Most Congress Party leaders did not pay much attention to foreign affairs; nor indeed did Gandhiji. However, Nehru, who did, was concerned about the American and Chinese reactions to Gandhiji’s moves. Indeed, he wished they would persuade Britain to restart talks with the Congress Party so that the possibilities of averting the crisis could be explored. On 4 June 1942, he sent a message to Colonel Louis Johnson (who had by then returned to Washington), which read as follows:
Though Gandhiji does not wish to embarrass the war situation and will not start a movement unless forced to do so, the recognition of India’s independence is now essential to successfully fight the war and utilize India’s great resources for it.6
This message, however, failed to breach the Halifax–Bajpai front in Washington. On 18 June Cordell Hull had Johnson send the following reply to Nehru: ‘You should know that Mr Gandhi’s statements are being misunderstood in the United States and are being construed as opposing our war aims.’7
Nehru then somehow persuaded Gandhiji to accept that if India was granted freedom, Britain and America could retain their forces in the country to fight the Japanese. Nehru believed that such a clarification was necessary if China and America were to be persuaded to prevail upon Churchill to grant self-government to India in the middle of the war. Gandhiji’s telegram to Chiang Kai-shek, drafted by Nehru, was a long one. Its main points are contained in the following excerpts:
A Japanese domination of either India or China would be equally injurious to the other country and to world peace…. Free India will agree that Allied powers under treaty with us keep their armed forces in India and use the country as a base for operations against the threatened Japanese attack…I am straining every nerve to avoid a conflict with British authorities but if in the vindication of the freedom which has become an immediate desideratum, this has become inevitable I should not hesitate to run any risk however great.8
Nehru then persuaded Gandhiji to write to Roosevelt as well, and make the same proposition, which he did on 1 July 1942:
Under foreign rule we can make no effective contribution of any kind to this war except as harlots. The policy of the Indian National Congress admittedly the largest political organization of the longest standing in India is largely guided by me…. The Allied declaration that the Allies are fighting to make the world safe for freedom of the individual and for democracy sounds hollow as long as India [and] for that matter Africa are exploited by Great Britain and America has the Negro problem in her own home…. Allied troops will remain in India during the war under treaty with the free India Government that may be formed by the people of India without any outside interference direct or indirect…I write this to enlist your active sympathy.9
Chiang’s reply, dated 8 July 1942, was received through the Chinese consul general in Delhi. Chiang requested the Mahatma to hold his hand on any agitation because of the recent heavy reverses that the British had suffered in North Africa.10 This message along with the Congress Party leaders’ lingering hopes that Britain may yet reopen talks with them resulted in the Quit India movement being postponed till August.
On 25 July 1942 Chiang Kai-shek then sent a three-page-long telegram to the US president and also asked his foreign minister, T.V. Soong, who was then in Washington, to deliver a verbal message. The telegram, amongst other things, said:
The Indian people have been expecting the US to come out and take a stand on the side of justice and equity…. The Indian people are by nature of a passive disposition but are apt to go to extremes…. By showing sympathy, they can be influenced…a laisser-faire policy would cause them to despair…[and] danger [would be] of the situation getting out of control.11
Foreign Minister Soong made three points orally to Sumner Wells, the US undersecretary of state. These Chiang thought too sensitive to be put down on paper. The first point was that the ‘Indian Congress actually represents the desire of the Indian people’. Secondly, ‘that the question of India is regarded by all Asia as a test case’. Thirdly, that ‘the US and China acting together can influence the situation’.12
Wells supported the Chinese démarche, recommending to his president, on 29 July 1942, a joint Sino–US intervention to bring about ‘some satisfactory arrangement [in India] which would hold during the war period’. Roosevelt, however, decided to transmit Chiang’s entire message to Churchill and requested him ‘to let me have as soon as possible your thoughts and any suggestions you may wish to offer with regard to nature of the reply I should make to him’.13 To Gandhiji, Roosevelt replied on 1 August as follows:*
US has always supported policies of fair dealing and of fair play. War has come as a result of the Axis Powers’ dreams of world conquest…I shall hope that our (mutual) interest in democracy and righteousness will enable your countrymen and mine to make common cause against a common enemy.14
Roosevelt’s message to Churchill arrived in London when the prime minister was away in the Middle East. Attlee thought that the matter was too urgent to be left pending even for a few days. Immediately, Leopold Amery, the secretary of state for India, sent for John G. Winant, the US ambassador, who reported to Hull on 29 July 1942 as follows:
First he [Amery] explained the service that Britain had rendered to India. His emphasis is always on the divisions in India, both religious and political, underlining the minority problem…. The Indian Congress would not be the sole party with which England would ultimately deal…. If Congress revolts after 7 August [the] British would arrest Gandhi and other political leaders. If similar effort was made within England same measures would be taken. Amery then asserted confidently: “Agitation will not affect the Indian war effort or recruitment.”15
