Zetland continued to differ from the viceroy on policy towards the Congress. ‘I cannot conceive’, he told the cabinet, ‘that a policy of “lying back” will serve us for very long, even if there should be no early resort to civil disobedience.’ He urged the need for a ‘constructive plan of action’. Such a plan should bridge the gap between the Congress’s demands and those of the minorities and princes. Zetland suggested announcing that after the war an all-India body would be set up to prepare a constitution for India as a member of the British Commonwealth. This body must include minorities and the princely states and its composition must be determined by an agreement between the Indians themselves.79
The League’s Lahore Resolution threw these discussions off kilter and Zetland conceded the need for further reflection before making any fresh move in India. On 12 April, the cabinet endorsed Linlithgow’s assessments and decided that ‘it would be inexpedient … to take any action which might be interpreted as a change of policy or a concession to the demands of the Congress’.80 Zetland continued to insist that inaction would not help. ‘When the time is ripe’, he told the cabinet, ‘a solution on the lines I have advocated will require serious consideration.’81 Four weeks later, Zetland was out of office, along with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
2
Defence of India
At the outbreak of war, India’s defence policy and plans were splayed all over the strategic map. From the standpoint of India’s defence, the war came at a most inopportune time. The strategic debates and dilemmas that had exercised defence planners in New Delhi and London in the preceding years had hardly been settled. And the Indian army was barely prepared to face the ruthless tribunal of modern warfare. Yet until the fall of France in June 1940, it seemed as if India’s role in the war might correspond with the plans that had proliferated in the years between the world wars. This was not entirely an illusion, though by clinging to them strategists in India and Britain made subsequent adaptation all the more painful.
In September 1939, the 200,000-strong Indian army was subject to three competing claims: those of internal security, external defence and imperial duties. This had been the case for nearly half a century. Since the Rebellion of 1857, internal security had been a central concern of military policy in India. In 1881, the government of India claimed that ‘the Indian Army is required to maintain internal tranquillity rather than for employment against external foes’.1 As late as 1912, an Army in India committee led by Field Marshal Nicholson had identified the principal mission of the army as ‘maintaining internal security and tranquillity’.2 Although internal security took a back seat during the First World War, it soon returned to the fore. The Kuki-Chin (1917–19) and Saya San (1930–32) rebellions in Burma; chronic unrest in Punjab and the north-west frontier; the Mappila rebellion of 1921 in Malabar; the rise of mass nationalism; the escalation of communal riots – all ensured that internal security remained a top priority in the inter-war years. Only a few months before the Second World War began, the Indian army was busy stamping out the embers of revolt on the north-west frontier fanned by charismatic leaders such as the Faqir of Ipi and the Shami Pir.3
For much of this period, the only serious external threat to India envisaged by military planners was from the north-west. From the late 1870s, the Raj was transfixed by the spectre of Russia, whose swelling boundaries were coming to be coterminous with Afghanistan. This threat was, for the most part, a fantasy, yet military organizations do need enemies for their own survival. So, from Kitchener onwards, successive commanders-in-chief conjured up the threat of a Russian attack – with or without the connivance of Afghanistan – against India’s north-west frontier and advocated focus on external defence. This expectation held even after the Russo-British alliance of 1907 and in the early years of the Bolshevik revolution when Russia lay prostrate. Defence planners in India and London diverted themselves by drawing up a variety of plans – Blue, Pink, Interim – that designed armed advances to meet the enemy at Kabul and Kandahar.4 But this assumption of a threat from Russia now acquired a fresh lease of life with the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939.
The imperial commitments of the Indian army were altogether more contentious. In the nineteenth century, India was the central strategic reservoir of the British Empire and was crucial to securing imperial interests throughout Asia and large patches of Africa. As popular parodists put it,
We don’t want to fight; but, by Jingo, if we do
We won’t go to the front ourselves, but we’ll send the mild Hindoo.5
During the First World War, India’s imperial commitments bloated enormously. The Raj supplied almost 1.5 million troops, nearly three-quarters of whom served in the Middle East. In 1920, Indian troops were still stationed in Iraq and Egypt, Palestine and the Persian Gulf, Aden and Cyprus, Burma and Malaya, North China and Hong Kong.
India’s subsequent unwillingness to provide troops on tap has led some historians to conclude that the government of India was not solicitous of imperial interests in the inter-war years.6 This is misleading, for it overlooks the fact that the Raj discerned a range of interests of its own – not least strategic – in most of these parts. After all, they constituted the informal ‘empire of the Raj’. The central concern of the managers of this sub-imperial system mirrored that of the larger empire: how to work their system on the cheap.
