India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  Of a train journey from Cochin to Bombay, another wrote:

  we could see hundreds of men, women and children of all ages on the sides of the roads and crying for alms. The sight of those naked and half-naked wretches reduced to skeletons was too strong even for the most strong-hearted persons. They were begging from all indiscriminately and even soldiers of other nationalities took pity on them and gave them alms. These wretches had left their villages and were moving towards towns in crowds.76

  A visitor to Poona similarly noted that ‘People are in a terrible condition there. Every living person looks like a skeleton. No flesh on their bones and the youth have no sign of youth on their faces. They seemed to be over 50.’77

  The problem was not just the price but also the availability of essential commodities for civilian consumption, owing to myriad problems of procurement, storage and distribution. As an elderly villager in the United Provinces observed, ‘scarcity and dearth is ranging throughout the land … even at these [high] rates, very little is available for most of the time. Many people return empty handed from the shops. Many go to different parts of the country to get rice but from there also come back disappointed.’78 The brother of an Indian officer from the Central Provinces complained that

  all corn is being collected forcibly by the Govt. authorities. They do not care whether you have got enough for you and your servants or not. They snatch away all except Jawari [millet] and spare us as much as they like. Up till now such a tyranny has never been experienced under British rule as going on now.79

  Just when Indian factories were clothing armies across Asia and beyond, the Indian people were faced with an acute shortage.

  There is no other dress for the girls except the one they are wearing and that too is worn out. The price of cloth has risen 6 times … We have never seen such times in our life … we can bear all other difficulties but we cannot bear to see the girls wearing torn garments.80

  By early 1942, the Indian government was alert to the problem of inflation. The provincial governments were told that ‘Inflation is at present a greater danger to India than either the Germans or the Japanese.’81 Nevertheless, its response proved largely ineffective. Although wartime powers allowed the central government to control prices, the authority to do so in the initial stages was devolved to the provinces. Moreover, it was restricted to a few essential consumer goods. When New Delhi did wake up to the magnitude of the problem it remained focused on curbing the prices of wheat and cloth.82 The government not only lacked the requisite statistics but was apparently impervious to basic economic considerations such as relative costs of various items in a consumption basket as well as the regional disparity in prices. The subsequent expansion of controls to other commodities happened without any overall conception of price controls. Rationing too was adopted in a half-baked manner. The mechanism of control that came into being would go on to play a central role in the planned economy of independent India.83 But during the war it did not appreciably check the soaring rate of inflation.

  Some provinces did better than others in responding to the problems of hunger and deprivation. The Madras government began operating ‘Famine Camps’ in the Bellary district – one of the famine-prone ‘dry districts’ of the province – as early as March 1942. These camps provided work for villagers of the district. The numbers engaged in these works rose steadily in the subsequent months. Interestingly, there was an ‘unusual preponderance of women’ in the camps. The Madras government also opened weavers’ relief centres. The government paid ‘an advance of Rs. 2 per loom to the distressed weavers to enable them to convert their looms so as to weave cloth of [military] uniform texture and of other types to be produced in relief centres’.84 A year later, the famine camps in Bellary were supporting 180,000 people. Similar camps were operating in Anantapur and Kurnool, assisting another 100,000. By November 1943, as the harvest looked promising in most parts of Madras Province, these camps began to be wound down.85 Yet food remained a serious problem in the province and the government there had to operate relief camps and fair-price shops in various places throughout the war. The Malabar district was particularly hard hit in 1943. ‘Dear brother,’ wrote a man from Malabar, ‘as regards news out here, death and death everywhere. Starvation and epidemics sweep away daily a good number. You will be astonished to see that ¼ of our neighbours have left for the better world – when you come back with anxiety to see them.’86

