After the Quit India movement was crushed by November 1942 and the fear of a Japanese invasion of India receded, India went off the blip in the US press. And public interest in Indian developments faded once again. By the end of 1942, Churchill had, for all practical purposes, won the ‘press war’ on India in the United States. However, he remained deeply concerned that a new crisis might develop in India that could once again raise the temperature in the US and persuade the government there to renew pressure on him that would strain Anglo–US relations, particularly because he had no desire to withdraw from India then or later. One consequence of this was that, in early 1943, the British Government commissioned a high-powered survey (to be conducted by Sir Frederick Puckle, an official of the British Ministry of Information) to pinpoint the reasons for this special American interest in Indian affairs, so that this aspect could be dealt with appropriately. According to Puckle:
India has been an abiding factor in Anglo–American relations…and it may well be that the influence of the Indian question may be more dangerous to the preservation of good relations between Britain and the USA at the peace table than it has ever been before…. For, if we are honest, we must admit that there is no reasonable hope that the end of the hostilities will bring us any nearer to the day when we can say that our obligations and promises to India have been discharged. There is a long and difficult road yet to be travelled and on our journey along it we shall become more and more exposed to charges of dishonesty and insincerity from our ill-wishers everywhere. In these days American cooperation, sympathy and understanding will be invaluable, and without them India may be a most adverse [sic] factor in our mutual relations and a serious obstacle to Anglo–American collaboration for the satisfactory settlement of the world’s affairs. This is the real importance of India in the USA, its influence on Anglo–American relations both now and in the future.33
Puckle analysed the reasons for the Anglo–American misunderstanding as follows:
In the whirl of crosscurrents, floating rubbish and sunken snags which make up the stream of American opinion on the subject of India, two things steadily catch the attention, the interest and the ignorance. The interest is because of the old psychology of the frontiers which still influences America and makes them utterly disinclined to believe that there is no quick and simple way out of a deadlock in India or anywhere else…. It is also there because of the presence of American troops in India and their view that China’s deliverance will come from their base in India…America has suffered two major disasters in this war, Pearl Harbor and Pearl Buck, the second because of the sentimentalism she has spread in the public about China and India.34
He then goes on to enumerate the important ‘pressure groups’ in America, which played a role:
For the anti-imperialists the British are par excellence the great imperialists, therefore the British are oppressing India; for the American neo-imperialists like Mr Henry Luce of Time, Life and Fortune, who see the coming years as the “American Century”, India is just another of the muddles into which a decadent Britain has got herself, to be cleared up now by the world power, the USA; for big business and not the least the anti-New Dealers, Roosevelt is the enemy, and he is of course in Mr Churchill’s pocket and since Churchill is the prime enemy of Indian freedom India becomes the stick with which to beat the President.35
Puckle continues:
Finally there is jealousy: Our alleged failure in India is not unpleasing to many Americans, who are not fundamentally anti-British. The Americans are fundamentally concerned…not for India but for themselves, perhaps for the world; India is seen to be our responsibility but their business as well. This sort of a tentative view makes American policy dependent upon American public opinion and critical American public opinion creates complications. In India in particular American criticism of Britain heartens the Congress Party, frightens the Muslims and discourages our supporters…. It can hardly be questioned that both HMG in London and the Government of India in Delhi are at times embarrassed by the tone of American comment by its effect both on their supporters and on their opponents. On the other hand, the censorship decreed by the Government of India creates suspicion in America that the state of things in India is much worse than is allowed to be known. The failure of Mr Gandhi’s fast has rubbed some of the gloss off a romantic figure and driven India off from the front pages of the newspapers. But any new incident would revive the adverse interest because India embodies the idea of the British Empire: few people worry at all about Trinidad, Kenya or the Gold Coast.… Whenever there is any matter on which America and Britain are at odds; the lion hunter, when he goes out after his quarry, may vary the charge in his right barrel to suit the circumstances, but in the left there will always be India.36
Now, one way for this British conundrum to be solved would be to make the American public disenchanted with India, more precisely with the Congress Party – to Churchill always the Hindu party – or, for the Indian nationalists to become distrustful of American intentions or both. In April 1942 Churchill had tasted success in warding off American pressure by sowing doubt in American minds about the Congress Party’s commitment to the Allied cause and by emphasizing the necessity to depend on ‘loyal and robust’ Muslim support. ‘By now’, according to R. Moore, the historian, ‘Churchill had come to see the Congress–Muslim League conflict as a pillar of the Raj’.37 So, there would certainly be other topics with which to sow Indo–American discord, but from then on, whenever an Englishman went out after this particular prey, whatever the arguments he loaded in his right barrel, in the left there would always be Pakistan.
