Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Maps
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: contemporary encounters
- 2 Vortex debate: the purna swaraj decision 1929
- 3 Holds barred: anatomy of a satyagraha, Lucknow, May 1930
- 4 Peace with conflict: the Gandhi–Emerson talks, March–August 1931
- 5 Thrust and parry: the Mahatma at bay, 1932–1933
- 6 Which way ahead? Nehru and Congress strategy 1936–1937
- 7 The spider's web: Congress and provincial office 1937–1939
- 8 Working with the grain: Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and the antecedents to the Cripps Declaration 1942
- Biographical notes
- Index
4 - Peace with conflict: the Gandhi–Emerson talks, March–August 1931
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Maps
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: contemporary encounters
- 2 Vortex debate: the purna swaraj decision 1929
- 3 Holds barred: anatomy of a satyagraha, Lucknow, May 1930
- 4 Peace with conflict: the Gandhi–Emerson talks, March–August 1931
- 5 Thrust and parry: the Mahatma at bay, 1932–1933
- 6 Which way ahead? Nehru and Congress strategy 1936–1937
- 7 The spider's web: Congress and provincial office 1937–1939
- 8 Working with the grain: Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and the antecedents to the Cripps Declaration 1942
- Biographical notes
- Index
Summary
I rather like the look of things in India. The late Lord Salisbury said, quoting an American, there were two ways of governing men – ‘bamboozle or bamboo’. You seem to be trying both at once.
Winston Churchill to Sinclair, Liberal Chief Whip, 30 December 1931One common feature of the final period of imperial rule in many a colonial territory, at all events in the British Empire, was the coming together, and then close conjunction, between the principal nationalist leaders and the last colonial rulers. Perhaps the most notable example occurred in India in 1947 as between Jawaharlal Nehru and Mountbatten. But there were many later cases too: between Senanayake and Soulbury in Ceylon; Nkrumah and Arden-Clarke in Ghana; Tunku Abdul Rahman and MacGillivray in Malaya; Abubaker and Robertson in Nigeria; Nyerere and Turnbull in Tanganyika; Kenyatta and Macdonald in Kenya; even briefly between Mugabe and Soames in Zimbabwe. There were earlier examples too in most of India's Provinces in 1937–9 (as we shall see in chapter 7). The reason for this propensity is not hard to find. For while the incoming nationalist leaders were understandably anxious to secure a firm grasp on the levers of political power, the outgoing rulers were anxious to depart in as orderly and as dignified a manner as possible. Both had a major interest in effecting a smooth transfer of power.
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- Information
- Britain and Indian NationalismThe Imprint of Amibiguity 1929–1942, pp. 119 - 173Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997