  The Bombay government too was alert to early signs of trouble. The Bijapur district in the southern part of the province (today’s Karnataka) was declared as afflicted by famine in December 1942. Even as measures were being initiated, the commissioner of the southern districts reported that the situation in the neighbouring districts of the Dharwad and Belgaum was also ‘very grave’: ‘Unless stocks are received immediately, the position will undoubtedly become most serious and it will become increasingly difficult elsewhere to preserve law and order … all districts of the Karnatak are now faced with the problem of how to tackle Mass Hunger on a menacing scale.’87 The Bombay government initially sought to regulate trade and distribution throughout the province in order to stabilize prices. But it quickly found that it did not have the capacity to do this. The upshot was the widening of the black market and a rise in profiteering. The government was forced to attempt other measures, such as rationing and a basic plan of allotments, to ensure that the province did not tip over into famine.88

  Outside Bengal, the part of India worst hit by inflation-led famine was the princely state of Travancore. In 1942, there was a shortage of food-grains there owing to the cessation of imports from Burma – a major source of rice for all of south India. This initial shortfall led, as in Bengal,89 to an exclusive focus on estimating the ‘real shortage’ based on ‘requirements’ and ‘availability’ and to a neglect of other factors that shrank the ability of the people to procure food. The deeper problems were widespread, including the loss of employment owing to the decline of the local export-based coir industry during the war. And, of course, there was the scourge of inflation.90

  Travancore had an ostensibly progressive and competent government led by the diwan, Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer. But its handling of the famine was no better than that of the Bengal government. As the government fumbled along from expedient to expedient, the effect on the population was devastating. A soldier’s relative wrote from Travancore:

  For days together I couldn’t even see a grain of rice. Of course Govt. is supplying us rice after three days. It is only a very nominal quantity. The quality too is hopelessly bad. To tell the truth, many of us are dying of starvation. A sack of rice costs Rs. 65/- in Cochin.91

  Outsiders travelling through Travancore were shocked: ‘I shuddered to see men, women and children with no flesh on their bodies and all skeletons just as if they were half dead.’92 As the shadow of famine lengthened in the state, the government was unable to appreciate the fundamental problem of insufficient purchasing power. Even after food stocks were built up and rationing introduced in the latter part of 1943, ration-card holders were taking in only 40 per cent of their allotment.93

  In desperation, people began migrating out of the state to nearby parts of Madras Province. A resident of the relatively prosperous Chettinad district noted that:

  Great distress has been caused by the severe famine in Travancore, from whence so many families have migrated to big towns like Madras, Karaikudy, Tanjore and Chettynad [sic]. They are coming day by day in overwhelming numbers begging for alms. They present a pathetic sight. All of them have got no flesh on their bodies, in fact they can be called living skeletons … they do not accept money. They want only food.94

  The largest such exodus took place to Malabar in 1943. Around 15,000 Travancoreans travelled 300 miles by rail and foot to Malabar, where they cleared upland jungles – designated ‘wastelands’ by the government – for cultivation. About a fifth of them succumbed to cerebral malaria and other diseases, while the rest straggled home
two years later. All told, famine and disease in Travancore exacted a mighty toll on the people. Between 1941 and 1944, the number of ‘excess deaths’ – above the normal rate of fifteen per thousand of population – was almost twenty-two per thousand.95

  By 1944, the cumulative and mutually reinforcing problems of railway capacity, coal production and food became increasingly evident to the Indian government. An inquiry into the problems of war production led by Lieutenant General Thomas Hutton observed that

  The blunt fact is that India’s resources are very limited and have been overstrained. She cannot now feed her population, nor can she get the coal required out of her mines, nor move it if she could. Her existing war industries are not working to capacity and existing contracts are not being fulfilled. Her capacity for executing military works has already been mortgaged for 1943–44 and nearly 80% for 1944–45.

  The inquiry’s conclusion was equally stark. ‘India has now by and large reached the peak of her war effort. The country can subscribe no further real resources. An endeavour to extract more in one direction generally involves a diminution in another. The plight of the civil population is serious and inflation has assumed dangerous proportions.’ At best, by adopting ‘remedial measures in respect of transport, coal, food and on anti-inflationary measures it may be possible to maintain India’s war effort at its present level for a time’.96

  The government was seriously worried by the prospect of a collapse of the home front owing to the combined pressures of war and political stalemate. The deadlock, however, could only be eased once the situation on the war front began to change.

  15

  Around the Mediterranean

  On 1 July 1942, Cairo was humming with rumours about Rommel’s imminent entry into the city. As in Calcutta six months before, women, children and the elderly were streaming out in all modes of transport. Trains bloated with passengers puffed and wheezed their way out of Cairo to Upper Egypt, Sudan and Palestine. As the people fled, the city was cloaked in smoke. Bits of burnt paper twisted in the breeze as a fountain of soot rose from the courtyard of the Middle East Command’s headquarters. The British civilian and military staff were hastily consigning thousands of confidential documents to improvised incinerators. Days after ‘Ash Wednesday’, street vendors of Cairo sold peanuts in paper cones made of half-burnt British secret documents.1 General Francis Tuker was sent up the Nile to reconnoitre positions for a retreat southwards along the river: ‘it looked as though it would be inevitable that we should soon be driven on to Alexandria and Cairo and those positions would in the end be needed. It was a most trying atmosphere.’2

  The ‘flap’, as it came to be known, occurred in the absence of the commander-in-chief. General Auchinleck, having taken charge of the Eighth Army, was in the Western Desert where his troops were squaring up against the Axis forces at El Alamein. The Alamein Line ran 38 miles south from an eponymous railway station on the Mediterranean coast to the Qattara Depression, an immense stretch of sand dunes and salt marshes impassable to tanks and hence incapable of being flanked. The terrain on which the defences were organized was broken up by sharp ridges, sand banks and hillocks. The Alamein Line, however, was no more than a series of scattered ‘boxes’ sited on commanding positions – the most important of these being the ridges of Ruweisat and Alam Halfa.

  Auchinleck’s plan was to block Rommel’s advance in this 38-mile funnel and use his own mobile forces – organized as ‘battle groups’ with infantry and artillery – to punch at the enemy’s flanks and rear. Rommel had crossed the Egyptian frontier on 23 June and four days later had taken Mersa Matruh in an audacious attack. On 30 June Rommel circled his wagons ahead of the British defences at Alamein. As his forces stood less than a hundred miles from Alexandria, Mussolini flew to Derna in anticipation of a triumphal entry into Cairo.

  The 10th Indian Division, which had been garrisoning Matruh, had been cut off by the attacking Axis forces. The division decided to abandon the coastal road and fight its way back to Alamein through the desert. The breakout proved successful, but the division was in such disarray that it had to be sent all the way back to the Nile Delta for reorganization and re-equipping. Meanwhile, other Indian units were deployed for the defence of Alamein.

  The northern sector of the Alamein Line was held by the 30th Corps, while the 13th Corps was deployed in the southern sector. No sooner had the two corps taken up their positions than the Axis forces fell upon them. Rommel’s attack on 1 July was hastily improvised and mounted. His confidence buoyed by the battle at Matruh, he dispensed with such formalities as proper reconnaissance – he hoped to catch the Eighth Army on the hop and give it the coup de grâce. As the 15th and 21st Panzer divisions advanced towards the Ruweisat ridge, held by a division of the 30th Corps, they came under fire from an unanticipated corner.

  The 18th Indian Infantry Brigade was deployed in a box at Deir el Shein to the north-west of the Ruweisat ridge. A large depression in the desert, Deir el Shein was a good position for all-round defence. It carried the added advantage of being more or less invisible to the enemy – unless he came right up to its rim. Not surprisingly, it was overlooked by the Axis forces as they advanced on Ruweisat. Once under fire, though, the Panzers realized that bypassing the Deir el Shein box could render the British positions at the northern edge of Ruweisat untenable. When the Panzers decided to attack in full strength, the minor element of surprise afforded by its position was the only thing that counted in the brigade’s favour.

  The 18th Brigade’s unenviable position underscored the problems that continued to plague Indian units in the Middle East, as well as the Eighth Army. Formed in October 1940 in India, the brigade was originally assigned to the 8th Indian Infantry Division. About a year later, it was despatched for independent policing duties at Abadan in Iran. Subsequently, the brigade found itself in Erbil in Iraq. In early June 1942, as the Middle East Command cast about for additional formations, the brigade was moved by air from Iraq to Palestine. When its transport did not arrive in a week, one battalion – the 2/3rd Gurkhas – was sent by road to Egypt; the remaining battalions – 4/11th Sikh and 2/5th Essex – arrived by train. The units that moved by rail came under attack from German aircraft and took a few casualties. On the morning of 27 June, they were brusquely dropped off at Alamein. The brigade commander, with his headquarters and artillery, had set out by road and had lost his way. So the senior battalion commander took charge and was ordered by the corps commander to Deir el Shein.3

  The brigade reached Deir el Shein in the small hours of 29 June and immediately started digging in. ‘Time was against us from the start’, noted the new brigade commander.4 The box was a little over 2 miles long by a mile wide. Tired and cramped from the long journey, the brigade worked round the clock over the next two days to dig defences, wire the perimeter and sow mines. Since the brigade had no compressors to bore through the stony ground, emplacements could not be properly prepared. Nor did it have a suitable stock of mines: three different types were sent to it and many were without fuses.5 The box, therefore, had several gaps which could not adequately be sealed with mines. Still more problematic was the lack of artillery. ‘Guns did not exist when we first arrived’, an officer recalled, ‘but there were rumours of some coming from various sources.’ Eventually, on the evening of 30 June, an assortment of artillery tricked in. However, the eighteen 25-pounders, sixteen 6-pounders and twenty 2-pounders reached the brigade too late to be dug in.6

  Such was the parlous state of the 18th Brigade on the morning of 1 July 1942 when it sighted a column of dust moving towards Deir el Shein. At 1000 hours Axis artillery began pounding a part of the perimeter held by the Essex battalion. This was a baptism by fire for the battalion. Indeed, with the exception of the Sikh battalion, which was originally from the 7th Indian Brigade, none of the troops had any experience of desert warfare. After an hour of shelling and probing, the Axis forces resorted to a familiar ruse. Two British prisoners of war walked forward under
a white flag and relayed a message from the Germans: surrender or prepare to be slaughtered. After gleaning some useful information on the enemy’s strength, the officers were sent back with a reply: ‘stick it up and be damned’.7

  By early afternoon, the Afrika Korps had laid down a heavy barrage and began probing and thrusting against the Indian defences. As the German sappers sought to blow a crater on the perimeter, they came under heavy fire from the Essex troops. But the battalion was short of ammunition and could not lay down a steady field of fire. Around forty German tanks rammed their way through and went straight for the brigade headquarters. The seven Matildas that had arrived the previous night were swiftly snuffed out. The Panzers then pounced on the Essex position, forcing its surrender, before moving on to the Sikhs.

  Meantime, the corps commander had ordered the 1st Armoured Division to assist the defenders of Deir el Shein. The 18th Brigade was informed that the tanks were on their way. None turned up. The armoured division’s assets were widely scattered and by the time its commander had scrambled to put a force together, it was too late. ‘The effect of this disappointment’, the brigade commander observed, ‘cannot have done other than lower the morale of the whole garrison, particularly the Indian troops.’8 The brigade nevertheless hung on by its fingernails – taking a toll of eighteen German tanks – until it was overrun at 1930 hours. Just about a third of the brigade managed to break out of the battle.

  The outcome was never in doubt. Tired and inexperienced, unprepared and ill-supported, the 18th Brigade was no match for the two veteran Panzer divisions; it did not survive this encounter and was never reconstituted. Yet its tenacious resistance had blunted Rommel’s offensive and bought invaluable breathing space for the Eighth Army to organize for the defence of the Alamein Line. As Niall Barr rightly argues, ‘the resistance of the 18th Indian Brigade had stemmed the tide’.9