India's War
Page 29
These views were echoed elsewhere in the American press. The well-known Washington Post columnist Ernest Lindley wrote that the Roosevelt administration would be ‘remiss in its duty’ if it failed to ‘assert its influence on behalf of the treatment of the Indian problem which will best serve to win the war’. Halifax was perturbed at this turn of opinion. Unless they did something to reverse this trend, he advised London, the American press would ‘rapidly and perhaps completely change its attitude much to the detriment of Anglo-American relations’. The problem was not just the press. Top officials, including the president’s close adviser Harry Hopkins, had spoken to him about the ‘strong pressure now being exerted on the President from both official and unofficial quarters to do something’.33
Halifax would have been still more alarmed had he known of the attempt by Gandhi to reach out to Roosevelt. Prior to Fischer’s departure from Wardha, Gandhi had asked him to carry a letter as well as a verbal message to President Roosevelt. ‘I hate all war’, wrote Gandhi. But he also knew that his countrymen did not share his abiding faith in non-violence in the midst of the raging conflict. Gandhi made a straightforward suggestion. India should be declared independent and the Allies should sign a treaty with the free government of India which would allow their troops to stay on in India ‘preventing Japanese aggression and defending China’.34
On returning to America in early August 1942, Fischer sought a meeting with the president to share a message from Gandhi as well as his impressions of the situation in India. Roosevelt was tied up, so Fischer was asked to brief the secretary of state, Cordell Hull. Fischer, however, wrote again to Roosevelt, emphasizing that the Congress might lurch towards civil disobedience. ‘A terrible disaster may be impending in India.’ Gandhi had explicitly said to him: ‘Tell your president that I wish to be dissuaded [from civil disobedience].’ The viceroy, Fischer added, was hardly inclined to do so.35
By this time, however, the Roosevelt administration was not open to intervening on India. On 25 July, Chiang Kai-shek had written again to Roosevelt on the need to secure India’s full participation in the war. The ‘wisest course and the most enlightened policy for Britain’ would be to grant complete freedom to India. Chiang asked Roosevelt to advise both Britain and India to seek a ‘reasonable and satisfactory’ solution. Senior officials like Sumner Welles felt that it was time for the United States and China to act as ‘friendly intermediaries’ and forge a settlement between Britain and India. However, the president sent Chiang’s message to Churchill and sought his advice.36 Churchill immediately replied that he disagreed with Chiang’s assessment of the situation in India. The ‘military classes … are thoroughly loyal’. If anything, their loyalty would be ‘gravely impaired by handing over the Government of India to Congress control’. Implying that he might resign – ‘I cannot accept responsibility for making further proposals’ – Churchill asked Roosevelt to dissuade Chiang from ‘his completely misinformed activities’ and to lend ‘no countenance to putting pressure upon His Majesty’s Government’.37
Roosevelt had no desire to break with Churchill, especially when the Congress seemed set on civil disobedience. A few weeks later, Hull pointed out to the president that they had expressed to Britain their ‘unequivocal attitude’ about the need for change in India on the basis of agreement between the government and the Congress. ‘Our attitude’, he added, ‘has not been one of partisanship toward either contender.’ It was not clear that they could do more.38 The president agreed. This was not surprising: the ‘Quit India’ revolt had just begun.
The battle of Indian opinion exercised not just the Allies but the Axis powers as well. Even as Cripps unfolded his plan in India, Germany, Italy and Japan were considering the possibility of issuing their own joint declaration for India. In fact, an Axis declaration was on the anvil for months before Cripps came onto the stage. The prime mover behind the idea was Subhas Chandra Bose.
