[ANONYMOUS]. Hopes & Fears (When, where and what about Cabinet delegation's work in India). By a noted Journalist (Who met and talked to Delegation Members and Indian Party Leaders). Foreword by Dr. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya.

[ANONYMOUS]. Hopes & Fears (When, where and what about Cabinet delegation's work in India). By a noted Journalist (Who met and talked to Delegation Members and Indian Party Leaders). Foreword by Dr. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya. [Delhi: Printed by Mr. A. C. Jain at the Rajhana Press, Delhi, and published the Dhara Publications] for the Banking Experts. 1946].

8vo. Original printed cloth-backed boards with illustrated dust-wrappers (price-clipped); pp. [16], lvi, 96, four photographic illustrations on two leaves of plates on green paper, tables in the text; wrappers minimally spotted, otherwise very good.

Very rare first edition of this blow-by-blow account of the diplomatic and political wranglings about India's future and independence, documenting in diary form the events from February 19 to June 14, 1946. The preface is by Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya, a leading independence activist and close ally of Nehru. The anymous author was a young journalist observing the British Cabinet Mission to India, discussing a plan for Indian independence. Over a period of three months the mission failed to achieve a constitutional agreement between the two main parties and the inevitability of partition became apparent. One of the rarest books on a crucial moment in the history of the Subcontinent.

Front fly-leaf cordially inscribed by one G. Jain to Mr and Mrs Paul B. Mason 'by one of whom they consider as their own son', dated 1948; large printed and folded leaf of all the meetings of Pethick-Lawrence, Stafford Cripps and V. A. Alexander in spring 1946 pasted onto front fly-leaf.

WorldCat locates copies at Toronto and Chicago Universities only; Hibrary Hub locates a single copy only, in the BL.

SKU: 2120928