By January 1943, William Phillips, the successor to Colonel Johnson, had arrived in Delhi as the US president’s special representative in India. The instructions issued to him by the president best illustrate American policy on the role that they saw for themselves in the wake of the altercation with Churchill vis-à-vis the Quit India movement. These may be summarized as follows:
To become partisan of either Great Britain or India would seriously handicap us in dealing with the other side. Objectionable pressure on Great Britain would probably result in no progress but only in disturbance to the unity of command and of operations both during and following the war. On the other hand, while conscious of the complexities of the Indian situation, we have to keep in mind our policy of freedom for all dependent peoples as illustrated in our cooperating with the Philippines for the purpose of their freedom and as incorporated in the Atlantic Charter. And talking bluntly to British officials as long as they understand that this was being done in a thoroughly friendly way can be helpful. The British have raised the question why our professed interest in protecting the integrity of the French Empire is at variance with our attitude towards the British Empire. Our view is that the positions of the two Empires are dissimilar and hence the question does not arise.38
Phillips’ tenure in India lasted for four months. At the end of April 1943, he was recalled on the pretext of consultations and sent on another assignment by the president, though officially he retained his post in India. Phillips was recalled because, in the midst of the growing Indo–British embroilment (renewed by Gandhiji’s fast in February 1943), the presence of Roosevelt’s representative in Delhi, whom Linlithgow would not permit to even call on Gandhiji or intercede in any way, was creating misunderstanding regarding the president’s policy and position with respect to India in particular and Asia in general. The British by then had crushed the Quit India movement and with the increase in American naval and air pressure on Japan in the Pacific, the possibility of that country successfully invading India had become remote. Churchill and Linlithgow were now fully confident of retaining India well after the end of the war and were in no mood to encourage anyone, even if he be the American president’s representative, to say or do anything that might instigate the Indian leaders or give ideas to the Americans to pressure Britain to start a dialogue with them. Phillips warned Washington that the US had
to safeguard ‘our own position in India as [a] military base against Japan as well as our future relations with all coloured races. If the Viceroy can obstruct the representative of President to see Gandhi, Indians will lose confidence in his capacity to accomplish anything’.39 Roosevelt, upon reading this message, instructed Cordell Hull in February 1943 to bluntly tell Halifax to convey to London that ‘Gandhi should not be allowed to die in prison’, but Phillips was instructed not to make public in India this concern expressed by the president for the Mahatma.40
Rendered immobile, Phillips, in his reports to Washington, was, nevertheless, able to convey the flavour of the prevailing situation in India at that time: ‘They [the Englishmen in India] seem unaware of the changing attitudes in England and cannot really envisage a free India fit to govern itself [and] point to illiteracy, Indians’ disinterest in self-government and interest only in food and protection, Hindu–Muslim differences and the possibility of civil war as soon as the British leave, as factors that had to be taken into account in considering self-government for India.’ These views, reported Phillips, ‘have the effect of convincing Indian leaders that the British promises to withdraw are worthless’.41 On 15 February 1943, he reported that when the American correspondents in Delhi complained to Sir Reginald Maxwell (the home member in the Viceroy’s Executive Council) about press censorship that did not even permit them to send abroad reports on Gandhiji’s fast that appeared freely in the local press, the reply they received was that ‘the Congress is the enemy’ and that ‘they would not be permitted to send out dispatches which place Gandhi or Congress in a favourable light’.42 There were voices in the State Department seeking a more active American role. Wallace Murray, the adviser on political affairs, noted: ‘We will be in a very vulnerable position in the future if we adopted [an] overcautious attitude in the situations of this kind merely because we fear that the British might not like it.’43 However, the undersecretary, Sumner Wells, ruled out any modification to the policy being followed.
On 7 April 1943, Phillips held a meeting with Jinnah that lasted almost four hours, after which he wired the following message to Washington: ‘Jinnah twice reiterated his willingness to help in every way towards victory…he would not stand against any plan which could further the war effort, and that his reservations to British plans were “defensive” only, by which “I interpret as meaning that the right to Pakistan must be maintained”.’44 Phillips left without his being able to meet any Congress leader, except C. Rajagopalachari, who was free. One can only speculate as to whether any of them would have been as forthright as Jinnah in telling the American what his countrymen most wanted to hear at that point of time.
