Congress—Raj Conflict and the Rise of the Muslim League in the Ministry Period, 1937–39

Abstract

The Government of India Act of 1935 was a constitutional device meant to extend the Raj's political alliances in Indian society. The Congress Party, on the other hand, construed the Act as a new challenge to the demand for independence. The authorities discovered that the Congress ministers’ primary loyalties lay with the imperatives of the party and not with the constitutional arrangement. Concern on this account was heightened by the resurgence of ground-level Congress activism. The Congress strengthened and expanded its volunteer organization while it governed the provinces. If the formal party institutions were weakened by corruption and factionalism during the ministry period, its grass-roots cadres were revitalized and mobilized opinion against compromises with the Raj, strengthening the ministers’ hands in any major clashes with the authorities. The latter were disturbed by links between the Congress ministers and party activity hostile to the Raj, even though a certain convergence of Congress and British interests kept the experiment of provincial autonomy going. The official response to this situation consisted, at one level, of making expedient concessions.But the authorities explored an alternative possibility as well. The Muslim League, which emerged as a mass party after 1937, was not exactly an ally, but it offered the most powerful resistance to the possibility of total mobilization under the Congress.