Dominion of India

The Dominion of India came into existence upon the partition of India, a process under and legal act of the Government and Crown of the United Kingdom. Its creation was preceded, however, by a pioneering and influential anti-colonial nationalist movement which became a major factor in ending the broader British Raj. The first government of the new Union was formed under Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister with Vallabhbhai Patel as deputy prime minister, both members of the Indian National Congress. Lord Mountbatten, who had served as the last Viceroy of India, stayed on from August 1947 until June 1948 as independent India's first governor-general; he was replaced by C. Rajagopalachari.

The religious violence occasioned by the partition was soon reduced, in large part through the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi; resentment of him grew though amongst Hindu fundamentalists, eventually costing him his life. To Patel fell the responsibility for integrating the princely states of the British Indian Empire into the new India. Lasting through the remainder of 1947 and the better part of 1948, integration was accomplished by means of inducements, and on occasion threats. It went smoothly except in the cases of Junagadh State, Hyderabad State, and, especially, Kashmir and Jammu, the last leading to a war between India and Pakistan and to a dispute that has lasted until today.

During the existence of the Union/Dominion, the new constitution of the Republic of India was drafted. It was based in large part on the Government of India Act 1935, the last constitution of British India, but also reflected some elements of the Constitution of the United States as well as the Constitution of Ireland. The new constitution disavowed some aspects of India's past by abolishing untouchability and derecognising caste distinctions.

A major effort was made during this period to document the demographic changes accompanying the partition of British India. According to most demographers, between 14 and 18 million people moved between India and Pakistan as refugees of the partition, and upwards of one million people were killed. A major effort was also made to document the poverty prevalent in India. A committee appointed by the government in 1949, estimated the average annual income of an Indian to be Rs. 260 (or $55; perhaps equivalent to Rs. 31,342 in 2026), with many earning well below that amount. The government faced low levels of literacy among its population: it was estimated at 23.54% for men and just 7.62% for women in the 1951 Census of India. The Union Government also began work to improve the status of women, which bore some fruit eventually in the mid-1950s passage of the Hindu code bills, outlawing patrilineality, marital desertion and child marriages (though evasion of these bans continued for years thereafter). The Dominion of India lasted until 1950, at which time India became a republic within the Commonwealth with a president as head of state.

History

Background: 1946

By the early 1920s, the Indian National Congress had become the principal leader of Indian nationalism. Led by Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress was to lead India to independence from the United Kingdom, and powerfully influence other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire. The Congress's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism, led by the All-India Muslim League and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, which demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India.

In the 1945 general elections in Britain, Labour Party won. A government headed by Clement Attlee, with Stafford Cripps and Lord Pethick-Lawrence in the Cabinet, was sworn in. Many in the new government, including Attlee, had a long history of supporting the decolonization of India. Late in 1946, the Labour government, its exchequer, and population, moreover, exhausted by the Second World War, decided to end British rule in India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948.

Earlier in 1946, elections had been called in India. The Congress had won electoral victories in eight of the eleven provinces. The negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League, however, stalled over the issue of a division of India. Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946 "Direct Action Day" with the stated goal of peacefully highlighting the demand for a Muslim homeland in British India. The following day Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta and quickly spread throughout India. Although the Government of India and the Congress were both shaken by the course of events, a Congress-led interim government was installed in September, with Jawaharlal Nehru as united India's prime minister.

Independence: 1947

By March 1947 when the new viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived, the violence between Hindus and Muslims in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal had not abated. With the British Army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, Mountbatten wanted to advance the date for independence and the transfer of power. In June 1947 the nationalist leaders, including Nehru representing the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, and Baldev Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country and Mountbatten was able to rush the British withdrawal forward. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal.

On 14 August 1947, the new Dominion of Pakistan came into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor-General in Karachi. The following day, 15 August 1947, the Dominion of India (officially the Union of India), became an independent country with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, and with Jawaharlal Nehru assuming the office of the prime minister, and the viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, staying on as its first Governor General.

Mountbatten's decision to hasten the transfer of power has been both praised and criticised over the years. Supporters feel that an early transfer forced Indian politicians into abandoning petty quarrels and accepting their obligations in stopping an outrage that Great Britain was no longer able to control. Critics feel that if the British had stayed on for another year, had institutions in place for a transition, had the army readied in troublesome areas, a less violent transfer might have resulted.

