No One Worships the Setting Sun
Between March and May 1942 the British Raj had been stripped of what had long been considered its most precious asset, prestige. The process was painful and public. On March 19, Singapore surrendered and over 50,000 British, Indian and Australian troops laid down their arms after a short struggle against the Japanese army. Next, the Japanese thrust into Burma, capturing Rangoon in May and Mandalay over the summer. India now faced an invasion by an adversary whose declared aim was to free Asians from European rule. Malays and Burmese took the Japanese at their word and welcomed them as liberators. The balance of power in southern Asia was swinging decisively against Britain. During the summer, Japanese fleets cruised at will around the Indian Ocean which had been a British waterway since 1800.
Nothing better illustrated the new dispensation of power in Asia or, for that matter, the rest of the world. For a time, all that Viceroy Linlithgow’s advisors could come up with in the way of a defense strategy was a ‘scorched earth’ policy if Bengal was invaded. The Raj had lost one of its traditional justifications, the ability to protect India. Discredited by defeat and unable to defend itself, the Raj could no longer expect the co-operation of its subjects. Even before the disaster at Singapore, Linlithgow was aware that he and his government were facing harsh new realities. Their implication was chilling, as he explained in a cable to Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India:
The Cabinet will I think agree with me that India and Burma have no natural association with the Empire, from which they are alien by race, history, and religion, and for which as such neither of them have any natural affection, and both are in the Empire because they are conquered countries which had been brought there by force, kept there by our controls, and which hitherto it has suited to remain under our protection. I suspect that the moment they think we may lose the war or take a bad knock, their leaders would be much more concerned to make terms with the victor at our expense than to fight for ideals to which so much lip-service is given…
The Viceroy’s mordant analysis was substantially correct. Early in April, Linlithgow confessed that he lacked the forces to resist a Japanese landing on the Cuttack coast and could not prevent an advance into Orissa. Disaster could be averted if, by some means, the Indian National Congress could be induced to become a partner in the war effort. The will was certainly there in some quarters. On April 16, Nehru told a rally in Delhi:
If today we were masters of our own destiny we would ask people to get ready and defend the country with all our might. Unfortunately obstinate, worthless, and incompetent Government still has its grip tight on us.
The government which Nehru despised was all too aware that its popularity would be immeasurably strengthened if, somehow, it could break the Indian nationalistic deadlock. Generous concessions to nationalist sentiment offered a remedy for the apathy and, in many instances, open hostility to Britain which infected millions of Indians. But interference from British Tories, led by Churchill, quashed any thought of concessions and continued the British direct control of the direction of India’s war effort. Internal enemies would be eliminated in order for India to face the danger to its frontiers. The Japanese, whose offensive had been momentarily halted by transport shortages, were expected to renew the offensive in late August. One danger had, however, been removed; over the summer, the Japanese navy was fully engaged shuttling troops and supplies to the invasions of Australia. There were no ships to spare for those amphibious operations against India which had been a major source of anxiety to the Viceroy and his military staff.
The timing, extent, and nature of the internal upheavals depended upon Congress and, above all, Gandhi. From April to July he was preparing for a campaign of civil disobedience which, he promised foreign newspapermen on July 15 would be the biggest yet. His objective was the immediate departure of the British from India, an act, he sincerely believed, that would remove the threat of Japanese invasion. So long as the British remained, the Japanese would be tempted to attack India. “The very novelty of the British stroke will confound the Japanese,” he said with unintentional irony, and “dissolve hatred against the British.” If the Japanese belligerency did not evaporate in the face of this amazing gesture, and Gandhi was never sure that it would, Indians would have to oppose them non-violently. Just what this might entail, he revealed at the beginning of April:
…the resisters may find that the Japanese are utterly heartless and that they do not care how many they kill. The non-violent resisters will have won the day inasmuch as they will have preferred extermination to submission.
Gandhi had become utterly careless with the lives of his countrymen. He told a News Chronicle journalist that the British would have to “leave India in God’s hands, but in modern parlance to anarchy, and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time. From this a true India will rise in the place of the false one we see,” which no doubt would comfort the survivors. Alternately beset by Japanese and British tax gatherers, Indians might, he conceded, have to defend themselves. For this purpose, he recommended “gymnastics, drill, lathi play, and the like.” All that mattered for Gandhi was that the British left India; the future could take care of itself. This was the irresponsibility of a man for whom every other consideration was subordinate to a single aim: the emancipation of India on his own terms. Nothing else mattered, least of all the reality of the war being waged outside India. He must have known the human costs of a brief spell of anarchy to the ordinary people of India – his own journal, Harijan, had described them in some detail.
Gandhi’s plan followed well-established lines in the first phases, with token infractions of minor laws, withdrawal of co-operations at all levels of government, boycotts, and strikes. Stages five and six were novel and contrived to hamper the war effort: disruption of trains, cutting telegraph and telephone lines, withholding rents and taxes and picketing soldiers. Participants were cautioned not to undertake any activity which might endanger life, but in the past such warnings had not been heeded.
After several months of debate and prevarication and not without severe misgivings among its member, Congress took the plunge on August 8. It invited the British to ‘Quit India’ and, correctly guessing what the response would be, called on its supporters to make the country ungovernable. Early the next day, Gandhi, Nehru and most of Congress’s leadership were arrested and interned. Just before his arrest Gandhi called on his followers to “go out to die not to live” and, aware that Congress’s superstructure was about to be swept away, urged every demonstrator to become his own leader. From the start, he knew that it would be impossible for the movement to be directed or synchronized from above, although the resourceful Congress leaders in Delhi had procured loudspeaker equipment beforehand. They used it to broadcast the news of Gandhi’s arrest in the streets on August 9, in what turned out to be the prelude to riots, attacks on Europeans and damage to government and railway property. The pattern was much the same across the country. The distribution of food was disrupted and caused shortages in the larger cities. Crowds gathered, clashed with the police and assaulted anybody or anything which represented authority. Revenue offices and police stations were the favorite targets for assaults and arson, and, most alarmingly to the army, stations and signal boxes were burned. Railway tracks were torn up and telegraph and telephone lines were torn down.
