Tej Bahadur Sapru was a clever lawyer who played a big role in various constitutional reforms in the inter-war years. However, his own political influence and that of the Liberals tended to diminish in direct proportion to his activity. His contemporaries viewed him as a useful fellow- he might get you off a murder charge if your beat your maid servant to death by finding obscure Irish legal precedents regarding corpus delecti- and an honest enough intermediary- but one attached to a Victorian social order which was as dead as the dodo.
D.A Low, some 55 years ago, argued that Sapru had been overlooked. He suggested that
1) it was Sapru more than anyone else who helped Reading annihilate the Non Cooperation Movement. But this would only hold true if Sapru was very cunningly giving Gandhi enough rope to hang himself. In other words, Sapru only mattered if he was a rogue. But he wasn't a rogue. He genuinely wanted a Round Table Conference. It was Gandhi who overplayed his hand. Low does offer an alternative argument- viz Gandhi surrendered due to pressure from moderates like Sapru. In other words Sapru is a genius who gets Reading to adopt the moderate position and then is so powerful that Gandhi surrenders to him. But Sapru wasn't powerful at all. Reading was vindicated. He didn't need Sapru any longer because the Khilafatis had come to know that he had done more for them than the maha-crackpot. So Sapru ceases to be Law Member. Reading returns home as an influential voice against Dominion Status or even (what Low says Sapru thought was equivalent) a 'responsible' Federal Executive (i.e. one responsible to an elected Legislature). The problem here is that that Legislatures can be 'elected' in many very different ways. Dow suggests that Sapru thought it would only be elected in one way or, more bizarrely, that there is only way any Legislative body can be elected. But that's obviously not true. In particular, the Princes and the 'minorities' could have been given a permanent majority at the Center.
2) Sapru set the stage for the First Round Table Conference by persuading the Tories and the Princes to buy into a 'Federal' scheme and this would be equivalent to the Dominion Status of the White dominated Colonies. Low suggests that it was factionalism and stupidity among the Princes which frustrated this. Still, Sapru indirectly becomes the author of the 1935 Act.
There is an obvious problem with this story. Rather than showing Sapru leading the Tory bull by the nose, it depicts the reverse. The Tories and the Princes 'pumped and dumped' Sapru. Moreover, because he was pro-Muslim, he could have no future in Indian politics in the manner of Jayakar or other Hindu Liberals. Patel displaced him as the 'Law & Order' man. If Sapru had really been concerned with maintaining the social fabric and promoting Hindu-Muslim amity, it is obvious that he failed miserably. The Princes, too, used Sapru to loosen their bondage to their Political Agents and to live briefly but more amply in their own Fools' Paradise. Jinnah, in Low's account, is a spear carrier for Sapru. But Jinnah returns to India as the head of a party powerful enough to create its own country. Sapru goes back to being a clever provincial lawyer. It seems the politically savvy barristers (Sapru's legal qualifications were Indian) rose- Jinnah, Ambedkar, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel etc- while the homegrown vakil with greater legal nous had merely greased wheels which crushed him. He should simply have accepted a Judgeship like his querulous son. As a politician he failed.
Perhaps Low only took up Sapru not to glorify him but to make a rather obvious point- politically savvy British Viceroys ran circles around stupid Indian agitators and crackpots. But this was always Gandhi and Nehru's complaint. Them Brits be hella smart. If we cooperate with them they will always find a way to fuck us over. It is safer for us to stay in jail where we can be sure that whatever Lenten fare we are consuming is not the Viceroy's jizz. If we hold talks with the guy, somehow or the other his dick will always end up down our throat.
There is some truth in the notion that some Viceroys were smarter than the Indians because they had more experience in cutting deals. Chelmsford had experience in White Colonies and had found he could work with more working class 'Labor' politicians. Later he was the first Labor administration's First Lord and thus played a part in taming Britain's own Socialist working class. Reading was even more experienced than Chelmsford. Like Montague, he was a Jew and thus opposed to Racism. Furthermore, back then Jews were more pro-Muslim because Christians were the biggest anti-Semites.
