Explain why the efforts at finding solution to India's constitutional impasse failed during 1942-1946?

Answer:

Between 1942 and 1946 four major attempts were made to resolve India's constitutional deadlock, and all failed. Irreconcilable demands, British reluctance, wartime circumstance and mounting communal polarisation together made agreement impossible.

The Cripps Mission of 1942

• It offered dominion status only after the war, giving nothing immediate.
• The right of provinces to opt out conceded the principle of partition in embryo.
• Defence was to remain in British hands, which the Congress could not accept.
• Gandhi called it a post-dated cheque; the League rejected it for not conceding Pakistan.
• Churchill and Linlithgow undermined the mission from behind.

The Gandhi-Jinnah talks of 1944

• Gandhi negotiated on the basis of the Rajagopalachari formula.
• Jinnah demanded the whole of the Muslim-majority provinces with sovereign status.
• He insisted the League alone represented Muslims, which the Congress denied.
• Disagreement over who should vote in the plebiscite proved insoluble.

The Simla Conference of 1945

• Wavell proposed an interim executive with parity between Hindus and Muslims.
• Jinnah insisted that only the League might nominate Muslim members.
• The Congress refused to abandon its claim to be a national, not a Hindu, body.
• Wavell's decision to let the demand veto the conference doomed it.

The Cabinet Mission of 1946

• It proposed a three-tier federation with grouping of provinces, rejecting Pakistan.
• Both parties accepted it, then interpreted the grouping clause in opposite senses.
• Nehru's statement that the Congress was not bound by grouping precipitated the crisis.
• The League withdrew acceptance and called Direct Action Day in August 1946.
• The Calcutta killings that followed turned deadlock into communal war.

The underlying reasons for failure

• The Congress sought a strong united centre; the League sought parity or separation.
• British policy vacillated, conceding the League a veto that hardened its demands.
• Wartime imprisonment of Congress leaders let the League consolidate unchallenged.
• Communal violence progressively destroyed the trust any settlement required.

The final outcome

• Mountbatten arrived in March 1947 and quickly concluded partition was unavoidable.
• The date was advanced to August 1947, leaving no time for orderly transfer.
• The Indian Independence Act was passed in July 1947.
• Partition followed with immense displacement and violence.

The efforts failed, therefore, because the two positions had become mutually exclusive and each failure hardened them further. As Ayesha Jalal and R.J. Moore have argued, British handling gave the League a decisive bargaining position, so that by 1946 partition remained the only settlement to which all parties could be brought to agree.