The End of the Indian National Congress

This below via gandhi-manibhavan.org
Also found in Volume 98 of"The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes".
Footnotes from the Electronic Book appear at the bottom of this post.

Articles By Gandhi
His Last Will And Testament
January 29, 1948

This constitution was drafted by Gandhiji for the Congress on the eve of his assassination. His intention was to show how the Congress which was till now mainly concerned with achieving political independence might convert itself into an association for the Service of the People (Lok Sevak Sangh), and work for the establishment of a nonviolent society.

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NEW DELHIJanuary 29, 1948

Though split into two, India having attained political independence through means devised by the Indian National Congress, the Congress in its present shape and form, i.e., as a propaganda vehicle and parliamentary machine, has outlived its use. India has still to' attain social, moral and economic independence in terms of its seven hundred thousand villages as distinguished from its cities and towns. The struggle for the ascendency of 'civil over military power is bound to take place in India's progress towards its democratic goat It must be kept out of unhealthy competition with political parties and communal bodies. For these and other similar reasons, the A. I. C. C. resolves to disband the existing Congress organization and flower into a Lok Sevak Sangh under the following rules with power to alter them as occasion may demand.

Every panchayat of five adult men or women being villagers or village-minded shall form a unit.

Two such contiguous panchayats shall form a working party under a leader elected from among themselves.

When there are one hundred such panchayats, the fifty first grade leaders shall elect from among themselves a second 'grade leader and so on, the first grade leaders meanwhile working under the second grade leader. 

Parallel groups of two hundred panchayats shall continue to be formed till they ,cover. the whole of India, each succeeding group of panchayats electing a second grade leader after the manner of the first. All second grade leaders shall serve jointly for the whole of India and severally for their respective areas. The second grade leader may elect, whenever they deem necessary, from among them- selves a chief who will, during pleasure, regulate and command all the groups.

(As the final formation of provinces or districts is still in state of flux, no attempt has been made to divide this group of servants into provincial or District Councils, and jurisdiction over the whole of India has been vested in the group or groups that may have been formed at any time. It should be noted that this body of servants derive their authority or power from service ungrudgingly and wisely done to their master, the whole of India).

1. Every worker shall be a habitual wearer of khadi made from self-spun yarn or certified by the A.l.S.A. and must be a teetotaller. If a Hindu, he must have abjured untouchability in any shape or form in his own person or in his family and must be a believer in the ideal of inter-communal unity, equal respect and regard for all religions and equality of opportunity and status for all irrespective of race, creed or sex.

2. He shall come in personal contact with every villager, within his jurisdiction.

3. He shall enroll and train workers from amongst the villagers and keep a register of all these.

4. He shall keep a record of his work from day to day.

5. He shall organize the villages so as to make them self-contained and self-supporting through their agriculture and handicrafts.'

6. He shall educate the village folk in sanitation and hygiene. and take all measures for prevention of ill-health and disease among them.

7. He shall organize the education of the village folk from birth to death along the lines of Nai Talim, in accordance with the policy laid down by the Hindustani Talimi Sangh.

8. He shall see that those whose names are missing on the statutory voters rolls are duly entered therein.

9. He shall encourage those who have not yet acquired the legal qualification, to acquire it for getting the right of franchise.'

10. For the above purposes and others to be added from time to time, he shall train and fit himself in accordance with the rules laid down by the Sangh for the due performance of duty.

The Sangh shall affiliate the. following autonomous bodies:

1. A.I.S.A. (All-India Spinners Association)

2. A.I.V.I.A. (All-India Village Industries Association)

3. Hindustani Talimi Sangh (Society for Basic Education)

4. Harijan Sevak Sangh (Society for service' of "untouchables")

5. Goseva Sangh (Society for Cow-protection and Improvement)

FINANCE

The Sangh shall raise finances for the fulfillment of its mission, from among the villagers and others, special stress being laid on collection of the poor man's pice.

- Harijan, 15-2.1948

Footnotes from the Electronic Version:
Acharya Jugal Kishore, General Secretary of A. I. C. C., released this draft to the Press on February 7, with the note: “As something has already appeared in the Press . . . regarding the proposals which Mahatmaji had made concerning changes in the Congress constitution I am releasing the full draft as was handed to me on the fateful forenoon of 30th January. . . .”

