India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  On the evening of 18 February Chiang met Gandhi. With Soong Mei-ling translating, they spoke for some five hours. Gandhi expressed sympathy for China and vowed not to obstruct British aid to the country. He explained his idea of satyagraha, his ‘weapon of war’ – a weapon that ‘makes no noise, which does not kill, but which, if anything, gives life’. All the while Gandhi worked his spinning-wheel. ‘You will have to teach me this’, said Soong Mei-ling. Come to my ashram, replied Gandhi. ‘Let the Generalissimo leave you here as his ambassador, and I adopt you as my daughter.’ Soong was charmed, but Chiang could not persuade Gandhi to change his stance towards the war. ‘These foes’, said Chiang, ‘may not listen to active civil resistance, and may even make the preaching of non-violence impossible.’ Gandhi responded that in the event of a Japanese invasion he would, as always, look to God for guidance.57

  Chiang was disappointed. ‘My expectations’, he wrote in his diary, ‘were too great.’ Gandhi, he concluded, ‘knows and loves only India, and doesn’t care about other places and people’.58 ‘What about the Sheikh of China?’ quipped Patel to Gandhi’s secretary. Gandhi replied that Chiang came ‘empty handed and left empty handed. He amused himself and entertained me. But I cannot say that I learnt anything.’ Gandhi was cold to Chiang’s call: ‘Help the British anyhow. They are better than the others and will improve further hereafter.’59

  Before flying out of Calcutta, Chiang addressed the people of India in a speech broadcast in English by Soong Mei-ling. Reminding his listeners about the Nanjing Massacre, he warned them not to place their hopes on Japan’s anti-imperialist pretensions. Like Nehru, he also linked China’s freedom with that of India and called on the British to devolve power to India.

  On returning to China, Chiang sent a message to Roosevelt from Kunming. If the Indian problem was not ‘immediately and urgently solved, the danger will be daily increasing’. If the British government waited until the Japanese bombed India and Indian morale collapsed, or if it waited until the Japanese army invaded India, ‘it will certainly be too late’. The danger was ‘extreme’. If Britain did not ‘fundamentally change’ its policy towards India, it would amount to ‘presenting India to the enemy and inviting them to quickly occupy’ the country.60

  Even as Roosevelt read Chiang’s cable, his representative in London, Harriman, was meeting Churchill. The prime minister emphasized to Harriman the need to avoid taking any political step that would antagonize the Muslims of India. Around 75 per cent of the Indian troops were Muslims, he claimed. (This was a gross exaggeration: the figure was closer to 34 per cent.) There was in India, he assured Harriman, ‘ample manpower willing to fight’. Nevertheless, his cabinet was actively considering the next move towards India, and he would keep the president informed.61

  The war cabinet was indeed seized of the matter. Days after America entered the war, Attlee had chaired a cabinet meeting in Churchill’s absence. The minister of labour – the senior Labour politician Ernest Bevin – flagged the prevalent anxiety in Britain about the position of India from the standpoint of both defence and politics. Was British policy, he asked, ‘calculated to get the fullest war effort from India?’62 Although the cabinet agreed to consider this question at the earliest opportunity, Churchill was set against it. He wrote to Attlee from Washington, warning him of the danger of raising this issue – never mind making any moves – when the ‘enemy is upon the frontier’. The prime minister conveniently elided the fact that he himself had previously noted that the time for action would be when the enemy stood at the gate. He now argued that they could not ‘get more out of India’ by bringing in the Congress. If anything it would ‘paralyse action’. Besides, Indian troops owed their allegiance to the king emperor: ‘the rule of the Congress and Hindoo Priesthood machine would never be tolerated by a fighting race’.63

  When a group of Indian liberals led by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru petitioned the prime minister in January 1942 to consider some ‘bold stroke [of] far-sighted statesmanship’, Linlithgow and Amery stood by Churchill. The viceroy had ‘no doubt’ about the ‘wisdom of standing firm’. Admittedly, he would not have an easy hand to play, but he could hold his own: ‘Vital thing is that people should stand firm at home.’ Amery agreed that there was ‘nothing to be done at this moment’.64

  The lord privy seal disagreed with them. Attlee found the viceroy’s stance ‘distinctly disturbing’ and ‘defeatist’. Congress leaders, he felt, were looking for a ‘way out of the impasse of their own creation’. Expressing concern about Linlithgow’s judgement, he wondered if someone should not be sent on a political mission to India to bring its leaders together. Attlee pointed out to Amery that this feeling was shared on the Conservative as well as Labour benches in Parliament.65 The viceroy dug in his heels, however, arguing that India had no ‘natural association’ with the Empire: it had been conquered and held by force.

