Wavell Plan 1945 and the Shimla Conference: Proposals and Failure

Wavell Plan 1945 at a Glance

Wavell Plan 1945: Date, Authors and Outcome

The plan came out of talks in London in May 1945 and was made public on 14 June 1945, at the same time, by Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India, in the House of Commons and by Wavell in a broadcast from Delhi. It dealt only with the central government, that is, the Viceroy's Executive Council, the body whose members ran the departments of the Government of India. It did not promise independence and did not frame a constitution. Its aim was a temporary all-Indian council for the closing phase of the war, with the permanent constitution to be settled later.

To discuss the plan, Wavell summoned Indian leaders to a conference at Simla, the summer capital, on 25 June 1945. The conference broke down on one question, the nomination of Muslim members, and no council was formed. After the failure came the British general election of July 1945, the elections in India in 1945-46 and the Cabinet Mission of 1946.

Background to the Wavell Plan, 1943 to 1945

Wavell as Viceroy and the Wartime Deadlock

Lord Wavell became Viceroy in October 1943, replacing Lord Linlithgow. He had been head of the Indian army, so he knew the country's military and political position well. The Congress leaders were in prison after the Quit India Movement, which began on 8 August 1942, and the Bengal famine of 1943 had struck the province. One of Wavell's first acts was to order the army to distribute relief supplies to the starving people of rural Bengal.

Wavell argued that most Indians would support the war effort only if Britain made a clear political promise. Shortly after taking office he told Amery that Churchill should promise Dominion status after the war. Churchill opposed the idea. In May 1944 Wavell released Gandhi from prison rather than risk his dying in British custody, which he feared would set off riots across India. On 18 December 1944 Churchill's war cabinet reviewed and rejected Wavell's proposals for constitutional reform, so the deadlock continued into 1945.

CR Formula and the Gandhi-Jinnah Talks of 1944

Efforts to break the deadlock first came from Indian leaders. In March 1944 C. Rajagopalachari prepared a formula for Congress-League cooperation, and Gandhi supported it. Its main points were these:

• League and independence: The Muslim League would endorse the Congress demand for independence.
• Provisional government: The League would cooperate with the Congress in forming a provisional government at the centre.
• Plebiscite: After the war, the population of the Muslim-majority areas in the north-west and north-east would decide by plebiscite whether to form a separate sovereign state.
• Joint arrangements: If partition were accepted, defence, commerce and communications would be safeguarded by joint agreement.
• Condition: All these terms would operate only if Britain transferred full powers to India.

Jinnah objected. He wanted the Congress to accept the two-nation theory, wanted only the Muslims of the north-west and north-east to vote in the plebiscite, and opposed a common centre. Vir Savarkar and other Hindu leaders condemned the formula as well.

Gandhi and Jinnah then met on 9 September 1944 at Jinnah's residence on Malabar Hill in Bombay, and letters passed between them through September. Nothing came of the talks. Wavell summed up the gap: Gandhi wanted independence first and a communal settlement afterwards, while Jinnah wanted the communal problem settled first.

Desai-Liaquat Proposal and the Idea of Parity

Another attempt came in the Central Legislative Assembly. Bhulabhai Desai, leader of the Congress Party there, held secret talks with Liaquat Ali Khan, deputy leader of the Muslim League in the Assembly. They drafted a proposal for an interim government at the centre with an equal number of persons nominated by the Congress and the League in the central legislature, and with 20 per cent of the seats reserved for minorities.

When the talks were leaked to the press in 1945, Jinnah and the League rejected any such agreement, and Liaquat Ali Khan denied that a pact was being negotiated. Congress leaders were angry that Desai had negotiated without informing them. No settlement was reached on these lines. Even so, the idea that the Congress and the League should be treated as equals had been put forward, and it had far-reaching consequences. The parity formula of the Wavell Plan carried the same principle into the plan itself.

Why Britain Moved in 1945

The war in Europe ended in May 1945, but the Japanese threat remained. The Conservative government in Britain, led by Churchill, now wanted a solution to the constitutional question in India, and Wavell was permitted to open negotiations with Indian leaders. Three reasons explain the change:

1. A general election was due in Britain in mid-1945, and the Conservatives wanted to be seen as sincere about reaching a settlement.
2. The Allies were pressing for further Indian cooperation in the war.
3. The government wanted to direct Indian energies into channels more useful to Britain.