This appeared in Harijan under the title “His Last Will and Testament”.

In his article “The Fateful Friday”, in Harijan, Pyarelal writes: “The whole of the 29th had been so cram-full with work that at the end of the day Gandhiji felt utterly fagged out. “My head is reeling. And yet I must finish this,” he remarked to Abha, pointing to the draft constitution for the Congress which he had undertaken to prepare, and then, “I am afraid I shall have to keep late hours.”

The next morning Gandhiji revised the draft and gave it to Pyarelal to “go through it carefully”. He added: “Fill in any gaps in thought that there might be. I wrote it under a heavy strain.” When Pyarelal took the revised draft to him he “went through the additions and alterations point by point with his characteristic thoroughness and removed an error in calculation that had crept in in regard to the number of panchayats.”

Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, July 8, 1946

From Transfer of Power 1942-7, Volume VIII, #11,  Field Marshal Viscount Wavell to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State), July 8, 1946, L/PO/10/23.

5.  Menon will keep Turnbull informed of the progress of the elections to the Constituent Assembly.  Even the Sikhs appear to intend to elect their representatives to the Constituent Assembly, which is satisfactory.   There has however been insistence by the Ministries of Assam, Madras and Bombay that the declaration form for candidates should omit mention of paragraph 19, and it still appears that the Congress may try to move in the Constituent Assembly that the Assembly is a sovereign body and can changes its own rules of procedure, even include the one which requires a double majority for major communal issues.   They may even seek to elect a provisional Government in the Constituent Assembly.  If the Congress press their view as far as that, it is clear that the Constituent Assembly will break up at once, and all our efforts will have been in vain.  If that happens, it will mean I suppose that the Congress are prepared to attempt to take power by a mass-movement.  We must still recognize the possibility of this; and His Majesty's Government must give me as early as possible a definite plan to deal with a breakdown; it will take a considerable time to fill in details, when I know the general intention.   Only if the Right Wing of the Congress are unshaken in their control during the A.I.C.C. session shall we have any reason to hope that the Constituent Assembly will be worked in something approaching the way that we intended.

Interview: Maya Tudor : The Promise of Power

 From the Indian Express

 Unlike the Congress, the Muslim League failed to create a social and economic programme, or rural-urban alliances’

Maya Tudor, a lecturer in government and public policy at Oxford University, recently published ‘The Promise of Power’, investigating the origins of India and Pakistan’s regime divergence in the aftermath of independence. In Delhi for a lecture tour, she spoke to Yamini Lohia. Excerpts {of excerpts}

In your book, you identified the leading political parties, the Congress and the Muslim League, as the major difference between India and Pakistan at the time of Partition. How do you think their leadership contributed to the divergent paths?
 
I wouldn’t say it was leadership. ....... But the parties were more than their leaders, at least in India, and that was the difference. It was just leaders in the case of Pakistan. There wasn’t much of a party organisation in terms of real representation in rural areas and a real programme. So on issues like what kind of programme of economic governance India was going to pursue, what kind of social programme and what the ideology of citizenship was — what made the Indian citizen an Indian citizen — on all these questions, India’s nationalist movement did more to develop a clear programme. They weren’t addressed in Pakistan until much later. India also built a movement that had substantial support in the countryside. That’s what made a difference.

How historians manufacture history

An incident in the careers of Jinnah and Gandhi serves to illustrate how historians manufacture their narratives.  I've written about it before (here) but now have a more complete contemporary source, and so am bringing it  up again.

On January 14, 1915, the Gujarati community in Bombay held a meeting to felicitate Gandhi and his wife, recently returned from South Africa.  Jinnah presided over the meeting.

The most complete contemporary account of the meeting that I have (from the newspaper Bombay Chronicle) is here.  Note that Jinnah ended his speech with the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity, and Gandhi began by saying that while in South Africa "Gujarati" was associated with Hindus only and not Parsis and Muslims, here he was glad a Muslim was a member, and presiding.

