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‘The first public clash between Gandhi and his political heir-to-be, Jawaharlal Nehru, occurred in December 1927, at the Congress’ annual session in Madras. The issue that divided them was whether the Indian National Congress should keep dominion status as its political goal or abandon it and adopt a new goal, “complete independence” [purna swaraj]. Gandhi was for dominion status, Nehru for complete independence. The struggle went on for two years. It was resolved in 1929 at the annual session in Lahore with Nehru’s installation as president of the Indian National Congress and the Congress’ adoption of complete independence as the national movement’s political objective.

While both goals involved sovereign autonomy, they brought with them different expectations and commitments. Dominion status carried with it allegiance to the Crown, participation in imperial institutions and, ‘at least partially engaging with British politics and public opinion’. Dominion status also meant that there would be negotiations about the conditions in India under which the transfer of power would occur. For example, the British were likely to insist on provisions for minority rights and representation. Complete independence, on the other hand, carried overtones of anti-imperialism, unitary nationalism and majoritarian democracy. ‘It amounted to a severance of ties, a political rupture that would … leave the shape of the successor state in nationalist hands…. Complete independence also meant and that the successor state was unlikely to share sovereignty with the minority community’.

Gandhi and Nehru brought different historical understandings to the concept of dominion status. Gandhi having spent the first twenty one years of his political life in South Africa, as a member of an Indian minority fighting for rights in the face of an incipient apartheid regime ,had experience of this system. In South Africa, the British Crown and imperial citizenship were a potential source of rights and redress against oppression. Gandhi, whilst in South Africa had sought legal help in London by visiting there. He had cooperated with the British by raising ‘a medical corps to aid the English in the Zulu and Boer Wars and (had) recruited for the British Army in World War I’. But Nehru ‘younger than Gandhi…viewed imperialism and capitalism as evil forces in world politics’. He too, liked English ways and had English friends but ‘politically the British empire was the enemy’.

Excerpted from Page 155-156 of ‘Jinnah: India-Partition Independence’ by Jaswant Singh