  In a memorandum to the cabinet on 2 February, Attlee pulled no punches. He excoriated Amery for thinking that they could weather the storm: ‘Such a hand-to-mouth policy is not statesmanship.’ The viceroy’s ‘crude imperialism’ was ‘short-sighted and suicidal’. It was dangerous, Attlee argued, to ignore the current situation. For one thing, there was the possibility of a ‘Pan-Asiatic movement led by Japan’. For another, the Allies had accepted China as an equal. An Indian would wonder why ‘he, too, cannot be master in his own house’. Taking a dig at Churchill, he added that Indians would not forget their ‘large contribution in blood, tears and sweat’. Finally, the United States was leaning ‘strongly to the idea of Indian freedom’. Lord Durham, he reminded his colleagues, had in the nineteenth century saved Canada for the British Empire. ‘We need a man to do in India what Durham did in Canada.’66

  Members of the cabinet agreed with Attlee that it was dangerous to perpetuate the present deadlock. Yet it was also difficult to conceive of an interim step that would not prejudice the ultimate outcome after the war ended. Amery was asked to prepare a draft statement. Facing flak from his Labour colleagues, Churchill hit upon an idea. The National Defence Council could be enlarged to a body of 100 members representing the provincial assemblies and the princes. Not only would this body discuss the war effort, but after the war it would proceed to frame a constitution for India. In the meantime, the viceroy’s Executive Council would continue with business as usual.

  Amery felt that the idea had ‘some characteristic strokes of Winston’s genius’. On 11 February, he wrote to Linlithgow: ‘Please take strongest peg you can before continuing.’ And he went on to outline the scheme which the prime minister proposed to broadcast. Linlithgow was astounded. Churchill’s plan, he replied, was based on ‘a complete failure to comprehend’ the problem in India. By conflating the war effort and constitutional functions it created a hopeless muddle. Besides, neither the Congress nor the Muslim League would be amenable to the idea.67 Amery and Churchill beat a hasty retreat.

  A week later, Churchill was forced by the failures in Malaya and Burma to reconstitute the war cabinet. Attlee was designated deputy prime minister and Stafford Cripps, erstwhile ambassador to the Soviet Union, took over Attlee’s old portfolio as well as becoming leader of the Commons. The deck was now stacked against the ‘do nothing’ stance of Churchill and Amery.

  By the time Churchill met Harriman on 26 February, the cabinet was considering a new draft of a declaration for India produced by Amery. Soon Cripps pitched in with his own version. After several sittings, the newly formed India Committee of the war cabinet produced an almost final draft on 3 March. The salient points of the declaration were, first, that the objective was to make India an equal Dominion with the right to secede from the British Commonwealth. Second, immediately after the war ended a constitution-making body would be elected. The princely states would also join this body. Third, and most significant, any province that did not accept the new constitution could effectively secede from India. During the war, the British government would have to shoulder the full responsibility for
India’s defence, but it invited the immediate and effective participation of the main Indian leaders in the war effort.68 In short, the declaration tried to bridge the Congress’s demand for a constituent assembly with the Muslim League’s demand for ‘Pakistan’, and held out the prospect of office to all.

