Nehru by Shashi Tharoor

Ali Jinnah, Maulana Muhammad Ali (1878–1931) was a leader of the Khilafat agitation and president of the Congress in 1923.

4
    â€œHope to Survive the British Empire”:
1928–1931
    I n 1927, while Jawaharlal Nehru was in Europe, the British delivered themselves of an imperial specialty, the insult dressed up as a concession. An all-party commission, the government declared, would be established to visit India and examine whether the country was ready for further constitutional reform. But — and here lay the insult — it would be composed entirely of British members of Parliament. Indian opinion, of all shades, was outraged; though Indians were divided over such issues as political participation and noncooperation, full independence or Dominion status, they were united in their utter rejection of this British offer. Even Liberals like Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, a loyalist known as Britain’s favorite Indian politician, could not swallow the humiliation and refused to have anything to do with the commission. When Sir John Simon and his six fellow commissioners landed in Bombay on February 3, 1928, they found themselves facing a full-fledged boycott. Thousands of demonstrators thronged the port area holding black flags and placards that echoed their chant: “Simon go back!” Wherever the commission traveled, similar demonstrations took place, often ending in police firing and lathi -charges on the unarmed protestors (a lathi is a bamboo stave, wielded to great effect by Indian policemen). The visit was an unmitigated fiasco.
    Among the principal organizers of the boycott, in his capacity as general secretary of the Congress Party, was Jawaharlal Nehru. When he arrived in Lucknow on November 25, 1928 to rally his followers against the commission’s visit to U.P., the national mood had turned particularly ugly, for the Punjab Congress leader Lala Lajpat Rai, a veteran Extremist, had succumbed the previous week to injuries inflicted by the police during his participation in the Lahore protests against Simon. The protest demonstrations in Lucknow were unprecedented in their size and intensity, and demonstrators were twice attacked by the police, with Jawaharlal himself receiving two blows from police batons. When the commission arrived in the city on November 30, the police resorted to a cavalry charge against the demonstrators, beating and trampling hundreds of them; once again, Jawaharlal received several blows from police lathi s, “a tremendous hammering,” in his own words. Public opinion around the country was outraged, and Nehru saw parallels to the country’s response to that earlier episode of British brutality, the Amritsar Massacre. “That awakening shook the fabric of British rule,” he wrote. “[This] is likely to lead to an even greater national response which may carry us to our goal.”
    The Simon Commission had succeeded in giving a greater impetus to political change in India than its creators had intended. It had galvanized the nation and united it in a common cause. And it had helped anoint a new national hero. Jawaharlal had been “half-blinded with the blows” but had had enough presence of mind to refuse the offer of two revolvers from a police agent seeking to entrap him in the midst of the melée. The grace under pressure he revealed on that occasion was also reflected in a telegram he sent anxious friends in London: “Thanks. Injuries severe but not serious. Hope [to] survive the British Empire.” The Mahatma was warm in his admiration. “It was all done bravely. You have braver things to do. May God spare you for many a long year to come and make you His chosen instrument for freeing India from the yoke.”
    How the yoke was to be lifted, though, remained un-clear. The British had suggested that Indians were only capable of obstructive opposition but could not come up with any constitutional proposals of their own.