Labour Monthly, June 1942

India For Action


Source: Labour Monthly, June 1942, p.185-188, signed by, V.K. Krishna Menon;
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.


India calls for action! Japan, hitherto unhalted in her career of brigandage and conquest since the attack on Pearl Harbour, now claims to have crossed the Indian border through Burma. China has lost the Burma Road and now the new Assam by-way is threatened. Allied communications eastward to the far Pacific via the Bay of Bengal are menaced by Japan’s sea-power in the Bay, by her control of Burma ports, and the imminent peril to Indian harbours and ports on the Bay. Eastwards Japan’s surface and undersea craft have destroyed shipping in the Arabian Sea, thus severely challenging the supply routes from India or through Indian bases to the Middle East, Iran and to the U.S.S.R. via the Persian Gulf. This in route, vital to allied strategy and strength, though menaced, is still not out of commission though increasingly endangered. The danger, however, increases with Japanese control of Indian ports and of supply sources.

India herself is threatened by land and sea and has already been attacked from the air. At the moment the Japanese forces, which have overcome Allied opposition in Burma, appear to be moving northward to China, a process which the weakness of the Indian flank of the Chinese sector of the war has facilitated. India herself is gravely menaced. Her defence, vital to her people, has therefore emerged as the main factor in policy decisions. While the defence and the safety of India is vital to the Indian people, it is no minor factor in Allied strategy or in the calculations of a victory this year and to the cause of the United Nations as a whole.

This realisation dominated the minds of the leaders of the Indian National Congress in their talks with Sir Stafford Cripps at New Delhi. It conditioned their approach to the British proposals, both in concessions and insistences; it also resulted in the final breakdown. For the leaders of the Indian people regard the whole-hearted participation of the Indian masses, with their passions and enthusiasms unleashed, the only realistic and effective form of defence to-day. India must be defended, says Nehru, as China and the Soviet Union have shown how to do effectively. A hundred million men and women engaged in that task is Nehru’s own conception of defence under a national government and carried out by the people. British policy in industry, government, military organisation and the general effect of political subjection for over a century makes this task a breathless race against time, and sets severe limits to Indian achievement in this direction, even if obstacles were removed now. It also makes improvisation, unconventional methods and the plentiful use of indigenous initiative vital to success. It demands that the new Indian effort shall look not only to British but to other sources for industrial, organisational and military co-operation and inspiration. It prescribes the release of the people as the essential conditions for its achievement.

Malaya, Singapore and Burma each fell to Japan even more quickly than was feared. The leadership, organisation and methods planned and provided by the Empire proved of no avail. It did not sustain morale. Its fighting forces were confined to the brave armies and garrisons imported for the purpose which, like the government itself, had no roots in the people. There was no popular resistance to the invaders. The people were not called to arms. They had none. Their rulers did not consider them relevant to a nation’s resistance. In peace they were the Empire’s chattels. In war they were condemned to the same servitude. True, in Singapore the workers demonstrated and demanded arms; in Malaya, the Communist Party, composed of Malayans, Chinese and Indians, called to the people to rally against invaders and for the weapons of defence. But this, the only anti-Fascist call to the people, was neither soon enough nor powerful enough to stem the tide of invasion.

The governments of Malaya, instead of seeing in these forces the vital elements of popular resistance and rallying them, had outlawed and suppressed them. In Burma, we are now told by British correspondents, the people do not know what they are fighting for. The Japanese found Burmese guides to take them through jungle paths while the British found the masses of the people apathetic, unconcerned and unaware of what the whole business was about! Popular leaders, including Liberals, Communists and Peasant leaders, are (or were) in British prisons. British correspondents tell us now that the civil administration failed, and that the government did nothing to win Burman support. While the people were thus cordoned off from the fight for their country the Empire carried on the ineffective resistance, which has so far failed.

These events are recent; their consequences bitter and tragic.