Wavell visited London in May 1945, and the talks there produced a definite plan of action. He was allowed to fly back to India in June 1945 to release the Congress Working Committee members and begin the talks that became the Shimla Conference.

Proposals of the Wavell Plan

Provisions of the Reconstituted Executive Council

The plan reshaped the Viceroy's Executive Council and left the rest of the constitution alone. Its provisions, taken in order, were:

1. The Viceroy’s Executive Council would be reconstituted at once, and the number of its members would be increased.
2. All members of the council except the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief would be Indians.
3. Caste Hindus and Muslims would have equal representation on the council.
4. An Indian would be appointed Member for Foreign Affairs, and a British commissioner would be responsible for trade matters.
5. The defence of India would remain in British hands until power was ultimately transferred to Indians.
6. The Viceroy would convene a meeting of Indian politicians, including the Congress and Muslim League leaders, to nominate the members. The parties were to submit a joint list, and if that proved impossible, separate lists.
7. If the plan worked at the centre, similar councils of local political leaders would be formed in the provinces.
8. None of the changes would prejudice or prejudge the essential form of the future permanent constitution of India.

The reconstructed council was to work as an interim government within the framework of the Government of India Act, 1935, and so it would not be responsible to the Central Assembly. The Governor-General's veto was kept, to be exercised on the advice of ministers. The council was an arrangement for the last phase of the war, with negotiations on a new constitution to follow once the war was won.

Parity Between Caste Hindus and Muslims

The plan proposed the complete Indianisation of the Executive Council, but it did not ask every party to nominate members from all communities. Seats were reserved by religion and caste, and caste Hindus and Muslims were to be represented in equal numbers, which is the parity formula. Parity gave the Muslim League, which spoke for one community, the same weight as all the Hindus on the council, whatever the actual population figures were.

The Congress objected that the plan was an attempt to reduce it to the status of a purely caste Hindu party. It insisted on its right to include members of all communities among its nominees, since it claimed to speak for Indians of every faith. Gandhi himself resented the words "caste Hindus".

The Muslim League's stand was the opposite. It wanted every Muslim member to be a League nominee, because it feared that the other minorities, the depressed classes, Sikhs and Christians, shared the Congress's aims, which would reduce the League to a one-third minority on the council. It also claimed a kind of veto, with decisions opposed by Muslims needing a two-thirds majority.

Limits of the Plan

The plan gave Indians office but not independence or full self-government. Four limits explain why it satisfied no one fully:

• No promise of independence: The plan did not guarantee that India would become free.
• No constituent assembly: It made no mention of a body to frame the future constitution.
• No division of power: It offered no proposal on how power would be shared among the Indian parties.
• Communal seats: Reserving seats by religion and caste treated the Congress as one community among several.

Compare the plan with the Cripps Mission of March 1942, which offered Dominion status and elections after the war but, in the short term, only a vague commitment to increase the number of Indian members of the Viceroy's Executive Council. The Wavell Plan was more concrete on the council and silent on the end of British rule, a weakness the Labour government corrected in 1946.

The Shimla Conference of 1945

Venue, Dates and Participants

The Shimla Conference met at the Viceregal Lodge in Simla, then India's summer capital, from 25 June 1945. The lodge on Observatory Hill had been built as a home for Lord Dufferin, Viceroy from 1884 to 1888, and it housed every Viceroy and Governor-General after him. Today it houses the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, president of the Congress, spoke for the Congress, and Jinnah for the Muslim League. Gandhi met Wavell at the Viceregal Lodge before the conference opened. Among the leaders seen in the surviving film of the conference, shot by a naval officer and now held by the National Film Archive of India, are Gandhi, Azad, C. Rajagopalachari, Jinnah, Rajendra Prasad, Bhulabhai Desai, Master Tara Singh and G. B. Pant.

