Gandhian Era to Independence (1919-1947)

The First World War ended in 1918 and India waited for its reward. It received instead the Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Gandhi had meanwhile become the central figure of Indian politics, and in 1919-22 he gave the nationalist movement something it never had before: a mass base that ran from the cities into the villages. Read this topic as a story in four acts: betrayal (1919), anger (1919-20), mass action (1920-22) and recovery (1922-28). Here is the whole road of this chapter at a glance, so you can see where each topic fits.

Begin with the Rowlatt Act (March 1919), formally the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, passed on the recommendation of the Rowlatt (Sedition) Committee headed by Justice Sidney Rowlatt (appointed in December 1917). It allowed the government to arrest anyone on suspicion, try them without a jury and detain them without trial for up to two years. Indians called it the 'Black Act', summed up as 'No Dalil, No Vakil, No Appeal' (no argument, no lawyer, no appeal). Every Indian member of the Imperial Council voted against it (Jinnah, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Mazharul Haque resigned from the Council in protest). Gandhi called for a Rowlatt Satyagraha, formed a Satyagraha Sabha at Bombay and fixed a countrywide hartal on 6 April 1919.

In Punjab the protest turned tense. The government arrested two popular Congress leaders, Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal, in Amritsar on 9 April. On 13 April 1919, the day of Baisakhi, thousands of people, many of them pilgrims who knew nothing of the ban, gathered in an enclosed garden, the Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched in with troops, blocked the narrow exit and, without warning, ordered 1,650 rounds to be fired for about ten minutes. Official figures say 379 died; Indian estimates were over 1,000. The Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Michael O'Dwyer, backed Dyer, and martial law followed in Punjab, with the humiliating 'crawling order' in a lane in Amritsar. Udham Singh later shot O'Dwyer in London (Caxton Hall, 13 March 1940).

After Jallianwala Bagh, Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood, Gandhi returned the Kaisar-i-Hind medal (actually in 1920), and Sir Sankaran Nair resigned from the Viceroy's Executive Council. The government set up the Hunter Committee (Disorders Inquiry Committee, October 1919), headed by Lord William Hunter, which mildly censured Dyer; Dyer was relieved of his post (and later praised by many in Britain). The Congress ran its own inquiry (Motilal Nehru, C. R. Das, Abbas Tyabji, M. R. Jayakar, with Gandhi), which gave a harsher verdict. The 1919 Congress session was held at Amritsar under Motilal Nehru.

A second anger now joined the first. After the war, the Allies broke up the Ottoman Empire, whose Sultan was the Caliph, the religious head of the world's Sunni Muslims. Indian Muslims saw this as an attack on their faith. The Khilafat Movement was led by the Ali brothers (Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Hasrat Mohani. A Khilafat Committee was set up in Bombay (1919), and Khilafat Day was observed on 17 October 1919. At the All-India Khilafat Conference at Delhi (November 1919), Gandhi was elected president. For Gandhi this was a golden chance to bring Hindus and Muslims onto one platform; for the Muslims it meant an ally with a mass following. The movement ended when Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself abolished the Caliphate in 1924.

Gandhi decided to turn anger into a programme. The Khilafat Committee began non-cooperation on 1 August 1920, the very day Tilak died. The Congress approved the plan at a special session at Calcutta in September 1920 (president Lala Lajpat Rai) and confirmed it at Nagpur in December 1920 (president C. Vijayaraghavachariar). At Nagpur the Congress also changed its creed to 'attainment of Swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means', reorganised itself on linguistic provincial committees, and made membership available at four annas. The programme had a negative side (give up titles and honorary posts; boycott councils, law courts, government schools and foreign cloth) and a positive side (spin khadi, set up national schools and arbitration courts, promote Hindu-Muslim unity, remove untouchability).

