judged by him. It was apparent that while Delhi was prepared to trust a European ICS man belonging to a province, there was no question of trusting an Indian provincial minister. Ultimately, it was decided that some officer like the accountant general of Bengal, who was unconnected with the Bengal secretariat, would be selected to do the work. Dr Mookerjee says in his diary: ‘[T]his small incident left a mark on my mind. This happened hardly a month after my assumption of office and I felt how hopeless the position was.’
This incident illustrates both the chicanery of the British in dealing with Indian ministers as well as Dr Mookerjee’s insight into the ways of Indian officialdom and his firmness in dealing with it appropriately. It also shows that he could not be intimidated by any white-skinned man, ICS or not.
Dr Mookerjee got along very well with his secretarial staff, who knew that if they worked hard and honestly, they had nothing to be afraid of. Regarding interpretation of rules, Walker was amazed at his minister’s determination to interpret them liberally, particularly to the advantage of the poorly paid staff. One pathetic case of a government pensioner who wanted his small pension of about Rs 30 or Rs 40 per month increased by Rs 6 or Rs 8 per month has already been described in Chapter 1. Dr Mookerjee did it despite the opposition of his entire officialdom.
Finally, he handled the provincial budget efficiently, overcoming serious handicaps that attended its framing. It had been only two months since the present ministry had taken office and it fell to his lot to prepare—in barely three weeks—its budget proposals for 1942–43. These were passed at the cabinet meeting held in the first week of January 1942 and presented to the Legislative Assembly on 16 February. In his opening speech, he said that in a limited sense, his budget was in the nature of a War Budget, dealing with civil defence schemes of considerable magnitude. ‘Nation-saving’ took the place of ‘nation-building’. He asked all the parties in the house to agree that as long as the existing emergency would continue, there could be no diversion of the inadequate resources of the province to purposes that could wait.
Dr Mookerjee finished his speech on 24 February by calling for communal harmony and sinking of all political differences, for if Japan came, even Jinnah’s Pakistan scheme would pale into insignificance. One may conclude with the following extracts from his diary: ‘[M]y secretarial staff was full of admiration for the slashing remarks I made in my reply, completely silencing the opposition. The speech was more political than financial and was in reply to the general discussion on the budget of the year . . . I had to play with crores of rupees, borrowed from other sources . . . I was happy however that the financial adjustment between Bengal and India was on a fair and reasonable basis.’
Another task before the new ministry was to prepare Bengal to meet the danger of Japanese invasion, which was becoming more threatening after the declaration of war on Japan on 7 December 1941. The British government of India was then thinking of withdrawing and following a scorched earth policy instead of preparing the people to fight the enemy. ‘The secret instructions as to what officials . . . were to do in case of invasion and failure of the military, practically indicated that the Government had given Bengal up for lost.’6 Dr Mookerjee found in the enunciation by the Government of India of the Denial Policy—which included destruction of means of transport and communication and removal of rice and paddy from the dangerous zone—‘a shocking proof of the nervous breakdown of British administration in India’. He pleaded earnestly that the means of communication in the so-called danger area should, instead of being destroyed or removed, be allowed to work and could be destroyed at the last moment in case of defeat and invasion by the enemy. In case the enemy never came (as they did not), the policy of destruction imposed by the government would cause a complete breakdown of the social and economic life of a large part of the province. His advice was, however, disregarded and he was told that but for the fact that he was himself a minister, his attitude would have been misinterpreted as indicative of sympathy with the enemy. It was this scorched earth policy, this invention called ‘Denial and Evacuation’ fashioned by the infamous trio of Leopold Amery, Lord Linlithgow and above all, Sir John Arthur Herbert, that gave rise to the infamous Bengal Famine of 1943. This famine, and Dr Mookerjee’s role in first trying to prevent it and later arranging for relief, has been discussed in the next chapter.