Wavell's earlier list of invitees, as he described it to Amery, included Gandhi and one other from the Congress, Jinnah and one other from the League, B. R. Ambedkar for the depressed classes, Tara Singh for the Sikhs, M. N. Roy for labour, and others to represent Hindus and Muslims who belonged to neither party. Jinnah accepted the invitation only on condition that he could meet Wavell alone first, on 24 June.

Proceedings From Opening to Adjournment

The conference followed a short sequence of dates:

• 24 June: Wavell met Azad, Gandhi and Jinnah to assess their approach before the opening.
• 25 June: Wavell opened the conference at 11 am. Azad spoke of the Congress’s non-communal character, Jinnah replied by pointing to its predominantly Hindu character, and Wavell had to calm the exchange.
• 29 June: Wavell asked the parties to submit lists of candidates for the new council. Azad agreed, but Jinnah refused to submit a list before consulting the League’s Working Committee.
• Adjournment: The conference was adjourned until 14 July.
• 8 July: Wavell met Jinnah, who was determined that all Muslim members must come from the League and called the Congress’s Muslim representatives “show boys”.
• 9 July: Wavell’s letter was placed before the League’s Working Committee, which replied that without an assurance on nominating all Muslim members from the League platform, it could not submit a list.
• 14 July: The adjourned conference ended without agreement.

Why the Wavell Plan Failed at Shimla

The Muslim League's Claim to Nominate All Muslim Members

The conference broke on one question, namely who could nominate the Muslim members of the council. The Muslim League claimed to be the sole representative of Indian Muslims and refused to back any plan in which the Congress, the dominant party in the talks, also appointed Muslim representatives. The Congress held the opposite principle, that it was not a Hindu body and could name members of any community.

The two positions could not be reconciled by drafting. For the League, giving up the claim would have meant admitting that Muslims had other spokesmen, and the Congress's Muslim nominees were, in Jinnah's phrase, "show boys". For the Congress, accepting the claim would have meant accepting the label of a Hindu party. A letter from Wavell was placed before the League's Working Committee on 9 July, and the reply was that no list would be submitted without the assurance.

The Unionist Question and Khizr Hayat Tiwana

A second difficulty concerned Punjab. Wavell wanted Khizr Hayat Tiwana, the Unionist Party leader and Premier of Punjab, as a Muslim representative from western Punjab. Khizr was not a League man. The Unionist Party was a secular party of landowners drawn from Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, and it had defeated the League in the Punjab elections of 1937.

Jinnah increased the pressure on Khizr at Shimla. By insisting that any Muslim nominee must be chosen by the League, he made a demand that was seen as an attempt to undermine the Unionist Party's ability to represent its own Muslim constituents. The demand was therefore about more than seats in a council. It was a test of whether the League could speak for all Muslims, including those who had rejected it at the polls. Later events showed the effect. In September 1945 Feroz Khan Noon left the Unionist Party and urged Khizr and other Unionists to join the League, and in the elections of 1946 the League won 73 of the 89 Muslim seats in Punjab.

Wavell's List and the End of the Conference

With no list from the League, Wavell drew up his own and telegraphed it to Amery. It had four League Muslims (Liaquat Ali Khan, Khawaja Nazimuddin, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman and Eassak Sait), one non-League Muslim (Muhammad Nawaz Khan, a Punjabi landlord), five caste Hindus (Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, M. S. Aney and B. N. Rau), one Sikh (Tara Singh), one Scheduled Caste member (B. R. Ambedkar) and one Christian (John Mathai). Muslims and caste Hindus stood five to five, so parity was kept.

Amery asked Wavell to consult Jinnah on the Muslim names. Jinnah refused to let any League member join until the League's right to be the sole representative of Indian Muslims was acknowledged. Wavell found the demand impossible, and half an hour later he told Gandhi that the conference had failed. Gandhi took the news calmly.

Consequences of the Failure

The League's Veto and a Stronger Muslim League

By closing the conference when the League refused, Wavell in effect gave the League a veto, since no settlement could now proceed without Jinnah's consent. The episode strengthened the League, as the elections of 1945-46 showed, boosted Jinnah's position and exposed the real attitude of the Conservative government under Churchill. After Shimla the debate was increasingly about whether India would be one country or two, not whether it would be free.