Non-Cooperation became a mass movement. Students left schools, lawyers like C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel gave up practice, women took up the charkha, and the visit of the Prince of Wales (November 1921) was met with a hartal in Bombay and riots. There were regional peasant revolts: the Awadh Kisan Sabha / Eka movement in United Provinces, the Moplah rebellion in Malabar, Kerala (August 1921; Moplah tenants against landlords, which took a communal colour), and the Akali (Gurdwara reform) movement in Punjab (the Nankana Sahib massacre, Feb 1921). Then, on 5 February 1922, at Chauri Chaura near Gorakhpur (UP), a mob set a police station on fire and 22 policemen were burnt to death. Gandhi was shocked at the violence and, against the wishes of leaders like Nehru, Das and Bose, suspended the movement (Bardoli resolution, 12 February 1922). He was arrested in March 1922, tried for sedition and sentenced to six years (released in 1924 on health grounds).

The suspension left the Congress divided about what to do next. One group, the Pro-changers (C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru, Vithalbhai Patel), wanted to enter the legislative councils and fight the government from inside by obstruction. The other group, the No-changers (C. Rajagopalachari, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, M. A. Ansari), wanted to continue constructive work and boycott councils. At the Gaya session (December 1922, president C. R. Das), the council-entry proposal was defeated. Das and Motilal then formed the Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party, the Swaraj Party, on 1 January 1923 at Allahabad (Das president, Motilal Nehru secretary). At a special session at Delhi (September 1923, president Maulana Azad) the Congress allowed the Swarajists to contest elections. In the elections of November 1923 the Swarajists won 42 of 101 elected seats in the Central Legislative Assembly and became the largest group, and in some provinces (Bengal, Central Provinces) they even blocked the dyarchy. Vithalbhai Patel became the Speaker of the Central Assembly in 1925. After the death of C. R. Das (June 1925), the party weakened, and the Swarajists walked out of the Assembly in 1926.

After the Swaraj Party years, politics went quiet for a while. Then in November 1927 the British government announced a commission to study how the Government of India Act 1919 was working, and the quiet ended at once. The reason was simple: the commission was to decide India's constitutional future, and not one Indian was on it. From that insult to the Dandi March and the Poona Pact the story runs straight, and every step answers the one before it: boycott, challenge, constitution, ultimatum, independence resolution, salt, talks, split, fast, pact.

The Simon Commission (statutory commission under Section 84A of the 1919 Act) was named after its chairman Sir John Simon. It had seven members, all British MPs; one of them was Clement Attlee, who would become Prime Minister in 1945. The Act of 1919 itself had said a review would come after ten years, but the government brought it forward and left out Indians. The Congress (Madras session, 1927, president M. A. Ansari) decided to boycott it. A faction of the Muslim League led by Jinnah also boycotted it, while another faction led by Muhammad Shafi cooperated. On 30 October 1928 at Lahore, police under J. A. Scott lathi-charged the procession led by Lala Lajpat Rai; he died on 17 November 1928, and this death is what pushed young revolutionaries towards the Saunders killing (see the revolutionary topic). The Commission's report (1930) suggested ending dyarchy in the provinces and giving them autonomy, but said nothing about Dominion status, and most of its ideas later fed into the Government of India Act 1935.

The Secretary of State Lord Birkenhead had taunted Indians to produce a constitution that all groups would accept. The answer was an All Parties Conference and a committee under Motilal Nehru (members included Tej Bahadur Sapru and Subhas Chandra Bose). Its Nehru Report (August 1928) asked for Dominion status, joint electorates with reserved seats for minorities where they were few, a statement of fundamental rights, and linguistic provinces. It rejected separate electorates, which disappointed Jinnah. He replied in March 1929 with his Fourteen Points. The Calcutta Congress (December 1928, president Motilal Nehru) gave the government one year to accept the Report; young leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose wanted independence at once and formed the Independence for India League.

The Lahore session of December 1929 was held under Jawaharlal Nehru as president (he was just 40). Before the Congress's own deadline ran out, the Viceroy Lord Irwin had in October 1929 offered only a vague statement that Dominion status was the natural goal and promised a Round Table Conference. That was not enough. The Congress now passed the Purna Swaraj resolution, authorised the Working Committee to start civil disobedience, and fixed 26 January 1930 as Independence Day, to be observed every year. The tricolour was hoisted on the bank of the Ravi at midnight on 31 December 1929. This is why the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950.

