The Raj at War
Page 9
Although the individual satyagraha may have been weaker and less dramatically effective than earlier Gandhian mass movements, nonetheless it did solidify and give form to a strong strand of anti-war feeling. The harsh sentence of four years’ rigorous imprisonment given to Nehru by a District Magistrate in Gorakhpur was seized upon by anti-war demonstrators and proved counterproductive to British efforts. And a number of those who experienced imprisonment for political beliefs in 1940–1 would return to more violent anti-war action in 1942, when adherence to Gandhi’s leadership would give way and his attempts at stage management and careful control would no longer prove effective.
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One of the protesters in the hand-picked group selected by Gandhi in 1940 was the little-known wife of a senior Congress politician, Aruna Asaf Ali. She stood in the shadow of her husband but, like many middle-class and elite women in the politics of the 1940s, was becoming more actively involved in social work. Just before the war started, she had celebrated her thirtieth birthday. Her home in Old Delhi was a typical old haveli in Daryaganj, tucked away in the walled city, and in many ways at first glance she appeared the epitome of a courtly lady. She spoke in impeccable English and Urdu, could converse about art and poetry (Shaw and Ibsen were favourites), dressed in tasteful saris and hosted a number of the leading politicians, artists and intellectuals of the day, who would stay late into the evening at her home. Aruna, born into a Bengali Brahmo Samaj family, had begun life with the name Aruna Ganguly, and her father had run a refreshment room in Kalka, a railway junction town. Convent-educated and strong-willed from an early age, Aruna had left home to work as a teacher. Before long, she had met an unsuitable man and married him. Aruna’s husband, Asaf Ali, was twenty-three years older than her, a Muslim and in the innermost circle of the Indian National Congress.
In 1940, Aruna was beginning to become caught up in the intensity of political feeling sweeping the country; she was coming round to the idea that more radical and revolutionary steps needed to be taken to eject the British. There was a generational division, with young people rallying to radical politicians, and this divide had started to make a rift in the Ali household, Aruna later recalled:
With every rejection of Indian advice and opinion by Britain, anger and resentment against Imperialism blazed as never before. Britain’s contemptuous and arrogant ignoring of the Congress offer to cooperate for defence of democracy was an intolerable national insult. Many men and women of the then younger generation were angry with the elder leaders’ hesitation to embarrass the British Government.16
Her husband, Asaf Ali, had small, incisive features framed by dark round spectacles. He was a more cautious and introspective character than his wife and was more inclined to support the British in their war effort. To the annoyance of some of his colleagues in the Congress he made an appeal on the radio for political parties to band together and enter government. He wanted a national coalition that would back the war effort, particularly because he foresaw the rapid gains being made by the Muslim League. But Aruna was being pulled into a deep well of frustration and despair about the right course of action: should she follow Bose or Gandhi? Should Indians resist the British using revolutionary tactics or rely on Gandhian non-violence? Or should they co-operate in some kind of constitutional agreement and work with the British, despite all their dashed hopes and suspicions of the government’s insincerity? Her dilemma was one shared by many educated Indians in 1940. World events dominated the headlines and, as in Europe, many intellectuals felt themselves to be taking part in an epoch-changing moment, in an epic period of world history which would shape future events.
When Gandhi hand-picked individual satyagrahis in 1940 to take part in the carefully calibrated protests, Aruna’s name was on the list. By the end of the year she was imprisoned in Lahore Women’s Jail for breaking the Defence of India rules as she had deliberately spoken out against the war in public. In jail she made efforts to educate her fellow prisoners about politics, relaying current affairs to the women and settling disputes between inmates, giving small gifts like combs and embroidery threads to the poorer women she came to know. Prison sentences had become badges of honour for Congress workers. They shared ideas, swapped stories about the warders, conditions and relative merits of different prisons, and drew legitimacy and pride from their detentions. Sucheta Kripalani, another wife of a prominent Congressman, remembered her own incarceration at this time: ‘I had never been to jail before and I used to feel somewhat different. I would rather say I was suffering from an inferiority complex viz a viz the other Congress workers. So I was, therefore, very keen to go to jail as soon as possible.’17 Aruna had a short spell in prison but it gave her invaluable thinking time. The course of the war was going to change her life irreversibly.
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By the end of 1940, military commanders were demanding a new intensification of India’s war effort. But the slow, unsteady start to the war in India and the failure to synchronise Indian and British needs, the failure to secure a people’s war rather than emphasising imperial privilege and prerogative, left a lasting and bitter legacy. Many in Britain, not just Churchill and pro-imperialists, but even former supporters and allies of India’s cause, could not square the circle and fathom the opposition to supporting the war. They were shocked at attempts across India to suborn soldiers, to deter recruitment, to refuse to contribute to the War Fund. When they did try to comprehend it at all, they fell back on culturalist assumptions about the Hindu and the Muslim, or on stereotypes of Gandhian non-violence. India had simply not grasped anti-fascism with both hands, it was too often believed, because it was too backward, irrational or undeveloped, or its people were too uneducated, superstitious or unable to see the international picture. The very real problems of ruinous inflation or the very obvious subjugation of Indian political rights were not seen by many British onlookers as strong enough reasons for resistance.
6
Bombed to Hell
PART HILL STATION, part colonial plantation town, Keren, in present-day Eritrea, was 4,000 feet above sea level, perched in the crook of the Anseba River. It had a stunning, formidable position surrounded by a barren, rocky moonscape on all sides. The Italians who had colonised this part of East Africa in 1885 encouraged the locals to grow tobacco, coffee, fruit and other garden produce. Situated on the railway line and road from Asmara to Agordat, its connections and climate gave it a favoured position in the colony. Whitewashed Italianate villas and churches studded a landscape of red rocks and earth. By the start of the war there were about 9,000 local Eritrean inhabitants, and hundreds of Italian colonists including missionaries, priests and farmers. The town was a natural fort, easily defended and surrounded by immense mountains. The battle for this small town would take over six weeks and would involve troops from across the British Empire-Commonwealth, including Britons, Indians and Africans.
In early 1941, with the victories in North Africa behind them, the 4th Indian Division’s next challenge was to capture Italian-occupied East Africa. In 1940, within six weeks Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France had fallen. Against this backdrop of unrelenting bad news, Indian troops were involved in some of the only heartening advances of 1941 and the Allies desperately needed news of a victory to lift morale across the empire. At the end of 1940 and into early 1941 the focus was almost solely on North and East Africa. Between December and early February, heavily outnumbered Indian troops helped to beat ten Italian divisions and the role of Indian troops in North and East Africa and the Middle East stood at the epicentre of the war.
Richpal Ram was from a village in Patiala, a princely state and traditional hunting ground for the Recruitment Officer. The forty-year-old was tall and thin with a prominent chin. Married with a young family, he was a lifelong soldier who had worked his way up from the ranks and hailed from a region with a long history of service. Men from his village came and went into the army, and he would have known men who had seen action in the First Wo
rld War; he himself had only just missed participating in that war, joining the Indian Army in 1920. By 1941 he had only been abroad for four months, but as a subedar in the 4th battalion of the Rajputana Rifles, he was part of a battle-hardened infantry team. The 4th battalion had sailed for the Middle East just as war broke out and had arrived in October 1939. Things had been going very well for them. They had already taken part in the first offensive at Sidi Barrani on the Egyptian coastline in December 1940, a disaster for the Italians where the only major problem faced by the Allies was what to do with the vast numbers of prisoners of war after the victory. The battalion moved to Sudan and then on to the Eritrean campaign.
Richpal Ram and his men had reached Agordat, about sixty-five miles north-west of Asmara, by 1 February, as part of the mopping-up operation in the train of Italian defeats. They found the remnants of a deserted and defeated town in Agordat and while patrolling had heard the last Italians retreating in the distance, the sounds of their jeeps moving away and the lights receding. ‘The gorge presented a scene of great disorder. Dead and wounded lay along the road, lorries still smouldered and great heaps of ammunition and supplies were dumped in the scrub.’1 The 4th battalion spent their days in Agordat guarding the area and carrying out salvage from the twisted wreckage of battle, recycling tanks and other materials. One of the companies headed by Subedar Puranchand Ram had the most unpleasant job of pulling dead Italian soldiers from their tanks, but despite this, the mood was upbeat. Around them the men found numerous ammunition dumps, food rations and a fine supply of rum, brandy and Chianti, and Wavell sent his congratulations to the army for their ‘spectacular advance’ into Eritrea.2
On 7 February Richpal Ram and the rest of his battalion started out towards Keren, about fifty miles away, by foot and then by truck. They moved under the shadow of a mountain in the east, Dologorodoc, nearly 1,500 feet high, crowned with a fort. To the west stood the forbidding Mount Sanchil, 1,000 feet higher. Between these two mountains stretched lower hills; the aim was for the men of the Rajputana Rifles to take three positions that night – nicknamed Pimple, Sangar (from the Hindi for fort) and Tree Hill – and to help open up the valley, or at least prise open a place where a track could be laid. The men started to appreciate the daunting mountains that loomed ahead of them and the magnitude of their task; in places the rockface was perpendicular. The last company reached the foothills after five o’clock, ‘very hot, thirsty and tired’.3 There would be little time for rest as a few hours after arrival, as darkness fell, they began to move, along with companies of Fusiliers, Sikhs and Gazelle forces also at the scene, towards their objectives in the hills above.
Richpal Ram and their company were given Sangar, the highest of these hills, to secure and started their climb at about eight o’clock. In essence, they had to scale steep rocks in the dark in the direct line of fire from a well-prepared enemy positioned above them. Everything was on foot and there were no tanks and, as yet, no air cover. The shapes of these mountains in the dark were disorienting and forbidding as they picked their way through the darkness and scrabbled over the rocks, and they were about halfway up to Sangar when the situation quickly deteriorated and heavy enemy mortar attacks, grenades and machine-gun fire blazed from all across the highest points. In the forward platoon, Richpal Ram’s senior officer, Ivan Knowles, was badly wounded in the face – stretcher-bearers managed to get him back down the hill – and the men pressed on under Richpal Ram’s leadership. Things went from bad to worse as his platoon lost touch with the other units, ‘owing to lack of signallers and apparatus’. Behind the men, water and ammunition were being ferried by hand and by mule but the mules stumbled and suffered broken limbs, stretching the supply lines to their limits, and with little water, the troops felt burning thirst.4
There were about thirty men left with Ram under heavy mortar fire on the slopes of Sangar by midnight. Machine-gun fire rained down on them and, as they got closer, the enemy troops lobbed hand grenades. As they reached Sangar, the fighting became hand-to-hand and Richpal charged forward with his bayonet in the dark. Against the odds, the Indians won out and stood their ground on the hill. But although they had won this small sliver of land as instructed, remaining there was futile with such a strong Italian presence all around them. Over the course of the night, there were counter-attacks by Italian troops until there was a lull in the firing in the early hours of the morning as ammunition dried up. Taking his chance to retreat, as the sun began to rise over the mountains, Richpal Ram led his men out to safety by fighting his way out from encirclement with his bayonet. That afternoon, Richpal Ram and his remaining twenty-five men were spotted approaching the camp headquarters in the rain, dirty, hungry and exhausted. The men took stock of their losses: sixty-two men had been wounded, including Ivan Knowles, seventeen had been killed and ten were missing.5
Richpal Ram had little time to reflect on his night of battle in Eritrea. Across the valley, many other Indian and British regiments had been engaging the Italians (who were often actually North African local mercenaries) and facing heavy losses. Conditions were brutal. ‘The corpses of course had been smelling to heaven since the second day of the battle; we tried to bury our dead, but explosions dug them up again, while the Italian and Indian and British bodies in the ravine in front of the Ridge just lay there, swelling’, recalled Peter Cochrane, a soldier of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders who was also at Keren.6 The men of the Rajputana Rifles were now faced with a second attempt on the steep hillside above them.
The men struggled to sleep the night before the new assault on 12 February. The mood was not good and there was low cloud in the sky. ‘We had a miserable night because there were a few sharp showers of rain and a few mortar bombs which kept us awake’, their senior officer reported, and just after midnight they heard that there was going to be a delay; the attack was postponed for another twenty-four hours and the tension mounted.7 The enemy was estimated at two battalions but there were rumours that more were collecting up on the hills above them. Any earlier optimism about Italian desertions and fragility had dissolved after the first attempt. In the 4th battalion of the Rajputana Rifles, B and C companies had been fused into one new company – a reflection of the extent of casualties. Sepoys waited, joked and smoked while British and Indian officers shared a tin of beer in the officers’ mess with the colonel, Frank Messervy, who had come to rally them.
Richpal Ram was in the advance platoon of his company as they started their second assault just after five the next morning as the sun began to rise. Once again his eyes were fixed on Sangar, transfixed by trying to capture the small scrap of rock, so narrow that it could barely hold more than a platoon of men. He had already held this place once for several hours, but as expected, almost immediately the company came under fire. The mortar fire exploding around the men was intense as Ram urged them on alongside him in the midst of the blasts: his company was taking the bulk of the shelling, clearly in the sightline of the Italian troops above who directed many of their mortars against them; the company ‘became the target for every mortar attack in the area from the moment it set out’. The British artillery would fire 5,000 shells against the Italian troops that day but, in the words of their senior officer, ‘it never seemed quite enough’.8
From the headquarters, a short distance away, nothing could be seen apart from the blast and smoke of explosions for over an hour. Occasionally Italian troops could be glimpsed through the smoke, rushing up the crest and hurling bombs at troops below them. While mortars exploded, men also came under machine-gun fire. Carriers and stretcher-bearers scrambled up and down the rocks, carrying up water and ammunition and carrying down messages and bringing in the injured. ‘All runners who reached Bn. HQ [battalion headquarters] were without exception wounded and all men sent forward for any reason with ammunition or with messages went cheerfully and confidently.’9 One Subedar-Major Tota Ram ‘was indefatigable in his efforts’ going up and down the ridge organising ammunition and water to t
ry to supply the exhausted men struggling above.
There were few trees for cover and the men were stepping forward almost in the certainty of being killed. They had repeatedly been told to hold their objectives and that the eventual capture of Keren could unlock the whole struggle over North Africa. Naik Maula Baksh, just eighteen years old, from Jhelum in Punjab, advanced on his own with a machine gun, took two enemy posts then held ground and fired until he was killed himself. Richpal Ram also charged ahead, ‘leading the forward platoon through intense fire with grim determination and complete disregard for his own safety’. The firing against them was heavy and accurate. Richpal Ram’s battalion sent a terse message: ‘Being bombed to hell’ and requesting, once again, more artillery cover.10 He was still pushing his men onwards, coming under fire and suffering further wounds as he died on the mountainside, telling his men as he lay bleeding and dying that they would capture the objective.11