The wrangling between India and Britain over the question of financing the external ventures of the Indian army had been carried on since the 1870s. In 1902, the Indian government had accepted the suggestion of a Royal Commission that it should bear financial responsibility for areas which contained its ‘direct and substantial interests’. These included the Suez Canal, Persia, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. During the 1914–18 war India not only bore a substantial cost in raising and deploying troops, but also made a generous gift to Britain by taking over some of its war debts, worth £100 million. India, as the viceroy put it, was bled ‘absolutely white’ by the war.7
After a short-lived economic recovery in 1919–20, Indian trade followed the worldwide slump of 1920–22. During this period, the exchange rate of the rupee underwent violent fluctuations, so the economy was unable to recover wartime credits.8 The fiscal crisis extended well into the decade after the war and was prolonged by the Great Depression.9 It was in this context that India began to assert its unwillingness to assume wider commitments. Even so, India’s aversion was not so much to sending troops on occasion as necessary as to providing permanent garrisons across the Empire. Thus, in the late 1920s India accepted contingency plans for sending troops to Iraq, the Persian oilfields, Singapore and Shanghai, on the understanding that London would share the bill.
In fending off London’s importunate demands, the Indian government had a handy excuse. Under the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms of 1919, a Central Legislative Assembly of elected Indian members had been created. Although the assembly had no powers to vote on defence, it could on taxation. More importantly, Indian nationalists – even of the moderate and mendicant variety – had long criticized the army’s external forays as well as the Indian government’s financing of them.10 During the inter-war years, the government routinely invoked ‘Indian opinion’ to fob off demands from London that it thought unnecessary.
In 1921, when the Esher Committee recommended placing the Indian army directly under the control of the British government, the viceroy commended to London a resolution passed by the Assembly stating that the Indian army should not be used outside India. In August 1938, when London pressed New Delhi to provide an Imperial Reserve Division at its own cost, the Treasury was told:
Whatever the legal position might be, we are under a moral obligation to consult the Legislature … in the event of a situation arising which rendered desirable the despatch of troops from India to some other theatre of operations, and anyone who thought otherwise was living in a wholly unreal world.11
Just a year later, the viceroy took India to war without e
ven a sidelong glance at the legislature.
By 1935, however, it was becoming clear that India could not duck its imperial commitments. Japan’s deepening penetration into China as well as its more belligerent external posture in Asia portended problems for Britain. As early as 1932, the chiefs of staff warned the Committee of Imperial Defence that a war with Japan would imperil all Britain’s possessions in the Far East – Hong Kong and Singapore were practically undefended – and would threaten the coastline of India as well. Soon after, the cabinet approved the fortification of the Singapore base. The Singapore strategy rested on the hope that the main fleet of the Royal Navy would be free of commitments in Europe. This was belied by Mussolini’s attack on Abyssinia and Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, and buried by Germany’s agreements with Italy and Japan in 1936.12
All this drastically and rapidly changed the context in which India’s imperial role was considered. Italy could threaten imperial communications through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, while Japan could menace imperial interests in the Far East and endanger India’s coastline and shipping in the Indian Ocean. In consequence, the scope of India’s external defence expanded to include the area stretching from Suez, Aden and the Persian Gulf in the west to Singapore in the east. An Expert Committee under Admiral Chatfield stamped its approval on this: ‘India should acknowledge that her responsibility cannot on her own interest be safely limited to the local defence of her land frontiers and coasts.’13 The exhortation was gratuitous. Even before the committee stated its view, officials in India had come round to it. This was hardly surprising, for the arc of India’s security had long been regarded as encompassing these parts of Asia and the Indian Ocean. In February 1938, New Delhi told London that in light of the evolving strategic scenario, ‘It is impossible to ignore the fact that India is likely, in the future, to be called upon to accept wider overseas commitments.’14
In 1939, then, the defence of India continued to encompass the tripartite demands of internal security, frontier defence against the Soviet Union, and external defence in West and East Asia. Despite all the hand-wringing and shadow-boxing with London, New Delhi embarked on war with ever greater demands on the Indian army. The only snag was that the Indian army was hopelessly unprepared. For one thing, attempts at modernization had been wrecked by the parsimony of the treasuries in New Delhi and London. For another, the expanded internal security role in the inter-war years – using the army as essentially an armed constabulary – had militated against the introduction of new technologies and the related organizational reforms. Finally, the general staff in India had remained wedded to outdated concepts of warfare and resisted change.
An inter-departmental committee tasked by the British government in 1938 to look into the modernization of the Indian army recommended several measures, including the creation of a fully modernized imperial reserve division, which would be financially supported by London.15 Modernizers in the Indian army chimed in at this point. A group of younger staff officers, led by Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck, the deputy chief of the general staff, were increasingly concerned at the lack of preparation of the Army in India for a future conflict. They were provided with an opportunity to voice their opinions when the commander-in-chief appointed an in-house modernization committee. The findings of this group fed into the recommendations of the Chatfield committee, of which Auchinleck was also a member.16
The Chatfield committee recommended that London pick up part of the tab for the expanded commitments of the Indian army, and entirely subsidize the modernization of an imperial reserve division. For the programme to be affordable, however, modernization would have to be accompanied by a downsizing of the Indian army. The committee also called for a programme to modernize the military-industrial base in India. The Chatfield committee was right in assuming that India and its army were not yet ready for a modern, industrial war. But it was wrong in assuming that they had until 1944 to implement these changes.