Click here for the Bombay Chronicle version (via Riaz Ahmed) 
(Note: Riaz Ahmed, in his introduction to Volume 2, cites the above as saying, "[Gandhi] thanked Jinnah for presiding over "a [sic] Hindu gathering".)

Click here for Wolpert's version.

(excerpt) Had he meant to be malicious rather than his usual ingenuous self, Gandhi could not have contrived a more cleverly patronizing barb, for he was not actually insulting Jinnah, after all, just informing every one of his minority religious identity.

Click here for Jaswant Singh's version.

(excerpt) At their very first meeting, at the Gurjar Sabha in January 1915, convened to felicitate Gandhi upon his return from South Africa, in response to a welcome speech, with Jinnah presiding, Gandhi had somewhat accommodatingly said he was ‘glad to find a Muslim not only belonging to his own region’s sabha but chairing it.’ Gandhi had singled out Jinnah as a Muslim, though, neither in appearance or in conduct was Jinnah anywhere near to being any of the stereotypes of the religious identity ascribed by Gandhi. Jinnah, on the other hand, was far more fulsome in his praise......This, too, was all right but then, needlessly, he thanked Jinnah for presiding over a Hindu gathering. This was an ungracious and discouraging response to Jinnah’s warm welcome and had a dampening effect.

The CWMG (electronic) with Gandhi's speech.

You be the judge, are either Wolpert or Jaswant Singh justified in what they wrote?

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PS:

Wolpert wrote in that same passage:

The Mahatma's ambulance corps had sailed for France without its founder after he had a slight nervous breakdown in London and decided to return home to India instead, thus prolonging his life by some three decades.

As per Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, “Gandhi was ill with pleurisy in London”.  Gandhi, in a January 9, 1915 interview with the Bombay Chronicle, (CWMG (electronic), Volume 14, #269)

Unfortunately, however, I was suffering from pleurisy, and the Commanding Officers in charge of the various sections would not listen to my going to any of the hospitals. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gandhi had a relapse of an old malady, and the Under-Secretary of State for India, on hearing this, immediately wrote to me saying that, after all, my work, so far as the organisation of the corps was concerned, was finished, and that as both of us were ill. we should at once return to India. Hence it is that we are here before our time. 

Earlier, (CWMG (electronic) Volume 14, #241)) from London, Gandhi wrote to Maganlal Gandhi:

 I am still confined to bed and shall be so, it seems, for another ten days at least….

Gandhi’s letter to Herman Kallenbach,  January 22, 1915 (CWMG (electronic), Volume 14, #281) –

Pleurisy has become chronic. It is not very painful but it necessitates great care. …. Blood continues to come up while coughing…

Only by March 2, 1915, could Gandhi write to D.B. Shukla (CWMG (electronic), Volume 14, #316) –

My health is fairly good. There is still pain in my ribs but Dr.Dev said that there was no pleurisy now.

Gandhi also records the visits of Lady Cecilia Roberts, and also the Under Secretary of State, Charles Roberts, visiting him and advising him to return to India. (The Story of My Experiments with Truth, CWMG(electronic), Volume 44, page 358)

Whilst things were going on in this way, Mr. Roberts one day came to see me and urged me very strongly to go home. ‘You cannot possibly go to Netley in this condition. There is still severer cold ahead of us. I would strongly advise you to get back to India, for it is only there that you can be completely cured. If, after your recovery, you should find the War still going on, you will have many opportunities there of rendering help. As it is, I do not regard what you have already done as by any means a mean contribution.’

I accepted his advice and began to make preparations for returning to India.

I do not yet have any information about the fate of the volunteer nursing corp that Gandhi organized (Wolpert implies that it was decimated, and Gandhi would have perished if he shipped to continental Europe with it.)

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Jaswant Singh writes:

To receive Gandhi, Jinnah had forsaken attending the Madras Congress meet of 1914.

He does not say where he got this from.  The Congress session in Madras was from December 28-30 of 1914,  and as per this online chronology of Jinnah, he was "elected member of All India Congress Committee at Indian National Congress session Madras" (in absentia?)