Labour Government and the Elections of 1945-46

In July 1945 a Labour government came to power in Britain, and it committed itself to granting independence to India. On 19 September 1945 Wavell announced that elections to the central and provincial legislatures would be held from December 1945 to January 1946, and that an executive council would be formed and a constitution-making body convened after them.

The elections polarised politics, as the table shows.

The League had verified its claim to be the sole representative of Muslims, although the franchise was limited and fewer than 10 per cent of the people in the provinces under direct British control could vote. The result was a strategic victory for Jinnah and gave him a stronger hand in every later negotiation.

In February 1946 the ratings of the Royal Indian Navy rose in protest. The revolt began in Bombay on 18 February, spread to Karachi and Calcutta, and involved over 10,000 sailors before they were asked to surrender.

Cabinet Mission 1946 and the Breakdown Plan

A Cabinet Mission of three ministers, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and A. V. Alexander, reached Delhi on 24 March 1946 on the initiative of Prime Minister Attlee, to discuss the transfer of power. Its plan, announced on 16 May 1946, proposed a united Union of India, a weak centre in charge of defence, foreign affairs and communications, and three groups of provinces, together with a Constituent Assembly and an interim government.

The Cabinet Mission plan failed because of the distrust between the Congress and the League. After Nehru said on 10 July 1946 that the Congress was not bound by the grouping scheme, the League withdrew its acceptance on 29 July, and called for "direct action". Riots broke out in Calcutta on 16 August 1946, and the Congress-led interim government under Nehru took office on 2 September 1946.

Wavell also drew up a Breakdown Plan, under which the British would withdraw in stages with India independent by 31 March 1948. The British cabinet considered it fatalistic, and in time Prime Minister Attlee lost confidence in him. In February 1947 Lord Mountbatten replaced Wavell as Viceroy, and he announced that British India would be freed but also divided.

Assessment and Exam Notes

Was Shimla a Missed Chance for Unity?

The conference is taught as a turning point, but the reasons for its failure sit on both sides. The British framed the problem in communal terms by giving the Congress and the League equal weight, and Wavell's decision to end the conference when the League refused handed Jinnah a veto. The Indian parties could not resolve the question of who spoke for Muslims, and neither would bend on it.

Mains answers on the British role in the transfer of power can use Shimla as evidence in three ways, namely parity by religion and caste, the League's veto after the conference closed, and the repeated change of plans from Wavell to Mountbatten. A balanced answer adds that the Indian divisions seen in the talks of 1944 and in the elections of 1945-46 also mattered.

Revision Points for the Wavell Plan

The facts most often asked are few:

• Viceroy: Wavell, not Mountbatten. Mountbatten came in February 1947.
• Dates: Announced on 14 June 1945, conference from 25 June to 14 July 1945.
• Formula: Equal representation of caste Hindus and Muslims, with every member Indian except the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief.
• Reason for failure: The League’s claim to nominate all Muslim members.
• Next steps: Labour government in July 1945, elections in 1945-46, Cabinet Mission in 1946.
• Order of plans: Cripps Mission (1942), CR Formula (1944), Wavell Plan (1945), Cabinet Mission (1946), then Mountbatten’s announcement in 1947.
• Different event: The Simla Agreement belongs to 1972, between India and Pakistan, and has nothing to do with the Wavell Plan.

Sources

• NCERT: Themes in Indian History III (Class XII), Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History III (Class XII), Framing the Constitution
• Wikipedia: 1945 Indian general election
• Wikipedia: 1946 Indian provincial elections
• Wikipedia: Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell
• Wikipedia: Bhulabhai Desai
• Wikipedia: Cabinet Mission
• Wikipedia: Cripps Mission
• Wikipedia: Khizar Hayat Tiwana
• Wikipedia: Maulana Azad
• Wikipedia: Royal Indian Navy mutiny
• Wikipedia: Simla Agreement
• Wikipedia: Simla Conference
• Wikipedia: Simon Commission
• Wikipedia: Unionist Party (Punjab)
• Press Information Bureau: Rare footage of the 1945 Simla Conference in the NFAI collection
• District Shimla (Government of Himachal Pradesh): Indian Institute of Advanced Study
• Himachal Pradesh Tourism: Shimla
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers