A Short History of Self-Determination in Colonial South Asia

The principle of self-determination had a fraught relationship with democracy, sovereignty and constitutionalism in colonial South Asia. While the British government were quick to disavow any commitment to the principle as far as their Indian empire went, the right to self-determination was periodically raised by various groups in India after 1919. In a multi-jurisdictional empire, with jurisdictions being defined not just on territorial and political lines, but also on religious and cultural lines, the ideal of self-determination pitched communities and territorial units against one another. Questions like who should exercise the right to self-determination and how should it be exercised generated considerable anxiety and tension.

In this paper, I will examine the proposal for territorial self-determination by various geographical and administrative units advanced by the Cripps Mission in 1942. The Mission, sent by the British government in London and headed by Strafford Cripps, was to come up with ideas for a new constitution for a united India consisting of both princely states and British provinces. The paper will argue that it was with the proposals of the Cripps Mission that, willy-nilly, self-determination became a part of the political discourse in colonial South Asia. However, as the paper will show, self-determination as an ideal resulted in political posturing and furthered the differences between the princely states and the British provinces on the one hand, and the Congress and the Muslim League on the other.