Book review: Rakesh Ankit,India in the Interregnum: Interim Government,September 1946–August 1947

Rakesh Ankit’s India in the Interregnum focuses on the eventful period straddling the end of the empire and the emergence of the post-imperial nation state. It posits the post-colonial Indian government as a successor state, with the Interim Government—the 11-month period from September 1946 to August 1947—serving as the bridgehead. The author views the interregnum as a rare ‘alternative attempt at sharing and exercising power’ (p. 352), with a sense of purpose and quality that has escaped historiographical attention. This brief period was a harbinger of the momentous changes and challenges that were to mark the Nehruvian years and presaged many of the post-colonial policies as well as predicaments. The account is peopled by British viceroys, Indian politicians and civil servants, all trained under colonialism, now dealing with the imperative of building a new nation.

The volume is divided into three sections. The first section, ‘Before Partition: At the Centre’, argues that the Congress–League–British cabinet of 1946–7 exemplified a “consociational” state committed to federal autonomy, proportional political representation and protection of regional and minority rights. The two chapters in this section detail the period under Wavell and Mountbatten, respectively, and we get an almost daily account, a kind of roznamcha, of the deliberations of the Interim cabinet as it waded through international and domestic issues. Unearthing as many moments of convergence between the League and the Congress ministers as of divergence, Ankit positions the experiment of a multiparty Interim Government not only as a site of struggle but also of ‘coalition, tolerance and unity of purpose’ (p. 10), single-mindedly devoted to governance, and not the failure it has usually been portrayed as.

Section II, ‘Beneath Partition: Personnel and Processes’, takes the narrative forward by highlighting the working of the top bureaucratic machinery of the Union. It was this set of officers, who had joined the ICS in the 1920s and would go on to serve for the next two decades, who remained committed to ‘their old covenant as much as their new country (emphasis in original)’ (p. 148), that saw India through this period of transition. It delves into the backstories of the ICS/IFS/IP personnel who were instrumental in conceiving, drafting, defending and implementing the various proposals of the government. Officials such as N. B. Khare, G. S. Bajpai, Samar Sen, C. D. Deshmukh, N. R. Pillai, K. P. S. Menon and H. V. R. Iyengar—the brown civil servants stepping in seamlessly as the white ones departed—provided stability, advising their new political chiefs who were ‘full of enthusiasm but [with]little experience’ (p. 154). Expectedly, many policies of the 1950s and 1960s are shown to be carry-overs from the pre-Independence period.

The final section, ‘Beside Partition: Among the Provinces’ shifts the historian’s gaze to the provinces and to the regional networks of economic interest, patronage and ambition that ‘marshalled a British state apparatus to run a postcolonial country in the name of popular will’ (p. 203). Consciously avoiding the provinces where the high drama of partition and integration was played out—Punjab, Bengal and the Princely States—the historiographical inquiry is focused on the seven provinces of British India that escaped physical vivisection and mass trauma. Unsurprisingly then, the conclusion here too is the ‘British-established government machines continued intact’ (p. 203). Governors replace the Viceroys in this section, collaborating with provincial premiers in finding solutions to pressing problems such as food scarcity and urban rationing in Bombay or crushing the communist agitation in Madras or dealing with anti-dam protests in Orissa. Ankit also discusses the provinces where this collaboration was not working—whether due to the naked majoritarian politics of the Congress workers in Central Provinces or due to the corruption and ineptitude of the Congress ministry of the United Provinces. Needless to say, these conclusions are all based on inferences of the Governors of these provinces.

There is no gainsaying that India in the Interregnum points towards an important period of Indian history that needs to be studied in detail in all its complexities. In Ankit’s narration, however, policies, politics and, indeed, history move forward by juxtaposing the view of one politician against another, one bureaucrat with the next one, in an aim to weave a top-down history of the ‘everyday life of the Interim Government’ (p. xii). The viceroys, Wavell and Mountbatten, are presented as benevolent and wise surveyors of the colonial mess, the bureaucrats appear as civil interlocuters and the politicians appear comfortably at ease with power even during this early period. Much of the historiographical work over the past three decades has striven to dispel precisely this colonial view of Indian politics. The inescapable truth is that tragedy and chaos prevailed all around on the ground, and much of it was the result of the paralysis of governance and mismanagement of the outgoing colonial regime. An alternative account of this period may well consider this continuity of personnel and policies to be the root cause of the ills that plague the post-colonial nation, based as it was on privilege and power, and a certain distrust towards the democratic impulse. One gets the feeling that in the turbulence and disarray of this uncertain year, Ankit’s sympathies seem to lie with the ‘gradualism and moderation’ (p. 352) of the colonial state apparatus rather than with the impatient and democratic desires of post-colonial society.

The reason for this charitable view is the exhaustive but near exclusive reliance on the official archive, complemented by a few oral and published memoirs of the civil servants. There is an unprocessed surfeit of the language of the private papers, fortnightly reports and official minutes. There is no reference to the debates and discussions about the actions of the state in the vibrant press and the public sphere of the time, which might have enlivened Ankit’s account of the multiple contestations faced by the Interim Government. The monotony of his sources is deeply problematic in terms of historical methodology. In choosing to speak the language of the state and to present the high official view, the author is able to insulate his account from the devastations of partition, war and famine—all of which appear defanged and ultimately manageable in the bureaucratese. Ultimately, what defines Ankit’s account of the interregnum is a continuity that is very akin to a mere transfer of power.