The Congress ‘Revolt’ and American Concern

Abstract

Colonel Louis Johnson went back to the USA with bitter-sweet memories, ostensibly not happy with the Raj, yet sympathetic toward the Nehru-Azad faction in the Indian National Congress. Forsaking Hull’s cautious approach to the Indian impasse, he posed a ‘threat’ to the Churchill, Amery and Linlithgow trio who found him ‘pushy’, raising many expectations among the South Asian nationalists of an American involvement which, in fact, was not the case. He ignored the All-India Muslim League completely, relied upon the Congress in his conciliatory efforts and accepted the latter’s claim to be the ‘sole-spokesman’ for the entire subcontinent. The Congress objected to the secession clause in the Cripps offer and demanded the Indianisation of the defence portfolio which Wavell and Linlithgow strongly resisted. Johnson’s affiliations with the Congress leadership made him very unpopular with the viceroy who, on the arrival of the President’s special representative a few weeks earlier, had been very enthusiastic, calling him a person of ‘distinguished attainment’ whose presence was considered ‘an earnest of high endeavour in the common cause’.¹ The reservations about Louis Johnson were soon made known to FDR and Cordell Hull by various indirect hints from the British government.