Partition: 1947

The Radcliffe Commission, tasked with assigning each district to either Pakistan or India, announced its award on 17 August 1947, two days after the transfer of power. It divided the Sikh-dominated regions of the Punjab in equal proportion between the two dominions. Sikh groups, which had feared the worst, had been preparing to mount a vigorous opposition to the award. To counter the expected violence, the British Raj government had formed a 50,000-strong Indian Boundary Force. When the violence began, the Force proved ineffectual. Most units, which had been recruited locally, had stronger ties to one or other of Punjab's three religious groups, rendering them unable to maintain neutrality under stress. In a matter of days, Sikhs and Hindus of the East Punjab were suddenly and unexpectedly attacking the Muslims there, and in the West Punjab, Muslims were returning the violence and the ferocity on the Sikhs. Trains taking the refugees to their new lands were stopped, their occupants slaughtered regardless of age and gender. Long lines of humans and oxcarts travelling East and West to their new dominions were intercepted and overwhelmed.

The Hindu refugees from the west Punjab arriving in Delhi ended up tearing away the Muslim community there from their established cultural patterns and values, and temporarily destabilized the new government. The death toll in the partition violence may never be known, but Judge G. D. Khosla, in Stern Reckoning thought it to be about 500,000. In addition, there was what historian Percival Spear has called "an involuntary exchange of population," which might be of the order of five and a half million travelling each way across the new border. From Sind, some 400,000 Hindus migrated to India, as did a million Hindus from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to West Bengal province in India. Migrations coming in the wake of the massacres severely taxed the strength of the new government.

Settling the refugees

The religious killings had abated by the Autumn of 1947, but the government was weighed down with the responsibility of settling the refugees. In the Punjab, there was land available recently vacated by the Muslims; in Delhi, there was a glut of incoming Hindu and Sikh refugees: many more were arriving there than were Muslims departing for Pakistan. The refugees were settled in several enclosed areas on the outskirts of Delhi. But they had soon overflowed into the streets and even occupied mosques. They attempted to take possession the Purana Qila, or Old Fort—ruins from the Delhi Sultanate—which were milling with Muslims waiting to be expatriated to Pakistan. Religious passions were running high; a pogrom of the remaining Muslims in Delhi was feared.

His mission of quelling the violence in Bengal accomplished, Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Delhi in October 1947. His new mission was to bring back the peace in the city, and this entailed standing up for the embattled Muslims. He chose to direct his activities from the scheduled caste (or "untouchables') "Balmiki Temple" in the Gole Market area of the city. (Eventually, as the temple was requisitioned for sheltering the incoming refugees, Gandhi moved to two rooms in Birla House, a large mansion in central Delhi.) Some groups within the Indian government opposed Gandhi's activities.

Soon another issue sprouted up. The partition of India had not just been a division of the land of British India; it had also involved a division of its assets. Assets whose amounts had been negotiated earlier needed to be transferred from India (where the treasury was) to Pakistan. The Indian government had withheld this payment in order to pressure Pakistan over the burgeoning crisis in Kashmir; India feared an onslaught from Pakistan during the dreaded winter months.

On 12 January 1948, Gandhi, who had turned 78 the previous October, undertook several hunger strike to stop the religious violence. On 15 January, the government took the decision to release assets it owed to Pakistan. On 18 January Gandhi broke his fast only after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed their commitment to a joint plan for restoration of peace.

War over Kashmir

The princely state of Kashmir was created in 1846, after the defeat of the Sikh Empire by the British in the First Anglo-Sikh War. Upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until the Partition of India in 1947. Kashmir was connected to India through the Gurdaspur district in the Punjab region. However, its population was 77% Muslim, and it shared a border with what would later become Pakistan. A significant portion of its economic activity had taken place down the Jhelum River with the Punjab region of Pakistan. Gulab Singh's descendant, Hari Singh, who was the reigning Maharaja of Kashmir in August 1947, had signed a "standstill agreement" with Pakistan to facilitate trade and communication. According to historian Burton Stein,

It was anticipated that he would accede to Pakistan when the British paramountcy ended. When he hesitated to do this, Pakistan launched a guerrilla onslaught meant to frighten its ruler into submission. Instead, the Maharaja appealed to Mountbatten for assistance, and the governor-general agreed on the condition that the ruler accede to India. Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state. The United Nations was then invited to mediate the quarrel. The UN mission insisted that the opinion of Kashmiris must be ascertained, while India insisted that no referendum could occur until all of the state had been cleared of irregulars.

In the last days of 1948, a ceasefire was agreed under UN auspices. However, since the plebiscite demanded by the UN was never conducted, relations between India and Pakistan soured, and eventually led to two more wars over Kashmir in 1965 and 1999.

Death of Gandhi

Some Indians were incensed by Gandhi's last fast and accused him of being too accommodating to both Muslims and Pakistan. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, a member of the political party Hindu Mahasabha as well as a former member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu paramilitary volunteer organization. On 30 January 1948, Godse assassinated Gandhi in Birla House as Gandhi was on his way to his evening prayer meeting there, shooting Gandhi in the chest three times.

Later that evening, Nehru addressed the nation by radio:

Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country.

