The British, however, were willing to do nothing. ‘If … Rajagopalachari and friends were able to stifle me in their close embrace’, Linlithgow wrote to Amery, ‘I feel quite sure that the Mahatma would emerge once again upon the stage to give the coup de grâce to British influence in India.’5 Given the evident strains within the Congress, the British government felt it was best to carry on with magisterial inactivity.
In the wake of British reversals in South-East Asia, Nehru realized that Britain was ‘already a second class power’. And his eyes turned towards the country that seemed destined to shape the future of the world: the United States. At the onset of the war, he wrote in the American magazine Fortune, Indians had hoped ‘to be able to play an effective role in the world drama’: ‘Our sympathies were all on one side, our interests coincided with these.’ Britain’s response made it clear that it ‘clings to the past’. Nehru called on the United States to declare that every country was entitled to its freedom, that India was also entitled to frame its own constitution, and that ‘all races and peoples’ must be treated equal.6 The article’s chief merit was its timing. For the United States was now alive to the importance of India.
Before the Second World War began, the United States showed no strategic interest in India. To most Americans, India was a land of fantasy and faith. Popular perceptions of India were shaped by the adventure tales of Rudyard Kipling and exotic Hollywood productions featuring regal maharajas and stern colonial officials. Among the cognoscenti, it was religion that served as a vestibule to India. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Emerson, Thoreau and other Transcendentalists held up Indian spirituality as a refreshing contrast to the materialism of the West. At the Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda of India shot to prominence. His fellow Bengali, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, held out his own version of Indian spiritualism to enthusiastic American audiences during his visits between 1912 and 1930.7
Religion was also the conduit for the transmission of negative images of India. American missionaries, active in India since the early nineteenth century, were appalled at practices such as self-mutilation and torture, the immolation of widows and female infanticide. The influence of such perceptions lingered in popular imagination well into the next century. Helen Bannerman’s Story of Little Black Sambo, for instance, was rife with racist clichés yet a popular book for children. The most notorious case was of Katherine Mayo’s Mother India. Published in 1927, the book presented a sensational picture of the most degenerate aspects of Hindu society and advanced the case for continued British rule in India. Famously dismissed by Gandhi as a ‘drain inspector’s report’, the book sold an astonishing 256,697 copies, making it the biggest best-seller on India, though it also sparked a fiery public debate in ways that were not anticipated by its author.8
By this time, however, some progressive activists – including prominent figures such as the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, Roger Baldwin – and African-American leaders were keenly following the nationalist movement in India and Gandhi’s experiments with non-violent civil disobedience. In 1921, an American, Samuel ‘Satyanand’ Stokes, was even appointed to the All-India Congress Committee.9 Nevertheless, for most Americans Gandhi remained an inscrutable figure and his country a collage of conflicting and remote impressions.
The indifference towards India was reflected in official relations as well. Although George Washington had appointed Benjamin Joy as consul in Calcutta as far back as 1792, the United States saw little need to expand official ties. The Raj moved its capital to New Delhi in 1931, but the American consul stayed put in Calcutta. Commercial exchanges, too, were meagre. American investment in India in the late 1930s amounted to less than $50 million, with over half of this accounted for in missionary schools, hospitals and other non-commercial activities.10
All this changed as war loomed on the horizon. By late 1938, American officials in India were expressing doubts about the loyalty of the Indian army to the Raj and the susceptibility of nationalist sentiment to German or Japanese propaganda. No sooner had war broken out than officials in the State Department began insisting that ‘the Indian attitude towards the War is of great importance’. Assistant secretary of state, Adolf Berle, Jr, head of the Near Eastern Division, dealing with India, was told that there were ‘large American interests in India’. Meanwhile, American officials in India took a sympathetic stance towards the Congress’s demands. The British, they reported, were following a policy of divide-and-rule by deliberately jilting the Congress in favour of the Muslims – a policy that they believed was also underpinned by British military interests in the Middle East. The viceroy’s ‘August offer’ was deemed inadequate; his unwillingness to accept the Congress’s offer of co-operation short-sighted. The beginning of the individual civil disobedience campaign sufficiently alarmed the State Department to demand more frequent reports from India. By May 1941, the US consul general, Thomas Wilson, had concluded that the situation in India was ‘very serious indeed’. The viceroy was a man of ‘small vision’ and too hidebound to manage the crisis. Amery was described as ‘unimaginative’ and unwilling to take ‘a realistic view’ of the problem.11
The American press reflected these views. The ‘August offer’ was criticized as insufficient by such prominent magazines as The New Republic, The Nation and Time. Editorials in traditionally pro-British papers like the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor, as well as others like the Los Angeles Times, were sceptical of the British stance. Even the conservative Reader’s Digest carried a favourable profile of Nehru, written by John and Frances Gunther. American journals also opened up their columns for supporters of Indian nationalism to expound their views: Nehru used these opportunities to present the Congress’s case at strategic points in April 1940 in the Atlantic, and in November 1940 in the Asia.12
