Madhusree Mukerjee (1961-) Churchill's Secret War (2010)
The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II
To those who fell so that I could be born free
Chapter three. Scorched
...On May 4, Churchill remarked at a War Cabinet meeting that the Japanese already had all the territory that their plans called for. Hence, the enemy was “unlikely to make a heavy attack either on Australia or on India. For why hasn’t he done it earlier?”
Unconvinced, Wavell protested that it was “sheer madness” to leave him with so little by way of men and materials: “India parted with all her trained troops for Mideast and Iraq and then sent half-trained troops to try to save Malaya and Burma and will take time to recover.” He further requested that the few Indian officers who commanded British troops be permitted to discipline them-provoking a Churchillian outburst on the “poor much harassed British soldier having to face the extra humiliation of being ordered about by a brown man,” as Amery recorded.
...Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek heard from Gandhi and informed Roosevelt that an uprising could still be averted if he would persuade the United Kingdom “to restore to India her complete freedom.” Roosevelt forwarded the letter to Churchill, asking only how the president should respond. The prime minister replied angrily that the president should “lend no countenance to putting pressure upon His Majesty’s Government.” From then on, a resigned Roosevelt ignored pleas to intervene that came from several quarters, including a cable from American writer Louis Fischer, who had interviewed Gandhi and who now warned that a “terrible disaster may be impending in India.”
...Early the next morning, all the senior Congress leaders were swept off to jail. Gandhi managed to call out the words “karenge ya marenge,” meaning Do or Die, as a final message to his countrymen before he was imprisoned. That evening, Amery spoke over BBC radio. In addition to the usual strikes and demonstrations, he said, the Congress had envisaged cutting telegraph and telephone lines, picketing army recruitment centers and government offices, and otherwise paralyzing the government. Such actions amounted to sabotaging the war effort. The broadcast successfully turned American and British public opinion against Gandhi and the Congress.
Amery’s statement was in accordance with a War Cabinet resolve, from as early as September 14, 1940, that “if conflict with Congress should arise, it should appear as an outcome of war necessity rather than as a political quarrel unrelated to the war.” Although the radical action of paralyzing the government had indeed been suggested at a regional Congress meeting, the national party had not endorsed it. But Amery’s broadcast had an unintended effect. The sudden arrest of Congress leaders had left them with no opportunity to decide, let alone explain to their subordinates, exactly what form civil disobedience should take: Amery did it for them.
...SOON AFTER, HOWEVER, an Indian member of the viceroy’s council met Churchill and found him rumbling with rage. “What have we to be ashamed of in our Government of India? Why should we be apologetic or say that we are prepared to go out at the instance of some jackanapes?” the prime minister fumed. “If we have ever to quit India, we shall quit it in a blaze of glory, and the chapter that shall be ended then will be the most glorious chapter of that country, not merely in relation to the past but equally in relation to the future, however distant that may be. That will be my statement on India tomorrow. No apology, no quitting, no idea of weakening or scuttling.” That very day, while discussing his forthcoming speech with Amery, Churchill exclaimed, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”