A second set of rumours pertained to the Raj’s preparation – or lack thereof – to meet the invading Japanese. Some of these speculations were about the possible demolition of key infrastructure – as part of a ‘scorched earth’ policy – in anticipation of a Japanese invasion. By early March 1942, it was widely held in Calcutta that plans had been made to blow up the two main railway stations in the city: Howrah and Sealdah. Soon rumours gathered steam that all industrial units would be presently shut down for ‘the laying of demolition charges’.17
Related to these were rumours about pusillanimous military plans. Assam was rife with tales about strategic towns like Chittagong being defended by ‘dummy anti-aircraft guns’. A variant on this was that anti-aircraft defences in Indian cities were oriented to protect only the British-inhabited areas. In Bihar it was believed that the British were adopting a policy of ‘placing Indian troops in the front while British and Australians are kept to the rear of the fighting’. Closer home, British troops were apparently evacuated from Fort William in Calcutta and replaced with Indian troops – in keeping with ‘the general policy of placing Indian soldiers in the forefront whenever serious fighting has to be done’.18
Indian soldiers, for their part, were rumoured to be deeply discontented. Indeed, one of the most persistent rumours was that Indian troops in Malaya had mutinied. British as well as Indian troops were said to be reluctant to go on active service. The flip side to this was the widespread concern that Indians would be forcibly recruited for the war. In Calcutta, a rumour was flying that ‘universal conscription of labour is under consideration’ and that ‘control will be almost immediately taken by the military’. In the western city of Ahmedabad, it was thought that ‘men were being forcibly recruited for military purposes’. The district magistrate personally addressed a large gathering of mill-owners and workers to deny this. In the United Provinces, too, labour was unsettled. Factories found it difficult to get casual labour owing to the rumour that ‘some military lorries that recently passed through had come with the intention of “press-ganging” men for the army’. In Gorakhpur, large numbers of workers fled owing to the fear that they would soon be prevented from leaving the town.19
All this added up to the feeling that the Raj had no stomach for a fight against the Japanese. The rumour that most succinctly captured it was that ‘India has been leased out to the Americans under the Lease and Lend arrangement’.20 By contrast Japanese military prowess made a deep impression on the Indian people. Having taken Burma, it was believed, the Japanese would simultaneously attack Chittagong, Calcutta and Madras. The Japanese were also expected to attack India via Tibet, eastern Assam and Burma. The operational plans were envisioned in some detail: ‘The Japs will attack Dehra Dun from the air, and in addition to bombing, parachutists and arms will be dropped into the cages of prisoners of war and enemy internees. The latter with their assistance will overcome the guards and occupy the town.’21
By early April, there was in Bengal a ‘widespread conviction that Britain cannot win the war and that a Japanese invasion of India is inevitable’. Madras was fizzing with the rumour that ‘The Japs have issued an ultimatum to the Viceroy that they will invade India unless India is granted freedom.’ In parts of Bihar, a rumour was afloat that ‘Japan is reluctant to invade India and that she will try to negotiate some sort of settlement with India as soon as she achieves independence.’ Set against this was the idea that the Japanese would come into India ‘without causing any damage to the lives and properties of the people of this country’.22
Rumours also set up an invidious contrast between the racial attitudes of the British and the Japanese. They stressed the ‘discriminatory treatment by Japan in favour of Asiatics in the areas they have overrun’. ‘Rangoon was damaged more by the British than the Japanese,’ ran another rumour, ‘the latter gave financial help to those who suffered during the attack.’ British airmen in Rangoon were even held to have ‘machine gunned people sheltering in Buddhist temples who had been spared by the Japanese raiders’. A poster found pasted outside the Victoria Terminus in Bombay read: ‘After all the Japs. are Asiatics: Let them in.’ Notions of the mighty yet kind Japanese were neatly captured in the rumours about a Japanese soldier who had apparently dropped into a festive gathering by parachute, addressed the crowd in their own language, and flown out on his parachute.23 Indeed, it would not be too reductive to say that the rumours collectively produced a picture of the Raj retreating with its tail between its legs when confronted with the brave yet benevolent Japanese.