Even before sections of the American press grew censorious, the British cabinet was alert to American opinion on India. Indeed, hardly any major decision on India was taken without reference to its impact on public opinion in the United States. Zetland’s criticism of Linlithgow’s ‘do nothing’ policy; Amery’s demand for a fresh declaration in July 1940; Churchill’s rejection of it; Amery’s call for implementing the ‘August offer’: all were influenced by this concern. With a view to keeping a closer tab on American opinion, as well as shaping it, the British government proposed to the State Department in April 1941 the appointment of a senior Indian official to its embassy in Washington. The State Department expressed no objection to the proposed ‘Agent-General’ of India, but sought and obtained the reciprocal appointment of its own ‘Commissioner’ in New Delhi.13
The State Department’s demand reflected its growing realization of the strategic importance of India. The country had recently become a member of the Lend-Lease system, which was approved by the US Congress in March 1941. The Roosevelt administration was well aware of India’s contribution to the war effort. India, the US Treasury noted in May 1941, had already raised over 300,000 men and could ‘greatly increase’ the number. India had sent ‘important forces’ to fight in North and East Africa and supplied garrison troops for the Far East. The Allied operations in Iraq and the Persian Gulf were entirely based on India. Further, from the beginning of the war, India had made a ‘most important contribution’ to war supplies. Indeed, for the past year, the Allies had ‘wholly relied’ on India to supply all their forces in Africa and the Middle East. Both for logistical and strategic reasons, they had accepted India as the centre of the Eastern Supply Group, which aimed at supplying half a million men and substantial naval requirements besides. If India were to fully mobilize its ‘enormous basic internal resources’, it needed to be able to ‘import finished and semi-finished manufactures and certain materials’ for which the United States was the sole source.14
Simultaneously, the State Department was concerned about the situation in the Middle East. And this brought to the fore the political problem of I
ndia. Berle believed that if the political impasse were not resolved, India could become an ‘active danger’ to the war effort in that region. The British seemed to be doing ‘nothing’ about it. Berle recommended sending a formal note to the British government, underlining India’s ‘vast influence’ on the Middle East and the need to convert India into an ‘active, rather than a passive, partner’ in the war. They should ask Britain to ‘promptly explore’ the possibility of granting India equal membership in the British Commonwealth. Berle conceded that this may seem ‘sensational’, but added that ‘this is no time for half measures’.15
At his suggestion, Secretary of State Cordell Hull met the British ambassador, Lord Halifax. In an earlier incarnation, as Lord Irwin, Halifax had been viceroy of India from 1925 to 1931. Widely regarded as a liberal viceroy, he had announced the goal of Dominion status for India, had parleyed with Gandhi, and had been famously denounced by Churchill for ‘drinking tea with treason’.16 Later in the 1930s Halifax had, as foreign secretary, been prominent among the appeasers. When Hull questioned him about the possibility of further ‘liberalizing’ moves towards India, Halifax claimed that conditions in India were ‘really very good’. Indians had self-government in the provinces and had been offered berths in the viceroy’s council. Despite Gandhi’s opposition, support for Britain was very strong. Halifax concluded that his government did not think it ‘feasible or even necessary now to make further liberalizing concessions’.17
There the matter rested – until three months later when the Americans were worried by Japanese strategic moves in the Far East. The US ambassador in London, John Winant, felt that India had a ‘large’ role to play in securing the Far East, and that in the rapidly evolving context, it might be wise for the United States to raise the question of India with Britain. The British, he observed, had emphasized the minority problem as the main obstacle towards a settlement. Winant, however, believed that the absence of such a settlement ‘handicaps the support of war in India itself’. It might be possible, he argued, at least to get the British to announce Dominion status for India within a stated period after the end of the war. Among other advantages, such a move would have ‘a sobering effect upon the Japanese’.18
Berle supported Winant. He suggested to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles that they point out to the British government that this was a ‘more opportune time’ than ever for such a declaration. It would be ‘very helpful’ from the standpoint of American public opinion. Besides, India could become the ‘nucleus of a Far Eastern alliance’, which included China, Australia and New Zealand, and which could hold its own against Japan or possibly even Germany. Welles disagreed. He wrote to Secretary Hull that in his judgement the United States was ‘not warranted’ in suggesting a status for India to Britain. But if the president was inclined to take up the matter, he might wish to discuss it ‘in a very personal and confidential way directly with Mr. Churchill’.19
Three days later Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met secretly off the coast of Newfoundland. While the principal objective of the meeting was to weld the Anglo-American alliance and discuss grand strategy, a statement of war aims – the Atlantic Charter – attracted attention the world over. In fact, the Charter had emerged without much deliberation.20 Over dinner on 9 August, Churchill and Roosevelt talked about the possibility of a joint statement. The next morning the British advanced the draft of a five-point declaration. The third point originally read: ‘they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; they are concerned only to defend the rights of freedom of speech and of thought without which such choosing must be illusory’. Welles, however, was dubious of the American Congress and public support for such a sweeping pledge to defend human rights – rights that had been abolished by the Axis countries. Roosevelt accordingly suggested removing the second clause and substituting it with: ‘and they hope that self-government may be restored to those from whom it has been forcibly removed’. Churchill agreed, only suggesting adding ‘sovereign-rights and’ before ‘self-government’. Obviously all this was in the context of European countries under enemy occupation.