India, though faced by imminent peril, finds her powerful national forces isolated from participation in defence and for the most part rendered sterile. From the outbreak of the war the Indian National Movement has striven to achieve this co-operation, as it considered Fascism an enemy of the people. The entry of the Soviet Union into the war, the graver dangers that threaten China, and the national unity in America and Britain in the war against the Axis, augmented Indian desires. The working-class movement in India, which at the outbreak of the war initiated strikes as a protest against the enforced entry of India into what was then a fully imperialist war, now declared its solidarity with the U.S.S.R. and all other peoples fighting Fascism and demanded that the conditions of work and government in India should be transformed immediately so that Indian production and effort might be increased. The peasants and the national movement generally reflected this change in their abandonment of non-co-operation. The Japanese advance intensified Indian efforts in voluntary directions for the protection of the people. These are the only substantial efforts in India to-day. Congress instructed co-operation with Government officials and all others interested in the same objects. This could easily have become a powerful national front if the British Government did not continue to obstruct and live in what is now criminal obscurantism.

Its own policies continued to be the rallying of sycophants and the creation of greater disunities in India. Mr. Amery surpassed his predecessors in his achievements for exasperating Indian opinion. The political maturity of the Indian national movement, however, prevented it from being side-tracked into suicidal petulance. Led by Nehru and Azad, the Congress called on the people to prepare resistance and anti-Fascist propaganda. They repeated their readiness to undertake the defence of India if a National Government were established. After fourteen months of enforced suspension by the imprisonment of its leaders, Congress adopted policies which were courageous and realistic. They provided a basis of settlement. It led to the retirement of Mr. Gandhi from leadership. Neither the Government of India nor the British Government, however; made any effort to respond. Instead they continued to function as though nothing had changed since the days of Lord North until finally Japan inflicted rude shocks on the Governments in London and Washington. New Delhi lives farther away from Singapore, Rangoon and Akyab than does Whitehall. Public opinion in this country became increasingly concerned. China took a hand. Chiang Kai-Shek, invited to India by the Viceroy, spent the greater part of his time with the Indian leaders, and on leaving appealed to the British Government and the British people to transfer real political power to India. The British Government was feeling also the draught of Liberal American sentiment which it tried hard to counteract by misrepresentation and propaganda, using its missionaries, officials and radio, for the purpose. Mr. Amery excelled himself by grave distortions of history in his answers to responsible American publicists. The culminating effect of all these factors was the Cripps Mission.

It came to grief because of its inherent and fundamental defects. At this stage it is needless to analyse the proposal which Sir Stafford Cripps took to India. They are irrelevant to the issues immediately before us. All that is important is that they contained no suggestions which would alter substantially the character of Indian administration at present which alone would enable the rallying of India and the releasing of her vital energies and resources. They contained no proposal for India’s future status which would galvanise Indian feeling. On the contrary they were built on the basis of “divide and rule.” They were planned by the Ulster mind. They were conceived in terms of delaying actions to meet the onslaughts of united India. In any case, they were all about a world after the war.

In its resolution, however, Congress decided and stated that its own attitude to any proposals would be determined by the nature of the proposals affecting the present Government of India and their potency to render India’s defence effective and popular. On the face of it the British document contained no such proposals, but Sir Stafford gave the Congress leaders to understand that the British draft permitted of accommodation on the basis of a National Government subject to the reservation of defence. The latter, therefore, became the pivot of negotiation.

Nehru and Azad strove patiently for a settlement. They passionately desired one. They waived their objections about the future. They accepted compromises on the issue of National Government and defence which was the central feature of any interim settlement. They agreed to accept a British war minister in the Indian National Government in the person of the Commander-in-Chief, with an Indian defence minister who, they said, should have real powers. This was Sir Stafford’s formula, but when the defence functions were formulated they were found to be trivial. Nehru called them comic. But, the negotiations failed because at this stage Sir Stafford informed the Congress that a National Government was impossible. The Viceroy, who till now, he had said, would function as a constitutional head, would have to be a Prime Minister instead. He would be the political head of the Government. He would choose his colleagues. The agreement as to the limitations that he would impose on his wide, autocratic powers, the extent to which he would be bound by advice, the relations between him and the other ministers as whole and other such vital matters, these, Sir Stafford said, the Viceroy alone could decide. They lay entirely within his discretion. Sir Stafford would remain in India to facilitate the discussions. The member of the British War Cabinet who, till then, was a British plenipotentiary who, contrary to established custom, took up residence at New Delhi outside the Viceregal Lodge to gain direct contact with the Indian leaders, now suddenly assumed the role of honest broker between the Viceroy and the leaders of the Indian people. The negotiations broke down. The British “offer” proved to be substantially the same as the present structure of administration, and the same plan as is contained in the Amery declaration of August 8, 1940. There was to be no National Government. Sir Stafford continued to call the Viceroy’s Council a National Government!