By the time he had been sent to prison in July 1940, Bose knew that he had failed to turn the Congress towards uncompromising opposition to the war. His attempts to forge a radical front centring on his Forward Bloc movement were coming apart at the seams. Yet the course of the war seemed to open up other possibilities. When the Wehrmacht ripped through Western Europe, Bose was awed by Germany’s military prowess. As the Nazis entered Paris, he wrote: ‘A miracle in military warfare has happened, as it were, before our eyes, and for an analogy one has to turn to the Napoleonic wars or to the catastrophe at Sedan.’ Britain, he realized, was ranged against a formidable set of enemies. Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, he argued, were likely to have ‘a plan of carving up the British Empire. In this task they may invite Japanese help and cooperation.’39 Bose had no illusions about the Nazi regime, but believed that its power could be bent to the cause of Indian independence. ‘Germany may be a fascist or an imperialist, ruthless or cruel,’ he observed, ‘but one cannot help admiring these [military] qualities of hers … Could not these qualities be utilized for promoting a nobler cause?’40
During his six-month stint in prison, these thoughts crowded Bose’s mind. Towards the end of November 1940, he began a fast unto death. Soon after, the Bengal government shifted him home to ensure that he did not die in prison. In the early hours of 17 January 1941, Bose gave the slip to the policemen who kept him under surveillance and made his way to the town of Peshawar in the North-West Frontier Province. Two weeks later, he arrived incognito in Kabul. There he established contact with the German and Italian embassies. As the British secret service began closing in on him, Bose was spirited out of Kabul to Moscow. On 2 April, ‘Orlando Mazzotta’, armed with an Italian passport, landed in Berlin.
Bose’s arrival was impeccably timed. Germany was then at the zenith of its power. Its forces controlled everything between the Arctic and the Pyrenees, the Atlantic and the Black Sea. Days after Bose’s arrival, the Wehrmacht rammed its way into Yugoslavia and Greece. At the same time, Rommel was dealing a powerful blow to British forces in the deserts of North Africa. Bose was eager to make the most of this strategic situation.
Prior to leaving Kabul he told the Italian envoy that a ‘Government of Free India’ – along the lines of the various exile governments in London – should be constituted in Europe. Italy, Germany and Japan should ‘promise, recognise and guarantee’ the independence of India to this government. India, he argued, was ‘ripe for the revolution’: ‘if 50,000 men, Italian, German or Japanese could reach the frontiers of India, the Indian army would desert, the masses would uprise and the end of English domination could be achieved in a very short time’.41 Bose might have exaggerated for effect, but he firmly believed in the practicability of these ideas. A day after reaching Berlin, he met Under-Secretary Ernst Woerman of the German Foreign Office and floated the same ideas. Woerman was taken aback at Bose’s suggestion of sending 100,000 German troops to invade India, but remained non-committal.42
A week later, Bose sent a lengthy memorandum to the German Foreign Office titled ‘A Plan for Cooperation between Axis Powers and India’. The memorandum suggested setting up a Free India Government in Berlin and concluding a treaty between this government and the Axis powers promising freedom to India. It also outlined a plan for propaganda and subversion in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of the north-west frontier as well as in the rest of India. Bose insisted that only the British component of the army, numbering 70,000, and perhaps the Punjabi Muslims were actually loyal to the Raj. The rest of the ranks could be made to rise up in revolt. If at that moment some military assistance – 50,000 men with modern equipment – was available from abroad, ‘British power in India can be completely wiped out’. A Japanese advance into South-East Asia would be most useful in the final stages of this plan. A defeat of the British navy, especially the ‘smashing up of the Singapore base’, would lead to a crumbling of British prestige and military strength in India. Conversely, if Britain were allowed to retain its grip on India, it could recoup its strength and challenge
the Nazi ‘New Order’. ‘And with this New Order’, wrote Bose, ‘the question of India is inseparably connected.’43
Bose’s memorandum was a compound of some shrewd observations and wishful thinking. His approach, however, rested on a set of flawed assumptions. For one thing, it took for granted the continuation of the Nazi–Soviet pact. Without this any plan to foment an uprising in – let alone an invasion of – Afghanistan and north-west India would be chimerical. For another, Bose underestimated Germany’s desire to come to terms with Britain. Establishing an Indian government-in-exile or promising freedom to India would constrain Berlin’s future options in dealing with London. For a third, Bose assumed that the Germans would regard him as a strategic asset in the struggle against Britain. But Berlin merely saw him as a propaganda tool.