The Atlantic Charter took on a life of its own and sent ripples of excitement through the colonial world. The Burmese premier asked if it applied to his country, and dashed off to London to obtain an answer. Savarkar of the Hindu Mahasabha wrote to Roosevelt urging him to state whether or not the Atlantic Charter applied to India and whether the United States guaranteed freedom to India within a year of the war’s end. If the United States failed to affirmatively respond, ‘India cannot but construe this as another stunt like the War aims of the last Anglo-German war’.21 Indeed, the response to the Atlantic Charter was comparable in enthusiasm to that evoked among colonial subjects by Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points after the First World War.22
Amery informed the war cabinet that the third point of the Charter had ‘excited wide-spread interest’ and that an authoritative statement was expected from the British government spelling out its implications for India.23 Amery himself loathed the Charter. He wrote to Linlithgow of its ‘meaningless platitudes and dangerous ambiguities’. Article three, he blithely claimed, had been inserted as a ‘reassurance’ that the Allies were not out to ‘democratise countries that prefer a different form of government’ and that it had already given ‘substantial comfort’ to Salazar in Portugal as well as ‘friendly dictators elsewhere’.24 The lord privy seal and leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, however, stated that the Charter had universal applicability. Churchill scotched any such suggestion. On 9 September, he told the Commons that article three applied only to countries under Nazi occupation and that it did ‘not qualify in any way’ the various statements made about India from time to time.
In India, the reaction to Churchill’s comment was uniformly critical. Even such loyalists as the Punjab premier, Sikandar Hayat Khan, termed it the strongest rebuff ever received by India. Sir N. N. Sircar, a leading light among the liberals, said that Churchill had offered India ‘hot ice’. The Central Legislative Assembly passed a resolution demanding the application of the Atlantic Charter to India. The Council of State adopted a resolution that the non-applicability of the Charter would ‘prejudice the war effort’ of India.25 Gandhi was typically witty and incisive in his comments:
What is the Atlantic Charter? It went down the ocean as soon as it was born! I do not understand it. Mr. Amery denies that India is fit for democracy, while Mr. Churchill states the Charter could not apply to India. Force of circumstances will falsify their declarations.26
Consul General Wilson cabled the State Department that Churchill’s statement was a ‘most unfortunate pronouncement’, one that went ‘far toward banishing perhaps forever’ any goodwill towards him in India. As for the British Government of India, he wrote dyspeptically, there was ‘no leadership worthy of the name anywhere to be found’.27
Churchill had, in fact, shared in advance the text of his speech with Ambassador Winant, especially since it had referred to a statement issued jointly with the United States. Winant felt that Churchill’s references to the inapplicability of article three to countries like India was unwise. It ran ‘counter to the general public interpretation’ of the article. It would intensify charges of imperialism and leave Britain with ‘a do nothing policy’ towards India. Minutes before Churchill left for the Commons, Winant urged him to omit the offending paragraph in his speech. The prime minister was determined to go ahead, however. He told Winant that this position was approved by the cabinet and was, in any case, a matter of internal British politics.28
On learning of this, officials at the State Department urged that the matter be brought to the president’s notice. Since Churchill had offered an interpretation of the joint declaration, it was an opportune moment to raise with the British government the question of Indian politics and do so along the lines suggested earlier by Winant. The political situation in India, it was felt, was ‘d
eteriorating rapidly’ owing to the stalemate between the government and the nationalists. This was in turn preventing India from doing its best to help win the war. Welles yet again threw a wet blanket on the idea. Interestingly, he now held that if article three had ‘any real meaning, it should be regarded as all-inclusive’ and in consequence applicable to India. Yet the United States, at least for the present, was ‘facing a question of expediency’. He had been told by Halifax – the ‘most liberal viceroy that India has ever had’ – that British officials were unanimous that an immediate grant of Dominion status would trigger ‘internal dissension in India on a very wide scale’ and render it thoroughly useless for the war effort. US officials were not familiar with the problems of India. Nor did the issue mean ‘very much to public opinion’ at home. Above all, Churchill would feel that the administration was taking advantage of British dependence on America to force its hand against its considered judgement.29
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, thinking within the administration underwent important changes. Apart from advocates in the State Department, intelligence assessments by the Office of the Coordinator of Information argued that the United States had to help arrest the downward political slide in India.30 Thus when Churchill arrived in Washington two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt gingerly broached the question of India. The only available account of this meeting is in Churchill’s memoir. The prime minister claimed to have ‘reacted so strongly and at such length that he [Roosevelt] never raised it verbally again’. Towards the end of his trip, Churchill confidently informed his colleagues that they would not have ‘any trouble with American opinion’.31 This judgement was premature. For Churchill underestimated American leverage on India.
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