India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  47. Memorandum by Kingsley Wood, 30 July 1942, TP, vol. 2, pp. 504–8.

  48. Linlithgow to Amery, 31 July 1942, TP, vol. 2, p. 510.

  49. Amery to Wood, 7 August 1942, TP, vol. 2, p. 613.

  50. Amery to Linlithgow, 16 September 1942, TP, vol. 2, p. 975.

  51. Cited in Sayers, Financial Policy, p. 272.

  52. Moraes, Purshotamdas Thakurdas, pp. 232–4; Aditya Mukherjee, ‘Indo-British Finance: The Controversy over India’s Sterling Balances, 1939–1947’, Studies in History, vol. 6, no. 2 (1990), pp. 238–42.

  53. Dharma Kumar, ‘The Fiscal System’, in idem (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India Volume II: c. 1757–2003 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004), pp. 927–30.

  54. R. N. Poduval, Finance of the Government of India since 1935 (Delhi: Premier Publishing, 1951), pp. 60–70.

  55. Sinha and Khera, Indian War Economy, pp. 355–67.

  56. Poduval, Finance of the Government of India, pp. 107–12.

  57. Cited in Simha, Reserve Bank of India, p. 297.

  58. Abhik Ray, The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Volume 3 1921–1955 (New Delhi: Sage, 2003), p. 249.

  59. Memorandum by Secretary of State for India, 11 August 1943, L/WS/1/581, AAC.

  60. D. R. Gadgil and N. V. Sovani, War and Indian Economic Policy (Poona: Gokhale Institute, 1943), p. 6.

  61. Speech in Bombay, September 1943, 1st Instalment, C. D. Deshmukh Papers, NMML.

  62. Nanavati to Raisman, 5 March 1943, Subject File 27, Manilal Nanavati Papers, NMML.

  63. Simha, Reserve Bank of India, pp. 295, 303–5.

  64. C. N. Vakil, The Financial Burden of the War on India (Bombay, July 1943), Appendix I; idem, War against Inflation: The Story of the Falling Rupee 1943–77 (Delhi: Macmillan, 1978).

  65. Venu Madhav Govindu, The Web of Freedom: J. C. Kumarappa and Gandhi’s Struggle for Economic Freedom (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), ch. 10.

  66. See the excellent analysis in Indivar Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance: State and Class in India, 1939–1945’, Past & Present, no. 176 (2002), especially pp. 201–10.

  67. J. J. Anjaria et al., War and the Middle Class: An Inquiry into the Effects of Wartime Inflation on Middle Class Families in Bombay City (Bombay: Padma, 1946).

  68. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 8 September to 21 September 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  69. Ram Swarup Nakra, Punjab Villages During the War: An Enquiry into Twenty Villages in the Ludhiana District (Delhi: The Board of Economic Enquiry, Punjab, 1946), pp. 10, 17, 32, Table 4.

  70. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 21 April to 5 May 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  71. In particular, see Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943–44 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Janam Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal: War, Famine, Riots and the End of Empire (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2015).

  72. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), especially ch. 6.

  73. Cited in Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II (New Delhi: Tranquebar, 2010), p. 80; Cormac Ó Gráda, Eating People is Wrong and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past and Its Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 38–91.

  74. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 19 May to 1 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  75. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 2 June to 15 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  76. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 21 April to 5 May 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  77. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 8 September to 21 September 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  78. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 14 July to 27 July 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  79. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 14 July to 27 July 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  80. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 2 June to 15 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  81. Secretary, Civil Defence Department to All Provincial Governments, 8 February 1943, 49(5)-W/43, NAI.

  82. Gadgil and Sovani, War and Indian Economic Policy, pp. 77–84.

  83. S. Bhoothalingam, Reflections on an Era: Memoirs of a Civil Servant (Delhi: Affiliated East-West Press, 1993), pp. 19–25.

  84. Fortnightly reports from Madras, for May 1942, NAI.

  85. Fortnightly reports from Madras, for April, May, June, November 1943, NAI.

  86. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 25 August to 7 September 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  87. Cited in Fortnightly reports from Madras for June 1943, NAI.

  88. Fortnightly reports from Bombay for 1944, NAI.

  89. Cf. Sen, Poverty and Famines, p. 80.

  90. K. G. Sivaswamy et al., Food Famine and Nutritional Diseases in Travancore (1943–44) (Coimbatore: Servindia Kerala Relief Centre, 1945).

