by Yasmin Khan
40 TOP, vol. 2, p. 909, Stewart to Linlithgow, 5 Sept. 1942; P. N. Chopra and S. R. Bakshi (eds), Quit India Movement: British Secret Documents, p. 164.
41 P. N. Chopra and S. R. Bakshi (eds), Quit India Movement: British Secret Documents, p. 164; p. 200.
42 Hutchins, India’s Revolution, p. 177.
43 Rob Johnson, ‘The Indian Army and Internal Security’, in Kaushik Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars, p. 302.
44 Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery, p. 374.
45 P. N. Chopra and S. R. Bakshi (eds), Quit India Movement: British Secret Documents, p. 243.
46 IOR L/PJ/12/655 Censorship Reports, Aug. 1942.
47 Hutchins reproduces government statistics on civil disturbances, pp. 230–2.
48 W. J. Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 156.
49 Vinita Damodaran, Broken Promises, p. 174. Aerial attacks were also made on rebels in Bengal and Orissa. There was support for a firm line of strafing saboteurs in the House of Commons on 8 Oct. 1942.
50 IOR L/PJ/8/608 Civil disobedience: protests against use of whipping as punishment, Aug. 1942–Jul 1944; IOR/L/PJ/8/494 Punishments: legislation to allow whipping as punishment for civil disobedience offenders in Bombay, Jul. 1932–Oct. 1945. For discussion of changing methods of punishment in colonial India, see Taylor Sherman, State Violence and Punishment in India (London: Routledge, 2012).
51 IOR L/PJ/8/608 Civil disobedience: protests against use of whipping as punishment, Aug. 1942–Jul. 1944.
52 Ibid.
53 Benjamin Zachariah, ‘Rewriting Imperial Mythologies: The Strange Case of Penderel Moon’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, no. 12 (2001), p. 58.
54 National Archives, Kew, KV 2/2510, Security Service files on Menon, telephone checks, 25 June 1942.
55 CSAS, Nilubhai Limaye interviewed by Uma Shanker in 1970.
56 G. N. S. Raghavan (ed), M. Asaf Ali’s Memoirs, p. 292. Prison diary dated 14 Dec. 1942.
57 Ibid., p. 293. Prison diary dated 10 Jan. 1943.
58 Ibid., pp. 293–4. Prison diary dated 22 Jan. 1943.
59 Ibid., p. 293. Prison diary dated 10 Jan. 1943.
60 Ibid., p. 285. Prison diary dated 29 Sept. 1944.
61 R. K. Garg, ‘Aruna Remembered’, in T. N. Kaul (ed.), Aruna Asaf Ali: A Profile (Delhi: Lancer Press, 1990), p. 60.
62 G. N. S. Raghavan (ed), M. Asaf Ali’s Memoirs, p. 297. Prison diary dated 11 May 1943.
63 Ibid., p. 299. Prison diary dated 22 Jan. 1944.
64 Ibid.
15 Scorched Earth
1 NARA, US Consulate General Calcutta, 1943: 800–1943: 861.33, Telegram to Washington DC, 18 July 1943.
2 Ibid.
3 Statesman, 24 April 1942. Government of Assam Communiqué on Food Shortages.
4 Daily requirements for the US military were 12,800 lb and for the British Army 6,000 lb.
5 Kenneth Hulbert Diaries, BBC People’s War, Article ID A4442564, 29 May 1943.
6 Clive Branson, British Soldier in India, p. 66. 23 May 1943.
7 NARA, Adjutant Gen., Gen. Correspondence, Box 84, 634–674, Major Gen. Wheeler, SEAC, 23 Dec. 1943.
8 IOR L/PJ/12/655.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. Censorship Reports, letters by sepoys, 16 and 17 May 1943.
11 IOR L/PJ/12/655 Censorship Reports, letters by a Marathi villager to a sepoy, 1 Sept. 1943.
12 IOR L/PJ/12/655 Censorship Reports, 25 Aug.–7 Sept. 1943 inclusive.
13 IOR L/PJ/12/655 Censorship Reports, 11 Aug. 1943–24 Aug. 1943 inclusive.
14 IOR L/PJ/12/655 Censorship Reports 1943.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Janam Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire (London: Hurst, 2015).
