The Raj at War Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  List of Illustrations

  Chronology of Major Events

  Title Page

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  1. An Empire Committed

  2. Peasants into Soldiers

  3. Into the Middle East and North Africa

  4. Free and Willing Human Beings

  5. Not a Paisa, Not a Man

  6. Bombed to Hell

  7. Money Coming, Money Coming

  8. An Empire Exposed

  9. Urban Panic

  10. The World at the Door

  11. Thirty Months Too Late

  12. Welcome to Bombay

  13. Plantations and Paddy Fields

  14. Living Dangerously

  15. Scorched Earth

  16. The Cogs in a Watch

  17. Longing and Loss

  18. Catalyst of Change

  19. The Man-a-Mile Road

  20. Insults and Discriminations

  21. Empires, Lost and Found

  22. Celebrations and Recriminations

  23. The Sepoy’s Return

  Picture Section

  List of Abbreviations

  Note on Sources

  Notes

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Second World War was not fought by Britain alone. India produced the largest volunteer army in world history: over 2 million men. But, until now, there has never been a comprehensive account of India’s turbulent home front and the nexus between warfare and India’s society.

  At the heart of The Raj at War are the many lives and voices of ordinary Indian people. From the first Indian to win the Victoria Cross in the war to the three soldiers imprisoned as ‘traitors to the Raj’ who returned to a hero’s welcome, from the nurses in Indian General Hospitals to the labourers, prostitutes and families – their testimonies reveal the great upheaval experienced throughout the land.

  Yasmin Khan presents the hidden and sometimes overlooked history of India at war, and shows how mobilisation for the war introduced seismic processes of economic, cultural and social change – decisively shaping the international war effort, the unravelling of the empire and India’s own political and economic trajectory.

  About the Author

  Yasmin Khan is a British writer and historian. She is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Kellogg College.

  Her first book, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, won the Gladstone Prize from the Royal Historical Society in 2007 and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2008.

  List of Illustrations

  British tanks in the North-West Frontier Province, courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo

  British soldiers at Chitral, courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library/Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

  ‘The British Commonwealth of Nations Together’ poster, courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library/Onslow Auctions Limited

  Three stokers on board the Royal Indian Navy sloop © Imperial War Museums

  Indian Army Training Centre © Imperial War Museums

  Inspecting potential recruits © Imperial War Museums

  Men of the 4th Indian Division © Imperial War Museums

  Indian fighter pilot © Imperial War Museums

  Subhas Chandra Bose and Heinrich Himmler, courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo

  Indians evacuating from Rangoon © George Rodger/Magnum Photo

  Subhas Chandra Bose delivering speech, courtesy of GandhiServe Foundation

  ‘Your Help Will Bring Victory’ poster, courtesy of Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine, Paris, France/De Agostini Picture Library/G. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images

  ‘Malaria Strikes the Unprotected’ poster © The National Army Museum/Mary Evans Picture Library

  The Ledo Road © Alamy

  Nurses at a hospital in Calcutta © Imperial War Museums

  Parsi women on an air raid precaution course © Imperial War Museums

  Sir Stafford Cripps with Gandhi in Delhi © Imperial War Museums

  Aruna Asaf Ali © RIA Novosti/Alamy

  ‘What About India?’ poster © Alamy

  The Quit India movement, August 1942, courtesy of GandhiServe Foundation

  Policewomen from the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force © Imperial War Museums

  An aircraft plotter of the WAC (I), courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration

  Clearing land for airfields, courtesy of NARA

  An American airfield in India, courtesy of NARA

  The Bengal famine of 1943 © William Vandivert/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

  A family during the Bengal famine © Keystone/Getty Images

  A free kitchen in Calcutta, 1943 © Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  Chronology of Major Events

  1939

  1 September Government of India Act centralises executive authority

  3 September War declared

  3 September Recruiting stations in India opening; internment of Italians and Germans starts

  3 November United Provinces and Bombay Congress ministries resign, followed by ministries in Orissa, Central Provinces and NWFP

  1940

  13 March Udham Singh assassinates Michael O’Dwyer in London

  22–4 March All India Muslim League meeting declares Lahore Resolution

  10 May Churchill becomes Prime Minister in Britain

  3 July Subhas Chandra Bose imprisoned (until 5 December 1940)

  8 August ‘The August Offer’ presented in a White Paper (rejected by Muslim League and Congress)

  18 September Sinking of the SS City of Benares

  17 October Gandhi authorises individual satyagraha followed by 20,000 arrests

  25 October Eastern Supply Group meets in Delhi to discuss war supplies

  1941

  January Indian language broadcast service started for Indian troops in Middle East

