Governments Indian Policy in the 1930s - Essay Example

Rubaiyat-ul Ali April 05, 2007 Why did Winston Churchill oppose the Government's Indian Policy in the early 1930s A multitude of factors would come into play when a multifaceted personality like Winston Churchill takes a stand on any issue. Yet, there would be an underlying basic and intrinsic factor that would run like a thread interweaving the comparatively external causes. So was it in the case of Winston Churchill's opposition to the Government's Indian Policy in the early 1930s. At the core of his being Winston Churchill was an imperialist, a firm believer in the Empire and all that it stood for. For him India was a very integral part of that Empire. The romantic in Winston Churchill had an unbreakable emotional attachment with India as a part of the British Empire. This is very evident in what Louis Mountbatten had to say of Winston Churchill to Archibald Wavell who was then the Viceroy of India: "And he also disputed the idea of any advance (of autonomy) in India because he has got a very emotional feeling about India; he was there as a young subaltern the Fourth Hussars in 1897 or something of the sort. To him India is Kipling, it is polo, it is soldiering, it is glamour, it is everything. He doesn't want to see that go away and he thinks, in some ways quite rightly, that India is happier under British Rule." (Collins, L., Lapierre, D., 1948 p.17) India symbolized the Empire for Churchill. His very psyche had been moulded so. He was therefore loath to play any role in what could for him only be the disintegration of the Empire. The intrinsic factor combined with extrinsic factors such as economic and political influences, requirements and his motives of the times. Thus, in his stand against granting more autonomy to India, we find different shades and hues of the character and personality of Sir Winston Churchill. The 1930s were the 'Wilderness Years' for Winston Churchill. He was out of the Government, and naturally desperate to get back. During the period he had raised a string of issues, or rather, he had raised the alarm over several incidents or happenings that he perceived and propagated as threats but were disproved as false alarms by his detractors. These included what he considered as the threat from Bolshevik Russia; the destabilizing force of the General Strike of 1926, the crippling effect that the loss of India could have both on the empire and India itself; and the abdication crisis of 1936. The consequence was that Churchill began to be considered more of an alarmist, that he lacked knowledge or insight of the practical situation on the ground, that he was a rabble-rouser, more so in the case of his tirades against granting more autonomy to India as envisaged in the 1935 India Act. Judith M Brown echoes the same opinion: British officials who had experienced the 1919 constitutional experiment, the Simon Commission debacle and civil disobedience knew they had to conciliate a widening range of Indian political opinion and to harness it to the process of government. Even Wellington's administration which refused to 'deal' or 'treat' with Gandhi in 1932-3 realized that Ordinance rule and smashing the congress organization was only a temporary solution. At the turn of 1931-2 Wellington had unsuccessfully tried to extract from London greater freedom in appointing his Executive Council, partly to enable him to admit more Indians as a counterpoise to the draconian policies adopted to crush civil disobedience. He argued that he could not use the big stick unless he could demonstrate real movement towards more Indian political responsibility Given such messages from the men on the spot, only the die-hard wing of the Tory Party led by Churchill and Salisbury, backed by the Rathermore Press opposed a reform package. For reasons of ideology and party strategy, they belaboured the National Government's attempts to produce a reform package. (Brown pp.275 - 276) She goes on to add: Churchill was bitterly hostile to Indian aspirations and given to tirades in Cabinet about the maintenance of empire. His ignorance of India, yet the reluctance of his cabinet colleagues to challenge him, made realistic assessment of the British position and prospects in India, extremely difficult. (Brown pp.319 - 320) What strengthen the argument against Churchill are his views on Gandhi, at that time. He was surely far off the mark when he had said it 'was alarming to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.' (Guha, The Hindu) Churchill simply could not stand Gandhi. In the words of his biographer Robert Rhodes-James, 'the personal qualities, political capacity and national cause of Gandhi were (all) incomprehensible to Churchill.' (Guha, The Hindu) It was perhaps his arrogance of Churchill that made him blind to the aspirations of the millions of Indians who had 'nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat' (Churchill, 1940) (Churchill in his first speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940.) for their freedom. From the high pedestal he stood on, he could but afford only to look down on Indians as a people who did not deserve to rule themselves or were incapable of doing so. But can the man who is deemed to have saved not only Britain but the entire world from the designs of a lunatic dictator, be waved away just like that Could he have been really so irrational as to oppose, and oppose almost single-handedly, what was the consensus amongst the majority in his own country Or was there some logic, some reason behind his stand It may have been equally possible that lesser mortals were unable to fathom the vision or the foresight of the great man. Churchill may have had reasons enough at that point of history to envision what could have been best both for the Empire and India. He had made this very clear in his debate on the 1935 India Act Even as he had insisted that the British were not letting go of its prime colony: We hope once and for all to kill the idea that the British in India are aliens moving, with many apologies, out of the country as soon as they have been able to set up any kind of governing organism to take their place. We shall try to inculcate this idea that we are there for ever as honoured partners with our Indian fellow subjects whom we invite in all faithfulness to join with us in the highest functions of Government for their lasting benefit and for our own. (Brown p.276) The statement lends itself to different interpretations. There is a ring of sincerity to it because it fits the personality of Churchill to a T. The man is an ardent imperialist: 'to Churchill, Britain