The First Round Table Conference (London, 12 November 1930 to 19 January 1931) was chaired by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. The Congress stayed away, with its leaders in jail, so it settled nothing. Lord Irwin then chose talks: the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (5 March 1931), also called the Delhi Pact. Gandhi suspended the movement and agreed to attend the next conference; the government released political prisoners who had not been convicted of violence, allowed peaceful picketing and let people near the coast make salt for their own use. The Karachi session (March 1931, president Vallabhbhai Patel) approved the Pact and passed a resolution on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Programme. It came days after Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged (23 March 1931), and Gandhi was greeted with black flags.

When Gandhi returned in December 1931, a new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, was in office and repression had grown. Civil Disobedience was resumed in January 1932 and Gandhi was arrested again. In August 1932 Ramsay MacDonald announced the Communal Award, which gave separate electorates to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and also to the Depressed Classes. Gandhi, in Yerwada jail, saw this as an attempt to cut Hindu society in two and began a fast unto death on 20 September 1932. B. R. Ambedkar had every reason to want protection for the Depressed Classes, so the two sides met. The Poona Pact was signed at Yerwada on 24 September 1932 by Ambedkar and, for the Hindu side, leaders such as Madan Mohan Malaviya; Gandhi accepted it. It gave up separate electorates but raised the reserved seats for the Depressed Classes in the provincial legislatures from 71 to 148, chosen by a joint electorate through a primary election.

After the Poona Pact Gandhi turned to the removal of untouchability: the All India Anti-Untouchability League (September 1932) became the Harijan Sevak Sangh (1933), and the weekly Harijan began in 1933. Civil Disobedience slowed into individual satyagraha, was suspended in 1933 and formally withdrawn in April 1934. The Congress went back to council politics, which is how it reached the elections of 1937.

When Gandhi withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement after Chauri Chaura (1922), many young people felt that non-violence had been tried and abandoned. Some of them went back to the path of the revolver and the bomb. This second phase of the revolutionary movement (1920s-30s) differs from the first (Swadeshi years) in one big way: it had an idea. The young men now read about the Russian Revolution, Irish rebels and Marx, and talked of socialism and of a free India that would end exploitation of every kind, not only British rule.

The Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) was started at Kanpur in 1924 by Sachindranath Sanyal, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Ram Prasad Bismil. Its aim was an armed revolution to set up a 'Federated Republic of the United States of India', and it needed money. On 9 August 1925, ten men stopped the 8 Down train at Kakori, near Lucknow, and took the government cash it carried. The Kakori conspiracy followed: the main accused were Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh, who were hanged in December 1927. Chandra Shekhar Azad escaped and began to rebuild the party.

After Kakori, the survivors met at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi, on 8-9 September 1928 and renamed the party Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). The word 'Socialist' was added on purpose. Azad was its commander-in-chief, and Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Shiv Verma and Rajguru were among the main members. In Lahore, Bhagat Singh and Vohra had earlier started the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (1926). When Lajpat Rai died after the lathi-charge, the HSRA decided to avenge him. On 17 December 1928, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Azad shot J. P. Saunders, an assistant superintendent of police, who had been mistaken for the officer J. A. Scott. Bhagat Singh escaped from Lahore with the help of Durga Bhabhi (Durgavati Devi, wife of Vohra), travelling as a family with her and her child.

Bhagat Singh was born on 28 September 1907 in Lyallpur district of Punjab, and he is remembered as Shaheed-e-Azam. He wrote 'Why I am an Atheist' while in jail. The young revolutionaries also argued with Gandhi: after Gandhi wrote against 'The Cult of the Bomb' in Young India (1929), Vohra wrote 'The Philosophy of the Bomb' in reply. Chandra Shekhar Azad was born on 23 July 1906 at Bhavra (now in Madhya Pradesh), chose the name 'Azad' (free) when he was produced before a magistrate as a young non-cooperator, and died on 27 February 1931 at Alfred Park in Allahabad, shooting himself rather than be captured; the park now bears his name.