  91. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 16 June to 29 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  92. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 21 April to 5 May 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  93. Sivaswamy et al., Food Famina and Nutritional Diseases in Travancore, p. 159.

  94. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 2 June to 15 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  95. Sivaswamy et al., Food Famina and Nutritional Diseases in Travancore, pp. i–ii, 145–50.

  96. ‘The Limitations on India’s War Effort’, L/WS/1/581, AAC.

  15. AROUND THE MEDITERRANEAN

  1. Niall Barr, Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein (London: Pimlico, 2005), p. 69.

  2. Note by Major General F. S. Tuker, n.d. (c. early 1943), 71/21/1/3, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  3. P. C. Bharucha, The North African Campaign, 1940–43 (New Delhi: Ministry of Defence, Government of India, 2012), p. 547.

  4. Barr, Pendulum of War, p. 76.

  5. Compton Mackenzie, Eastern Epic Volume I: Defence September 1939–March 1943 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951), p. 581.

  6. Bharucha, North African Campaign, p. 548.

  7. Ibid., p. 549.

  8. Barr, Pendulum of War, p. 79.

  9. Mackenzie, Eastern Epic, pp. 581–2; Barr, Pendulum of War, p. 80.

  10. John Connell, Auchinleck: A Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck (London: Cassell, 1959), pp. 633–4.

  11. Barr, Pendulum of War, pp. 144–6.

  12. Douglas Porch, Hitler’s Mediterranean Gamble: The North African and Mediterranean Campaigns in World War II (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), pp. 288–9.

  13. Biographies of Montgomery are numerous. For a perceptive brief assessment, see Michael Howard, The Causes of Wars (London: Unwin, 1983), pp. 247–62.

  14. Jonathan Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the Path to EI Alamein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 231–7, 26.

  15. Antony Brett-James, Ball of Fire: The Fifth Indian Division in the Second World War (Aldershot: Gale & Polden, 1951), ch. 17. Accessed online at http://www.ourstory.info/library/4-ww2/Ball/fire10.html.

  16. Notes by Major General F. S. Tuker for the Records of the 4th Indian Division, 31 August 1943; Letter from Tuker, 22 October 1942, 71/21/1/3, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  17. Brett-James, Ball of Fire, ch. 17.

  18. Tuker to Hartley, 27 August 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  19. Notes by Major General F. S. Tuker for the History of the 4th Indian Division, December 1943, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  20. Letter to Hartley, 6 September 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  21. Tuker to Hartley, 24 September & 16 October 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  22. Tuker to Hartley, 27 August & 22 October 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  23. Tuker to Hartley, 24 October (12 noon), 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  24. Tuker to Hartley, 25 & 26 October 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  25. Tuker to Hartley, 30 October & 2 November 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  26. Tuker to Hartley, 4 & 11 November 1942, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.
/>   27. Notes by Major General F. S. Tuker for the History of the 4th Indian Division, 31 August 1943, 71/21/1/6, Tuker Papers, IWM.

  28. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 20 December 1942 to 4 January 1943, L/P&J/12/654, AAC.

  29. Cited in Mackenzie, Eastern Epic, p. 604.

  30. G. R. Stevens, 4th Indian Division (Toronto: M Laren and Son, 1948), p. 217.

  31. Cited in Chris Mann, ‘The Battle of Wadi Akarit, 6 April 1943’, in Alan Jeffreys and Patrick Rose (eds.), The Indian Army, 1939–47: Experience and Development (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), p. 97.

  32. Ibid., pp. 105–7.

  33. Letter of 23 April 1943, reproduced in Fortnightly Censor Summary, 21 April to 5 May 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  34. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 24 March to 6 April 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  35. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 21 April to 5 May 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 19 May to 1 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 16 June to 29 June 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  40. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 11 August to 23 August 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  41. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 22 September to 5 October 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  42. Alan Jeffreys, ‘Indian Army Training for the Italian Campaign and Lessons Learnt’, in Andrew L. Hargreaves et al. (eds.), Allied Fighting Effectiveness in North Africa and Italy, 1942–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 105–6.

  43. Fortnightly Censor Summary, 8 September to 21 September 1943, L/P&J/12/655, AAC.

  44. Jeffreys, ‘Indian Army Training for the Italian Campaign’, p. 117.

  16. PREPARATION

  1. S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan Volume II: India’s Most Dangerous Hour (London: HMSO, 1958), p. 385.

