The Cripps Mission

By Sir Reginald Coupland

The author of this book had been for several months in India studying the Indian constitutional problem when the Cripps Mission arrived. At Sir Stafford Cripps’ request, Professor Coupland joined his staff, and this book is the result of close personal observation of the Mission at work, reinforced by a thorough knowledge at first hand of the background issues out of which the Cripps Mission was born.

With admirable brevity and clarity Professor Coupland traces the course of events in India from the outbreak of the present war, through the “August Offer,” the answering “Sapru Proposals,” the arrival of Sir Stafford Cripps with the Draft Declaration, down to the final rejection of the Draft by all political parties. By a careful analysis of the attitudes of Congress and the Moslem League, as well as those of the minority groups, and the sharp divisions of opinion between opposing factions within the parties, the author is able to show why the negotiations, begun and carried on with high hopes on both sides, eventually broke down. The story of the Cripps Mission is told without bias by a man who cannot regard it as a complete failure, since for the first time in the history of Anglo-Indian relations, the essential sincerity of the British government in general and its emissary in the person of Sir Stafford Cripps in particular was in the main not questioned by the Indian people or their leaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Nov 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781787202887

Sir Reginald Coupland

SIR REGINALD COUPLAND KCMG FBA (2 August 1884 - 6 November 1952) was a prominent historian of the British Empire. Born in London, he was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford. From 1907-1914 he was Fellow and Lecturer in Ancient History at Trinity College, Oxford. His interest turned from ancient history to the study of the British Empire, and in 1913 he became Beit Lecturer in Colonial History at Oxford. He held the Beit Professorship of Colonial History at the University of Oxford from 1920-1948. His Chair carried with it a professorial fellowship at All Souls College which he valued highly. During World War II, Coupland devoted much time to the study of India, visiting the country twice. In 1942 he was appointed a member of Sir Stafford Cripps’ Mission to India, and his contribution to the study of Indian politics—his Report on the Constitutional Problem in India—was published in 3 parts during 1942-1943. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Palestine of 1936-1937, set up under the chairmanship of Lord Peel. Coupland was one of the original founders of the Honour School of philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford in the years after World War I, and was one of the early professorial fellows of Nuffield College from 1939 to 1950. His distinction as an historian was recognised by an honorary D.Litt. from Durham in 1938 and by election to a fellowship of the British Academy in 1948. He died suddenly in 1952 as he embarked at Southampton on a voyage to South Africa.

Book preview

This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books—[e-mail]

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1942 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE CRIPPS MISSION

BY

R. COUPLAND

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

PREFACE 4

ILLUSTRATIONS 5

I. INDIA AND THE WAR 6

II. DISTRUST AND DISUNION 13

III. ON THE EVE OF THE MISSION 18

IV. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 26

V. THE NEW CONSTITUTION 33

1 33

2 35

3 36

VI. DEFENCE 39

VII. THE BREAKDOWN 43

VIII. INDEPENDENCE NOW 47

1 47

2 48

3 49

4 51

EPILOGUE 54

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 56

PREFACE

I WENT to India last autumn to study the constitutional problem under the auspices of Nuffield College. I had spent four months in the country and was on the point of returning home to draft my report, when Sir Stafford Cripps arrived. At his request I stayed on and joined his staff. I was thus enabled to observe the work of his Mission at close quarters; and, though it cannot yet be seen in its true historical perspective, it seemed to me worthwhile to attempt a brief record of it while my impressions were still fresh. Sir Stafford has kindly allowed me to do this on the understanding that it is a personal and wholly unofficial record and that for the statements and opinions it contains the responsibility is solely mine.

R. C.

WOOTTON HILL,

May, 1942.

ILLUSTRATIONS

SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS AND MR. GANDHI

SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS AND MR. JINNAH

SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS AND MR. RAJAGOPALACHARI

SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS AND PANDIT NEHRU

TRAPEZE TRAGEDY? Sir S. Cripps and Pandit Nehru.

(Reproduced by courtesy of the Hindustan Times)

I. INDIA AND THE WAR

THE purpose of Sir Stafford Cripps’ mission to India in the spring of 1942 was to explain to ‘the leaders of the principal sections of the Indian people’ the British Government’s proposals for India’s attainment of full self-government after the war, and to express in person that Government’s desire that, on the basis of the proposals, those leaders should at once and effectively participate ‘in the counsels of their country, of the Commonwealth and of the United Nations’ for the defence of India and the prosecution of the world war effort as a whole.

In ill-informed quarters the object of the Mission was interpreted more broadly. It was ‘to bring India into the war,’ the implication being that India or the Indians had so far taken little, if any, share in the common war effort. But that, of course, was far from the truth. In the first place, the Central Government of India has contained since last summer, besides its three British official members and the British Commander-in-Chief, eight non-official Indian members, and it has been assisted by an advisory Defence Council of about thirty members, almost all of them Indians. Linked with the Central Government are the eleven Provincial Governments. Seven of these are now purely official Governments owing to the resignation of their Congress Ministers at the outset of the war, but four of them—those of Bengal, the Punjab, Sind, and Orissa—are constitutional Governments composed entirely of Indian Ministers supported by majorities in their elected legislatures and exercising the full provincial autonomy established by the Act of 1935. These Governments are as much ‘war governments’ as the Central Government, and they have taken their full share in the general war effort. Serving under these war governments at the Centre and in all the Provinces are many thousands of Indian officials, all of them as fully committed to the war effort as their confrères in Whitehall.

More directly engaged in it are the Indian officers and men of the Indian Army. From the earliest days of the war its famous regiments have been fighting—in East Africa, in Libya, in the Middle and Far East. At the time of Sir Stafford’s arrival in India the strength of the Indian Army was over one million. Nor was there any shortage of reserves. At least 50,000 recruits were volunteering every month. Far more Indian fighting men, in fact, were and are potentially available than can be provided with arms and equipment within measurable time. The size of the Indian Navy has been increased sixfold, and recruits for the Indian Air Force are again far more numerous than the aircraft available for their use.

Industrial production for war purposes in India has immensely increased since the war began. Indian industry is now supplying no less than 90 per cent, of the military equipment of the Indian Army—guns, shells, small-arms ammunition, armoured cars, uniforms, boots, and so forth—and the amount of labour employed is only limited by the factory space and machinery and skilled artisans to hand. Lastly, there has been a steady flow of contribution to the war funds. And in this substantial war effort the Indian States have shared with British India. In all respects they have more than maintained the high standard of war service set in 1914.

Thus, in administration, in military service, in war production the Indian war effort has been as great as the limiting conditions have permitted. Nevertheless, India has not been and is not at war in the same sense as the other Allied countries are at war. To a newcomer fresh from England the difference in the atmosphere, at any rate before the Japanese swept through Malaya to Singapore, was almost startling. In November, 1941, India was as different from England as England was different from what she herself had been, say, in November, 1939.

One reason for this was India’s geographical position. Till the Japanese occupied Malaya, the fighting seemed very far away; and it was assumed that in this war, as in the last, British sea-power—and American sea-power at need—would protect the coast of India. But there was a more potent reason than that for the unwarlike atmosphere, a reason which, as will be seen, persisted even when the victorious Japanese drew nearer. Indian public opinion has regarded the war from its outset with a divided mind.

What constitutes, who forms, public opinion in India? The mass of the people, the countless poor and ignorant villagers who make up nine-tenths