India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  The reasons for the failure continue to be debated by historians. Some argue that it was a ‘Churchill–Linlithgow’ axis that cut Cripps down to size. Others contend that neither the British government nor the Congress trusted each other: Cripps disappeared into the crevasse opened up by their mutual mistrust. Historians, however, have been less interested in the wider fallout of the Cripps Mission, especially its international ramifications. This is surprising considering Cripps was sent to India with more than one eye towards public opinion, particularly in the United States. The aftermath of his mission was arguably more important in the context of the war than the endlessly fascinating finer points of his negotiations.

  The first consequence of the failure was a breach in relations between British socialists, both within and outside the Labour Party, and their Indian comrades within and outside the Congress. This gravely weakened, if not entirely undermined, the support for a saner policy towards India in Britain. Indian socialists differed from Nehru in their assessment of the reasons for Cripps’ failure. Ram Manohar Lohia, a young turk of the Congress Socialist Party, wrote a scathing pamphlet, The Mystery of Sir Stafford Cripps, blaming Cripps himself for the outcome. Cripps’ ‘abuse of the Congress’, he wrote, was ‘clear and definite’. Cripps might have been ‘part robot’ in the hands of Churchill, but he was also ‘part advocate’. ‘He advocated the old imperialist plea of communal differences in India rather too well to be a machine.’ Cripps, Lohia observed, was a European socialist and not a ‘world citizen’. He belonged to ‘the more modest, the less blood-and-iron, and the more arguing species of imperialists’. Hadn’t he refused to take sides on Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, arguing that it was a ‘struggle between Italian capitalism and Ethiopian feudalism’? In any event, wrote Lohia, there could be no more ‘post-dated cheques’. Unless Gandhi’s colleagues pulled him back from a complete showdown with the Raj, he may ‘soon succeed in providing India with a full cash settlement’.6

  Lohia’s assessment of the mission, especially his ad hominem attack on Cripps, wounded British socialists. More cutting perhaps was the criticism from closer quarters. In June 1942, the Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand published a piece on the Cripps Mission in the Fortnightly magazine. Apart from being an acclaimed writer and protégé of the Bloomsbury group, Anand was well known among the British Left for his anti-fascist activism – including a mandatory stint in Spain – as well as his work for the India Independence League in London. Following the onset of the war, Anand had distanced himself from his colleagues in the League, who echoed the Congress’s position. ‘He is genuinely anti-fascist’, Orwell noted in his diary, ‘and has done violence to his feelings, and probably to his reputation, backing Britain up because he recognizes that Britain is objectively on the anti-fascist side.’7

  The failure of the Cripps Mission breached the dykes of Anand’s restraint. Written as a letter to a British working-class friend, Anand’s article regurgitated Gandhi’s criticism of the offer as a ‘post-dated cheque’ – one that promised the ‘Ulsterization’ and ‘Balkanization’ of India. Furthermore, the British government was ‘not willing to concede any real power’ to an Indian defence minister. ‘The patent absurdity of expecting an Indian Defence Minister, one of whose chief functions was to organize canteens, to inspire people to fight for their motherland is obvious.’ No ‘self-respecting’ Indian leader could take up such an ‘abject and humiliating position’. Those who sought to defend Cripps and the war cabinet were indulging in nothing more than ‘the sanctimonious humbug of bad propaganda’. Cripps himself was talking ‘almost like Amery’. India was facing Japan with its hands tied to its back. ‘Such is the invidious position’, Anand concluded, ‘to which Nationalist India has been forced by a recalcitrant government.’8

  This letter, along with others denouncing various aspects of the Raj and demanding independence for India, was published by Anand in September 1942 as Letters on India. Leonard Woolf, the distinguished Bloomsbury of socialist and anti-imperialist bent, offered to write a preface to the book being published by the Labour Book Service. Woolf’s preface took the form of a letter to Anand. It curiously criticized the ‘dangerously biased’ politics of Anand’s pro-Congress case and the starkness of his portrait of British rule in India. Anand was taken aback. He thought Woolf had gone ‘to the Amery extreme’ and denied having sought a preface from him. Anand insisted that his publisher carry his own rejoinder to Woolf at the beginning of the book.9