18 Ibid.
19 Jyoti Bose, The Man-Made Famine (Cambridge: B. Rajan and D. Sen, 1943), unpaginated.
20 NAI, Dept. of Commerce, File no. 21 (10)ITC/42 Serial nos 1–7 Part C.
21 Bose, The Man-Made Famine.
22 Ibid.
23 Satyen Basu, A Doctor in the Army, p. 190.
24 Ibid., p. 192.
25 IOR L/PJ/5/150 FNR Herbert to Linlithgow, 28 Aug. 1943.
26 IOR L/PJ/5/150 FNR Herbert to Linlithgow, 21 July 1943.
27 Sen’s classic work is Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). For the social history, Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943–44 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). For an excellent comparative approach of famine, its causes and consequences, Cormac Ó Gráda, Famine: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). A new account is Janam Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire (London: Hurst, 2015).
28 Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 9 Aug. 1943.
29 Pinnell’s career is discussed in Janam Mukherjee’s Hungry Bengal.
30 CSAS, Gurdial Singh Khosla interviewed by Uma Shanker in 1976.
31 Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, p. 52. 17 Feb. 1944.
32 John Glendevon, The Viceroy at Bay (London: Collins, 1971), p. 269. Photographs of demonstrations against Linlithgow on his return to the UK were banned from the Indian press.
33 Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, p. 54. 9 Feb. 1944.
34 Ibid., p. 95. 24 Oct. 1944.
35 Ibid., p. 122. 4 April 1945.
36 Branson, British Soldier in India, p. 94. 17 Sept. 1943.
37 Kenneth Hulbert Diaries, BBC People’s War, Article ID A4442564, 1 June 1943.
38 Peggy Tench Memoir, BBC People’s War, A5864358, contributed 22 Sept. 2005.
39 Hump Express, 26 April 1945.
40 IOR L/PJ/5/150 Confidential report on political situation in Bengal, second half of Aug. 1943.
41 The Calcutta Key (Guidebook for US Army in India, Information and Education Branch CBI, 1945).
42 T. G. Narayan, Famine Over Bengal (Calcutta: The Book Company, 1944), p. 155.
43 B. L. Raina, Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War (1939–45): Medical Services, Administration (New Delhi: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, 1990 [1953]), p. 410.
44 CWMG, vol. 84, p. 253. Interview to the press, 30 July 1944.
45 CSAS, Sucheta Kripalani, interviewed by Uma Shanker in 1974.
46 The INA Heroes: Autobiographies (Lahore: Hero Publications, 1946), p. 77.
47 Anon., Jai Hind: The Diary of a Rebel Daughter of India with the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (Bombay: Janmabhoomi Prakashan Mandir, 1945), p. 37, 28 June 1943.
48 Ibid., p. 41, 5 July 1943.
49 Bose visited the Andamans for three days from 29 Dec. 1943 and stayed in the Governor’s House which had once been occupied by Charles Waterfall. See Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 264.
50 Jane Robbins, ‘Freedom Under Britain or Freedom Under Japan: The Radio Battle for India, December 1941–September 1945’, Japan Forum 7, no. 2 (1995): pp. 217–24. See also S. K. Bose and Sugata Bose (eds), Azad Hind: Subhas Chandra Bose (London: Anthem Press, 2004).
16 The Cogs in a Watch
1 IOR L/Mil/7/18599 Lascelles to Amery, 10 Dec. 1943.
2 IOR WS/1/707.
3 IOR R/2/767/280 Directive on Victory Celebrations for the North African Campaign, issued by the National War Front in Simla, 13 May 1943.
4 Spectator, 4 May 1944.
5 For a full account of Noël Coward’s tour in South Asia, see Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942–5 (London: Vintage, 2011), pp. 362–3.
6 For details of these films see http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/archives. I am grateful to Francis Gooding for screening a selection of these films in Oxford in Sept. 2013.
7 Sanjoy Bhattacharya, ‘British Military Information Management Techniques and the South Asian Soldier: Eastern India During the Second World War’, Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 2 (1 May 2000).
8 Ibid.
&n
bsp; 9 IOR MSS Eur F152/59–62 Papers of Frank Lugard Brayne, 22 Dec. 1941, Notes as Inspector of Amenities for Indian troops in Iraq. Brayne’s pre-war career is analysed in depth by Clive Dewey in Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service (London: Hambledon Press, 1993).
10 IOR MSS Eur F152/59–62 Papers of Frank Lugard Brayne.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 IOR L/PJ/12/655 Middle East military censorship fortnightly summaries covering Indian troops.
14 Transcript of interview conducted with Rajinder Singh Dhatt by Dr Kanwaljit in Hounslow, c. 2008. See also, National Army Museum, 2008–05–26, oral history of Rajinder Singh Dhatt, interview conducted by Justin Saddington in Hounslow, London, April 2008. Also, author’s personal conversation with Rajinder Singh Dhatt in Aug. 2011.
15 National Army Museum, ‘Memoirs of an old Koi Hai’ (John Ffrench, unpublished manuscript, National Army Museum), 9507–79. Written in 1989.