There was yet another matter regarding which the ministry felt helpless. They were prevented by the existing army laws from mobilizing the people for the defence of their homeland. Dr Mookerjee decided to take up the matter directly with the Governor. Having learnt that the Governor was going to New Delhi to discuss the war situation with the viceroy, he addressed an important letter to him on 7 March 1942, pressing hard on the urgent need of raising a Bengal army for home defence in the face of imminent Japanese invasion. Herbert, of course, objected. First, he said that it was entirely against the Indian army policy to let Bengal have her own army. Dr Mookerjee countered by saying that man could undo the existing man-made regulation. Herbert’s second objection was that sufficient arms and ammunition were not available. Dr Mookerjee said that arms and ammunition must be manufactured in increased quantity or imported from abroad. Countering Herbert’s third objection of there being no military trainers, Dr Mookerjee said that trainers would have to be brought from other parts of India or of the Empire, if necessary. He felt that the real obstacle was distrust of Indians and Bengalis by the British. He appealed to the Governor and the viceroy to give Bengal the right to raise a special home army, consisting of an equal number of Hindus and Muslims, for the defence of Bengal. The appeal failed and the situation in Bengal and elsewhere continued to deteriorate.
The reaction of the British, however, could not be said to be unexpected. The British had had their cupful of Bengali middle-class militarism, ranging from Khudiram Bose to Surya Sen and finally to Subhas Chandra Bose, and were in no mood to teach a large number of them how to handle modern armaments. Perhaps, with a Governor like Herbert, Dr Mookerjee need not have wasted the effort.
Meanwhile, in March 1942, the British government, in a bid to solve the Indian question for the efficient execution of war policies, and with a view to secure Indian political support for the war effort, sent to India Lord Privy Seal Sir Stafford Cripps. Cripps, a Labourite MP, had just returned from Russia after tremendous success and appeared almost as popular as Prime Minister Churchill. Dr Mookerjee had known Cripps when he had come to India earlier and he had two long discussions with him, first on 28 March as part of a Savarkar-led Hindu Mahasabha delegation and then on 30 March 1942 as minister of Bengal. Dr Mookerjee found him very conscious of his own importance. He boasted that India would either make him or mar him and if he could settle with India, there would be none to compete with him in the whole British Empire. Be that as it may, Dr Mookerjee records in his diary: ‘Cripps made a genuine attempt to solve the Indian problem . . . Regarding the Scheduled Castes he was completely indifferent. From this point of view his failure was a matter of deep tragedy, for he was determined not to play with minority or rake up small parties in order to create artificial barriers.’ Although there was much in Cripps’s scheme that the Mahasabha liked, he said that the document had either to be accepted or rejected in toto so far as the fundamental parts were concerned and that the British regarded the right of non-accession (the right of individual provinces to remain in India or secede from it) as fundamental. Dr Mookerjee bluntly told Cripps that India was not such an easy problem that he could tell her either to take it or leave it. The Mahasabha then raised the question of defence minister and said that they would want to have two defence advisers, one Hindu and one Muslim, whose advice the viceroy would undertake to accept. Cripps said that it did not appear to him to be a very practical scheme.
Dr Mookerjee also intensely disliked the scheme for the possible partition of India and was very concerned regarding his non-accession provisions that empowered the provinces to secede from the Indian Union. He said, ‘You are breaking with your own hand the one great achievement of the British in India—the political unity of India as a whole.’ Aware of the weakness of his scheme, Cripps said this was the least His Majesty’s Government could do to placate the Muslim League. Cripps pointed out to Dr Mookerjee what the alternatives were to the acceptance of the scheme and he fully realized the seriousness of the situation. Further, Dr Mookerjee was, according to Cripps, convinced that it was necessary for those who did not wholly agree with the scheme to accept it in order to solve some of the pending problems.
Dr Mookerjee’s diary reveals that in later times he revised his opinion about the Cripps plan. It is true that the scheme on paper practically gave Indians nothing for the time being with regard to interim arrangements. Even then, looking at it from a distant point of time, Dr Mookerjee felt that Indians could have accepted the offer and grasped the power in 1942, however unsatisfactory in some respects the offer might have been. At that time, Japan was proceeding towards India at a terrific speed, everything was crumbling, and British prestige was at its lowest ebb. His Majesty’s Government wanted to settle in its own interest, and without a willing India on her side, England could not win the Asiatic War. Indians could have then hastened the dawn of fuller freedom. Dr Mookerjee recorded that they could deliver the goods, only if Congress, as the largest and most well-organized political party in India, agreed to come to terms with His Majesty’s Government, not otherwise.
From the trend of things in Bengal up to about the middle of 1942, it appears that Dr Mookerjee had decided that there was no longer any point in being ‘nice’ to Herbert—the man had chosen to be his enemy, and was bent on overturning Haq’s ministry and installing a Muslim League-led coalition. In July 1942, therefore, while away at New Delhi to see Viceroy Linlithgow, among other chores, he wrote a very long letter on 26 July to Governor Herbert, in which he gave vent to his entire dissatisfaction in the manner Herbert was carrying on, and predicted that disaster was bound to come if he did not mend his ways (it did come, in the shape of the famine). Earlier, on 7 March, he had written another important letter on the eve of Herbert’s departure for Delhi, where the latter was going to hold a conference with the viceroy and the commander-in-chief regarding the war situation. In that letter, he had pressed him hard to allow them to raise a Bengal army, especially for home defence. Herbert, of course, did not oblige.
In the long letter7 that he sent from New Delhi, dated 26 July 1942, he directly accused Herbert of wantonly harbouring ill feeling towards the ministry and trying to subvert it. There were solid reasons for this accusation, and Dr Mookerjee, while remaining strictly parliamentary, was nothing short of brutal in the language in which he lambasted Herbert, and together with him, the British bureaucracy. He principally attacked him for his machinations, while being at the head of the British administration, to support the Muslim League. Consider some of the language that he used—only Dr Mookerjee would have had the guts to write to a British Governor in such language:
It is an open secret that the Hindu and Muslim combination in Bengal under Mr Fazlul Haq’s leadership was not welcomed by a section of permanent officials . . . We are often told that India’s future political advancement was being retarded because of the failure of leaders of Hindus and Muslims to work together in the sphere of State Administration. For the first time in the history of British India, whatever democratic constitution has been handed over to us, in spite of its manifold defects, was sought to be worked in Bengal by Hindu and Muslim representatives who wielded considerable influence over their own community. The success of this experiment naturally would give a lie direct to the plea of communal disharmony standing in the way of India’s political advancement. It would be therefore to the interest of diehard officials to see that this experiment proved a failure . . . To speak frankly, your own attitude towards the ministry has been far from satisfactory from the very beginning . . . though the Muslim League for seven months carried on a relentless and vituperative campaign against the ministry and specially the Chief Minister, thus weakening the forces of law and order and rousing communal passions, you all along characterised them either as constitutional agitation by the Opposition or mere attacks on ministers individually which did not affect Government as such . . . You have allowed to function, in this province, a government within a government, where real power has been wielded by men who have very little responsibility in carrying on the constitutional Government of the province with the willing support of the people. This is a serious charge. But it is just as well that you should know that whether consciously or unconsciously, you have created this deep impression in the minds of your ministers, which is hardly consistent with the good administration of the province.
But together with the charges against Herbert and the bureaucracy, the letter also focused on the need for the British to look at Indians in a different way. Dr Mookerjee, unlike Subhas Chandra Bose, was no admirer of the Japanese, and did not unreservedly believe in the dictum, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. When he was writing this letter, the Congress Working Committee had already finalized the ‘Quit India’ phase, and Dr Mookerjee, in all probability, could foresee that this would bring about terrible reprisals from the British, and was trying to soften the blow that was coming. He tried to convince Herbert that while the Indians did want the British to go, it could wait till the end of the war, and they most certainly did not want the Japanese to take their place. We shall presently see how things turned out in practice.
When Dr Mookerjee met the viceroy in Delhi, he discovered that Linlithgow was fully prepared to sternly meet the political situation. He also realized that the Haq ministry would be expected to fight the Congress agitation. He concluded by saying that what he asked for was power for the chosen representatives of the people to be shared with the Governor, acting as the constitutional head, to deal with the vital problems during the war. Meanwhile, Herbert had complained to the viceroy that he was not very certain of the attitude of Haq (with respect to disciplining the Congress when they rebelled) who, under Dr Mookerjee’s influence, showed signs of wobbling, with the result that the Bengal government might be reluctant to take necessary action. No trouble was apparently anticipated with ministers in the Punjab, Orissa or Sind.
On his way back to Calcutta, Dr Mookerjee halted at Allahabad for a few hours and had a long discussion with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He gave Nehru copies of his letters to the Governor, which indicated how he was struggling against heavy odds while carrying on his duties as minister. When he returned to Calcutta, the stage was practically fully set for the Quit India movement to be launched. Gandhi had been authorized to give the final direction regarding the beginning of the movement.
But before we go to the momentous days of the ‘Quit India’ call, let us digress a bit to describe an incident which showed Dr Mookerjee as the intensely humane person that he essentially was. The incident concerned the famous Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam who, like Rabindranath Tagore, straddles two countries—India and Bangladesh.
Nazrul was always rather carefree in matters of money. He had run up a debt of 7000 rupees (a huge sum in those days) because of the illness of his wife and the cost of her treatment, for which he had to borrow money from loan sharks. Just then he got an offer as a music director in a Bengali film and hoped that the money he got from it would get him out of the woods. At this stage Fazlul Haq, to whom he was close, asked him to take over the editorship of his party organ Nobojug, and said he would take care of his debts. However, after Nazrul let go of the music directorship, Haq began to drag his feet on this, and did not pay him any money for the next several months. Nazrul was in terrible straits and finally approached Dr Mookerjee in July 1942. The latter not only arranged for repayment of his debt but also sent him to Madhupur as a house guest in his own house for ‘change’ and recuperation. Nazrul stayed with his wife in the annex to Ganga Prasad House for nearly two months, and she recovered to a great extent. This made a world of difference to Nazrul. The letter he wrote to Dr Mookerjee in gratitude towards the end of his stay at Madhupur would wring anybody’s heart.
Though he did not know it yet, around this time, Nazrul had begun to suffer from an unknown, but serious, neurological disorder (possibly Pick’s disease, similar to Alzheimer’s). This caused him eventually to lose his voice and memory. He lived on as a vegetable in Calcutta till 1972. Invited by the Government of Bangladesh, Nazrul and his family moved to Dacca in 1972, where he died four years later.
We can now return to the Quit India movement. Gandhi finally gave the call of ‘Quit India’ from the Gowalia Tank Maidan (now called August Kranti Maidan) in Bombay on 8 August 1942 when the All-India Congress Committee approved the resolution. The British almost instantly retaliated by throwing all the principal Congress leaders in jail the very next day and, as a result, the movement became a disjointed one, led mainly by second or third-rung leaders with local followings.
The other political parties also did not follow the Congress in the movement. The communists openly sided with the British and made efforts to derail the movement. The previous year Hitler had launched his Operation Barbarossa, or the attack on Soviet Russia. Until this point the Indian communists had dubbed the war an ‘Imperialist War’ and opposed it. With the attack on the Soviets, they changed their line overnight, and what was the Imperialist War now became the ‘People’s War’. From this point onwards, the Indian communists totally sided with the British and indulged in abject hypocrisy to whitewash the misdeeds of the British. The Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha both distanced themselves from the movement. Dr Mookerjee, a Hindu Mahasabhaite since 1939, toed his party line and continued with parliamentary politics. Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the scheduled castes, was also bitterly critical of the movement, saying that it was a mad venture which took the most diabolical form and proved to be a complete failure.
