Since confidence in Nehru as such had never been at issue, Tandon’s supporters resented this action, which smacked of the build-up to a showdown. They were also somewhat surprised by Nehru’s most uncharacteristic unwillingness to back down, to understand their point of view, to postpone unpleasantness, to compromise. He was talking now of insisting on a ‘change of outlook’ and a ‘clear-cut verdict’. And rumours had begun to float about of the possibility of Nehru taking on the Congress Presidency together with the Prime Ministership, an onerous – and, in some ways, ominous – combination that he had in the past declared himself against on principle. Indeed, in 1946, he had resigned the Congress Presidency to become the Prime Minister. But now that the main threat to his power came from within the Congress Party itself he had begun to hedge on the issue.
‘I definitely think that it is a wrong thing practically and even otherwise, for the Prime Minister to be the Congress President,’ he declared at the end of August, just a week before the decisive meeting of the All-India Congress Committee in Delhi. ‘But that being the general rule, I cannot say what necessity might compel one to do in special circumstances when a hiatus is created or something like that.’
The typically floppy Nehruvian tail to that sentence could not entirely counter the surprising inflexibility of the body.
14.15
WITH every passing day, however, it became increasingly clear that the month-long deadlock could not be resolved except by some desperate expedient. Tandon refused to reconstitute the Working Committee at Nehru’s dictation, and Nehru rejected anything less if he was to rejoin it.
On the 6th of September, the entire Working Committee dramatically submitted their resignations to Tandon, hoping thereby to retrieve what would otherwise have been, in an open conflict, an irretrievable position for both him and them. The idea was that the much larger body of the All-India Congress Committee (due to meet two days later) should now pass a resolution asking Nehru to withdraw his resignation, expressing confidence in Tandon, and requesting Tandon to reconstitute the Working Committee by election. Nehru and Tandon could then draw up a slate of candidates jointly. Tandon could remain President; he would not have surrendered any presidential prerogatives to the Prime Minister; he would merely have implemented, as he was bound to, a resolution of the AICC.
This should have been, the Working Committee thought, agreeable to both Nehru and Tandon. In fact it was agreeable to neither.
That evening Nehru told a public meeting that he wanted the All-India Congress Committee to make it entirely clear which way the Congress should go and who should hold its reins. He was in a fighting mood.
The next evening Tandon too, at a press conference, refused the face-saving formula proffered by his Working Committee. He said: ‘If I am asked by the All-India Congress Committee to reconstitute the Working Committee in consultation with A, B, or C, I would beg the AICC not to press that request but to relieve me.’
He placed the responsibility for the crisis squarely on Nehru’s shoulders. Nehru had tendered his resignation over the issue of the reconstitution of the Working Committee; and, by so doing, he had forced its members to tender their own.
Tandon stated that he could not accept these forced resignations. He repudiated any suggestion by Nehru that the Congress Working Committee had failed to implement Congress resolutions. He made a few references to Pandit Nehru as ‘my old friend and brother’ and added: ‘Nehru is not an ordinary member of the Working Committee; he represents the nation more today than any other individual does.’ But he reaffirmed the inflexibility of his own stand, which was one based on principle; and he announced that if no acceptable formula could be reached by mediators, he would resign from the Congress Presidency the next day.
And this was what, the next day, with good grace – despite the many personal attacks against him in the press, despite what he saw as the impropriety of Nehru’s tactics, and despite the bitterness and length of the battle – he did.
In a noble gesture, which did much to assuage any residual bitterness, he joined the Working Committee under the newly-elected Congress President, Jawaharlal Nehru.
It was in effect a coup; and Nehru had won.
Apparently.
14.16
THE jeep had hardly arrived at Baitar Fort than Maan and Firoz got horses saddled and rode off to hunt. The oily munshi was all smiles when he saw them, and brusquely ordered Waris to make the necessary preparations. Maan swallowed his gorge with difficulty.
‘I’ll go with them,’ said Waris, who was looking even more rough-hewn than before, perhaps because he appeared not to have shaved for a few days.