16 Ibid.
17 Jhuddha Shumsher Rana to Auchinleck quoted in Mary Des Chene, Relics of Empire (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1991), p. 153.
18 Bernard Pignede, The Gurungs (Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1993), p. 23. Pignede was an anthropologist who lived among the Gurungs in the 1950s.
19 Frank Brayne would describe the Gurkhas as the most ‘newsless of all’ in 1941. See IOR MSS Eur F152/58–62. Papers of Frank Lugard Brayne.
20 Mohammed Khan, b. 1922. North West Sound Archive. Interviewed 7 June 2004. Ref. 2005. 0194A.
21 H. M. Close, A Pathan Company (Islamabad: National Book Foundation, 1994), p. 42.
22 E. D. Smith, Even the Brave Falter (London: Robert Hale, 1978), pp. 15–16.
23 Rupert Lyons, transcript of audio memoir, BBC People’s War, Article ID A6062988, 8 Oct. 2005.
24 IOR L/PJ/12/576.
25 Ibid.
26 Compton Mackenzie, All Over the Place (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948), p. 32.
27 Quoted in Christopher Somerville, Our War (London: Phoenix, 2005), p. 65. See also the transcripts of these interviews conducted by Christopher Somerville now held at the IWM.
28 Interview conducted by Iqroop Sandhawalia with Major-General Kartar Singh, 2011.
29 Satyen Basu, A Doctor in the Army (Calcutta: Sri Bajendranath Bose, 1960), pp. 202–15. Basu’s note on Discipline dated 6 June 1944.
17 Longing and Loss
1 For examples of this propaganda, Herbert A. Friedman, ‘Axis and Allied Propaganda to Indian Troops’, prepared with the assistance of Arunkumar Bhatt, http://www.psywarrior.com/AxisPropIndia.html.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Angela Bolton, The Maturing Sun, pp. 91–2.
5 Interview conducted by Iqroop Sandhawalia with Major-General Kartar Singh, 2011.
6 Satyen Basu, A Doctor in the Army (Calcutta: Sri Bajendranath Bose, 1960), p. 143.
7 Compton Mackenzie, All Over the Place (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948), p. 47.
8 Letter of appeal by Nazir Begum included in Ffrench papers, National Army Museum.
9 IOR L/Mil/17/5/2333.
10 IOR L/WS/1/707 Indian Army Morale. Intelligence report on one Jat unit, 30 Sept. 1943.
11 Francis Yeats-Brown, Martial India (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1945), p. 144.
12 Calcutta had some of the highest rates of VD among soldiers recorded anywhere in the world during the Second World War; in the British Army in Calcutta in 1944 rates reached 376 per 1,000. See IOR V/24/3671 Annual Report on the Health of the Army in India, 1943, vol. 4, part 1. Among US forces in CBI the rate reached 200 per 1,000 in the same year.
13 NARA, CBI, Adjutant-General, General Corresp. 1944: 720.3–726.1, Box 88.
14 Mark Harrison, Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
15 IOR V/24/3671 Annual Report on the Health of the Army in India, 1942, vol. 4, part 1.
16 Statesman, 2 April 1945.
17 NARA, Secretary of Defense, Research Divn Box 1025. Attitude reports on overseas personnel, 1944.
18 IWM, HHS/1, Private Diary of Signalman H. Somerfield, 23 Nov. 1939.
19 IOR L/PJ/5/151 Casey to Wavell, 15 May 1944.
20 W. R. Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Pan, 2009), p. 153; Clive Branson, British Soldier in India (London: International Publishers, 1945), p. 34. 12 Oct. 1942.
21 IOR L/MIL/7/13899 Letter to Secretary of State for India, 25 March 1946.
22 NARA, CBI, Adjutant General corresp. 720.3–726.1, Box 88. American soldiers were banned from marrying while in India, making it impossible to legitimise unplanned pregnancies even if a couple wanted to do so.
23 IOR V/24/3671 Annual Report on the Health of the Army in India, 1943, vol. iv, part 1, p. 57.
24 Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the Famine of 1943–44 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 222.
25 Bhowani Sen, Rural Bengal in Ruins (Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1945) quoted in Greenough, pp. 177–8; Hansard, 17 Feb. 1944.
26 Santosh Kumar Mukherji, Indian Sex Life and Prostitution (Burnpur, Burdwan: Anil Kumar Das Gupta, 1945). This survey is, however, of dubious authenticity as this document is informed by some of the author’s own fantasies.
27 NAI, Home Dept 68/44 Political (1), 1944.
28 Ibid.
29 There were a large number of discussions on the subject. One civil servant explained that increases in prostitution ‘inevitably occurs owing to the concentration of large military forces’. NAI, Home Dept 11/27/44 Police.