On 7 August Attlee sent off a lengthy telegram to the president enclosing the minutes of the Congress Working Committee of 29 April 1942 (which have been referred to in the previous chapter) to prove that the Congress was defeatist and particularly Gandhiji was so, and no reliance could be placed on them at this juncture. Attlee then warned that ‘if Congress agitated, the consequences could be grave and thus rigorous steps would be necessary to suppress the movement at the very outset’.16 Roosevelt’s notation to Hull on this telegram read as follows: ‘Frankly I think it is best not to reply to it. What is your view? – FDR’.17
On receiving Attlee’s telegram, Roosevelt did not wait for Churchill’s reply before answering Chiang, on 8 August 1942:
I agree with you [but] the British feel that their position is fair and in any case the suggestions coming from us would undermine the authority of the only existing government in India and create the very crisis we wish to avoid.… We could further consider the matter should the course of events in India in the next week or two reach a more serious stage.18
He added the following in a further message to Chiang on 12 August: ‘Under the Atlantic Charter, the US supports “independence for those who aspire for independence”.’19
Churchill replied to Roosevelt on 13 August. As may be expected, he was furious:
All Chiang’s talk of Congress leaders wishing us to quit in order that they may help the Allies is eyewash…. You could remind Chiang that Gandhi was prepared to negotiate with Japan on the free passage for Japanese troops through India to join with Hitler. Personally I have no doubt that in addition, there would have been an understanding that the Congress would have the use of sufficient Japanese troops to keep down composite majority of 90 million Muslims, 40 million untouchables and 90 million in the Indian states. The style of his message prompts me to say “Cherchez la femme”. It may well be that ensuing weeks will show how very little real influence Hindu Congress has over the masses in India.20
Churchill had taken liberty with facts, but, in the last paragraph, he had thrown down the gauntlet: that the coming struggle would prove the Congress Party’s lack of support amongst Indians. ‘Cherchez la femme’ – look for the woman – was what Louis XIV used to say whenever there was a whiff of scandal in his court. ‘La femme’ in Churchill
’s message was obviously a reference to Madame Chiang Kai-shek and to her influence on the generalissimo as well as her enthusiasm for Nehru.
Churchill, in the meantime, had succeeded in breaking up the Nehru–Johnson nexus by arranging, through Harry Hopkins, the president’s friend and most influential adviser, for Johnson’s recall from India. On 31 May 1942, Churchill had wired to Hopkins:
There are rumours that the President will invite Pt. Nehru to the United States. I hope there is no truth in this, and that anyway the President will consult me beforehand. We do not at all relish the prospect of Johnson’s return to India. The Viceroy is much perturbed at the prospect. We are fighting to defend this vast mass of helpless Indians from imminent invasion. I know you will remember my many difficulties.21
And by August 1942 Johnson’s fate was sealed, and Roosevelt began looking for a replacement.
The ire of English officialdom in India against the Americans had been rising after Colonel Johnson’s arrival in Delhi. Their general attitude is well conveyed in a telegram from Sir Maurice Hallet, the governor of United Provinces, to the viceroy: ‘America will compel us to hand over [power] to Congress…it is extremely dangerous that the idea should get around that Roosevelt disapproves of HMG policy in regard to India and is even willing to interfere in that policy.’22 Linlithgow forwarded this telegram to London with the following comment: ‘A difficult people and we are bound to have a great deal more difficulty I think once the war is over…I of course and you are only too well aware of the difficulties presented to us by American sentimentalism and ignorance of the Indian problem.’23
The American assessment, based on the reports of the US Mission in Delhi at that time, was that the British would find it difficult to suppress the agitation in India but would not negotiate with the Congress Party because of their ‘belief based on British and American Intelligence reports that there is no chance of a Japanese invasion’ and also ‘because they could rely on the intransigence of Jinnah’. Cordell Hull, after the Quit India movement had been launched, had proposed to Roosevelt that Britain would be well advised to ‘repeat with full emphasis its proposal of Independence of India at the end of the war’.24 However, as indicated in his letter to Chiang, Roosevelt’s policy had turned to waiting and watching and applying pressure on Britain, but only with great caution.
Around this time the President Roosevelt’s assistant, Lauchlin Currie, passed through India on his way back from China. He noticed the danger of American forces and American attitudes in India getting identified with British policy in the minds of the Indians and wired his chief:
This tendency endangers your moral leadership in Asia and therefore America’s ability to exert its influence for acceptable and just settlement in post-war Asia. It is to Britain’s own long-term interest that Asiatic belief in American disinterestedness be preserved. The thing to be avoided at all costs is the shedding of Indian blood by American troops.25
Roosevelt, who, ever alert to the US’ image and future role in Asia, immediately issued a directive to the American forces in India that ‘their sole purpose is to prosecute the war of the United Nations against the Axis powers’ and to ‘take scrupulous care to avoid any appearance of participation in India’s internal political problems’. The president sent a copy of this directive to Chiang Kai-shek to further reassure him about American policy.
The previous year, on 12 August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill had signed the Atlantic Charter. This charter laid down certain common principles that the US and the UK wanted to follow for a better future for the world and included the declaration that ‘they [the US and the UK] respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live [italics added]’.
On 7 August 1942 the British Embassy in Washington reported to London that, on the first anniversary of the signing of the Atlantic Charter, the United States was planning to propose that telegrams be exchanged between the president and the prime minister and that the president’s telegram would state that the charter applied to Asia and Africa as well as to Europe. When this message reached Churchill on 9 August 1942, he was in Cairo. But he immediately wired Roosevelt:
Charter’s proposed application to Asia and Africa requires much thought. Grave embarrassment will be caused to the defence of India at the present time by such a statement.…. Here in the Middle East the Arabs might claim by majority they would expel the Jews from Palestine. I am strongly wedded to the Zionist policy of which I was one of the authors. This is only one of the unforeseen cases which will arise from new and further declarations.26
By raising the Jewish issue, Churchill obviously hoped to temper American enthusiasm to apply the Atlantic Charter to India and the rest of the British Empire. The charter’s first anniversary passed off without any controversy, but, on 24 August 1942, Cordell Hull summoned Halifax and told him bluntly that the ‘Atlantic Charter should be applied universally including to the British Empire and there will be difficulties if it was applied in separate compartments, so to speak’. ‘A very impressive view’, answered Halifax, and the matter rested there.27
Raising the question of freedom under the Atlantic Charter had been one way of applying indirect pressure on Britain. Another was to draw British attention to the growing public opinion in the US in support of India in the wake of the Quit India movement. On 17 September 1942, Cordell Hull drew the British ambassador’s attention to the ‘prospect in this country [of] a general movement of agitation against Great Britain and in favour of independence of India, which might create complications in one way or another later on’. Hull specifically referred to the necessity for more moderate and sympathetic speeches (by British statesmen) that would clarify ‘that the British Government desired to resume its course going forward with its programme for Indian independence just as quickly as this movement of violence terminated’. In his memorandum of this conversation, Hull noted: ‘He [the ambassador] must have known that I was referring to two recent speeches one by the Prime Minister and the other by the Secretary of State for India.’28 In these speeches Churchill and Amery had lambasted Gandhiji and the other Indian leaders and asserted that ‘what we have, we keep’.
The release in the US of selected sections of the draft resolution sent by the Mahatma to the Congress Working Committee at Allahabad on 29 April 1942, which had fallen into British hands, had proved to be a shot in the arm for the British campaign in the US to paint Gandhiji as pro-Japanese and project him as a threat to the Allied war effort. The British built their propaganda around the theme that ‘it was not a question whether Great Britain is prepared to give India her freedom but whether India is in a position to exercise it, in view of the serious differences between the Hindus represented by the Congress Party and the Muslims represented by the Muslim League’.
The New York Times and other major newspapers were willing to recognize Britain’s difficulties at a time when it was fighting for survival. On the other hand, Edgar Snow and Louis Fisher were vociferously raising the question about the ideals that the US was fighting for. They wanted India to serve as a test case for how Washington would want Asia to emerge after the war. Their writings in the Nation and the Saturday Evening Post, their lectures at various fora and, especially, their close contacts with the US administration influenced American policy, though the general public, by and large, remained unacquainted with their views. Snow developed upon the points he had made in his book Battle for Asia (Random House, New York, 1941) to highlight that Britain was blocking India’s industrialization so as to preserve its hold over the Indian market after the war. (The same theme was echoed in a memorandum sent by the assistant secretary of state for the Near East to the secretary of state, Cordell Hull.) In his article entitled ‘Why Cripps Failed’, which appeared in September 1942, Fisher observed that the will to transfer power was simply not there. Nevertheless, in the same article, he also warned the Indian nationalists that if the continued civil disobedience threatened the Allied
war effort, such a state of affairs could reduce American public support for their freedom movement.
In September 1942, Halifax wired London that the general feeling (even in friendly quarters) was ‘that if HMG were to appear indifferent to the making of further constructive efforts to find a solution, US opinion would conclude that we were not trying to rally India for active prosecution of the war.’29 Halifax had earlier warned London of the ‘slipping back’ of the gains made with the US public opinion after the Cripps Mission failed. Around the same time, the London Times contended, in an editorial, that the increase in critical American opinion on the Indian question ‘has been so great that it threatens seriously to affect Anglo–American relations’. The same anxiety was reflected in another report of this period sent by the British Embassy in the US to London: ‘India has become the first test which the American, friendly or unfriendly, at once applies to British Imperial policy. In the main it is critical, and it is frequently shot through with emotion.’30
The American Government, at this stage, decided to twist the British lion’s tail by yet another stratagem. By September 1942 the Quit India movement had turned violent, rupturing communications and transport to the eastern parts of India, which served as the base for supplies to China and to the Japanese front on the Indo–Burmese border. The British repression to break the movement was then at its peak. At that very moment, without giving any notice to the British, the Americans stopped the deliveries of supplies being made under the Anglo–US lend-lease agreement to India.31 According to Auriol Weigold, an Australian educationist, who, in 2000, made a survey of Anglo–American relations in the post-Cripps period, the reports of the American Mission in Delhi and the writings of Snow and Fisher contributed to this serious development, although the concerns of the American chiefs of staff that these supplies may be looted or lost in the turmoil that had engulfed India were also taken into account. Halifax, knowing fully well that the agitation would shortly be smashed, took no action on the American move.32
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 16