  The book caused a flutter in the socialist dovecotes of London. Among those who took exception to it was Orwell. Following the collapse of Cripps’ mission, Orwell had assured the (mainly American) readers of the Partisan Review that while Cripps’ standing might have been damaged in India, it remained intact in Britain. The negotiations had been opposed by the ‘pro-Japanese faction in the Indian Congress party’ and ‘right-wing Tories’ in Britain.10 In reviewing Anand’s book, Orwell disclaimed any ‘serious disagreement’. He even took a dig at Woolf for being offended at the impression conveyed by Anand that ‘Indian nationalism is a force actually hostile to Britain and not merely a pleasant little game of blimp-baiting’. Yet Orwell held that Indian nationalism was racist and xenophobic. ‘Most Indians who are politically conscious hate Britain so much’, Orwell patronizingly claimed, ‘that they have ceased to bother about the consequences of an Axis victory.’11

  Orwell’s own ideas for India were seemingly more radical, but in fact were even more limited than the Cripps offer. India, he wrote to fellow socialist Tom Wintringham, should be ‘declared independent immediately’ and an ‘interim national government’ formed on a ‘proportional basis’. All political parties would be required to co-operate fully in the war effort, but the ‘existing administration to be disturbed as little as possible during the war period’.12 The failure of Cripps’ mission, in fact, brought out Orwell’s submerged prejudices. He noted with approval Wintringham’s observation that ‘in practice the majority of Indians are inferior to Europeans, and one can’t help feeling this and, after a while, acting accordingly’.13 The gulf between British and Indian socialists – the Orwells and the Lohias – would remain unbridged for the rest of the war. In the absence of any moderating influence from the Left, the British government pursued a rock-ribbed policy towards Indian nationalists for much of the remainder of the war.

  Even Orwell realized, however, that rather more than opinion in Britain, it was public opinion in America that counted. As he glumly wrote in his diary after Cripps had returned, ‘American opinion will soon swing back and begin putting all the blame for the Indian situation on the British’.14

  Churchill was all along concerned about influencing American opinion. As soon as he received Cripps’ cable claiming that the Congress had rejected his proposals on the ‘widest grounds’, Churchill passed it on to Roosevelt. The prime minister also sent a copy of his cable to Cripps, wherein he observed that the effect of the mission on Britain and the United States was ‘wholly favourable’. However, Louis Johnson had already written to the president that the Congress’s rejection was ‘a masterpiece and will appeal to free men everywhere’. Johnson pinned the blame squarely on Churchill. Cripps and Nehru could overcome the problem ‘in 5 minutes if Cripps had any freedom or authority’. London, he wrote, ‘wanted a Congress refusal’.15

  On the afternoon of 11 April, Roosevelt sent a private message to Churchill urging him to postpone Cripps’ departure from India and ask him to make ‘a final effort’. The president observed that Churchill had misread the mood in America. ‘The feeling is almost universally held here’ that Britain was unwilling to go the distance despite concessions by the Congress party. Roosevelt warned that if the negotiations were allowed to collapse and India was invaded by Japan, ‘the prejudicial reaction on American public opinion can hardly be over-estimated’. Cripps was already on his way home. Churchill sent an emollient reply to Roosevelt: ‘Anything like a serious difference between you and me would break my hear
t and surely deeply injure both our countries at the height of this terrible struggle.’16

  Although Roosevelt did not lean any further on Churchill, the prime minister took note of his warning about public perception in America. And the British embassy in Washington swung into action.

  Even while Cripps was in India, Britain’s ambassador, Lord Halifax, had argued in a nationally broadcast speech that the Congress party was not prepared to assume responsibility for defending India, nor indeed for maintaining law and order. After Cripps had conceded failure, the British embassy persisted with this line of propaganda, adding that the communal divisions in India were another reason for the failure. These arguments were faithfully reflected in prominent pro-British newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post in the immediate aftermath of the mission.17 American newspapers also picked up on statements by Amery and Cripps in the House of Commons, which pointed to the Congress and the communal problem for the failure of the mission.

