Congress Election Campaign and INA Trials

Elections were held in the winter of 1945-46.

Election Campaign for Nationalistic Aims The most significant feature of the election campaign was that it sought to mobilise the Indians against the British; it did not just appeal to the people for votes.

The election campaign expressed the nationalist sentiments against the state repression of the 1942 Quit India upsurge. This was done by glorifying martyrs and condemning officials. The brave resistance of the leaderless people was lauded; martyrs’ memorials were set up; relief funds were collected for sufferers; the officials responsible for causing pain were condemned; and promises of enquiry and threats of punishment to guilty officials were spelt out.

The government failed to check such speeches. This had a devastating effect on the morale of the services. The prospect of the return of Congress ministries, especially in those provinces where repression had been most brutal, further heightened the fears of those in government services. A ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the Congress seemed necessary to the government.

Mass pressure against the trial of INA POWs, sometimes described as “an edge of a volcano”, brought about a decisive shift in the government’s policy. The British had initially decided to hold public trials of several hundreds of INA prisoners besides dismissing them from service and detaining without trial around 7,000 of them. They compounded the folly by holding the first trial at the Red Fort in Delhi in November 1945 and putting on dock together a Hindu, Prem Kumar Sehgal, a Muslim, Shah Nawaz Khan, and a Sikh, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon.

Another issue was provided by the use of Indian Army units in a bid to restore French and Dutch colonial rule in Vietnam and Indonesia: this enhanced the anti-imperialist feeling among a section of urban population and the Army.