വഞ്ചന / 1942 English
20a

Home Department covering note and the Additional Secretary's assessment of P.C. Joshi's memorandum

Government

Scan of document 20a: Home Department covering note and the Additional Secretary's assessment of P.C. Joshi's memorandum, 1943-03-22 (covering note); the assessment following is Tottenham's, signed 24.3.43 at 20b (D33)
Browned paper, heavy insect damage down the left margin and along the right edge; a strip of a second sheet adheres at the upper left. Legible throughout.

Contrast-enhanced derivative. The scan shown by default is the unmodified original, so any reading can be checked honestly.

Date
1943-03-22 (covering note); the assessment following is Tottenham's, signed 24.3.43 at 20b (D33)
From
[Home Department official, signature illegible] and then the Additional Secretary [Sir Richard Tottenham]
To
Addl. Secy. [Additional Secretary, Home Department]
Classification
[not shown on this page]
Page
p. 1 of the note (manuscript "2" at foot left) — continues at 20b (D33)
Document type
Internal departmental note with manuscript docketing (Home Department)

Signatories

  • [name not given]Home DepartmentAutograph signature above the date 22. 3. 43, illegible
  • [Sir Richard Tottenham, by continuation]Additional Secretary, Home DepartmentThe assessment beginning "I have read Mr.Joshi's main letter" is unsigned on this page; it is signed "R Tottenham 24..3.43" where it concludes at 20b (D33)

Marginalia & annotations

Red crayon docketing instructions "(1) - Receipt" at the head and "(2) - Issue" mid-page. Manuscript corrections replacing struck-out typed words ("strain" for "style", "open", "allusion" for "ebullition"). Manuscript "+ p.137 corr." in the left margin. Red archival "20a".

Transcript verbatim

                        [red ms.:] (1) - Receipt

        I send herewith the papers received from
P.C. Joshi which I mentioned to Additional Secretary
this morning together with the copy of my interim
reply. I should be glad if Additional Secretary
would have these papers examined in the meanwhile.

        [red ms.:] (2) - Issue          [signed, illegible]

                                        22. 3. 43

Addl. Secy.

        I have read Mr.Joshi's main letter and some
of the Provincial reports. They are of such enormous
length that it would be impossible to examine them here
in any detail; and I think that, if we are to pursue
the matter, as I recommend we should, we shall have to
send the reports to the Provinces concerned for their
remarks. In doing so, we should also send a summary
of Mr.Joshi's thesis, which is also of portentous
length.

        2.      From a brief survey, it would appear that most
of the Provincial reports are in the same [struck: style] {ms. insertion: strain}, and
many of them are, I imagine, written up by Mr.Joshi
himself. In each case, there is a grandiloquent account
of the Party's achievements, coupled with an even more
damning indictment of the Government attitude. In
practically every Province, it seems, Government and
their servants have gone out of their way to arrest all
the wrong people — thereby leaving the field {ms. insertion: open} for the
mysterious fifth column, of whose existence Government
and their officers are presumed to have been completely
unaware. The nearest approach to a definition of the
fifth column is the constant [struck: ebullition] {ms. insertion: allusion} to the Congress
Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc (with a party of
Trotskyite communists in Assam!). There is, of course,