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Politics of War
As the train pulled into New Delhi station, a large crowd surged towards it chanting ‘We do not want any understanding.’ Travelling in the train was Mohandas K. Gandhi, the unquestioned – if also uncrowned – leader of the Indian National Congress. Over the previous two decades, Gandhi had transformed the Congress from a party of the urban educated classes to a formidably organized nationalist outfit. In successive waves of countrywide mobilizations, the Congress had under Gandhi’s leadership emerged as the foremost adversary of the British Raj. Now, in early September 1939, Gandhi was travelling to Simla at the invitation of the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow.
The viceroy’s unilateral declaration of war had roiled political India right from the start. The Congress and its supporters were peeved at the manner in which their country was being dragged into a war without so much as a by-your-leave. The leadership of the party was pulled in different directions by equally pressing concerns. On one side was their opposition to Nazi aggression as well as the desire to stand by the Western democracies. On the other was the imperative of refusing to co-operate with the British Empire unless it was willing to pay the right political price to India. Throughout the war, the Congress never managed to reconcile these competing imperatives. In practice, its political stance on the war kept oscillating between one position and another.
From the outset, Linlithgow was determined to give no quarter to the Congress. In his three and a half years as viceroy, he had made little attempt to establish a working relationship with any Congressman. This was partly a matter of personality. Exceedingly tall and well built, with a stern countenance caused by childhood polio, Linlithgow cut a distant and forbidding figure. The Indian nationalists mocked him as the ‘Great Mogul’. In fact, there was a lighter side to the avid sportsman and hunter who targeted monkeys with a catapult from the bay windows of his bedroom in Simla. In his official dealings, however, Linlithgow was deliberate, ponderous and unimaginative.
The viceroy’s attitude towards the nationalists also stemmed from the political context of the times. Linlithgow had been sent to India after the passage of the Government of India Act of 1935. This constitutional measure aimed at establishing in India a federation of the directly-ruled provinces and the indirectly-ruled princely states. Under the Act, Indian political parties could hold power only in the provinces – and not in the central government. Presented as a milestone on India’s road towards eventual self-governance, the Act sought in fact to leash the most powerful of these parties, the Congress, firmly in the kennel of provincial politics.
The Congress had initially been divided on the question of making a bid for office in the provinces. Many of Gandhi’s senior lieutenants wanted to seize the opportunities opened up by the Act of 1935. Others felt that embracing provincial power would spell the end of the Congress as an all-India force. In the event, the Congress contested the elections of 1936–37 and emerged victorious in eight of the eleven provinces. This stunning political outcome portended problems for the British when the shadow of war began lengthening over Europe. Among their principal concerns was the Congress’s attitude towards India’s strategic obligations. Throughout the inter-war years, nationalists of all stripes had been vociferous in calling for a reduction in India’s overseas military commitments – if only because it would lead to a concomitant drop in the Raj’s massive military expenditure.
In narrowly constitutional terms, Linlithgow was well within his rights in taking India to war. Yet the move was also spurred by strategic considerations, and especially the security of British India’s own expansive zone of influence. The various parts of this sub-imperial system, extending from Hong Kong to East Africa, were tied to the Raj in different ways. Many of these places had initially been conquered by the Indian army and continued to be policed by Indian men. Indian capital and entrepreneurs were important players in the local economies of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Rangoon and Nairobi, among other commercial centres. The infrastructure and enterprises in large parts of South-East Asia and East Africa had been built and worked by migrant labour from India. Between 1834 and 1937, around 30 million Indians had left their homes to toil in other parts of the Raj’s empire. The administrative set-up in many of these places mirrored that of British India. Architecture and ideas too radiated out of the sub-imperial centre.1
In the years after the First World War, this system had begun to fray. The Great Depression and the unravelling of pre-war economic globalization led to a backlash against Indian capital and labour. Indeed, the rising nationalism in many of these parts was directed as much against the Indians as the British.2 Yet one form of dependence on India persisted right through: military security. During the 1914–18 war, the Indian army’s main effort was focused on the Middle East and East Africa, and India’s military involvement in the erstwhile Ottoman territories continued in the post-war period. The economic depression and the resultant tightening of financial belts led India periodically to review its military commitments. Yet, in the event of another global war, it seemed a foregone conclusion that India should secure its spheres of influence. Indeed, even before the British government had formally declared war in September 1939, India had despatched nearly 10,000 troops to Egypt, Aden, Singapore, Kenya and Iraq.3
At the same time, the viceroy was aware that his executive fiat would be resented by the Congress party. In response to the despatch of troops in August 1939, the Congress had already accused the government of undermining the Central Assembly and defying public opinion. The Congress provincial governments were also instructed to desist from war preparations. So, Linlithgow harboured no illusions about the response that his declaration would elicit from the Congress. However, he was confident of being able to secure its co-operation on his own terms.
