ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what a government feels it must and can do to retain its authority under conditions of critical stress. Muslim leaders, deeply bitter over the aftermath of the 1937 elections and their exclusion from any share in government, had staked out their demand for Pakistan in the Lahore Resolution. Cripps immediately revealed to his Congress friends the whole plan—a new central government, immediate control for major parties, and full independence right after the war, all in return for India's full support in the war effort—which left him with nothing more to offer in bargaining. The great lengths to which the government of India was prepared to go in order to observe even the smallest niceties of the law, in order to guard the prestige of the raj abroad, and in order to guard it from dangers, internal or external, are manifold.