Haq told Dr Mookerjee upon his return to Calcutta that important secret instructions had arrived from the Government of India and he had requested the Governor to place the whole matter before a cabinet meeting. The Governor declined to do so and replied to Haq that the cabinet would meet later. Herbert expected any minister who disagreed with the Government of India’s policy would forthwith resign. The ministers met to consider the unprecedented situation. Responsible ministers were to be treated with suspicion and refused access to important documents which were being secretly discussed with ICS officers—this was a real mockery of provincial autonomy. On the morning of 9 August, the Governor summoned the cabinet, but the meeting could not proceed and had to be adjourned. This is because all the ministers insisted that they would not proceed without seeing the documents. As the ministers were about to leave the Government House, Additional Home Secretary Porter came with the file and handed it over to the Chief Minister who gave it to Dr Mookerjee. He took the file home and read it very carefully. It was clear that long before the Congress could give any provocation, the government had decided to start its campaign of repression, and all the details for this purpose were elaborately outlined in the letter. It was tersely put that ‘prevention was better than cure’ and this time, the government was determined to anticipate a possible revolt and sternly deal with the situation from the beginning. The government appeared to have a clear foreknowledge of the phase of the freedom struggle, namely the ‘Quit India’ phase that was coming, and was quite adequately prepared for it. Or could it have been an insider who had passed on advance information on it? We shall never know.
It was clear that the government envisaged running Bengal through the Governor and the ICS coterie, keeping the ministers as figureheads. Dr Mookerjee felt very uneasy about the whole thing, as it was useless to function as a minister when they would become mere tools at the hands of the bureaucracy. The ministers met at the house of the Nawab of Dacca to decide a course of action, but the meeting broke up without a final decision. It was clear that none of the ministers was willing to resign. All of Dr Mookerjee’s colleagues begged him to not resign and precipitate the matter. The Governor, on the other hand, felt that Dr Mookerjee would most likely quit office. Herbert reminded the ministers that the policy was that of the Government of India, and that was unchangeable. If any minister disagreed with it, he would be glad if he offered his resignation at a time when India was threatened with a dangerous war.
Dr Mookerjee’s personal views on the Quit India resolution were, however, balanced and not completely in line with that of the Mahasabha. He was in complete agreement with the patriotic content of the resolution, but had serious reservations as to the technicalities, and these point to his eye for detail and his political foresight. Before the adoption of the resolution by the AICC it had been approved by the Congress Working Committee meeting at Wardha in July 1942, and about this Dr Mookerjee was wary and watchful. In the letter8 dated 26 July 1942, addressed to Governor Herbert, he wrote:
The announcement made by the working committee that the British is being asked to withdraw, followed by further explanations that such withdrawal will not interfere with the British or Allied troops remaining in India and fighting the enemy, discloses considerable loose thinking. The British withdraws. No constituted government is determined by the British in agreement with Indians or otherwise to whom power will be handed over at the time of withdrawal . . . and things go on merrily. If the Indian problem had been such an easy one, India would have attained freedom long ago.
And again, he unequivocally records in the letter that he wrote to Lord Linlithgow on 12 August 1942, just four days after the Congress adopted the resolution:
The demand of the Congress as embodied in its last resolution [referring to the Quit India resolution of 8 August] virtually constitutes the national demand of India as a whole. It is regrettable that a campaign of misrepresentation is being carried on . . . characterising the Congress invitation as a virtual invitation to Japan and a surrender to chaos and confusion . . . Just as the Congress has a duty not to do anything suddenly which is bound to lead to chaos and disorder, so also have you a similar duty to ensure that there can be no just cause for discontent and disaffection, resulting in chaos and disorder. Repression is not the remedy at this critical hour.
All this, however, fell on deaf ears. The British government in India was so much on the edge and so apprehensive of a Japanese attack that they jumped at the slightest noise and let loose a regime of total repression. It happened in many places, but the one that affected Dr Mookerjee personally was what happened in Tamluk, in the Midnapore district of Bengal. We shall look at this phase of the freedom struggle, and the subsequent tragedy with which Dr Mookerjee was deeply involved, in the next chapter. Let us for the present look at the total Bengal and India scenario.
In any case, the Quit India call put the whole country into a state of rebellion. And because the topmost leaders had been thrown in jail, the movement had no central control. Disturbances of an extraordinary nature took place. Destruction of railways, roads and other means of communication compelled the police and protectors of law to surrender to the will of the people. Bengal was set on fire and Calcutta witnessed scenes of unbelievable acts of repression and shooting. Many innocent lives were lost.
The Quit India movement had meanwhile placed the Hindu Mahasabha in a difficult position. The Mahasabha’s Working Committee met in Delhi from 29 to 31 August 1942 and reviewed the political situation. It was emphatic in its condemnation of the repressive policy of the government and stated categorically that but for the bungling of the government and its hasty action, things would never have gone so badly. On his way to Delhi, Dr Mookerjee could see from the appearance of the railway stations and their adjoining localities how terrific the uprising had been. In fact, if it had continued for some more time the entire administration would have collapsed completely. The chief point of attack was the breaking of communications, and during a period of war, this obviously can have a disastrous effect on the administration. Still, there was no doubt that the situation had become acute on account of the perverseness of the government and its refusal to transfer power to the people of India.
While in Delhi, Dr Mookerjee had a long discussion with Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan, then premier of Punjab, and leader of the multi-religious Unionist Party. But Khan put him on his guard. He said that the key to the settlement lay with the viceroy. It was no use trying to come to an agreement with Muslims without the League, for the viceroy would not even care to look at it. He had made up his mind that he was going to recognize Jinnah as the only leader of the Muslims.
Dr Mookerjee on 8 September 1942 requested the viceroy for an interview, especially to obtain his permission to meet Gandhi at Poona. He was granted such an interview the next day. Among other things, Sikandar Hyat Khan was proved absolutely right. The interview did not go well for Dr Mookerjee who had to face a lot of uncomfortable questions which could not be answered—neither by him nor anyone else.
Linlithgow told Dr Mookerjee that he had ruined his chances of acting as a mediator by insisting on prior repudiation of Pakistan by His Majesty’s Government as a condition of any settlement. He then asked him to explain what he meant by ‘national government’, to which Dr Mookerjee had to confess that he really had no clear idea. He said that national government was national only if it was really representative. Linlithgow asked if Dr Mookerjee expected to get the Congress and the League to support his national government, to which Dr Mookerjee had to reply that he had little hope of either. Secondly, Dr Mookerjee could give no answer to the question whether he expected that a government based essentially on the Mahasabha, without either Congress or the League, could be described as ‘national’ in a true sense. Thirdly, he admitted that the risk of severe communal trouble in the event of a completely Hindu political government at the Centre was not negligible. Finally, the viceroy added that any alternative to his existing executive council must be able to deliver the goods in terms of popular support and give full support to the war. Dr Mookerjee’s argument was the usual one—that if the Muslim League would not play, and the Congress could not play, the British ought to give the vacant seats to the Mahasabha. Linlithgow warned him that if he was thinking of a government based essentially on the Mahasabha, with odd sections of the Muslims, he could hardly hope for much success if both Congress and the Muslim League were out in opposition.
Dr Mookerjee found the viceroy very bitter. He said that the Hindus were doomed, as Jinnah was made great not by the government but by the Congress who made the mistake of taking him seriously about Pakistan. He frankly admitted in his diary: ‘However much I disagree with the viceroy on other matters, there was a good deal of truth in what he said.’ Anyway, Linlithgow did not say that the door was closed to any constitutional progress. He clearly told Dr Mookerjee about the practical objections likely to operate against his scheme. When the latter asked if he could go and see Gandhi, the viceroy replied in the negative. He then asked if he could come back in a few days. The viceroy said not unless there were some really substantial changes in the position. Dr Mookerjee merely told the press that he had a ‘full and frank’ discussion with the viceroy but his diary records his disappointment: ‘Thus our efforts failed. But we demonstrated that in spite of tremendous odds, an agreement between the Hindus and Muslims and also other communities . . . could [be reached] only if the British Government took a rational view of things.’
Then Dr Mookerjee met Jinnah. Here were two people, politically at two opposite poles, completely convinced of their positions, and not prepared to concede anything to the other without a real struggle, and without solid political logic behind. They met as resolute, self-respecting equals—no brotherly business here, no coaxing, no genuflections. This meeting was in Delhi and lasted for three hours. Dr Mookerjee records that they spoke very frankly to each other. According to V.P. Menon, the principal idea which he had put to Jinnah was that representatives of the two communities should meet and that each should explain in what respect it expects protection from the other. The Mahasabha would be willing to concede the fullest measure of autonomy to the provinces and would give the minorities the maximum protection in respect of their religion, language and customs. On the question of Pakistan, however, Jinnah was as adamant as Dr Mookerjee was against it and they could not discover a point of contact. Dr Mookerjee reminded Jinnah that before Cripps came out to India, all that Jinnah wanted was that his Pakistan should not be tabooed, but considered dispassionately at the time of constitution-making. Dr Mookerjee asked why on that basis should they not agree to demand from the viceroy the immediate establishment of an interim national government, followed by the release of Congress leaders. Jinnah’s reply was immediate. He said that the situation had changed since Cripps gave him something like Pakistan, though it was not exactly what he wanted. His basis for settlement would now therefore be the acceptance of the principle of Pakistan here and now, and then only could he talk of an interim settlement. Dr Mookerjee exposed to him the utter fallacy of his Pakistan logic, but it made no impression on him. In any case, as Dr Mookerjee notes in his diary, there was no acrimony between the two and they agreed that they should not issue statements accusing each other, but would consider themselves happy that they had tried to explore each other’s point of view, respecting each other’s sentiments.
When Dr Mookerjee came back to his work in Bengal, he found the assembly in a state of great excitement. Herbert was not happy regarding the way in which the ministers were behaving. He complained that they were not sufficiently vocal in their condemnation of lawlessness and he wanted a suitable resolution to be passed on the floor of the assembly. The ugliest possible scenes followed. Shouts and counter-shouts, attacks and counter-attacks went to extreme lengths. Ultimately, the assembly had to be adjourned sine die.
It was clear to all that this demonstration was made possible only because of the Governor’s instigation. The European party had by now decided to side with the Opposition. Till now it was acting as an independent party and hardly, if ever, voted against the ministry. Now, it had decided to join hands with the Opposition, which thus gained considerable numerical strength.
Dr Mookerjee told Herbert, when Herbert laid down the ironclad rule that all ministers must either abide by the Government of India’s policy or resign, that he did not resign immediately for two reasons. He would like first to put the all-India issues before the viceroy and then His Majesty’s Government, which was the constitutional way of conveying a minister’s views to the highest British authorities regarding matters Indian. Secondly, since his colleagues were not going to follow him, he was anxious to have ‘assurance’ from Herbert that he would not take advantage of his resignation and instal the League into power again by threat or intrigue. Herbert assured Dr Mookerjee that he would not do anything of the kind. On 12 August 1942, Dr Mookerjee sent his letter to Linlithgow through Herbert himself. In this historic letter, he put forth the viewpoint of nationalist India and concrete suggestions for an immediate settlement between England and India.
