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This page last revised 3 June 1997
In 1942, after the considerable pressure of Mahatma Gandhi's "Quit India" campaign and needing to maintain Indian support against Japanese troops advancing on India's Eastern border, Sir Stafford Cripps proposed a new constitution to the Indian National Congress, including the right of the new government to secede from the Commonwealth. The proposal was rejected but the arena of independence had been opened and, in 1946, after the defeat of the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, local and provincial elections were held. The Muslim League, led by Muhammed Ali Jinnah, won most of the Muslim vote.
Britain, most of whose military units had disappeared, agreed to Indian self-rule and, in the succeeding negotiations determined that the date of independence would be midnight of 14 August. Following intensive rioting, it was also agreed that the demands of the Muslim League should be met and an India-Pakistan partition conceded at the same time, defined by the Radcliffe Boundary award. Thus the new government's first difficulty was a divided Punjab and a divided Sikh community. Percival Spear estimates that five and a half million refugees travelled each way across the Punjab border, the chaos intensified by the continual Hindu-Muslim-Sikh massacres.
By the time the 1950 constitution was implemented, Jawarharlal Nehru was in sole leadership of congress and he embarked upon a plan of industrialisation, intensified in 1956 by a series of five-year plans. Social reform accompanied this.
In 1964, Nehru died and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, became prime minister. Having confirmed this in a 1970 election, she was faced with war between the East and West wings of Pakistan. Refugees poured into India from the former wing, causing a crisis in the economics of the country. Pakistan raided Indian airfields and war was declared on 6 December 1971.East Pakistan was captured on 18 December and the new state of Bangladesh was created. Mrs Gandhi's second crisis came in the shape of O.P.E.C quadrupling of oil prices, increasing over-population and massive inflation. Amidst calls for her resignation and her fears of assassination and, encouraged by her son Sanjay, she imposed the Emergency in 1975. Constitutional changes allowed detention without trial, increased surveillance and checked the independence of the judiciary. Alongside this, the controversial birth-control campaign to which Rushdie refers in Midnight's Children was implemented by Sanjay Gandhi. In 1977, the Emergency was lifted, an election called and Moraji Desai became Prime Minister. Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 and her son Rajiv assumed political leadership
The pressures of this time have provided a wealth of literary material, frequently utilising Western genres. For a discussion of this, see Postcolonial Indian Literature in English: Narayan, Jhabvala, Rushdie.
This project was completed under the direction of Dr Leon Litvack as a requirement for the MA degree in Modern Literary Studies in the School of English at the Queen's University of Belfast. The site is evolving and will include contributions from future generations of MA students on other writers and themes.
This page was written by Tara Fallon.
The Imperial Archive Project is
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