In Bengal the revolutionary tradition had never died. After the death of C. R. Das in 1925, the Congress in Bengal split into two groups, led by J. M. Sengupta and Subhas Bose, and the Anushilan group allied with Sengupta's side. The big event came from Chittagong. Surya Sen, a teacher known as Masterda, led the Indian Republican Army (Chittagong branch) in the Chittagong Armoury Raid of 18 April 1930, taking the police and auxiliary force armouries and cutting telegraph lines, and declared a provisional revolutionary government. Many fighters were killed in the hills of Jalalabad a few days later (22 April). Surya Sen was arrested in February 1933 and hanged on 12 January 1934. The Chittagong movement was notable for its young women: Pritilata Waddedar led an attack on the European Club at Pahartali (September 1932) and died taking cyanide, and Kalpana Dutta was one of the group.

With the Civil Disobedience Movement over, the British tried to answer the Indian demand with a new constitution, the Government of India Act 1935. It gave Indians real power in the provinces, but not at the centre. The Congress, which had stayed away from the Round Table Conferences, contested the first elections under it in 1937, formed governments in most provinces, and then walked out of them in 1939 when India was dragged into the Second World War without a word of consultation. The years 1935 to 1942 therefore have one question running through them: how much power would Britain give, and when?

The Government of India Act 1935 was one of the longest Acts Parliament ever passed on India, and it matters twice over: it governed India until 1947, and it is the main source of the Indian Constitution (the federal scheme, the three Lists, the Governor's office, the Federal Public Service Commission and the Federal Court all come from it). Its main features:

In the elections of early 1937, the Congress won a clear majority in five provinces (Madras, Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces) and was the largest party in several others; it formed ministries in eight of the eleven provinces. The ministries did useful work on tenancy, debt relief and civil liberties, and they showed that Indians could run governments. They also deepened a quarrel: the Muslim League, which had done poorly, accused the Congress of refusing to share power, notably in the United Provinces. Within the Congress itself, the younger socialists had already formed the Congress Socialist Party (1934), and the All India Kisan Sabha (1936) spoke for peasants. At the Haripura session (1938) Subhas Bose was president; at Tripuri (March 1939) he stood again and defeated Gandhi's candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Gandhi said Pattabhi's defeat was his own. After the Pant resolution asking Bose to form his Working Committee in line with Gandhi's wishes, Bose resigned, Rajendra Prasad took over, and in May 1939 Bose founded the Forward Bloc.

The Viceroy Lord Linlithgow announced in September 1939 that India was at war with Germany, without consulting a single Indian leader. The Congress asked for a clear statement of Britain's war aims and a promise of freedom; it got neither, and its ministries resigned in October-November 1939. Jinnah called 22 December 1939 'Day of Deliverance' for Muslims from Congress rule. At Lahore (22-24 March 1940) the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution, moved by Fazlul Huq, which said the Muslim-majority areas in the north-west and the east should be grouped to form independent states. It was later called the 'Pakistan Resolution'. In August 1940, Linlithgow made the August Offer: Dominion status as the goal after the war, a constituent body after the war, expansion of the Viceroy's Executive Council with Indians, and an assurance that no constitution would be imposed on any large section of the population against its will. The Congress rejected it; the League took comfort from the minority assurance but did not accept the offer. Gandhi then started Individual Satyagraha (October 1940): Vinoba Bhave was the first satyagrahi, Jawaharlal Nehru the second.

The Cripps Mission arrived in March 1942, after Japan's entry into the war and the fall of Rangoon, when Britain badly needed Indian cooperation. Sir Stafford Cripps, a Labour minister friendly to the nationalists, brought a draft: after the war, India would get Dominion status, with a constituent assembly chosen by the provincial legislatures and nominated by the princely states; any province could stay out of the new Union; and during the war, Britain would keep control of defence. The Congress objected to the right of provinces to stay out (which hinted at Pakistan), to the nominated princely members and to the lack of any real power now. The League objected that Pakistan was not clearly accepted. Gandhi is remembered for calling it a 'post-dated cheque' (some versions add 'on a failing bank'). The mission returned in April, and the pressure that followed led straight to Quit India.