This belief stemmed from his reading of the Congress party as a set of provincial interests penned in by the central leadership. The centrifugal forces in the party had apparently been accentuated by the assumption of office. The provincial leaders wanted to govern, while the central leadership struggled to maintain the façade of opposition. A month before the outbreak of war, Linlithgow had asserted that ‘the theory that Congress Ministries were in office not to govern the country but to wreck the constitution from inside … [has been] given an unostentatious burial’.4
To be sure, there were differences in the attitudes of the Congress ministries and the party leadership. Nor was the viceroy’s assumption about the willingness of these provincial governments to co-operate with the war effort wholly mistaken. Even so, Linlithgow underestimated the political machinery at the disposal of the Congress leadership as well as its willingness to crack the whip. Then again, the viceroy and his officials were inclined to think that the eclipse of the Congress ministries might be a blessing in disguise. The bureaucracy could then lead the war effort untrammelled by pesky Indian politicians.
In the event, the Congress’s stance on the war was shaped not so much by tensions between central and provincial units as by the conflicting impulses of its top leadership and by the wider course of the world war.
On 4 September 1939, Gandhi arrived in Simla. Despite the demands from the rank-and-file of the party to desist from co-operation, Gandhi struck a conciliatory note with Linlithgow. His sympathies were with England and France: ‘I could not contemplate without being stirred to the very depth the destruction of London.’ Gandhi broke down as he pictured the destruction of the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. He insisted that he was not thinking of ‘India’s deliverance’. This would come in due course, but hopefully not through the ruination of England. The unyielding apostle of non-violence observed that ‘it almost seems as if Herr Hitler knows no God but brute force’ and that Indians would have collectively to decide ‘what part India is to play in this terrible drama’.5
Over four intense days, starting on 10 September, the Congress Working Committee debated its stance on the war. The spectrum of opini
on stretched from complete support to total opposition. Gandhi stood alone in advocating unconditional but non-violent support for the Raj. The country, he explained, was ‘not ready for any kind of resistance’. British repression would be of the fiercest variety. Besides, no foreign power would be easier to deal with than the British. In any case, the war was bound to destroy imperialism. All things considered, ‘the best policy would be to help and not hinder’.6
Among those who dissented from this view was Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, Gandhi’s senior lieutenant and the premier of Madras. A perceptive and pragmatic politician, Rajagopalachari seldom shied away from speaking his mind – an attribute that had led Gandhi to call Rajagopalachari his ‘conscience keeper’. Unlike his leader, Rajagopalachari was ready to provide ‘wholehearted cooperation in the fight against gangsterism personified’, even if it breached the norm of non-violence. The Congress, he felt, should demand that Britain announce a timetable for granting Dominion status to India and induct some Congressmen into the central government.
At the opposite end of the spectrum was Subhas Chandra Bose, who was specially invited to attend the meeting. The forty-two-year-old Bengali had lately metamorphosed from being the enfant terrible of the Congress to a charismatic leader capable of stirring the masses with his doughty opposition to the Raj and his ringing oratory. Unlike other senior Congressmen, Bose was fascinated by all things martial. At the annual Congress meeting of 1928 in Calcutta, Bose drilled a squad of volunteers, himself dressed in an ill-fitting khaki uniform complete with boots, breeches and a cane. Even as Gandhi looked askance at these military pretentions, Bose began making his own mark as a radical. After an obligatory spell in His Majesty’s Prison, Bose made his way to Europe in 1933. There he met several statesmen including Italy’s Benito Mussolini, who took a liking to the Indian.
During this period, Bose also began to spell out his own political philosophy, calling for a synthesis between fascism and communism. In these vacuous ideas, some of his colleagues in the Congress discerned a troubling fascination with authoritarian rule. Nevertheless, when Bose returned to India, Gandhi orchestrated his election as Congress President in 1938. Within a year, however, Gandhi was working to prevent Bose from standing for another term in office. Bose refused to bow to Gandhi’s wishes and surprisingly managed to win the election. Gandhi and his followers worked thereafter to render Bose’s position in the party utterly untenable, and he had no choice but to resign and form a new radical group within the Congress known as the ‘Forward Bloc’. After the outbreak of war, Gandhi requested Bose to join the deliberations on the future course of the party. Bose argued against any co-operation and urged the Congress to launch a mass movement to wrest India’s independence from Britain.7
In this welter of conflicting opinions, one voice proved particularly influential. Jawaharlal Nehru had for long been acknowledged as the most elegant communicator in the Congress. Born in 1889 into a family of well-off Kashmiri Brahmans, the Harrow- and Cambridge-educated Nehru had been pulled into the ruck of nationalist politics under the influence of Gandhi. Nehru also stood out among his colleagues for his ability to place India’s nationalist struggle in a longer historical perspective and a wider international context. During the latter part of the 1920s, Nehru came in contact with anti-colonial activists from across the globe and began regarding himself as a socialist – albeit one closer to William Morris than Karl Marx. During the next decade, he staunchly opposed European fascism and Japanese militarism, and advocated a tough stance on a range of international crises: Manchuria and Abyssinia, Spain and Czechoslovakia. Over the same period, he also emerged as leading figure in the Congress – his growing ideological differences with Gandhi being subordinated to their personal affection.