  Cripps himself facilitated the next salvoes in the propaganda in the United States. Towards the end of April 1942, a Canadian member of Cripps’ team, Graham Spry, was sent to the United States to expound the official version. Spry toured America for ten weeks and briefed more than a hundred groups on the ‘true’ story of the Cripps Mission.18 In his talks with US officials, Spry set himself two tasks: to dispel the notion that Churchill had in any way scuttled the mission; and to attribute the blame ‘almost entirely’ to Gandhi’s hold over his colleagues as well as their ‘unwillingness to accept political responsibility during wartime’. In a bid to thwart any American move, Spry observed that there was ‘little likelihood or possibility of a solution’ in India.19

  The climax of Spry’s trip was the half an hour he spent with Roosevelt. Jabbing periodically into a Hitler pin-cushion on his table, the president explained the relevance of the Thirteen States’ experience to India. Roosevelt came to the point: ‘Some people believe that the mission would have been successful if the instructions had not been changed during the later stages of the negotiations. Can you tell me if there is anything to that – were there any restrictions placed on Cripps’ instructions?’ Spry recited the disingenuous lines in a cable from Cripps, asking him to assure the president that he been ‘loyally supported’ by all his colleagues in London and India.20

  Meanwhile, Cripps had enlisted a well-known historian as a handmaiden for propaganda in America. Sir Reginald Coupland had been in Delhi writing a report on Indian constitutional problems when Cripps had landed. He became part of the ‘Crippery’ and maintained a meticulous diary and notes. Cripps had initially wanted Coupland to write an article for Life magazine. Coupland did better.21 In June 1942, he published under the Oxford University Press imprint a sixty-page pamphlet, The Cripps Mission, lauding Cripps’ offer as a ‘Declaration of Indian Independence’ and sharply criticizing the Congress for spurning it. Coupland’s central argument was fabricated. The Congress, he claimed, had rejected an offer of a cabinet government in which the viceroy would ‘make it a custom to deal with his Council as far as possible as if it were a Cabinet’.22 No such offer had been made by Cripps to the Congress, but coming from the Beit Professor of Colonial History at Oxford, it naturally carried credibility. By the summer of 1942, propagandists of the British government were chuffed by their campaign: ‘The Cripps negotiations did a successful propaganda job … we were able to exploit the situation.’23

  The Congress, in turn, struggled to get its version of events heard in America. At Louis Johnson’s urging, Nehru had written directly to Roosevelt, expressing the Congress’s continued eagerness ‘to do our utmost for the defence of India and to associate ourselves for the larger causes of freedom and democracy’.24 Following his exchange with Churchill, Roosevelt did not reply to Nehru. Matters were made worse by Gandhi’s obiter dicta on the United States. In May 1942, he told the press that the United States should have stayed out of the war. Criticizing racial policies in the US, he added that Americans were ‘worshipers of Mammon’. The following month, he called the presence of American soldiers in India a ‘bad job’ and the country itself a ‘partner in Britain’s guilt’.25 Gandhi’s subsequent calls for Britain to leave India were spun by the British embassy in Washington as indicative of his alleged sympathy for Japan.

  In this contest over American hearts and minds, the Congress eventually found some useful allies: American journalists, who had descended on India in the summer of 1942. To be sure, not all of them were sympathetic to the Congress’s stance, but at least two influential voices weighed in on their behalf. Louis Fischer of The Nation landed in India just as Cripps was leaving. Fischer had spent long years in Moscow, during which time he had got to know Cripps. He had also met Nehru a few times in Europe in the 1930s. Fischer had returned to the US in 1941 and had plunged into a lecture tour where he made the case for a post-war world without imperialism. India naturally featured large in his arguments. Fischer knew senior State Department officials, including Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. His trip to India had, in fact, been facilitated by Welles.26

  In Delhi, Fischer met Nehru and requested him to facilitate an interview with Gandhi. Nehru wrote to Gandhi’s secretary, who in turn promptly welcomed Fischer to Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha. On the night of 3 June 1942, Fischer reached Wardha after a long, hot and dusty journey by train. He spent a full week with Gandhi, conversing with him on a range of subjects and sampling the ashram’s austere regime. Cripps came up in their first meeting. Gandhi explained the reasons for his dissatisfaction with the proposal. Interestingly, he also made a cogent case for a civilian defence member. In war there must be ‘civilian control of the military’. For instance, ‘If the British in Burma wish to destroy the golden pagoda because it is a beacon to Japanese airplanes, then I say you cannot destroy it.’ The British, said Gandhi with a touch of exaggeration, ‘offered us wartime tasks like the running of canteens and the printing of stationery, which are of minor significance’. During his stay in Wardha, Fischer also met other leaders of the Congress Working Committee, and in particular Azad and Nehru, who briefed him on their understanding of what Cripps had and, importantly, had not offered. Azad specifically confirmed that the Congress had not – contrary to Cripps’ claims – envisioned being a majority on the Executive Council.27