After the Cripps Mission failed, Gandhi decided that waiting would only help the British and the Japanese. The war had brought rising prices, shortages and the fear of a Japanese invasion; Burma had fallen. Gandhi's answer was the third and last great mass movement under his leadership: Quit India. Its demand was plain, that the British must leave India at once, and its method was non-violent mass action. What made 1942 different from 1920 or 1930 was what happened next: the leaders were arrested within hours, and the movement was carried on by ordinary people and by an underground.

The slogan 'Quit India' (Bharat Chhodo) is credited to Yusuf Meherally, a socialist who was Mayor of Bombay in 1942 and who had also given the slogan 'Simon Go Back'. Gandhi's own slogan was 'Do or Die'. The Viceroy was Lord Linlithgow and the Prime Minister was Churchill. The Congress was joined by socialists, but the Communist Party of India opposed the movement (after the Soviet Union entered the war it called it a 'People's War'), the Muslim League under Jinnah raised the counter-slogan 'Divide and Quit', and the Hindu Mahasabha stayed away. Most of the princely states stayed quiet. C. Rajagopalachari had left the Congress earlier in 1942 because he favoured an understanding with the League.

With the leaders in jail, a younger generation took charge. Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the Congress flag at Gowalia Tank Maidan on 9 August. Usha Mehta, with Vithalbhai Jhaveri, Chandrakant Jhaveri and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia's help, ran the underground Congress Radio from Bombay from 14 August 1942. Jayaprakash Narayan escaped from Hazaribagh jail in November 1942 and organised guerrilla groups ('Azad Dastas') from Nepal. Others who went underground included Ram Manohar Lohia, Achyut Patwardhan and Sucheta Kripalani. In three places, people set up parallel governments:

The government answered with great force: the Congress was declared illegal, its offices were seized, crowds were fired on, and villages were fined. In the jail at the Aga Khan Palace, Gandhi's secretary Mahadev Desai died on 15 August 1942, and Kasturba Gandhi died there on 22 February 1944. Gandhi undertook a 21-day fast in February-March 1943 to protest the repression. By 1944 the movement had burned out, and Gandhi was released in May 1944 on health grounds. It was still, in Gandhi's own words, an 'open rebellion'; it failed to dislodge the government in 1942, but it made clear that the British could not govern India for long without the consent of Indians.

While Gandhi's Quit India fought the British from inside India, another struggle was being waged from outside, by an army of Indians. The Indian National Army (INA), also called the Azad Hind Fauj, was raised in South-East Asia from Indian soldiers who had been captured by Japan when Singapore fell in February 1942. It first took shape under Mohan Singh, and it became a fighting force with a government of its own only when Subhas Chandra Bose reached Singapore in 1943. The INA never won a decisive battle, but its trials in 1945 shook the loyalty of the very army that had defended the Raj, and that is its real importance for the exam and for history.

The story begins with the Indian Independence League. Rash Behari Bose, who had escaped to Japan in 1915 after the attempt on Lord Hardinge, held a conference at Tokyo in March 1942 and set up the League, which was formally organised at Bangkok in June 1942. At the fall of Singapore, Captain Mohan Singh of the British Indian Army persuaded the Indian prisoners to join an Indian National Army, and a first INA was formed in September 1942 with Japanese help (Major Fujiwara was the liaison). Disagreements with the Japanese about the INA's independence led Mohan Singh to be arrested in December 1942, and the first INA broke up. Bose, meanwhile, had gone from Calcutta in January 1941 to Germany, where he set up a Free India Centre and an Indian Legion, was given the title Netaji (leader), and broadcast on Azad Hind Radio. In February 1943 he left Kiel in a German submarine, changed to a Japanese submarine off Madagascar, and reached Singapore on 2 July 1943. Rash Behari Bose handed the League over to him, and Bose took command of the INA, reorganising it as the Azad Hind Fauj.