On the eve of war, Nehru had been travelling in China at the invitation of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader resisting the Japanese. No sooner had Linlithgow announced India’s participation in the war than Nehru had flown back to India via Burma. He had no doubt in his mind that the Nazi aggression had to be opposed. At the same time, he did not trust the British to do the right thing by India. So, he felt that the Congress must test the waters before making any further moves.
Following Nehru’s lead, the resolution of the Working Committee condemned the Nazi attack on Poland. Yet it also insisted that India could not participate in a war for freedom and democracy when that freedom had been denied to it. If Britain was truly fighting for democracy then it should logically forsake its own empire and introduce full democracy in India. If the war was to defend the status quo then India would have no truck with it. The operative paragraph of the resolution called on the British government to ‘declare in unequivocal terms what their war aims are in regard to democracy and imperialism … in particular, how these aims are going to apply to India and to be given effect to in the present’.8
By tossing the ball back into the British court, the resolution sought to bridge a fundamental divide in the Working Committee. Those in favour of co-operation could hope that Britain would respond creatively; those opposed to co-operation could hope that a rejection by the Raj would then sway the Congress in their direction. Gandhi commended the resolution, despite its apparent dilution of the commitment to non-violence. ‘Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into the war’, he asked, ‘or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy?’9
Prior to the Working Committee’s meeting, Linlithgow believed that the Congress provincial ministries were ‘ready and even anxious to remain in office and to give reasonable cooperation’.10 Indeed, some Congressmen in office were even willing to give the lead to British officials. Rajagopalachari, for instance, was eager to detain all German nationals on the outbreak of hostilities and seize their bank balances. When the governor of Madras disagreed, he muttered that the English wanted ‘to wage war according to High Court rules’.11 Even as the viceroy hoped for the Congress’s co-operation, he was clear that it would have to be on terms of his choosing. He informed the secretary of state for India, Lord Zetland, that the government should pull up the drawbridge and prepare for the resignation of Congress ministries. In fact, it was better to face this situation early ‘rather than at a later stage of the War when we may be engaged in an extensive campaign in the Middle East’.12 The Congress’s demand thus fell on stony ground.
Linlithgow, however, knew that simply digging in his heels would not suffice. From the outset, he sought to encourage countervailing forces to the Congress. If the Congress played for high stakes, the viceroy even contemplated convening an all-party conference, ‘at which the hollowness of the Congress claim to speak for India would very soon be exposed’.13 Though he did not act on this idea, Linlithgow did invite to Delhi a stream of non-Congress political leaders.
The viceroy drew his staunchest support from the traditional, conservative elite of India: the princes. A week before hostilities commenced, several princes, led by the nizam of Hyderabad, the nawab of Rampur and the maharajas of Travancore and Kapurthala, offered their services to the king emperor.14 As in the First World War, the princes discerned an opportunity both to demonstrate their loyalty to the crown and to advance their own political interests. The latter were particularly salient in the context of 1939. Although the princes had accepted the idea of federation, they had grown concerned about their powers being usurped by the federal authority. Their disenchantment deepened when they realized that the federation would not bring any financial gain, and eventually the outbreak of Congress-inspired mass movements in the princely states set the rulers firmly against both the idea of federation and the Congress. By contributing to the war effort, the princes hoped somehow to extricate themselves from this tight political corner.
No sooner had the war begun than they were handed a reprieve. ‘The federal offer’, Zetland observed, ‘is now in cold storage.’15 He was confident, however, that ‘the States will not fall short in the present war on the notable c
ontribution made by them in the last War to the Allied cause’.16 The princes were as good as their word. They opened their coffers to the viceroy’s War Purpose Fund. By mid-October 1939, the jam sahib of Nawanagar had pledged to contribute one-tenth of his state’s annual revenue to war expenses. The nizam of Hyderabad contributed £100,000, and promised to meet the cost of maintaining a regiment of state cavalry and a battalion of state infantry with the British forces in India. Six months into the war, the princes had already contributed £377,000 in donations and pledged a further £225,000 for the War Purpose Fund. By the end of the war, the princes had given grants of cash to the tune of £13.5 million. In addition, they provided war materials worth £5 million: Hyderabad alone paid for three squadrons of military aircraft. In addition, over 300,000 men enlisted from the princely states to serve in the war.17
In political terms, though, the states could help only to a limited extent in neutralizing the Congress. With the federation in abeyance, the princes could not actively help the viceroy puncture the Congress’s pretensions to hegemony. Of greater significance on this score was an array of smaller political outfits that sought to challenge the dominance of the Congress. The viceroy’s announcement on 11 September of the suspension of federation created the requisite room for manoeuvre for the leaders of these parties.
Prominent among these was the leader of the so-called depressed classes – the ‘untouchables’ at the bottom of the Indian caste system – B. R. Ambedkar. A brilliantly incisive thinker and sharp polemicist, Ambedkar had been a prominent opponent of Gandhi for several years. He held that the Congress was a curious combination of the exploiters and the exploited. The party might be necessary to achieve political freedom, but its upper-caste leadership was hardly a force for social reconstruction. Ambedkar was also opposed to the federal scheme on the grounds that it was a misshapen plan that would simultaneously impede the attainment of independence and democracy.
India's War Page 2