Off and on, one hears of mischievous propaganda equating Dr Mookerjee with the communists with regard to the opposition to the Quit India Movement. This letter of Dr Mookerjee, addressed to the viceroy, written just three days after the launching of the movement, should set to rest all doubts in this regard. In the letter9 he wrote:
It is therefore essential that India’s free status should be recognised immediately and the people of the country called upon to defend their own country in co-operation with the Allied Powers, and not merely look upon Britain to fight the impending aggression. The demand of the Congress, as embodied in its last resolution, virtually constitutes the national demand of India as a whole . . . you [have] a similar duty to ensure that there can be no just cause for discontent and disaffection resulting in chaos and disorder. Repression is not the remedy at this critical hour.
As said earlier, he was in complete agreement with the patriotic content of the resolution, but had serious reservations as to the technicalities, and was not afraid to speak out.
Not only this, but while Congressmen were languishing in jail, Dr Mookerjee took a keen interest in their welfare and arranged for Calcutta University to take their classes in jail. A relative recalled that when one Kushiprasun Chatterjee, an advocate and a Congress activist, felt insecure about keeping cash belonging to the Congress party at home, the person he thought of for keeping the cash with was Dr Mookerjee—and he cooperated.
Dr Mookerjee received the viceroy’s reply to his letter towards the end of September. It was of course anticipated. The viceroy could not do anything at that stage and his first duty was to maintain law and order in the country. Dr Mookerjee made up his mind to tender his resignation and the question was when he would do so. Apart from the all-India issues, he fully realized that in the provincial sphere, he could hardly do any work leading to the good of the province in view of the hostile and unsympathetic attitude of the Governor and the coterie of officials who practically ruled over the province. The political situation also rendered his position extremely difficult. Whatever the cabinet recommended was practically turned down.
Everybody knew about Dr Mookerjee’s letter to the viceroy dated 12 August 1942 and the viceroy’s reply to it made his resignation inevitable. He, however, assured his colleagues of loyal support so as to keep the ministry in office, despite a determined assault from the League and the Europeans. Haq tried to have the matter reconsidered, but neither the Governor nor Dr Mookerjee himself was agreeable to any such course of action. His last interview with Herbert was on the evening of 19 November. The interview ended abruptly after there was a difference of opinion between Herbert and Dr Mookerjee on the issue of publication of the latter’s correspondence. The Governor accepted Dr Mookerjee’s resignation on 20 November in Calcutta. And thus ended the first spell of ministership of Dr Mookerjee, begun in December 1941, even before he had completed his first year.
Meanwhile, in response to numerous inquiries regarding the reasons for his resignation, Dr Mookerjee issued a statement on 21 November. He clarified that his resignation was not due to any difference of opinion between himself and the Chief Minister or any of his colleagues or any member of the Progressive Coalition party. Apart from Dr Mookerjee’s general dissatisfaction with the interfering attitude of the Governor, there were two specific matters in which Dr Mookerjee failed to obtain even partial relief related to the imposition of collective fines and the handling of the Midnapore situation. Collective fines were imposed in Bengal in utter disregard of the ordinance itself and to terrorize Hindus. With regard to Midnapore, the legitimate measures taken by the government to check lawlessness were understandable but the repression that continued after the havoc caused by the cyclone and flood on 16 October, was staggering. Despite ministerial protests, repression and so-called relief went hand in hand. Dr Mookerjee called upon public opinion to immediately assert itself, both with regard to collective fines and the Midnapore situation. According to him, the office of a minister was not an end in itself but the means to an end, the end being service to the people. He resigned because he felt during the last few weeks that his capacity for doing good was being curbed more and more.
It was a great pity that the British government failed to utilize the gigantic energy and ability of a workaholic like Dr Mookerjee, due partly to the laws and constitution as prevalent then and also due to the pig-headedness of Herbert. One may conclude by saying that it was a tragic case of a right man in the wrong place and at the wrong time.
In between, however, there had been a cyclone-tsunami at Contai, in the district of Midnapore, and the concealment of the same from Dr Mookerjee had brought matters to head and also contributed to his resignation. This has been described in the next chapter.