Congress Rule in Provinces

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  • Congress ministries were formed in Bombay, Madras, Central Provinces, Orissa, United Provinces, Bihar and later in the NWFP and Assam also.
Gandhi’s Advice
  • Offices should be used in a way not expected or intended by the British.
  • Hold these offices lightly and not tightly.
  • Office ‘crowns of thorns.
  • Gandhi urged Congressmen to prove that the Congress could rule with least assistance from the police and the Army.
Work under Congress Ministries
  • Congress ministries had some basic limitations: they could not, through their administration, change the basic imperialist character of the system and could not introduce a radical era. 28 months of Congress rule.
Civil Liberty
  • Laws giving emergency powers were repealed.
  • Ban on illegal organisations (Hindustan Seva Dal & Youth Leagues), books & journal.
  • Press restrictions were lifted.
  • Newspapers were taken out of black lists.
  • Confiscated arms and arms licences were restored.
  • Police powers were curbed & CID stopped shadowing politicians.
  • Political prisoners and revolutionaries were released.
  • Bombay lands confiscated restored associated with the CDM.
  • Pensions of officials restored associated with the CDM.
Agrarian Reforms
Certain basic constraints, could not undertake a complete abolishing zamindari.
  • Ministries did not have adequate powers.
  • Inadequate financial resources.
  • Strategy of class adjustments was another hurdle since zamindars, etc.
  • Confrontation and not cooperation with .colonialism.
  • World War clouds had started.
  • Second chamber (Legislative Council) dominated by landlords, moneylenders and capitalists in United Provinces, Bihar, Bombay, Madras and Assam
  • Agrarian structure was too complex.
Spite of these constraints, Laws relating to land reforms, debt relief, forest grazing fee, arrears of rent, land tenures, etc.
Benefits went to statutory and occupancy tenants while sub-tenants did not gain much. Agricultural labourers did not benefit.
Attitude Towards Labour
  • Promoting industrial peace.
  • Goodwill was sought to be created between labour and capital with mediation of ministries.
  • Efforts were made to improve workers’ condition & Secure wage increases.
  • Approach was largely successful but not so in Bombay, Leftist critics were not satisfied by this approach.
  • Ministries took recourse to Section 144 and arrested the leaders
  • Nehru was unhappy about these repressive measures, popular base of the Congress should not erode.
  • Appealed to Congressmen against frequent resort to colonial laws and machinery.
Social Welfare Reforms
  • Prohibition imposed in certain areas.
  • Measures for welfare of Harijans taken - temple entry, use of public facilities, scholarships, an increase in their numbers in government service and police.
  • Primary, technical and higher education & public health and sanitation.
  • Encouragement given to khadi by subsidies and other measures
  • Prison reforms.
  • Encourage indigenous enterprises.
  • National Planning Committee set up under Congress president Subhash Bose in 1938.
Extra-Parliamentary Mass Activity of Congress
  • Launching mass literacy campaigns
  • Set up Congress police stations and panchayats
  • Congress Grievance Committees
  • States peoples’ movements.
Evaluation
Opportunism and hunger for power had started surfacing among Congressmen, utilise council work to their advantage.
  • Indian self-government necessary for radical social transformation got confirmed.
  • Congressmen demonstrated that a movement could use state power to further its ends without being co-opted.
  • Ministries were able to control communal riots.
  • Morale of the bureaucracy came down.
  • Neutralise many erstwhile hostile elements.
  • People were able to perceive the shape of things to come if independence was won.
  • Administrative work by Indians further weakened the myth that Indians were not fit to rule
Congress ministries resigned in October 1939 after the outbreak of the Second World War
  • Increased militancy and industrial unrest in Bombay, Gujarat, the United Provinces and Bengal at a time when the Congress was drawn into a closer friendship with Indian capitalists, Anti-labour shift.
  • Bombay Traders Disputes Act in 1938.
  • Support the Prajamandal movement for greater democracy or not.
  • All India Muslim League, annoyed with the Congress for not sharing power with them established the Pirpur Committee in 1938 to prepare a detailed report on the atrocities supposedly committed by the Congress ministries.
  • Interference in the religious rites, suppression of Urdu in favour of Hindi.
  • Oppression of Muslims in the economic sphere.
  • Congress was forced to realise that being in power and actually running the administration was not easy.
  • All sections of populations had such high expectations as could not be fulfilled all at once.

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