  2. Ibid., pp. 242–3.

  3. The exchanges on these changes can be followed in L/WS/1/616, AAC. For a useful summary, see, S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan: Volume III Decisive Battles (London: HMSO, 1961), Appendix 6.

  4. Weekly Intelligence Summary, 7 April 1943, L/WS/1/1433, AAC.

  5. Letter from an Indian Major in 42nd Cavalry to Colonel Cariappa, 29 November 1943, Group I, Part I, Cariappa Collections, NAI.

  6. V. J. Moharir, History of the Army Service Corps (1939–1946) (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1979), pp. 86–8, 91–2, Appendix B on p. 115.

  7. Report of the Infantry Committee, 1–14 June 1943, L/WS/1/1371, AAC.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Alan Jeffreys, ‘Training the Indian Army, 1939–1945’, in Alan Jeffreys and Patrick Rose (eds.), The Indian Army, 1939–47: Experience and Development (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 82–3.

  10. Auchinleck to Brooke, 18 September 1943, WO 106/4659, TNA.

  11. Details of the training regime under the 14th Division are from Major General A. C. Curtis Papers, IWM.

  12. Daniel Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), pp. 99–102; Jeffreys, ‘Training the Indian Army’, p. 84.

  13. Martin Booth, Carpet Sahib: A Life of Jim Corbett (London: Constable, 1986), pp. 224–6; Alan Jeffreys, ‘The Officer Corps and the Training of the Indian Army’, in Kaushik Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 298.

  14. Report of the Infantry Committee, 1–14 June 1943, L/WS/1/1371, AAC.

  15. Military Training Pamphlet No. 9 (India): The Jungle Book (Delhi: General Staff India, 1943).

  16. T. R. Moreman, The Jungle, the Japanese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War 1941–45: Fighting Methods, Doctrine and Training for Jungle Warfare (London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 98–102.

  17. B. L. Raina (ed.), Preventive Medicine (Nutrition, Malaria Control and Prevention of Diseases) (Delhi: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, India & Pakistan, 1961), p. 14.

  18. Ibid., pp. 53–4.

  19. Ibid., p. 55.

  20. Extracts from No. 1 Indian Operational Research Section Report, 12 November 1943, WO 203/269, TNA.

  21. Results of these surveys were published by A. M. Thomson, O. P. Verma and C. K. Dilwali in Indian Journal of Medical Research, vols. 34 (1946) and 35 (1947).

  22. Raina, Preventive Medicine, pp. 20–22.

  23. Report on Nutritional Status of Indian Troops – Fourteenth Army, by Canadian Nutritional Research Team, 31 May 1945, WO 203/269.

  24. A Medical Officer, ‘Feeding the Indian Soldier’, Journal of the United Services Institution of India, vol. 74, no. 314 (January 1944), pp. 90–92.

  25. Raina, Preventive Medicine, pp. 6, 79.

  26. Cf. Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (London: Allen Lane, 2011). This otherwise excellent book misleadingly claims that a catering corps was created in the Indian army.

  27. Moharir, Army Service Corps, p. 45.

  28. Ibid., pp. 20–49; Raina, Preventive Medicine, pp. 61–3, 92–6, 139–41.

  29. William Slim, Defeat into Victory (Dehra Dun: Natraj Publishers, 2014; first published 1956), p. 178.

  30. Mark Harrison, Medicine & Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 194–5.

  31. Report of the Infantry Committee, 1–14 June 1943, L/WS/1/1371, AAC.

  32. Raina, Preventive Medicine p. 278.

  33. David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  34. Note on Indian Medical Service by Lieutenant Colonel G. B. S. Chawla, Part II, Group XXII, Part II, Cariappa Papers, NAI.

  35. Raina, Preventive Medicine, pp. 362–3.

  36. G. Covell, ‘Malaria and War’, Journal of the United Services Institution of India, vol. 73, no. 312 (July 1943), pp. 303–6.

  37. Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 180.

  38. Raina, Preventive Medicine, pp. 369–70.

  39. Harrison, Medicine & Victory, p. 186.

  40. Report of the Infantry Committee, 1–14 June 1943, L/WS/1/1371, AAC.

  41. Harrison, Medicine & Victory, p. 197.

  42. B. L. Raina (ed.), Medicine, Surgery and Pathology (Delhi: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, India & Pakistan, 1955), pp. 621–51.

  43. These discussions are available in L/WS/1/1576, AAC.

  44. For a detailed account of these activities, see Azharudin Mohammed Dali, ‘The Fifth Column in British India: Japan and the INA’s Secret War, 1941–1945’, PhD thesis, London University, 2007, pp. 142–236.

  45. Weekly Intelligence Summary, 24 December 1942, L/WS/1/1433, AAC.

  46. Note to War Cabinet, 10 May 1943, CAB 66/36/47, TNA.

  47. Churchill to Amery, 10 May 1943, L/WS/1/707, AAC.

  48. War Cabinet Conclusions, 20 May 1943, CAB 65/34/26, TNA.

  49. Churchill to Amery, 20 June 1943, L/WS/1/707, AAC.

  50. Amery to Linlithgow, 21 June 1943, TP, vol. 4, p. 25.

  51. Auchinleck’s note, 22 August 1943, L/WS/1/707, AAC.

  52. Chief of General Staff to Army Commanders, 18 March 1943, L/WS/1/1576, AAC.

  53. ‘Traitors or Heroes’ TS memoir, Heard 20, J. A. E. Heard Papers, LHCMA.

  54. Ibid., pp. 33–4.

  55. Ibid., pp. 39–41.

  56. The full set of Josh newsletters is available in Heard Papers, LHCMA.

  57. Against Japan (Delhi: General Staff India, 1944).

  58. ‘Traitors or Heroes’, p. 37, Heard Papers, LHCMA.

  59. Moreman, The Jungle, p. 103.

  60. GHQ India to Army Commands, 12 May 1944, L/WS/1/1576, AAC.

  61. Tarak Barkawi, ‘Peoples, Homelands, and Wars? Ethnicity, the Military, and Battle among British Imperial Forces in the War against Japan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 46, no. 1 (2004), pp. 151–6 (quote on p. 152). While mostly persuasive, Barkawi’s argument conflates counter-propaganda and indoctrination.

  62. ‘The India Base’, January 1945, WO 203/5626, TN
A.

  63. Ordinance No. X of 1942, 7 March 1942, WO 203/1323, TNA.

  64. Fortnightly reports from Bihar, January–April 1942, NAI.

  65. On Ambedkar’s activities as labour member, see Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, vol. 10 (Mumbai: Government of Maharashtra, 2003).

  66. K. N. Kadam (ed.), Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: The Emancipator of the Oppressed (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1993), p. 162; Dhananjay Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1954, reprtd 2009), pp. 361–2.

  67. Appreciation for the Employment of Labour in India, n.d. (c. early 1945), WO 203/791, TNA.

  68. Graham Dunlop, Military Economics, Culture and Logistics in the Burma Campaign (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009), p. 55; S. Verma and V. K. Anand, The Corps of Indian Engineers 1939–1947 (Delhi: Ministry of Defence, Government of India, 1974), pp. 110–12.

  69. ‘The India Base’, January 1945, WO 203/5626, TNA.

  70. Dunlop, Military Economics, pp. 56–8; Moharir, Army Service Corps, pp. 30–32.

  71. History of the War Transport Department, July 1942 to October 1945 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1946), p. 6.

  72. Ibid., pp. 7–9.

  73. James M. Ehrman, ‘Ways of War and the American Experience in the China-Burma-India Theater, 1942–1945’, PhD thesis, Kansas State University, 2006, pp. 209–10.

  74. Ibid., pp. 219–20.

  75. ‘The India Base’, January 1945, WO 203/5626, TNA.

  76. Fortnightly Report, 15 April 1944, NAI.

  77. Memorandum on the Explosions in Bombay Docks, 9 September 1944, CAB 66/55/11, TNA.

  78. History of the War Transport Department, pp. 10–13.

  79. Hilary St George Saunders, Valiant Voyaging: A Short History of the British India Steam Navigation Company in the Second World War 1939–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 1948), pp. 44–5.

  80. Woodburn Kirby, Decisive Battles, pp. 21–3.

  81. Dunlop, Military Economics, p. 82.

  82. Woodburn Kirby, Decisive Battles, pp. 25–6.

  83. Ehrman, ‘Ways of War’, pp. 240–41.

  84. Woodburn Kirby, Decisive Battles, pp. 31–2; Ehrman, ‘Ways of War’, pp. 243–6.

  85. Ehrman, ‘Ways of War’, p. 250.