  Fischer’s stint in India overlapped with that of another influential journalist, Edgar Snow. Although junior to Fischer by a decade, Snow too had spent many years outside the United States – in his case in China, where he made a name for himself with his book Red Star over China, published in 1937. Unlike Fischer, though, Snow had been to India previously, in 1931, when he covered Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement. On returning to America in 1941, Snow began to take a keener interest in India. Like many anti-colonial Americans, he drew an unfavourable contrast between the British Empire and the United States’ own record in the Philippines. Soon he had an offer to go to India as a war correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post. In February 1942, he met President Roosevelt and discussed whether India ‘might soon become an American problem’. Roosevelt asked him to write from India if he learnt of anything interesting and to report to him on returning home. The president also asked Snow to tell Nehru to write to him.28

  Snow reached India in late April 1942. The mood among Indians was sombre in the wake of the Cripps Mission. ‘Despondency was more widespread than before his [Cripps’] arrival’, he noted. Among senior British officials, however, he found a ‘curious sense of relief’. On 1 May, Snow travelled with a US diplomat to Allahabad, where the All-India Congress Committee had convened. There he met Nehru and Rajagopalachari. ‘Cripps is a terrible diplomat, simply terrible!’ said Nehru. Cripps’ ideas about a reformed Executive Council would have left Indians as ‘mere puppets’. Yet he did not blame Cripps for the failure: ‘this combination of Churchill, Amery and Linlithgow is the worst we’ve had to face for many years’. Snow also met the viceroy, who candidly said that he had foreseen the o
utcome. ‘Democracy?’ said Linlithgow. ‘This country will break up when we leave. There won’t be a united democratic India for another hundred years.’ Snow then travelled to Wardha. Sevagram ashram, he thought, was ‘a cross between a third-rate dude ranch and a refugee camp’. Gandhi explained to him his ideas on non-violence and his plans for the coming showdown with the Raj.29

  On returning home, Fischer and Snow wrote important articles drawing on numerous conversations with Indian and British leaders. These articles at once punched holes in British propaganda about the Cripps Mission and presented a sympathetic account of the Congress’s predicament. Fischer published a two-part article, ‘Why Cripps Failed’, in The Nation in September 1942. His forensic pieces were laced with polemical verve. His case rested on two key arguments: Cripps had exceeded his brief, and he was ‘bitched in the back’ by Linlithgow and Churchill. Fischer also shredded the claim that the communal divide had exacerbated Cripps’ difficulty. The Congress and the Muslim League, he rightly pointed out, were more or less on the same page. More damagingly, he quoted Jinnah’s second-in-command, Liaquat Ali Khan, as stating that since the option of secession was conceded, the League was not only ready to join a ‘national’ government but ‘after discussion we might decide we did not want to divide India’. The Congress, Fischer wrote, was ‘ready to cooperate in the present’.30 Cripps was sufficiently alarmed by this attack to get Spry to respond on his behalf.31

  Snow focused on the consequences of the failure of Cripps’ mission. His article, ‘Must Britain Give up India?’, appeared in the Saturday Evening Post a week before Fischer’s first piece was published. Cripps’ failure, Snow wrote, had increased the considerable mistrust of the British government harboured by Indians. Friends of Cripps were deeply disappointed. Snow quoted Nehru as saying that ‘Cripps did Britain more harm in India than any Englishman sent out here in the past fifty years’. Even moderate liberals like Tej Bahadur Sapru were disillusioned by the outcome. Taking a broader view, Snow added that the humiliating defeat and withdrawal of British forces from Malaya, Singapore and Burma had punctured the standing of the Raj. India, he concluded, was the Allies’ last bastion. If it fell, China and the Middle East would be endangered.32