When the war ended in 1945, the British decided to try some INA officers for treason. The first trial, in the Red Fort at Delhi (from November 1945), was of three officers from three faiths, Prem Sahgal (Hindu), Shah Nawaz Khan (Muslim) and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon (Sikh). The Congress, which had kept away from the INA, now defended it. A defence committee led by Bhulabhai Desai included Tej Bahadur Sapru, Kailash Nath Katju and Jawaharlal Nehru, who put on a barrister's gown for the first time in decades. The officers were sentenced to transportation for life, but public anger was so great that the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Claude Auchinleck, remitted the sentences in January 1946. Demonstrations broke out in Calcutta and other cities, and in February 1946 the ratings of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied at Bombay. The British realised that they could no longer count on the Indian army.

By 1945 Britain had won the war and lost the empire. It was exhausted and nearly bankrupt, a Labour government under Clement Attlee had come to power in July 1945, and the army, navy and police that held India could no longer be trusted after the INA trials and the naval mutiny. The question was no longer whether the British would go, but how India would look when they did. The Muslim League, which had won almost all the Muslim seats in the elections of 1945-46, insisted on Pakistan; the Congress insisted on a united India. The last two years of the freedom struggle are the story of that argument, ending in partition and independence on 15 August 1947.

The Cabinet Mission reached Delhi on 24 March 1946. It had three members: Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State for India), Sir Stafford Cripps (President of the Board of Trade) and A. V. Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty). The Viceroy at the time was Lord Wavell (1943-47). After weeks of talks that failed to bring the Congress and the League together, the Mission announced its own plan on 16 May 1946. It rejected Pakistan but tried to meet the League halfway:

The League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan in June 1946, because it hoped the groups would lead to Pakistan in time. The Congress accepted the proposal for a Constituent Assembly but disagreed about the compulsory nature of the groups. When Nehru said in July that the Congress was free to change the plan, Jinnah withdrew the League's acceptance (29 July 1946) and called 16 August 1946 'Direct Action Day'. That day began the Great Calcutta Killings, and riots spread to Noakhali and Bihar. In the middle of it, the Interim Government took office on 2 September 1946, with Jawaharlal Nehru as Vice-President of the Viceroy's Executive Council. The League joined on 26 October 1946, with Liaquat Ali Khan as Finance Member, but only to obstruct from within. The Constituent Assembly met on 9 December 1946; the League boycotted it. Gandhi walked through the villages of Noakhali in November 1946, bringing peace, village by village.

In February 1947 Attlee announced that Britain would leave India by June 1948 and that Lord Mountbatten would replace Wavell as Viceroy. Mountbatten arrived on 22 March 1947, found the situation near civil war, and quickly decided that partition was unavoidable and that the date must be earlier. His Plan of 3 June 1947 (the Mountbatten Plan) said that India would be divided into two Dominions, India and Pakistan; the legislatures of Punjab and Bengal would vote on partition of their provinces; Sylhet and the North-West Frontier Province would hold referendums; the princely states would be free to accept either Dominion in practice, and the date for transfer of power was advanced to 15 August 1947. A Boundary Commission under Cyril Radcliffe drew the lines, and the awards were published on 17 August. Congress and League both accepted the plan. The Indian Independence Act 1947, passed by the British Parliament (royal assent 18 July 1947), created the two Dominions from 15 August, ended British paramountcy over the princely states, ended the office of Secretary of State for India, and let each Constituent Assembly act as a legislature. Mountbatten became the first Governor-General of India (until June 1948), and Jinnah the first Governor-General of Pakistan.

Independence was only half the task. Over five hundred princely states had been left free by the lapse of paramountcy. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Home Minister in Nehru's first cabinet, and his secretary V. P. Menon persuaded most of them to sign the Instrument of Accession, handing three subjects (defence, external affairs and communications) to the Union, together with a Standstill Agreement. Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir came later and with difficulty. Patel's work earned him the name 'Iron Man of India'. The first cabinet of free India had Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister, Patel as Home Minister, Maulana Azad as Education Minister, and Dr Rajendra Prasad later became the first President.