It is impossible to measure the importance of such rumours. But the crisis of early 1942 was by any standards a turning point in the history of the Raj – a period during which many millions of Indians became vividly aware of British weakness and failure. With India now vulnerable to attack by an enemy who had so recently been so far away, a drastic political and cultural reorientation took place from which the British could never recover.
Apart from news, refugees and rumours, the government’s own preparations added to the chaos. From the outset, the central and provincial authorities spent considerable time, energy and expenditure on air raid precautions.24 While acquainting the populace with ARP procedures was important, it also carried the risk of unnerving them. This was the case well before Japanese aircraft presented any threat to India. In the hill station of Shillong, for instance, the preparations for ARP in April 1941 led people to believe that the town would be targeted. Hence, the influx of workers in spring from other parts of Assam was ‘less than usual despite the large number of temporary visitors’.25 A call for volunteers for ARP in Cawnpore led to an exodus of 4,000 people in one week. Similarly, efforts to recruit Air Raid Wardens in Agra and Jhansi resulted in the ‘timid’ relocating their families to the country. By contrast, those who grasped the import of these preparations condemned them for their inadequacy. The Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta dismissed ARP shelters in the city as little more than ‘slushy pools’ during the monsoon. ‘Where concrete shelters are proving useless are these holes in the ground going to protect the populace?’26
Other measures relating to the ARP caused disquiet as well. From May 1941, lighting restrictions were imposed on all towns with populations exceeding 20,000 that lay within 10 miles of the coastline.27 In eastern and southern India the clock was advanced by an hour so that labourers and white-collar workers could get back to their homes before the blackout. This change in time proved deeply disorienting – not least because people had to eat by the clock rather than waiting for the sun to reach high noon.28
The Japanese raids on Calcutta, starting in mid-December 1941, as well as those on Madras, Vizag and Cocanada in early April 1942, lent a measure of urgency and seriousness to the ARP. Yet these precautionary steps continued to cause a stir among the people. There was widespread concern that those who volunteered simply as ARP wardens would then be despatched to the battle front. Measures such as bricking in factory windows and the construction of baffle walls were seen as attempts to prevent the workers from escaping. Slit trenches dug for protection during raids were referred to as ‘burial grounds’.29 Air-raid sirens told on people’s nerves. ‘I can hear something’ was a common refrain in Madras, observed the great Tamil modernist writer Pudhumaipithan. Neighbourhood conversations during an air raid, he wrote, typically ran this way:
‘I saw it,’ insisted a voice.
‘Only thereafter was the siren sounded,’ added another.
‘What aircraft? I didn’t see a thing,’ hissed a third.
‘Then we are off tomorrow,’ replied the second.
‘Wait till it is dawn, darling!’ snapped yet another.