  January Subhas Chandra Bose escapes India overland for Germany

  February–April East African campaigns, e.g. battle of Keren

  April India celebrates Allied North and East African victories

  22 June Operation Barbarossa begins; Hitler invades Russia

  7 August Rabindranath Tagore dies

  November First Victoria Crosses awarded to Indians during the war

  7 December Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, American entry into war

  1942

  15 February Singapore falls to the Japanese, first INA being formed American troops arriving in Calcutta

  19 February Subhas Chandra Bose makes first open broadcast to India

  27 February Japanese aircraft raid Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar

  6 April Vizagapatam and Cocanada bombed

  14 April False alarm in Madras, city evacuated

  7–8 March Rangoon falls; flow of refugees from Burma increasing

  23 March Cripps arrives in India

  29 March Burma Road cut by Japanese

  5–6 April Bombing raids on Ceylon

  April Formation of Women’s Auxiliary Corps (India)

  10, 16 May Bombing raids on Imphal

  May Allies withdraw from Burma

  June Grady technical mission in India from USA

  July First battle of El Alamein

  14 July Congress Working Committee meets at Wardha

  July Communist Party of India legalised

  8 August All India Congress Committee adopts Quit India resolution

  9 Au
gust Gandhi and Congress leaders arrested

  August Quit India movement breaks out across the country: at least 2,500 deaths and 60,000–90,000 arrests

  October Second battle of El Alamein Cyclone hits Midnapore

  13 December Chittagong bombed

  17 December British forces occupy parts of Arakan region in Burma

  20–8 December Air raids on Calcutta

  December Building of the Ledo Road initiated

  1943

  10 February Gandhi fasts for ten days and risks death African troops start to arrive in India

  7 March Japanese counter-offensive at Arakan Scale of famine in Bengal becomes apparent

  9 May Evacuation of Maugdaw in Arakan region of Burma

  21 May Public holiday to celebrate victory in North Africa

  19 June Announcement of Wavell’s appointment as Viceroy and Auchinleck’s as Commander-in-Chief, India

  21 June Bose’s first speech from Tokyo broadcast

  2 July Bose lands in Singapore in a Japanese aircraft

  25 August Announcement of Mountbatten’s appointment as Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia

  December 43,600 US troops arrive in India

  5 December Renewed bombing of docks in Calcutta

  1944

  March Battle of Imphal, Burma

  4 April Japanese attack Kohima, Burma; battle lasts until June

  14 April Major ammunition dock explosion in Bombay

  6 May Gandhi released from detention

  6 June Allied invasion of Normandy begins

  24 June Appointment of Indian Famine Inquiry announced

  3 August Myitkyina in Burma in Allied hands

  23 August Paris liberated

  August VD levels in Calcutta peak 376/1,000

  1945

  9 May End of war with Germany Bengal Famine Inquiry Report published

  15 June Nehru and Congress Working Committee released

  25 June Simla Conference opens in Simla, India

  6 August First atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

  14 August War ends with Japan

  September Liberation of Japanese prisoners of war

  7 October Allied British force reoccupies Andaman and Nicobar

  5 November First trials of members of the Indian National Army, Delhi

  1946

  3 January Sentences passed on three Indian National Army officers

  18 February Royal Indian Naval Mutiny in Bombay

  1947

  14–15 August Partition and Independence: Indian and Pakistani Independence from British colonial rule

  The Raj at War

  A People’s History of India’s Second World War

  Yasmin Khan

  ‘You want to know the names of the men who have joined the army from our village. They are too many to be mentioned.’

  An Urdu letter from an unknown man in the North-West Frontier Province to his son, 1943.

  ‘And war is many things.’

  Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

  Prologue

  On 3 January 1946, three men, Prem Kumar Sahgal, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan, quietly emerged from imprisonment in Old Delhi’s Red Fort. The Government of India had held them there for three months. Just four days earlier the trio had been convicted of waging war against the King-Emperor and sentenced to transportation for life. They were leading officers of the Indian National Army (INA) and had been in the vanguard of Subhas Chandra Bose’s renegade force. They had fought for the Axis in Burma and South-East Asia. Now they were free men and, within days, found themselves national heroes. The Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army had remitted their sentences; although technically found guilty, their punishment had been quashed. People interpreted their release as a decisive victory against the British Raj.

  The trials had been a disaster for the British rulers. The bungled attempt at a public prosecution had resulted in the ‘hero worship of traitors’ in the words of Archibald Wavell, the Viceroy of India in 1946. He admitted frankly that the affair was ‘embarrassing’.1 Since November, the trial had gripped the imagination of the Indian public. People had bought reports of the court case, autobiographies of the officers, panegyrics of Bose and pamphlets about all aspects of the Indian National Army, on sale at every pavement stall and bookshop. The way in which Bose and his followers had established a breakaway army to side with the Japanese had been told in full for the first time, without the full force of wartime censorship in place.