In his reports dated 19 April 1943 and 14 May 1943 to Roosevelt, before leaving, Phillips recorded his impressions of his sojourn in India, which can be summarized as follows:
(1) The British are “sitting pretty”, completely successful in suppressing dissent;
(2) with the Congress Party men in jail, the Congress Party’s influence [is] decreasing and [that] of the Muslim League increasing;
(3) if one looks for excuses not to change the status quo in a vast country like India, some can always be found;
(4) Indians are coming to believe that America stands solidly with Britain;
(5) Indian leaders are wondering whether the Atlantic Charter is only for the benefit of the white races;
(6) a feeling of frustration, discouragement and helplessness [is] endemic amongst Indians;
(7) despite everything “America is still looked upon as the one and only hope”; and
(8) that “in view of our military position in India we should have a voice in these Indian affairs”.45
On Phillips’ departure from India, the Muslim League’s official organ gave him a kick in the pants: ‘PHILLIPS FAILS TO IMPRESS US OFFICIALS’ ran the caption of the news item in the Dawn.46 On 25 September 1943, Merrell informed Hull that there was a pro-Japan feeling in Bengal because it was hoped the Japanese would bring Burmese rice to relieve the acute famine* and also that there was distrust of America because of close Anglo–US collaboration.47 On 8 October Merrell further reported as follows: ‘There was growing disappointment with the US, famine adding to the bitterness, and anti-British feeling is at a new high.’48 On 18 October, in yet another report, he stated that, in an off-the-cuff interview, the viceroy, Linlithgow, had told an Indian journalist whom he knew well that ‘the British must continue to rule for another fifty years; [it] would take that long for Indians to learn to govern themselves’.49
The same month, the British news agency Reuters carried a news item that suggested that the US was indifferent to the Bengal famine. When this item came to Hull’s notice, he was furious, and wired to Merrell that in view of the close connection between the British authorities and Reuters, the US saw this story as ‘an attempt by the British to shift the blame for the famine as far as public opinion is concerned to the alleged indifference of the US Government’. Hull asked Merrell to clarify in India that, under the US–British agreement, all ‘shipping between the United States and India is under British control and it therefore rests with the British Government to determine to what extent available supplies may be utilized for the transportation in India which might be sent from this country’.50
Colonel Louis Johnson, Roosevelt’s first representative in India, had succeeded in establishing contacts with Nehru, which had created a channel between the Americans and the Congress Party for the first time. However, the colonel’s overzealous and open support for the nationalists during the Cripps negotiations had given an opportunity to Churchill to seek his recall from India. Roosevelt’s directive to Phillips, his successor, to help the cause of Indian freedom only through friendly pressure acceptable to British officials, gave Linlithgow the means to restrict Phillips’ contacts in India, which created misunderstandings in India about American policy. It was unknown in India, for example, that Phillips had made several efforts to meet the Congress Party leaders but was prevented from doing so by the viceroy. The fact that he was forbidden by the US State Department even to mention this aspect to the Indians was the extent to which the British had succeeded in intimidating the Americans.
Most Indians, even the educated ones, had a most perfunctory knowledge of America and Americans at that time. American history taught in the universities ended with the battle of Yorktown and the American independence from Britain. People were more knowledgeable about Canada and Australia – which were part of the British Empire – than about the USA or indeed about neighbouring countries or territories, such as China, Central Asia, Afghanistan or Persia. Whatever curiosity about America that existed came from acquaintance with American cars and Hollywood films. Fords and Chevrolets, with their higher clearances, were better suited for the rough Indian roads than English cars and ruled the roads. Hollywood was the main source of information about the new world, even though these films never reached the villages, where 80 per cent of the people lived. When newsreels on events connected with the war began to be shown in picture houses, people were aghast to know that America, not Britain, was, in fact, the senior partner in the war!
The Indian villagers, when they got an occasional glimpse of the Americans, lumped them together with the British as ‘Whites’ or ‘red-faced monkeys’. The Indians educated in England were to be found in the higher civil services, in the legal profession, in the universities and some even in politics. They had imbibed in Oxford and Cambridge or in the leftist London School of Economics the prejudices of their fellow English students of the pre-First World War days about the Americans: that they were ignorant, uncouth and callous, which views they had found rather fashionable to wear on their lapels during the Raj. To those Indian communists who had joined the teaching and journalistic professions, the US was a capitalist country which was out to snatch India from the British clutches into its own. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the Indian communists had started to support the British, who not
only lifted the ban on their party, as recounted earlier, but also chose to close their eyes and shut their ears to their anti-American propaganda. The important group of socialists in the Congress Party were no great friends of capitalist America either. On the other hand, Gandhiji hardly displayed any interest in the United States, which lead was followed by most Congressmen. Nehru was an exception. He sought President Roosevelt’s help to achieve advances in Indian constitutional reform. But he later came to distrust the Americans.
Indian princes, except for one maharaja – Holkar of Indore – who had an American wife, were not interested in America, which, admittedly, back in the 1940s, did not have the same allure as it has today. Moreover, the US was too far away from India for excursions. Their interests outside India remained focused on England and the Continent: in England for political reasons to nurture their treaty rights on which their positions rested and in the Continent for pleasure: Paris of the Belle Epoque and the newly founded resorts on the Riveria.
So, there was enough disinterest in, and ignorance of, America, with some bias against it thrown in too, that could well sway India in an anti-American direction, despite there being no conflict of interest between the two countries; actually quite the opposite. There was another disturbing factor. Neither Indian leaders nor informed Indian public opinion had sufficiently focused on the hard realities of survival in our predatory world, when India would be entirely on its own, with the British security umbrella cast away. And ignorance, overidealism and swaggering abounded. Meanwhile, the vision of the Father of the Nation that a sovereign state could survive without armed forces added hugely to the complications. It was not easy for foreigners, especially for the matter-of-fact, not-too-well-informed and demanding Americans, in such circumstances, to work out mutuality of interests with Indians easily, and the possibilities of misunderstandings remained enormous.
The Shadow of the Great Game Page 17