Gandhi was mourned around the world. The British prime minister Clement Attlee said in a radio address to the United Kingdom on the night of 30 January 1948:

Everyone will have learnt with profound horror of the brutal murder of Mr. Gandhi, and I know that I am expressing the views of the British people in offering to his fellow-countrymen our deep sympathy in the loss of their greatest citizen. Mahatma Gandhi, as he was known in India, was one of the outstanding figures in the world today, ... For a quarter of a century this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem.

After the mourning period was over, the finger of blame was firmly pointed at the Hindu extremists who had plotted the assassination, bringing not only them into disrepute, but Hindu nationalism in general, which did not recover its political reputation until many decades later. The Deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Patel, who was also the Home Minister, was reproached for inadequate security arrangements.

Gandhi's loss gave Nehru more power. According to historian Percival Spear, "The government was really a duumvirate between him (Nehru), who represented the idealism and left-wing tendencies of the party, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the realist and party boss from Gujarat who leaned to authoritarianism, orthodoxy, and big business." At Gandhi's pressing, Patel had twice put off claiming the prime minister ship. It was thought he might assert his claim now, but Gandhi's loss had affected him equally deeply, and although there was still some discord between him and Nehru, he buried himself resolutely in his work on the integration of the princely states. By the year's end, this was complete. Patel died in 1950, and thereafter, Nehru ruled without any opposition.

Political integration of princely states

Two matters had been left unsettled from the Raj years: the integration of the princely states and the drawing up of a constitution, and they were addressed in that order.

There were 362 princely states in India. The premier 21-gun salute state of Hyderabad had an area of 200,000 km² (77,000 sq mi). Its population was 17 million. At the other end of the spectrum, some two hundred states had an area of less than 25 km² (10 sq mi). The British had revoked their treaty rights and advised them to join in a political union with India or Pakistan. For a short time, the Nawab of Bhopal and some British political agents attempted to form a third "political force," but the princes were unable to trust each other. By 15 August, all but three had acceded.

Even after accession, there remained the question of deciding the place of the princes in the new political union. Sardar Patel and his assistant V. P. Menon employed a combination of threats and inducements, the latter including special privileges and tax-free pensions. Within a few months, all the states that had acceded in August 1947 had been blended in some fashion into a new federal union. Baroda State and Kathiawar were combined to form the new federal unit of Saurashtra; and the states of Rajputana were united to form Rajasthan. The princely states of Travancore and Cochin became Kerala. Mysore being large in extent and population became a federal unit by itself. Hundreds of small states were absorbed and soon became lost within larger federal units.

Some former princes such as those of Mysore and Travancore were given titular leadership roles, called "Raj Pramukh" (lit. "state leader"), in the new federal units, but their former power was absent, and the political structure was invariantly democratic. Other former princes went into public service or private business. After 1950, they survived as historical vestiges but were no longer political determinants in the new India.

Except for Kashmir, where a major military conflict had begun in October 1947, two states, Hyderabad, and Junagadh had remained independent. Junagadh was a small state on the coast of the Kathiawar peninsula, but its land border was with India. It had a majority Hindu population but with a Muslim Nawab. The Nawab acceded to Pakistan after independence. Within a few weeks, Indian troops marched into Junagadh. A plebiscite took place and was declared for India. Although Pakistan protested, it took no further action.

Hyderabad was in a different class. Although it had an 85%-Hindu population, its Muslim rule had begun during the Mughal period. The ruling Nizams had proclaimed themselves to be equal allies of the British rather than subordinates. But the state was landlocked, surrounded on all sides by India. "No Indian government," according to Percival Spear, "could afford to have a block of land so placed independent and perhaps hostile." The Nizam had rejected generous terms for accession brokered by the British. Eventually, when he allowed the power of an extremist organization, the Razakars, to grow within his state, India militarily invaded the state in what was called a "police action," incorporating Hyderabad into its federal structure.

Framing the new constitution

The final achievement of the period of transition was the new constitution. It was drafted by the Constituent Assembly with uncommon speed and absence of irregularities between 1946 and 1949. The Government of India Act 1935 was used as a model and framework. Long passages from the Act were included. The constitution describes a federal state with a parliamentary system of democracy. The federal structure is conspicuous for the strength of the central government, which has exclusively exercised control of defence, foreign affairs, railways, ports, and currency. The President, the constitutional head of government, has reserve powers for taking over the administration of a state. The central legislature has two houses, the Lok Sabha whose delegates are directly elected by the people in general elections every five years, and the Rajya Sabha, whose members are nominated by the elected representatives in the states.

There are also features not to be found in the Act of 1935. The definition of fundamental rights is based on the Constitution of the United States, and the constitutional directives, or goals of endeavor, are based on the Constitution of Ireland. An Indian institution recommended by the constitution is the panchayat or village committees. Untouchability is illegal (Article 17) and caste distinctions are derecognized (Articles 15(2) and 16(2)). The promulgation of the Indian constitution transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth.