The Raj at War

by Yasmin Khan

  As ever, there was the problem of reliable news. Over the years people had become accustomed to the idea of censorship, to the sense that they were not being told the full truth. Now the newspapermen struck back at the censorship imposed on them, refusing to print at all. The printing presses for seventeen English newspapers and sixty-seven newspapers in Indian languages went cold. Word spread that the Indian Army might side with the people. In Vizagapatam, near Walchand Hirachand’s moribund shipyard, a cyclostyled sheet was circulating, claiming that Indian troops had mutinied and were being shot by British troops. People rallied to the power of rumours and vague news items.

  The movement shone a light on both the power and the serious weakness of the British in India; it was quickly reined in and brought under control by determined repression, but at the cost of exhausted and demoralised personnel and irreversible damage to the reputation of the empire.

  * * *

  In the Middle East, at the same time, the struggle for supremacy continued with reverses for the Allies and losses of some of their earlier advances to Rommel. The sepoys’ chief response to the movement back home was to curse it and to worry. What did this mean for family back home? What did it mean for their security of employment? Who was right and who was wrong? In North Africa, now facing defeat and already concerned about the rapidly rising prices back home, sepoys fretted about risks to the stability of their country, anxious that their relatives or villages might be rebel targets. And the relatives back in India took fright at the sight of the sarkar’s institutions and property now coming under attack, fearing the consequences for their own modest prosperity. ‘Dear Brother your deposits in the post office will be of no use to us’, wrote one worried kinsman from central India to a sepoy in the Middle East. ‘These post offices are being set on fire and that will be the fate of the one where you have kept your money. All the post offices at Nagpur and other places were burnt recently.’26 With nothing but these sparse communications it was difficult to make sense of what was happening in India for sepoys stationed in other theatres.

  Concern for children was paramount, especially when there were riots taking place in India, and a pained letter to Bhopal suggested the agonies and frustrations of being so far from home at a time of such dangerous instability in India. The soldier instructed his wife to keep the children ‘like [a] hen keeps chicks under her wings’. She should on no account let their boy, Mian Qayum, go out of the house, even to go to school, if the danger increased; he continued:

  Take greatest care in anything concerning [the] children. Oh! If only I knew it before I would never [have] come this way. I hope you will respect my feelings and take care of the children. Give me news of Bhopal, are there any riots?27

  Axis propaganda lost no time in seizing on this chink in the psychological armour, trying to drive a wedge between the government and its army. Over the skies of North Africa fluttered leaflets depicting Gandhi’s image or his iconic spinning wheel. Another showed an image of Indians chained to a map of England, with slogans printed in Hindi and Urdu. ‘Long live Independent India’, stated another Axis flysheet, calling itself a ‘Liberty Pass’. ‘Whoever shows this surrender pass will be accepted as a friend of the Axis forces. His personal freedom and liberty to follow his own religious practices are fully guaranteed. Just bring this surrender pass with you.’28 Soldiers may have been broadly sympathetic to Indian freedom but they were irritated by the timing of a movement that could derail their efforts against the Axis at a delicate moment in the war.

  For centuries the Indian Army had cultivated traditions of loyalty to king and country, and regimental pride, aspiring to political neutrality. Regimental and regional loyalties grounded on a sense of honour or izzat demanded steadfastness. Military steadiness was also founded on additional things by 1942: professional pride and intense training, the camaraderie and terror of shared battle at close quarters, and honouring the dead and the living. The ideological desire to defeat the Axis was strong especially amongst those who had seen action. For those who did waver, there was also sheer peer pressure, the risk of court martial and the difficulties of finding a practical way to desert once the oath of allegiance had been sworn. Above all, thoughts returned to families waiting on the next instalment of remittances. Izzat could have a wider meaning beyond pride in a regiment or military status: a regular army job brought izzat to the breadwinner who had the prestige of a steady state income and with it an elevated status among his kin.

  Despite attempts to suppress the press, knowledge about the Quit India movement was widespread and it is clear that soldiers sometimes felt ambivalent, wanting to know more, encouraged by the progress of Indian freedom, at least sympathetic to the cause of Indian nationalism even if not pleased with the actual timing of events. A guarded letter from a field ambulance reveals this tension: ‘I shall be interested to hear a little of the political situation in India. Recent news has been interesting and sad. I have a great respect for Gandhi because he is consistent in his policy and opinion. But it is a pity that such a time should have been chosen to press for a political advantage.’ An Indian in the air force in the Middle East wrote with exasperation:

  Oh the tragedy of it all! There is tremendous good will among the people [on] both sides. Life in India can’t be very easy or very pleasant caught between the devil and the deep sea, an army occupation and an army of invasion! In spite of everything I still maintain that there is more at stake in this war than mere self interest.29

  In another case, a havildar, who was reprimanded by officers for his letter, wrote straight from the heart about the terrors of war: ‘Please inform Congress to persuade people not to join Government Service and if they do then they will all be victims of this war.’30 A military cadet at a military college at the time remembered his teacher describing how he would like to tie Gandhi to the blades of the ceiling fan in the room and turn the speed up high, at which some of the boys laughed and some stayed conspicuously silent.31

  Among Britons too, many now questioned their role in India. A censored letter from a military wife in the hill station of Simla, where the remnants of the Burmese government had assembled alongside numerous senior officers and officials, suggested her own hunger for truth:

  You know Geoff, we have taken this jolly old war too bally casually here at Simla, picnics, dances and poodle-faking and now comes this Indian trouble. Because Simla has seen little of it does any one of us give a hoot? Do any of us women know who has been locked up or why? We know somebody was trying to sell India to Japan and if any one of us was consulted the reply would be ‘Good job too, get on with it and let us get out of it and fight Germany …’ Anyway I, for one, am going to begin asking questions even if I am described as Nuisance no. 1 until I really understand something of the whys and wherefores of this Indian trouble.32

  Among the soldiers who had come from Britain, there was a cluster of men who felt deeply aggrieved about the old forces of empire. Clive Branson, as ever, threw a piercing light on social iniquities in his letters home:

  Today things have gone so far that pacifism is impossible … One cannot foretell what will happen. The movement is so far confined to the towns, mainly angry demonstrations against police stations with a little shop breaking, telephone wire cutting, shop closing etc. … Even though one does not agree with what the people are doing, one understands why they do it.33

  Although Branson was the most prominent of this group of men to express such feelings in print, a number of others felt deeply uncertain aiding the civil power to put down internal unrest in the empire, when they wanted to be fighting in Europe. Concerned young officers shared a sense of uneasiness about the imperial mission and their role in it.

  There was not a sealed wall between troops and civilians and ideas and information flowed between them. Nilubhai Limaye, an underground activist from Poona, closely connected to the Quit India leadership, circulated around the country meeting Indian army officers and soldiers, trying to find ou
t if they could be swayed and how they felt about the movement. ‘I must have gone round half the military stations in India and, this way and that, I contacted the officers, jawans and all. But I am very sorry to say that somehow the Army was very cold about the movement. It is not that they were loyal to the Britishers at heart but somehow they were working for them.’ He was unable to persuade the men he met: ‘when some academic discussions used to take place, they did not like the satyagraha business or sabotage business … Even when I visited a few army officers they were afraid to talk to me also. They would hardly give me two minutes or three minutes.’34 Limaye’s disappointing tours around cantonments and camps are testament both to the permeable wall between soldiers and citizens – it was possible for them to meet and to discuss politics – and also to the nervous distance between them. Soldiers risked punishment by talking to men like Limaye. Even when they were broadly sympathetic to the aims of Independence, the specific timing and techniques of Quit India were unwelcome. Looking back, Limaye could hardly recall a time when a supportive conversation had taken place, although there had been the occasional lengthy debate. ‘Otherwise I did not get much response from the army boys.’35

  Soldiers did, of course, have cousins and family members who rose up as rebels, and family connections linked some soldiers to imprisoned protesters. The wide net of military recruitment – from Bengal to Madras – and the nature of South Asian extended families meant that many different opinions and views could be found within one village or family. One naik in the Middle East was implored by his nephew to help intercede on behalf of his rebellious father, Zahid Ali Mian Sahib, in August 1942, ‘arrested last Friday 14th August for defiance of the Govt. of India. No bail is allowed in such cases.’36 Service to the Crown and participation in anti-British movements could coexist, albeit uneasily within the same family. In the uncertain climate, and within a context in which the future of the British presence in South Asia seemed increasingly tenuous, it often seemed necessary for families to balance interests, to align oneself with the rising tide of power and to keep onside with municipal and local officials who had access to resources, especially if they oversaw the distribution of grain. This could dictate the pattern of so-called loyalism and rebellion in 1942, as in the heat of the moment new alliances and decisions about future political allegiances were forged.

  The sheer ruthlessness with which the imperial state hit back is not in doubt. It was the most violent crackdown since the repression of the 1857 uprising. ‘I am engaged here in meeting by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857’, the beleaguered Viceroy infamously told Churchill in a telegram. ‘The gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed from the world for reasons of military security.’ The ghosts of mutiny floated everywhere in the air.37 And as in the previous century, local officials could take matters into their own hands. Blanket protection and promises of amnesties from the top shielded individual policemen and officials. The backlash in troubled districts drew on the use of collective fines, widespread detention without trial for vaguely named ‘political prisoners’ and use of corporal punishment. L. W. Russell was an extreme example and recalled in his own memoir the ‘strong action’ he took against twenty-eight men, part of a ‘threatening’ mob that had collected around a local police station in his district of Kodaram. Each man was lashed ten times with a dog-whip on the spot, to his mind a necessary deterrent to the angry crowd. As he wrote: ‘Illegal without a doubt. Cruel? Perhaps. But there was no further trouble throughout the district.’38

  Officials, trying desperately to cling on to their authority, particularly in United Provinces and Bihar, acted far beyond the limits of legality or state-sanctioned power. These provincial governments acknowledged in letters to London how police had seized rebel hostages, destroyed property if it belonged to rebels or their supporters, called in arms or radio sets without normal procedures, forced labourers to repair damaged government property and imposed collective fines beyond the allowable limits.39

  Collective fines drew particular ire as a peculiarly pernicious type of action in India. These had long been imperial practice, and would later be applied during the Partition riots of 1947. Whole villages or communities had to pay up if members of their own village or mohalla had been implicated in violence. The fines aggravated anti-state feeling and drove a wedge between those fined and those not fined; in Bihar and in Central Provinces, in a blatant display of the government’s desire to prevent India’s religious communities from uniting in 1942, the police exempted Muslims from collective fines after lobbying by the Muslim League, unless there was a direct reason to suspect particular individuals.40 By mid-September 1942, within weeks of the start of the uprising, people in Central Provinces and Berar had been collectively fined over 300,000 rupees. After a rebellion in the Nilgiri Hills a fortnight later, the local government suggested that any more disturbances would result in ‘the forcible realisation of collective fines … as the rice crop ripens, this becomes a very real threat’.41 The collection of fines could be used to subdue and intimidate, as well as to realise cash.

  Officials also sought and won the possibility of exoneration from any illegal acts carried out in ‘good faith’, from the burning-down of villages to, in one instance, the shooting dead of one Dewoo Ganpat, a vegetable hawker, killed at short range by two policemen for shouting a nationalist slogan.42 Other more trivial but humiliating punishments, like the stripping naked of protesters and rough house searches, also took place, while in more remote districts like Midnapore zealous Indian and British policemen razed houses and burned property to the ground.43 Rebels used alarming rhetoric to instil the fear of rape by rampaging police and soldiers and in Bengal a number of sexual attacks on women were recorded in detail with corroborating evidence.44 In Chimur, an isolated village in Central Provinces surrounded by dense jungle, three senior local policemen were murdered. All the men of the village took flight, leaving local women vulnerable as the authorities swooped, and there were strong insinuations of sexual attack. ‘Meet any woman of Chimur and you will find her with tears in her eyes’, reported women Congress workers who visited the village some weeks later, ‘imploring you to try to release her husband, brother or son.’45 The courts, manned by both Indian and British judges, attempted to uphold the rule of law and to rein in some provincial policemen and administrators by refusing to ratify some actions. But with the extraordinary powers of the Defence of India Act under their belt, many provincial governments found they could simply declare new ordinances or dodge judicial interference. Military and civil parts of the state had fused together further; newly recruited civil servants now spent five or six weeks with units of the army to familiarise themselves with the armed forces and with a view to mutual co-operation in the case of civil unrest.

  For some army officers it was a chance to see action at last, even if not against the Axis. As one wrote home to Britain:

  At one time the police were completely demoralised and we were given a free hand, pretty well, to use force where necessary without the usual rigmarole of getting a magistrate’s sanction written or otherwise. We had some grand fun including a number of firing incidents. But I’m sorry to say we lost one officer and four ORs at one place just overwhelmed and beaten to death by a frenzied mob … I myself had some excitement with my pln [platoon]. And two or three times had to open fire but that always did the trick.46

  Churchill admitted 500 protesters had been killed, the official British statistics noted 1,060, The Statesman newspaper recorded 2,500.47 Many of the nationalists pegged the figure much higher. During the autumn and winter months of 1942 there were between 60,000 and 90,000 detentions, leaving the prisons packed and insanitary. Despite fears about political ‘infection’ it was difficult to keep political prisoners segregated from other prisoners, including thieves and murderers, alongside errant sepoys.

  Military reserves stretched to breaking point as the army balanced the defence of the border with the internal u
nrest. William Slim feared the Japanese might seize the moment and start an airborne invasion or lend air support to the protesters; he suffered at least a couple of intensely anxious weeks, as large chunks of the Indian countryside, particularly in Bihar, passed out of civil control altogether. Slim, with oversight of Orissa and Bengal, was reduced to forming his ‘final and only reserve’ from the venereal patients in the Calcutta and Barrackpore hospitals.48 The government had considered ever since the beginning of the war the passing of a domestic martial law, or a Revolutionary Movement Ordinance, should rebellion on a major scale erupt in India, but ultimately in 1942 settled on the repurposing of the Defence of India Act as a way of keeping unrest under control. But some choice morsels from the draft of the Emergency Ordinance supplemented the Defence of India Act from 1942, included as amendments to existing laws, including the aim of waging ‘economic warfare’ against Congress. The military and civil functions of the state became very blurry. What was necessary for the defence of the country and what was necessary for internal stability? On 14 August the first of several attacks by military aircraft were made on protesters who were dismantling bridges and railway tracks in Kajra, Bihar, and they were strafed by machine-gun fire from above.49 Ultimately, the wartime conditions and the unbridled possibilities offered by the blanket Defence of India rules enabled the Raj to bring down the full force of the state on the heads of the rebels without needing to justify or legislate for its own actions.