Even before Britain had formally declared war on 3 September 1939, the Raj had made the first moves to help secure its sphere of influence. In keeping with the Chatfield recommendations, India sent out a division-worth of troops – almost 10,000 men – to Egypt, Singapore, Aden, Kenya and Iraq.17
Three days after the war began, New Delhi proactively informed London that it was ‘anxious to take timely steps to render further aid to His Majesty’s Government’. As a first step, India had arranged to increase the output of its munitions factories, not just to meet its own requirements but also to cater for wider needs. Further, it proposed to raise two additional brigade groups: one for reinforcing the defences of Burma and the other for the protection of Anglo-Iranian oilfields or similar duties in the Middle East. It also intended to raise two more brigade groups of around 7,000 men each to replace the ones that would be sent out of India. All these measures, which went well beyond the Chatfield recommendations, would be met from India’s own resources. Although New Delhi was ‘extremely reluctant’ to flag the financial issue at this point, it hoped that an equitable arrangement would soon be worked out.18
In the early months of the war, however, Britain did not draw on any additional Indian resources. London as well as New Delhi remained fixated on the traditional threat to India from Russia via Afghanistan. It was believed that with Britain locked in a long conflict on the continent, ‘it would only be logical for Kremlin to give a free rein to expansionist tendencies inherent in the character of the Soviet state’ – especially in areas of its traditional interest such as Afghanistan.19
The government of Afghanistan was even more apprehensive on this score. For several years, it had hankered after a British guarantee against the threat of aggression from Russia. The Afghan prime minister had even visited London in 1937 to press for such a guarantee – to no avail. Although desultory talks had been carried on until the eve of war, London had been leery of any binding commitment. Britain did not want to tie itself down in advance in a fluid international situation. Moreover, it was well understood that the Indian army – the chief instrument for executing any guarantee – was in the throes of reorganization and consequently was in no shape to assist Afghanistan. The Anglo-French guarantee to Poland raised Afghanistan’s hopes, but London was prepared to offer no more than a treaty of goodwill, non-aggression and mutual consultations. The proposed agreement expressly avoided any military commitment, at the insistence of India. By the time Kabul was informed, the Nazi-Soviet pact had been signed and the idea of such an empty Anglo-Afghan treaty of goodwill was dead on arrival.20
After the war broke out, the Foreign Office and the India Office in London returned to the question of Afghanistan. The preservation of an independent Afghanistan as a buffer state, they asserted, was essential to the defence of India and the Empire. Until very recently there had been no reason to expect Russia to adopt an aggressive policy towards Afghanistan. With the Nazi-Soviet pact, though, that assumption could ‘no longer be safely relied on’. The flip-side of this was the need to keep Afghanistan ‘on our side’. Kabul already had a large contingent of German technicians working on various projects, who might pull it closer to Berlin. It was suggested that the proposed treaty must be coupled with oral assurances that in the event of a crisis Britain and India would go beyond consultation and look at concerted measures for assistance, though these might not involve the despatch of Indian or British forces. As a token of their sincerity, India would immediately send a military mission to Kabul to assess Afghan requirements, provide training for Afghan air force officers in India, and lend technical advisers to the Afghan forces.21
When these proposals were placed before Kabul, the Afghan prime minister took a cautious tack. His overriding concern now was to avoid antagonizing Russia, which did not seem to be bent on an imminent act of aggression. So Kabul procrastinated. The Soviet attack on Finland at the end of November, however, shocked the Afghans. The director of military operations, Brigadier G. N. Molesworth, was sent from In
dia to quietly confer with the Afghans on their military requirements. He quickly realized that the Afghans had no contingency plans – military or diplomatic – on the basis of which assistance could be discussed. Overnight, after their first meeting, the Afghans drew up a ‘stupendous and fantastic list’ of desired war material worth several million pounds. When Molesworth suggested more practical measures of training, the Afghan premier turned evasive, claiming that it would take time for Afghan soldiers to get used to the idea of British training.22
London and New Delhi were increasingly concerned not so much about a ground invasion, which would be rather difficult to mount, as about air attacks on north-west India. The Indian government had at its disposal all of one anti-aircraft battery, consisting of eight 3-inch guns – and not a single fighter aircraft. Apart from any material damage, Soviet air raids would shatter the morale of the defenceless population and dent the prestige of the Raj.23
The war cabinet felt that while any large-scale air attacks were unlikely, ‘even a light scale would make the internal security problem acute’. Even without such attacks, Russia could create trouble for India. The annexation of northern parts of Afghanistan by Russia was considered a ‘feasible proposition’ – one that might topple the Afghan government and spread unrest to the Indian frontier. In turn, Bolshevik propaganda would heighten the internal security problem of India. ‘We may be faced with a civil disobedience campaign in India in the near future’, the chiefs of staff grimly noted, ‘possibly supported and financed by Russia.’ The Indian reservoir of troops might dry up and Britain might even have to send reinforcements to India.24
India's War Page 5
