Darius Jilla

QUIT INDIA resolution, 1942: Churchill's racialist hypocrisy

Even after more than half a century, the "Quit India" resolution adopted by the Indian National Congress stands out as a landmark event in the country's history.

The trigger for the resolution was the failure of the British Cabinet Mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal. Both the Congress and the Muslim League rejected the Cripps proposals.

The ironical part is that Cripps himself was in sympathy with the Congress demands and wasn't in any way responsible for the fiasco. The villain of the piece was the British War Cabinet -- ie. Winston Spencer Churchill, who was the War Cabinet. Nobody else mattered. Churchill at the time wielded greater powers than even the acknowledged dictators. Even Hitler had to consult Himmler, Goebbels, or Goering, and give way to them at times. But Churchill gave way to nobody.

The underlying situation is brought out clearly in VB Kulkarni's scholarly work British Dominion in India and After.

After Japan's crippling attack on the American Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbour and the swift advance of the Japanese across East Asia, the US had its own geostrategic concerns to consider. One of them was the possibility of a Japanese advance through Burma (now known as Myanmar) into India (then, of course, undivided). In such an event, the US felt that Indian support would be vital.

The US was openly worried over Churchill's attitude towards Indian independence, and President Roosevelt had sent a personal representative to India, Colonel Louis Johnson. The message sent by Johnson on April 11, 1942, is revealing: "Cripps is sincere...To my amazement, when a satisfactory solution seemed certain, Cripps with embarrassment told me that he couldn't change the original Draft Declaration without Churchill's approval, and that Churchill had cabled him that he will give no approval unless [General] Wavell and the Viceroy separately send their own code cables unqualifiedly endorsing any change Cripps wants".

The Draft Declaration referred to was the British government's scheme for so-called Indian "self-government", published on March 30, 1942. It envisaged a constitution-making body which would have to give a commitment for the future(!) to the British government that the interests of "racial and religious minorities" would be duly protected. How, asks Kulkarni pertinently, could any government making such a commitment to an outside body claim to possess untrammelled sovereignty?

As regards the present, the Draft Declaration for self-government sanctimoniously declared that the people of India should participate effectively in the "counsels of their country, of the Commonwealth, and of the United Nations" (!)

India had been made a belligerent without the concurrence of Indian leaders. The Congress now proposed that the Viceroy's Executive Council should be regarded as a full-fledged Cabinet, with a Defence portfolio handled by an Indian. Against the background of the tremendous contribution made by hundreds of thousands of Indian armed forces to the Allied cause in World War 1 -- a contribution that had been enshrined in the thousands of names of Indian dead inscribed in the War Memorial at India Gate in New Delhi -- the Defence portfolio proposal was by no means unreasonable. Cripps himself, says Kulkarni, was inclined to accept the Congress proposal. About the Draft Declaration itself, Kulkarni writes: "It was absurd to expect Congress to accept an offer which, as Johnson so aptly put it, contained little more than the unkept promise of the First World War...The Congress Executive's Quit India resolution adopted in Bombay on August 8, 1942 was therefore the natural reaction of a disappointed people".

New light has been shed on Churchill's racist arrogance by the recent release of certain British Intelligence records relating to the period. Some of the records made available have been used by British journalist turned historian Patrick French, extracts from whose readable book Liberty or Death have been published by newsmagazine Outlook in its August 25, 1997 cover story.

Patrick writes of Churchill: "His understanding of the country's social and religious structures was superficial. He had a broad, emotional Edwardian belief in the racial superiority of the pinkish-grey races and the need to maintain the British Empire". It was once suggested to him that he should meet "some prominent political activists who were then in London". Churchill's reply: "I am quite satisfied with my views on India. I don't want them disturbed by any bloody Indian".

Churchill blatantly employed racist arrogance, bluff, and the myth of British superiority, to stall Indian independence. To him, India only stood for the basis of British imperial power. He was hypocrite enough to stall Indian independence at a time when his own agents in India were busily recruiting Indians for the armed forces. His hypocrisy allowed him to do all this despite the magnificent contribution of the Indian armed forces to the war effort, on several fronts. From a mere 350,000 at the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939, the number rose to well over 2,000,000 "bloody Indians". Did Churchill realise that he was a racial hypocrite?