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Passage 15
Read the following passage and answer Questions 71–75:
The decisive shift in British Policy came under mass pressure in the autumn and winter of 1945–46—the months which Penderel Moon, while editing Wavell’s Journal, has perceptively described as The Edge of a Volcano. Very foolishly, the British initially decided to hold public trials of several hundreds of the 20,000 INA prisoners as well as dismissing them from service and detaining without trial, no less than 7000. They compounded the folly by holding the first trial in the Red Fort, Delhi, in November 1945, and putting on the dock a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Sikh (P. K. Sehgal, Shah Nawaz, and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon). Bhulabhai Desai, Tejbahadur Sapru, and Nehru appeared for the defence (the latter putting on his barrister’s gown after 25 years), and the Muslim League also joined the countrywide protest. On November 20, the Intelligence Bureau note admitted that, ‘There has seldom been a matter which has attracted so much Indian public interest and, it is safe to say, sympathy … this particular brand of sympathy cuts across communal barriers.’ A journalist (B. Shiva Rao) visiting the Red Fort prisoners on the same day reported that, ‘There is not the slightest feeling among them of Hindu and Muslim … A majority of the men, now awaiting trial in the Red Fort, are Muslims. Some of these men are bitter that Mr. Jinnah is keeping alive a controversy about Pakistan.’ The British became extremely nervous about the INA spirit spreading to the Indian Army, and in January, the Punjab Governor reported that a Lahore reception for released INA prisoners had been attended by Indian soldiers in uniform.