Thus when he met Foreign Minister Ribbentrop on 29 April 1941, the latter was cool to most of his suggestions. Bose emphasized the importance of a declaration of independence to ‘win over the Indian masses completely’. Ribbentrop merely observed that he was ‘quite sure’ that India would attain its ‘freedom in the course of this war’. He urged Bose to move ‘step by step and not too hurriedly’. Ribbentrop, for his part, offered a clandestine radio station that Bose could use for broadcasting propaganda to the Indian people. Bose insisted, however, that propaganda would only be useful in conjunction with a declaration for India by the Axis powers.44
Despite the disappointing meeting, Bose persisted with his efforts. On 3 May, he sent another note to the foreign ministry, observing that the recent German victories in Yugoslavia, Greece and North Africa had ‘created a profound impression in all Oriental countries’, especially India, Egypt, Iraq and Palestine. This was the ‘psychological moment’ to capture their imagination by ‘an early pronouncement … regarding the freedom of India and of the Arab countries’. The Axis powers, he argued, should now ‘concentrate on attacking the heart of the British Empire, that is, British rule in India’. As a prelude, the pro-British government in Afghanistan must be toppled and military aid given to Iraq to resist Britain.45
The strategic context did seem propitious for such a move. Even as Bose sent his memorandum, Ribbentrop was urging Hitler to assist Iraq and seize the initiative in the Middle East. The German High Command advised Hitler on similar lines. Soon, Hitler issued a directive stating that the Arab freedom movement was Germany’s ‘natural ally’ against Britain and that Iraq would be given military assistance. Bose’s request thus fell on receptive ears. On 10 May 1941, the German Foreign Office was told that the Führer had agreed to publish a declaration on India in the next eight to ten days. Meeting Mussolini on 13 May, Ribbentrop secured his immediate assent that Italy and Germany should ‘stand up for the liberation of all peoples under British oppression’. Bose was elated. He submitted a detailed plan of work, underscoring the importance of a declaration. Interestingly, Bose now dropped the demand for a Free India Government. Instead he proposed the creation of a Free India Centre that would be the ‘brain of the Indian revolution’.46
Bose also drafted a ‘Free India Declaration’ that was adopted almost in its entirety by the Foreign Office. The declaration affirmed the ‘inalienable right of the Indian people to have full and complete independence’. The New Order that Germany had set out to establish envisaged ‘a free and independent India’. Indians would also be free to decide the form of government they wished to adopt and the mechanism – ‘constituent assembly or some other machinery’ – by which they would frame a national constitution, though Germany would like free India to remain united. Bose was confident that the declaration would be issued ‘within a fortnight’ and was preparing to launch a propaganda offensive immediately afterwards.47
These hopes were soon deflated. The failure of the revolt in Iraq, the rapid assertion of British control, and the British advance into Vichy Syria led the Germans to back off from the declaration. The Italians agreed that while Bose should be supported, a declaration would be premature. Bose initially hoped that this was a postponement and not a cancellation. This, too, was belied by the launch of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June.48
The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union threatened to unravel all of Bose’s plans. Meeting Woerman almost a month later, Bose spoke at length about the deleterious impact on Indian opinion of the attack on Russia. He noted that the sympathies of the Indian people were ‘clearly with Russia’ and they felt ‘definitely that Germany was the aggressor’. Bose expected the British government to propose some political reforms in India in order to secure the nationalists’ participation in the war. When Woerman observed that Germany had its own declaration at hand, Bose demanded that Ribbentrop must be asked to issue it immediately. There was ‘no reason to postpone this proclamation’. Woerman insisted that the declaration had to be issued keeping the overall context in mind. Bose had no option but to acquiesce.49