The question was whether Reading could implement Dyarchy under unfavorable military and diplomatic circumstances. The answer is that, by taking a risk, Reading showed he could do 'non-Violence' better than Gandhi. Then, by a stroke of luck, Montague revealed that Reading had also done more for Khilafat than Gandhi. Meanwhile Gandhi had pissed off the lawyers with his 'Court boycott' which failed miserably even though he got Rs 100 a month for advocates who stopped their practice. Secondly, the education boycott was an own-goal because it lessened the burden on the Government while increasing the need for Indians to participate in Dyarchy so as to get money for their 'national' schools. Finally, the economic measures led to violence at Chauri Chura in a predictable manner. However, there had already been the Moplah atrocities which may have started off as economic grievances but which rapidly took on a wholly communal character. It was obvious that the Government, by refraining from heavy handed repression and Jallianwallah type atrocities and terror tactics, was more Gandhian than Gandhi. Reading represented non-violence and conciliation. Indeed, he had gone out on a limb to appear to be holding out the prospect of a Round Table Conference. However, it must be said, if disorder in India had been more spontaneous, the parlous military situation and increasing political power of Labour and the Socialists back home would have militated for scrapping Dyarchy and granting Provincial Autonomy by the end of 1922. Low points out that Willingdon, Governor of Madras, was agreeable to this. Other Governors would have seen that they could transfer power to 'local notables'- e.g. Justice Party in Madras- or to conservative elements. Meanwhile Congress and other parties would have to morph into parties of Government rather than agitators so as to win elections. It would take years for cohesive parties to emerge at the Federal level. Only at that point would the Executive become responsible to a Federal legislature. In other words, there was enough time for Britain to safeguard its interests in India while enabling Westminster to get shot off the headache of legislating for a far off country with a myriad castes and languages and customary laws and institutions.
Sapru, as the Viceroy's Law Member, had advised a softly softly catchee monkey approach. Don't crack down hard on the protestors. Show that the Government could do non-violence better than Congress/Khilafat. Let the Punjab repression be seen as a departure from British policy brought on by the actions of soldiers who had been deranged by long years of bloody war. This strategy paid off. The Moplah atrocities were worse than those inflicted by Dyer & O'Dwyer. It must be said that Indian lawyers had been greatly incensed by Dyer's conscripting 93 members of the Amritsar Bar as 'special constables' and forcing them 'to witness floggings, patrol the city, to salaam, and to perform work as coolies.' This was frightful. But Dyer went on to command Indian troops in a successful war against the Afghans. The man, after all, was a soldier. Such beasts need to inspire terror for Peace to prevail. By contrast, Gandhi wasn't just telling lawyers to give up their livelihoods; he wasn't just destroying their profession by promoting 'panchayats'; he was also unleashing anarchy in the country. First the Moplahs slaughter and forcibly convert Hindus, then a mob of Congress members protesting high meat prices kill and roast a bunch of policemen. This way lay madness.
The alternative to Gandhi's meticulous organized 'satyagraha' was spontaneous uprisings. The lawyers and other good people could help the Government protect lives and property and then demand reform of a constitutional and fiscal and monetary sort. It was crazy to organize protest because either the protest would fail because the protestors starved or the protest would turn violent and it would be the Viceroy or the Governor who would emerge as the incarnation of non-violence restoring peace and tranquility.
Irwin, like Reading, was a very experienced politician and he too was ready to risk a 'softly softly' approach. Low would have us see Sapru's hand in this. The claim is that 'Dominion status' was implicitly granted as the goal by even the die-hards. But the truth is obvious. There was no chance of having a Federal legislature to which the Executive could be 'responsible'. What Low says was Sapru's achievement- viz hoodwinking the Princes into becoming Federalists- was in fact the reverse. Essentially, the Prince's got a 'stand still' agreement with the national parties which meant that they had more room to manoeuver. Gandhi's failed Rajkot Satyagraha showed that the Princes had gained power vis a vis both their own subjects and the Viceroy or Political Agent.
What did Sapru achieve? Nothing at all. The Japanese put an end to the mirage of Pax Britannica. The country was divided on the basis of Religion because Hindus did not want to repeat their disastrous past of disunity in the face of Muslim salami tactics. Nehru was a centralizing authoritarian with, admittedly, crazy diplomatic and economic views based on the 'moral inversion' of a section of the 'progressive', or increasingly senile, Edwardian upper middle class. Constitutionalism was a joke. Sapru House, in New Delhi, was the H.Q of the 'Indian Council of World Affairs'. Thus Sapru, for my generation of Lutyen's Delhites was a figure of high comedy because India's only interest in 'World Affairs' was to spot the most disgusting regime which was hostile to us and to praise it to the skies. Any decent country which was refilling our begging bowl must, of course, be shrilly condemned. Thus, in the Seventies, Sapru became the emblem of a stupidity greater even than that of Indira and her thuggish son. One pitied the jhollawallah going to do research in Sapru House. One admired the diplomat accredited to the UN who abandoned his job to set up a hot dog stand. It didn't matter what humiliating lies you had to tell to get to the West. What mattered was that you made money there. Selling hot dogs rather than being a Professor of a shite subject was evidence of a higher moral probity and spiritual integrity. Gassing on about Sapru's contribution to 'constitutional morality' was just sad.
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