The cumulative impact of news and rumour, refugees and raids led to ‘palpitation in the people’s nerves’: ‘As with a person suffering from the fever of typhoid, worry and tension dipped, rose and dipped again.’30 One measure of this palpitation was a tendency to withdraw money from banks and post office accounts. This was in evid
ence even before the appearance of a Japanese threat to India. After the fall of France, there had been heavy withdrawals from banks and post offices. Similarly, when Japan began encroaching on South-East Asia, there was a trend towards withdrawing cash in eastern India. This accelerated from early 1942 onwards. As the Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya told his friend, ‘I wonder whether the postal department is going to function for long.’31
Concerned that the British Empire would not come through the war, millions of Indians evidently preferred to stash their savings under their mattresses. From 1939–40 to 1942–43 withdrawals consistently exceeded deposits. More tellingly, the number of post office savings bank accounts fell from 4.2 million in 1938–39 to 2.8 million in 1943–44.32 After the fall of Singapore, there was a scramble to cash-in Defence Savings Certificates. Such was the rush to encash these certificates in Barrackpore that the police had to be brought in to control the crowds. There was also a reluctance to continue paying for insurance policies – a sign of the growing ‘lack of confidence’, as the managers of the Raj realized.33 There was a spike in purchases of land and buildings owing to the fear that the currency might soon not be worth all that much. Equally significant was the tendency to hoard precious metals like silver and gold as well as foodstuffs. The stock markets and commodity exchanges in Bombay and Ahmedabad experienced extraordinary volatility.34
The fear, panic and depleting confidence in the government were evident in the large exodus from several cities. This was not a peculiarly Indian phenomenon during the Second World War. There had been similar mass exoduses in Belgium and France in 1940 owing to the terror of approaching armies. Given its proximity to Burma, it is not surprising that Calcutta had the largest outflow. People began fleeing the city even before the first bombs were dropped by Japanese planes on 19 December. Although the bombing was not heavy – about 160 bombs were dropped over five air raids in December 1941 – and the casualties limited, Calcutta witnessed a swift diminution in its population. Of the 2.1 million people living in the city, around 700,000–800,000 had left by the end of December 1941.35
The government had hastily to organize special trains to facilitate this unprecedented movement of people. Among those fleeing the city were a large number of Marwari traders and other ‘up-country’ folks living there. A few schools and training institutions shifted out of Calcutta to nearby towns like Krishnanagar and Bolpur. The working poor, however, accounted for the bulk of the numbers. The factories of Calcutta had drawn workers from the villages of Bengal as well as Bihar, Orissa and the Central Provinces. Fearing an imminent invasion of eastern India and the impending collapse of the government, these workers rushed to join their families back home. The population of the industrial zone of Howrah, for instance, dropped from 292,000 on 1 December 1941 to 219,000 by 31 December 1942. Industrial labour apart, those fleeing the city included dock workers and contract ‘coolie’ labour, members of the lowest ranks of the police and civil administration, cooks and household servants.36
The renowned Calcutta sociologist Benoy Kumar Sarkar observed that with ‘the war at India’s door ‘interhuman relations are undergoing a swift transformation’. Indeed, the threat of war had led to social churning in Bengal of a kind that generations of social reformers had failed to achieve. With the departure of their servants, ‘metropolitan residents are compelled to do cooking and cleaning’. This in turn had led to the ‘breakdown of distinctions between superiors and inferiors’.37 Sarkar was undoubtedly overstating his case, but his observations about the social impact of the threat of war were not far off the mark.
This massive outflow of people not only led to severe labour shortages but also affected the property markets. House rents plummeted in Calcutta and shot up in nearby small towns to which people fled. Most of these towns were also ill-equipped to provide civic amenities to such large numbers of incoming people, resulting in an outbreak of cholera.