The proclamation of the Atlantic Charter goaded Bose into action. In mid-August 1941, he wrote to Ribbentrop that opinion in India was rapidly turning against the Axis. The war with the Soviet Union had given a propaganda coup to the Allies. The joint declaration by Roosevelt and Churchill portended a ‘compromise between Gandhi and the British government’ brokered by the Americans. Unless Germany issued a declaration on Indian independence, ‘The march of the German troops towards the East will be regarded as the approach not of a friend, but of an enemy.’50
Hitler, however, instructed Ribbentrop to hold off on the declaration. He was concerned that it would hand the British a pretext to march on Afghanistan and reinforce their position in the Middle East. Following the serial setbacks in Iraq, Syria and Iran, Hitler was not minded to risk another British victory. Further, the Germans believed that attention should be shifted to India only after the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. This was expected to help knock sense into British heads. The hope of a settlement with London continued to shape Berlin’s policy – as late as 13 November 1941, Ribbentrop wrote to Hitler that the ‘moment for such a declaration … will only come when it is clearly discernible that England does not manifest any willingness to make peace even after the final collapse of Russia’.51
Bose’s consternation with his hosts’ tardiness was compounded by the British revelation that he was living in Berlin – a fact that had so far been kept secret by the Germans. As a barrage of Anglo-American propaganda descended on him, Bose met Ribbentrop at the end of November. Although he did not raise the question of the declaration, Bose asked Ribbentrop to initiate effective counter-measures. Moreover, he noted that Hitler’s Mein Kampf – with its contemptuous references to Indians – was becoming a staple of the Raj’s propaganda. Ribbentrop replied that the time for a declaration would only arrive when German troops were beyond the Caucasus and at the Suez Canal. ‘The Axis could speak only when the military had a firm basis in the Near East, for otherwise any propaganda effect would come to nought. It was a guiding principle of German policy not to promise anything that could not be carried out later.’52 Just as the German door to a declaration seemed to be shutting, however, Japan’s entry into the war changed everything.
Even before Japan embarked on full-scale war, it had begun to sound out Germany and Italy about policy towards India. But it was the strike on Pearl Harbor that lifted the Axis powers out of their torpor. Hours after the attack, Berlin and Rome hastily convened a two-day conference on India with the Japanese. Bose was part of the German delegation and called for an immediate tripartite declaration on India. In the days ahead, he was stunned by the speed of the Japanese advance. On 17 December, he urged both the German Foreign Office and the Japanese envoy in Berlin to issue a declaration without delay. Bose was concerned that the Japanese military moves would outpace tripartite diplomacy. If Japanese forces reached the eastern frontiers of India before a declaration was issued, it would give a strong handle to British propaganda.53
Ribbentrop was persuaded. The Japanese were eager. Even the Italians showed a sense of urgency. But the Führer h
ad not given up on the hope of an accommodation with Britain. When the Japanese ambassador broached the topic with him, Hitler abruptly said: ‘If England loses India then a world will collapse.’ ‘There is no Englishman who does not constantly think of India now,’ Hitler told a gathering of officials. ‘If they had a choice to leave the continent to Germany and keep India instead, 99 out of 100 Englishmen would choose India.’ Evidently, he continued to believe that a declaration of Indian independence would constrain his ability to force Britain to sue for terms. Besides, he continued to admire the Raj and doubt the Indians’ capacity to rule themselves. The Indians, he observed with a tinge of regret, ‘do not waste a thought on the chaotic conditions that will prevail when the British go, all they want is freedom’.54
The fall of Singapore evoked mixed emotions in the Führer. Goebbels observed that while Hitler was ‘full of admiration for the Japanese Army’, he ‘naturally views the strong ascendancy of the Japanese in Eastern Asia and the recession of the white man with certain misgivings’. The German diplomat Ulrich von Hassell confided to his diary that Hitler would ‘gladly send the British twenty divisions to help throw back the yellow men’. As the Japanese advanced towards India, Hitler grew more opposed to granting India any autonomy, never mind freedom: ‘If the English give India back her liberty,’ he observed, ‘within twenty years India will have lost her liberty again.’55