was not just a European power. She was a global power. Her Empire gave her a presence on every continent.' (Allen p.835) And by the same dint, Britain had the God-given right to stay put in India. But he is magnanimous in his appeal to work together for mutual benefit. He is even ready to offer the highest functions of Government to Indians - only if it does not work for the good of both and not for the loss of the Empire. The astute politician that he was, he may well have been trying to lull the Indians as well as his opponents in the Government to a false sense of being patronized. However, if we closely examine what followed, we find that in many instances history bears Churchill out. In his speech on the second reading of the Government of India Bill on February 11, 1935, he had said, 'I should like to ask the hon. Member, does he call this Bill democracy Is the communal franchise democracy Is caste reconcilable with democracy Is the idea of 60,000,000 untouchables reconcilable with any sort of democratic system' (Parliamentary Debates, Official Report, Fifth Series, Volume 297 (House of Commons), columns 1640-1663). The communal orgy that followed Indian independence and the partition of India proves that Churchill was right in his assessment of the communal situation. Again, independent India is still grappling with caste problems. Elections are being fought on the basis of caste. Untouchability is still being practised in the country. The Indian Government has had to fight a long and hard battle against communal and caste politics. Churchill was in his own way right in asserting that British rule could help in constraining these negative traits in India. There is no denying that. But, then again, would the Englishman stay on in the country only for its interest Churchill's answer to that was an emphatic No. The interests of the British Empire would have to be served. And there were many interests at stake. For a man like Churchill no other interest could be greater than the impending war at hand. In the war that followed around 20,00,000 Indians served in the British Army, in many cases far away from home. About 24,000 were killed. More than 15,00,000 Indians died of starvation after the fall of Burma. The British war production line was fed with raw materials shipped from India. The Japanese advance was stopped with the help of Indian units. Churchill could have ill afforded to let India and its resources slip out of his hands with the war looming large and clear for him. Judith M Brown presents a different angle when she writes: 'His priority anyway was winning the war. Implicit in this was keeping the American goodwill, however, Churchill only designed to consider India when, as in 1942, a policy drift seemed necessary to serve his main task.' (Brown p.320) Churchill always had his eye on the war even in the early 30s. That would have been reason enough for him to deny sovereignty to India. Second in his list of priorities would be the economics of the entire deal. He was quite blatant about it in his speech on the second reading of the Government of India Bill on February 11, 1935: While we maintain an Army in India at a great burden of expense to this country, while we give the protection of our fleet, while we give the fruitful advantage of our trade, we are entitled on the highest grounds of justice, as well as empowered by hitherto unimpaired sovereignty, to proper and special consideration in regard to our trade. (Parliamentary Debates, Official Report, Fifth Series, Volume 297 (House of Commons), columns 1640-1663) He made his intentions even clearer with his interpretation of the Fiscal Convention of 1919 in the same speech: The Fiscal Convention of 1919 is not a convention in the sense of being a treaty. It is a unilateral declaration of policy. It does not confer fiscal autonomy upon India or upon the Government of India. It does not transfer British sovereignty to an independent external body. The Government of India is not an independent body. It is a projection, to a very large extent, of the Government of Great Britain. It is open to the Secretary of State to address and, if necessary, to instruct the Viceroy, and through him the Government of India. Churchill was well aware that the Industrial Revolution in Britain had been fuelled in a large measure by the raw materials from India. British goods had found a large and ready market in India. The trade policies of the East India Company can at the best said to have been unilateral. Churchill knew that England would require all the financial resources it could muster in the event of a war. It was but logical of him to offer all arguments to hold on to the treasure throve of India. In his diary Wavell concluded that Winston Churchill 'has a curious complex about India and is always loath to hear good of it and apt to believe the worst'. (Guha 2005) Yet the same man had in 1919 reacted very differently to what is termed the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre when hundreds of unarmed Indians were gunned down at the orders of General Dyer. He had described the incident as 'a monstrous event', a 'great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely, the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or country'. It was the same Winston Churchill who sent the Cripps Mission to India in 1942 although many claim it to be a faade. And finally, Churchill had much admiration for Jawaharlal Nehru when both of them were prime ministers of independent nations. It would therefore be safe to come to the conclusion that Winston Churchill's reactions to independence for India in the early 1930s were dictated by the socio-political and financial circumstances of the times and his view of the world at large. But at the core of it all was the personality and character of the man who held the empire close to his heart. Works Cited 1. Brown, J.M., Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy under the series The Short Oxford History of the Modern World. 2. Collins, L., Lapierre, D., Montbatten and the Partition of India, March 22 - August 15, 1947. 3. Guha, R.,Churchill and Gandhi, The Hindu, Sunday, June 19, 2005 online edition, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/06/19/stories/2005061900060300.htm) 4. Guha, R.,Churchill's Indiaspeak in The Hindu, Sunday, June 19, 2005 online edition, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/06/19/stories/2005061900060300.htm. 5. Packwood, A., Churchill: Forging an Alliance for Freedom by Allen Packwood Heritage Lecture #835 http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/hl835.cfm. Read More