  As the word spread of the men’s release they were swept along the cramped streets of Old Delhi in a growing tide of supporters, cheered and hoisted on shoulders. Soon they were forced to stand on the roof of a car because of the crush of the crowds. Everybody clamoured to shake their hands and to fill their mouths with sweets. Indian National Congress politicians rushed to the scene to be among the first to congratulate them. Over the coming days, the men paraded around Delhi, Lahore and across the country. They were hosted at massive rallies. Everywhere they went admirers mobbed them, thrust forward autograph books and strung heavy garlands of flowers around their necks. The crowds were hundreds of thousands strong. ‘People wanted to see us, touch us, hear us speak and garland us. They had gone mad with the joy of our release. Young girls cut their fingers with razor blades and applied blood to our foreheads instead of vermillion’, recalled Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, one of the released prisoners.2 Policemen, magistrates and officials looked on, powerless to intervene or to stem the tide.

  The Red Fort, the sandstone fortress built by the Mughal emperors in the heart of New Delhi, was spectacularly ill-chosen as the location for the trial. The fort, which had been used as a barracks by the Indian Army ever since the uprising of 1857, was the symbolic seat of South Asian power. So, too, the British decision to try the three officers together, a Sikh, a Hindu and a Muslim. This just added piquancy to the symbolism of the event. The Congress Party used the trials as a way to try to build pan-religious solidarity and some of the finest legal minds in the country, including Jawaharlal Nehru, the foremost Congressman of the era, had represented the men as their defence barristers. Any earlier ambivalence the Congressmen had felt about the militarism and unabashed pro-Axis stance of the INA was swept aside in the fervour of the moment.

  The vehement outpourings of anger that greeted the INA trials, and widespread rejoicing at the release of the prosecuted men, were the result of a hardened form of nationalism. Everywhere there was a new belief in the power of violence to release India from colonial control, and an upsurge of post-war euphoria which gripped civilians and soldiers alike. Policemen, magistrates and military generals became reluctant to intervene in a cause célèbre which had captured the imagination of people of all regional and religious backgrounds. Military commanders of the Indian Army had feared mutiny if the INA men received the death sentence. As it was, over 20,000 members of the Royal Indian Navy would mutiny during the coming weeks in any case.

  The upsurge of political zeal was inextricably linked with ongoing demobilisation. As over 2 million Indian soldiers were demobilised from the Indian Army in the aftermath of the war, and began to return to their villages, they started to ask how they would be rewarded for their sacrifices during the war. As one Pathan soldier told the Indian civil servant Malcolm Darling, ‘We suffered in the war but you didn’t … we bore with this so that we might be free.’3 This was the moment that British rule in India became untenable. It marked a decisive break with everything that had gone before. Imperial rule had lost its final shreds of legitimacy. The Raj had unravelled under the pressure of war.

  The elation greeting the released prisoners would have been unthinkable in 1939. At the start of the war, nobody would have anticipated in Mahatma Gandhi’s India that it would be military men who would soon be in the vanguard of nationalism. But six years of war had changed the political language. By 1946 Gandhi was barely heeded by a new generation of protesters who were angry, strident and dete
rmined to achieve Independence. Their hero was Subhas Chandra Bose and their battle cry was ‘Blood is calling to blood’.

  By contrast, in August 1939 as the world waited for the news of the outbreak of war, a government spokesman in Simla, the summer capital of imperial India, declared, ‘We only have to press a button and the whole organisation prepared to meet a war emergency will slide smoothly into action.’4 This was propaganda, of course, but it also suggests the easy complacency with which India was plunged into war in 1939.

  At the start of the war, Europe’s troubles had seemed far-distant and removed from India. Living in the cantonments and bungalows of the imperial state, the older guard of army officers and officials believed that India could be insulated and protected from the swirl of ideologies taking place in Europe. The war would be framed in terms of loyalty and disloyalty to the Crown and would be a repeat performance of India’s role in the First World War: the landed and the wealthy would take the lead and Indian subjects would fall in step behind them. India would come to the aid of the motherland, and the state would draw on manpower and resources as it saw fit. The prospect of total war, of a threat of invasion reaching India’s borders, of deeply transformative social change, of the erosion and eventual collapse of the power of the imperial state, would have seemed outlandish to many of these officers in the late 1930s.

  * * *

  Some years ago, I wrote a book about the Partition of India, about the tragic violence, refugee movements and the breakdown of trust, which resulted in the making of the two new nations of India and Pakistan. That book focused on the pivotal year of 1947. But in the course of writing it I was often struck by how profoundly transformed India had been in the 1940s, and, in particular, how the Second World War had determined so many aspects of decolonisation and Partition. Muhamad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, had made his very first public demand for Pakistan within months of the war starting. I realised that it is necessary to dig back into the preceding years, and to understand the whole wartime transformation of India in order to really comprehend the exit velocity of the British, the crisis that accompanied Independence in 1947 and the Partition of the subcontinent. Once I began to trawl back into the 1940s, I realised just how critical these years had been to the collapse of the empire and to the making of modern South Asia.