  Churchill had serious misgivings. Informing Roosevelt of the proposal, he added that he did ‘not want to throw India into chaos on the eve of invasion’.69 The draft was considered by the full cabinet on 5 March. In presenting it, Churchill made clear his own bias against the document. There was much confusion among cabinet members about its import. However, Churchill and Amery had an eye on America. Two days later, the prime minister informed Roosevelt that they were ‘still persevering to find some conciliatory and inspiring process’.70 Meanwhile the draft was assailed from several directions: by Conservative members of cabinet, the viceroy, the commander-in-chief of India, and even the governor of the Punjab. Despite multiple amendments, the draft did not satisfy everyone in London, let alone India. In a bid to save the process, Cripps offered to go to India and ascertain the willingness of Indian leaders to accept the proposal. On 9 March, the war cabinet assented to Cripps’ offer with evident relief.71

  In the meantime, Linlithgow threatened to resign in protest. He was persuaded by Churchill to stay and Amery sought to assuage the viceroy’s concerns about the proposal. It was in essence ‘fairly conservative’. The Congress’s horns would come out the minute it realized that ‘the nest contains the Pakistan cuckoo’s egg’. In any case, Cripps would not ‘go outside his brief’ and try to commit New Delhi and London to ‘really dangerous courses’. In explaining the decision, Amery stressed the ‘pressure [from] outside, upon Winston from Roosevelt’ as a prime factor.72

  The Cripps Mission was clearly intended to head-off further American intrusion into Indian affairs. It was impeccably timed. Hours after the mission was approved, the Roosevelt administration announced the appointment of an American advisory mission to assist the war effort in India. The head of the mission, Louis Johnson, was appointed as the president’s special representative.73

  The next day Roosevelt wrote directly to Churchill. Expressing ‘much diffidence’, he suggested for India lessons from the history of the United States. Between 1783 and 1789, the Thirteen States had formed a ‘stop-gap government’ by joining in the Articles of Confederation – an arrangement that was replaced by the union under the US constitution. Roosevelt suggested setting up a ‘temporary Dominion Government’ in India, headed by ‘a small representative group, covering different castes, occupations, religions and geographies’. This government would have executive and administrative powers over finances, railways, telegraph and other ‘public services’. It could also be charged with setting up a body to consider a more permanent government for India. Having put forth these radical ideas, Roosevelt wrote: ‘For the love of Heaven don’t bring me into this, though I do want to be of help. It is, strictly speaking, none of my business, except insofar as it is a part and parcel of the successful fight that you and I are making.’74

  The studied phrasing of the president’s closing lines would not have been lost on Churchill. India was the United States’ business.

  10

  Declarations for India

  ‘The most important event this week’, the BBC’s Indian listeners were told in mid-March 1942, ‘is not military but political.’ It was the appointment of Stafford Cripps to go to India and place before its leaders a scheme worked out by the British government. The broadcaster, George Orwell, admitted that little was known about the details of the scheme, but insisted that ‘no one now alive in Britain is more suited to conduct the negotiations’. The terms of his praise made Cripps sound almost like a British Gandhi: ‘a man of great personal austerity, a vegetarian, a teetotaller and a devout practising Christian’. Cripps’ outstanding quality, Orwell added, was his ‘utter unwillingness to compromise his political principles’. A friend of India, he had served ‘brilliantly’ in Moscow as Britain’s wartime ambassador. Everyone in Britain, Orwell concluded, was delighted to see this mission undertaken by a ‘gifted, trustworthy and self-sacrificing’ man.1

  The failure of Cripps’ mission a month later deflated the hopes raised by his appointment and dealt a severe blow to all who desired India’s full participation in the war. No sooner had Cripps returned to London than the first accounts of his mission began to be published. Scores more would be published in the months and years ahead. Indeed, no aspect of India’s war has been more closely examined than the intricacies of Cripps’ negotiations. The broad outlines of the story are worth recalling, however.2

  Cripps reached India on 22 March 1942 and was soon engaged in a staggering number of meetings with Indian leaders of all persuasions. In his very first meeting with Congress President Abul Kalam Azad, it became clear that the Congress’s main interest lay in his proposals about immediate arrangements. The declaration, an official observed, was merely ‘the wrapper round a pound of tea’: the control of the government of India. Cripps said that the new Executive Council – except for the commander-in-chief – would consist entirely of Indians chosen by the viceroy from lists provided by the different Indian parties. Although the system of government would not be changed, the viceroy would function as a ‘constitutional head like the King in the United Kingdom’. Azad took this to mean that the viceroy’s special powers and veto would be rescinded. And here lay a major misunderstanding that would curdle into distrust. Much of their discussion, however, centred on Azad’s demand for an Indian defence minister and its implications for the position and role of the commander-in-chief.