30 NARA, Consulate Karachi Classified Gen. records 000–832, Box 1; CBI, Provost Marshal Activity reports (July 1945).
18 Catalyst of Change
1 Angela Bolton, The Maturing Sun, p. x.
2 Gian Singh, Memories of Friends and Foes (Neath: Cwmnedd Press, 1995), p. 13.
3 The literature on these battles is extensive. See in particular Fergal Keane’s brilliant account, Road of Bones: the Epic Siege of Kohima (London: HarperPress, 2011). Also, Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942–5 (London: Vintage, 2011). Rajinder Dhatt recalled how the stench of bodies was one of the worst aspects of the Burma campaign, and how the men made efforts to send back or cremate bodies if they were far enough away from the fighting in order to be able to do so.
4 N. Lokendra, Manipur during World War II, 1941–45: Socio-Economic Change and Local Responses (Imphal: Manipur State Archives, Directorate of Arts & Culture, Govt of Manipur, 1993). See also, John Parratt, Wounded Land: Politics and Identity in Modern Manipur (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2005).
5 Neipezu-u Chirhah interviewed by Kazimuddin Ahmed in Nagaland, 2013.
6 Lokendra, Manipur during World War II, p. 9.
7 A recent article estimates that 6,000 Manipuri Kukis lent assistance to the Japanese and points out that 148 Kukis from Manipur have got INA pensions and that 70 local Kukis were charged by the British with assisting the Japanese after the war. See Jangkhomang Guite, ‘Representing Local Participation in INA–Japanese Imphal Campaign: The Case of the Kukis in Manipur, 1943–45’, Indian Historical Review 37, no. 2 (2011): 291–309.
8 Ibid.
9 Lokendra, Manipur during World War II, pp. 23–6.
10 B. L. Raina, Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War (1939–45): Medical Services, Administration (New Delhi: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, 1990 [1953]), p. 36.
11 Ibid., p. 38.
12 Nehru in 1952 quoted in Raina, Official History, pp. 147–8.
13 The annual sickness rate on the Indo–Burmese front rose in 1943 to 1,196.10 per 1,000, i.e. statistically each man was hospitalised more than once. Almost half of hospital admissions were due to malaria, the most important single cause of sickness. Other causes of morbidity included malaria, dysentery and skin diseases and there was a very high ratio of sickness to battle wounds on the Indo-Burmese front mid-war: for every soldier wounded on the Indo-Burm
ese front in 1942, 204 were sick and in 1943 this was 142.
14 National Army Museum, Lilian Pert Papers, 1982–08–215. March 1943, Lilian Pert’s note on Indian military hospitals.
15 Ibid., 8 Oct. 1943, Lilian Pert to General Rankin of the Southern Army.
16 Ibid., Report on evacuation of cases from Ranipet to Bangalore, 29 June 1943.
17 Quoted in Mark Harrison, Medicine and Victory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 189.
18 Raina, Official History, p. 136.
19 Bhore Report, p. 94.
20 Raina, Official History, p. 136.
21 Ibid., p. 136; Bhore Report.
22 E. E. Prebble, ‘Venereal Disease in India’, Sexually Transmitted Infections 22, no. 2 (1946), 59–60.
23 Ibid.
24 W. J. Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Pan, 2009), p. 203. This quote refers particularly to nursing.
25 Singh, Memories of Friends and Foes, p. 7.
26 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves (London: Pimlico, 2002), pp. 221–2; H. R. A. Prabhu, ‘Military Psychiatry in India’, Indian Journal of Psychiatry no. 52 (Jan 2010); D. Wilfred Abse, The Diagnosis of Hysteria, etc. (Bristol: John Wright & Sons, 1950), B. L. Raina, Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War (1939–45): Medical Services, Administration (New Delhi: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, 1990) [first published 1953], pp. 150–220.
27 Abse, The Diagnosis of Hysteria, p. 2. Abse was from a distinguished Welsh family; one of his brothers became a British MP and another a well-regarded poet.
28 Ibid., pp. 13–14.
29 Ibid., p. 18.
30 Bolton, The Maturing Sun, p. 152.
31 Ibid.
19 The Man-a-Mile Road
1 W. J. Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Pan, 2009), p. 284.
2 IOR L/PS/12/4622 Routes to China, 1940–1947.
3 Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 196.
4 Charles Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Time Runs Out in CBI (Washington DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959), p. 300.
5 John Tamraz contemporary report quoted in Leslie Anders, The Ledo Road (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. 45.
6 Contemporary report quoted in ibid., p. 59.