The mission having failed, the British plenipotentiary returned; but, before leaving India, did far more damage than the failure itself by raising issues which clouded the realities. He, however, showed no originality in this, which is the measure of the unreality of the accusations. It was the old tale of Indian disunities once again! It was said that the Congress position amounted to a demand for the dictatorship of a tyrannical majority. It was argued that a National Government would be responsible only to the main political parties in India. Sir Stafford said also that he “felt confident” that no other party in India (but the Congress) would agree to the plan of a truly National Government. Each of Sir Stafford’s objections can be met by conclusive argument. He has provided the answers himself. Speaking on this very question in the House of Commons on October 26, 1939, and answering the imperialist spokesmen whose brief he has now accepted, he said:-

It is true that, technically and in accordance with the constitution, the Executive Council would not be a Cabinet, but there is no reason on earth why our Government should not give an undertaking that the Viceroy would deal with that Executive Council, so appointed from the members of the majority of the Legislative Assembly, as if it were a Cabinet on all major matters – that is to say, he would accept their advice as the Crown here accepts the advice of the Cabinet when duly tendered to it.

On the basis of that immediate rearrangement, and on the basis of our pledge to grant self-government after the war, we could, I believe, with safety and confidence, invite the wholehearted co-operation of the Indian people in our effort to establish democracy and freedom in the world, of which determination we should have given an earnest by our willingness to co-operate with India in winning her freedom and democracy at the earliest possible moment. That declaration would not only, I believe, win the support of all British India, but would be acclaimed throughout the world as a great act of a great and sincere democratic people.

In an intervention in the recent House of Commons debate Sir Stafford admitted that he did not discuss the communal question with the Congress during the negotiations for a National Government. Maulana Azad, on the other hand, asserts that the Congress was asking for a National Government for India and not for the Congress, and would have overcome such difficulties as might have occurred if Britain agreed to the transfer of effective power.

It would appear from all that has happened that the British Government was afraid that there might be a settlement and that the popular forces of India would assume power. It beat a hasty retreat to prepared positions.

The mission has failed. It has created much bitterness and cynical disillusionment. It has weakened the hand of those in Congress who strove patiently for a settlement to enable India to participate effectively in the fight against the Axis. It has increased Indian suspicions. It has demonstrated to India that the British Government does not intend to part with the reality of power.

What next? Sir Stafford has followed up his failure with the announcement that nothing more can be done. This is the present British policy. It is defeatist and calamitous.

In India there is a grave deterioration of the situation. Reactionary elements have gained what the people have lost. Autocratic government continues, sanctioned once again last month by Parliament. Political adventurers like M.N. Roy, whose name is now mentioned for a place in the Viceroy’s Council, emerge anew as anti-Fascist champions, the exponents of national unity and of realism in politics. He finds support in Earl Winterton, in The Times and in the Statesman of Calcutta. The determination to resist the invader and to fight Fascism, to which the people were called by Azad and Nehru, cannot find full expression or effective forms.

Japan approaches Eastern Bengal, where, in many districts, there is not a home which has not felt the hand of police repression during the last 35 years without a break. Political leaders are still in prison. A great many of them, Communists and other anti-Fascists, are the very people who, despite the obscurantism of the British Government, would rally the people in resistance and prevent a repetition of the experience of Burma.

A National Government in India now is a supreme and desperate necessity. The forces of the people and the State must be united. Disunity spells disaster to India. It weakens the cause of the United Nations.

We must act now! The Government must be compelled to reopen negotiations immediately on the basis of the recognition of the national independence of India and the agreement to the formation of a National Government.

A settlement can then be reached. It may even at this late hour avert disaster.