  Jinnah, too, proved receptive to Cripps’ idea. Surprised that his demand for ‘Pakistan’ was so readily conceded, he expressed willingness to help mobilize India for its own defence. Furthermore, Jinnah saw no great difficulty in changing the Executive Council, so long as the viceroy consulted him and treated the Council as a cabinet. The problem of securing the co-operation of the two main political parties seemed to have been solved. Gandhi, however, struck a discordant note. ‘If this is your entire proposal to India’, he told Cripps, ‘I would advise you to take the next plane home.’3 Unlike Azad, he paid more attention to the plans for the future of India, and he saw these as portending the Balkanization of the country. Gandhi urged the Congress Working Committee to reject the ‘post-dated cheque’ – a crafty journalist would add ‘on a crashing bank’ – though he left it to Nehru to discuss the proposals with Rajagopalachari and others.

  Subsequent meetings with Rajagopalachari and Nehru turned on the question of the defence portfolio. At a press conference on 29 March, Cripps made public the declaration for India. The paragraph on defence arrangements had been reworded to affirm that the task of organizing India’s defence must be the responsibility of the government of India, with the co-operation of the peoples of India. Linlithgow now intervened and insisted that defence functions assigned to an Indian member of the Executive Committee should in no way impinge on the functions of the commander-in-chief. By 1 April, it seemed as if the mission had failed. Linlithgow’s own observation was: ‘Goodbye Mr. Cripps!’ Churchill sent a consolatory telegram praising Cripps for his efforts, and significantly adding: ‘the effect of our proposals has been most beneficial in the United States and in large circles here’.

  Cripps persisted and sought to work within the remit of the viceregal proviso, which had been approved by the cabinet on the understanding that defence would not be held by a Congressman. Nehru and Azad conveyed the Congress Working Committee’s opposition to this idea but continued the negotiations all the same. Tortuous talks followed on slicing and dicing the functions of defence between the member and the commander-in-chief. The dominant factor in the Working Committee’s mind, Nehru observed, was the ‘imminent peril to India’ and their desire to throw their weight behind the war effort. Towards this end, they were prepared to swallow ‘many a bitter pill’.4 Meanwhile, the viceroy i
nitiated direct communication with the prime minister and tossed a new point into the mix. His Executive Council could not, under any circumstances, function like a cabinet, where majority decisions were decisive.

  Cripps had a reprieve by way of the arrival in Delhi of Louis Johnson, President Roosevelt’s special representative. In his first cable home, Johnson requested the president to intercede with Churchill to prevent the failure of Cripps’ mission. Although Roosevelt refused to intervene, he wished to be kept informed of developments. Thereafter, Johnson worked hard with Cripps and Nehru to try and carve out an arrangement whereby the division of labour on defence could be satisfactory to both sides. Eventually, it was not just on defence but also on the functioning of the Executive Council that Cripps’ mission foundered. The Congress was clear that in a ‘National Government’ the Council had to function as a cabinet and the viceroy could not overrule it. Cripps thought that this was a question of devising procedural conventions, but Churchill dived in at this juncture and forbade Cripps from offering any further elaborations on the proposal. The Congress Working Committee’s rejection swiftly followed. On 10 April, the Cripps Mission was at an end.

  Churchill and his Conservative colleagues were relieved at the outcome. Amery wondered if there wasn’t ‘a shade of truth’ in the Congress’s claim that Cripps had led them up the garden path. Even so, he felt ‘like someone who has proposed for family or financial reasons to a particularly unprepossessing damsel and finds himself lucky enough to be rejected’.5 The outcome of the Cripps Mission was not quite as benign. The failure led to considerable acrimony between Cripps and the Congress leadership. Cripps put the blame on Gandhi’s baleful influence on his colleagues, and subsequently claimed that the communal problem was an insuperable barrier. Nehru held that Cripps had been constrained by Churchill and had dishonourably gone back on his original offer.