Similar developments were observable in the western metropolis of Bombay. This is all the more striking because Bombay was not so much as grazed by a Japanese bomb. Yet starting from early January 1942, large numbers of residents began fleeing the city. Middle-class families hailing from western India – Gujaratis and Marwaris, Cutchies and Kathiawaries – despatched their women and children to the safety of their native towns and villages. Industrial workers, mostly mill-hands, left in droves after collecting their wages for the month. At the height of the panic in early April 1942, over 55,000 workers – almost 25 per cent of the total industrial workforce in Bombay – were reported absent. No fewer than six special trains were running every day to cope with this exodus. Steamers and ferries out of Bombay were packed with people fleeing the city. Special buses with extra rations of petrol were stationed at various places to facilitate the movement of people. Merchants began moving their stocks out of Bombay to safer storehouses in the countryside. As in Calcutta, house rents became cheaper in Bombay. By contrast, small towns like Baroda, which received a large influx, faced a serious shortfall of accommodation and a corresponding spike in rents. With the evacuation of families and servants, people also ‘complained of difficulty in cooking their own food’.38
The coastal town of Vizag saw periodic outflows of people corresponding to alarms about Japanese air raids. A practice air raid towards the end of March touched off a huge wave of panic. On hearing the siren, an Indian magistrate closed his court and informed the senior judge that Japanese aircraft were approaching. Soon, all courts were closed and ‘alarmist stories of bombing began to spread’. Despite efforts by the police to reassure people, a large exodus began. People cited the closure of courts as ‘proof of the truth of the rumours of impending attack’.39 When Japanese planes actually struck on 5 April 1942, there was massive confusion. The scope and scale of the attack were limited; only the port was targeted – and that by ten planes, which dropped twenty bombs. The ensuing chaos was well captured in the governor’s report to New Delhi:
The railways were practically paralysed and all the subordinate staff and labour fled from the place … All provision shops were closed and practically everyone fled the town. The port employees fled, as did the coolies employed on the construction of the new aerodrome. There was an acute food shortage and the DM [district magistrate] had to order the police to forcibly open and run some of the provision stores.40
Deeper inland, the industrial town of Jamshedpur – home to the famous Tata steel plant among others – was whirring with rumours about ‘scorched earth’ policies and fear of the approaching war. Industrial labour as well as casual workers and assorted service providers fled the town. By early February 1942, 63,000 people – nearly 40 per cent of the population – had left the town by rail, by bus and on foot. Workers in the cloth mills of Ahmedabad also fled the city.41
All these trends and more were at work in the other major coastal city: Madras. An exodus from the city to inland towns and villages began in late December 1941. Within a month almost 30 per cent of the population of 700,000 had left. At this stage, the bulk of those leaving the city were women and children. The Madras government’s dithering approach added to the confusion. In mid-February 1942, after the fall of Singapore, the government issued a press communiqué informing the people of Madras that there was no need to leave the city. The communiqué, however, muddied the waters by noting that those who had no business in Madras and who wished to leave should do so as soon as convenient in order to avoid rush and confusion. Far from reassuring the people, it sparked another bout of panic. There was a heavy exodus from the city: schools and colleges had to be closed.42
Following the Japanese capture of the Andaman Islands and the bombing of Vizag, Cocanada and Colombo, the Madras government was told by the local military command that they expected a Japanese ‘invasion in force’ along the east coast – somewhere south of Masulipatnam. Lieutenant Gul Hassan Khan’s battalion of the 9th Frontier Force had been deployed to Madras in early 1942. Tasked with defending the Madras coast against
a Japanese landing, the battalion’s nerves were frayed. One morning, the young officer saw a large plane flying out to sea. The air-raid siren was sounded: ‘The alarm galvanized us into frenzied digging because the trenches we occupied during the alarm were only ankle deep.’ It turned out that the plane was a British Catalina on a reconnaissance mission.43 Given the military’s nervousness, the government issued another communiqué asking people whose presence was not essential to leave the city at the soonest opportunity. More importantly, all government offices in Madras were moved to towns in the interior of the province. Essential staff relocated to the nearby towns of Chittoor and Madanapalle. The high court shifted to Coimbatore, the inspector general of police to Vellore, the board of revenue to Salem, and other departments to various inland districts’ headquarters. The bulk of the secretariat moved to the hill station of Ooty in the Nilgiris. Only the governor, along with the chief secretary and other senior officials, stayed on with a skeleton staff in the government seat of Fort St George.
‘The effect of the Government’s decision to move offices’, the governor baldly reported, ‘did far more than the advice in their communiqué.’ Between 8 and 14 April, about 200,000 people fled the city.44 Perhaps the most unfortunate outcome of the pell-mell confusion caused by the move of the government was the shooting of ‘all the lions, tigers, panthers, Polar bears and such dangerous animals in the zoo’. The police commissioner apparently feared that the animals might break loose if the Japanese attacked the city. The gory job was done by a platoon of the Malabar police.45
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