Linlithgow told Churchill on August 31, that “I am engaged here in meeting by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857, the gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed from the world for reasons of military security…Mob violence remains rampant over large tracts of the countryside and I am by no means confident that we may not see in September a formidable effort to renew this widespread sabotage of our war effort.” Churchill was at his most adamant and made clear his position on the uprising and India in general with this declaration:
…we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.
Days later, the irony of his words was proved apparent, as the Japanese renewed their offensive and attacked the hastily assembled British troops on the Imphal line. General Yoshiro’s four division vanguard of mobile troops effected a small breakthrough and poured through the gap in a race to reach Calcutta. The rest of the mobile troops under Yamashita followed quickly and moved to exploit the breach and push the majority of defending units to positions north of the Ganges. General Lockhart gamely attempted to extract his army from its predicament along the railways to the west, but was hampered by the effects of the uprising. Communications were spotty, and trains had difficulty getting through with supplies or returning with troops. He bitterly concluded in a dispatch to Viceroy Linlithgow, that he was now operating in an “occupied and hostile country.”
Three weeks later, on October 3, General Yoshihiro arrived at Calcutta and severed the Bengal rail lines. Lockhart had succeeded in extracting half his force from the trap, but those forces were in no condition to fight a mobile defensive battle as they were suffering a shortage of trucks and horses. They promptly began retreating towards Delhi. At the beginning, this retreat was orderly, but it soon developed into a panicked rout. Yoshihiro followed hard after this force, and, in a series of minor skirmishes, continued to pursue up the Ganges river valley. Behind him the full might of the Imperial Japanese Army spread out and began occupying the central plains of the subcontinent with the ultimate objectives of Bombay and Madras. No British or Indian troops existed between this army and Persia. Indians now sensed as never before that the days of the British Raj were numbered.
No One Worships the Setting Sun
Between March and May 1942 the British Raj had been stripped of what had long been considered its most precious asset, prestige. The process was painful and public. On March 19, Singapore surrendered and over 50,000 British, Indian and Australian troops laid down their arms after a short struggle against the Japanese army. Next, the Japanese thrust into Burma, capturing Rangoon in May and Mandalay over the summer. India now faced an invasion by an adversary whose declared aim was to free Asians from European rule. Malays and Burmese took the Japanese at their word and welcomed them as liberators. The balance of power in southern Asia was swinging decisively against Britain. During the summer, Japanese fleets cruised at will around the Indian Ocean which had been a British waterway since 1800.
Nothing better illustrated the new dispensation of power in Asia or, for that matter, the rest of the world. For a time, all that Viceroy Linlithgow’s advisors could come up with in the way of a defense strategy was a ‘scorched earth’ policy if Bengal was invaded. The Raj had lost one of its traditional justifications, the ability to protect India. Discredited by defeat and unable to defend itself, the Raj could no longer expect the co-operation of its subjects. Even before the disaster at Singapore, Linlithgow was aware that he and his government were facing harsh new realities. Their implication was chilling, as he explained in a cable to Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India:
The Cabinet will I think agree with me that India and Burma have no natural association with the Empire, from which they are alien by race, history, and religion, and for which as such neither of them have any natural affection, and both are in the Empire because they are conquered countries which had been brought there by force, kept there by our controls, and which hitherto it has suited to remain under our protection. I suspect that the moment they think we may lose the war or take a bad knock, their leaders would be much more concerned to make terms with the victor at our expense than to fight for ideals to which so much lip-service is given…
The Viceroy’s mordant analysis was substantially correct. Early in April, Linlithgow confessed that he lacked the forces to resist a Japanese landing on the Cuttack coast and could not prevent an advance into Orissa. Disaster could be averted if, by some means, the Indian National Congress could be induced to become a partner in the war effort. The will was certainly there in some quarters. On April 16, Nehru told a rally in Delhi:
If today we were masters of our own destiny we would ask people to get ready and defend the country with all our might. Unfortunately obstinate, worthless, and incompetent Government still has its grip tight on us.
The government which Nehru despised was all too aware that its popularity would be immeasurably strengthened if, somehow, it could break the Indian nationalistic deadlock. Generous concessions to nationalist sentiment offered a remedy for the apathy and, in many instances, open hostility to Britain which infected millions of Indians. But interference from British Tories, led by Churchill, quashed any thought of concessions and continued the British direct control of the direction of India’s war effort. Internal enemies would be eliminated in order for India to face the danger to its frontiers. The Japanese, whose offensive had been momentarily halted by transport shortages, were expected to renew the offensive in late August. One danger had, however, been removed; over the summer, the Japanese navy was fully engaged shuttling troops and supplies to the invasions of Australia. There were no ships to spare for those amphibious operations against India which had been a major source of anxiety to the Viceroy and his military staff.
The timing, extent, and nature of the internal upheavals depended upon Congress and, above all, Gandhi. From April to July he was preparing for a campaign of civil disobedience which, he promised foreign newspapermen on July 15 would be the biggest yet. His objective was the immediate departure of the British from India, an act, he sincerely believed, that would remove the threat of Japanese invasion. So long as the British remained, the Japanese would be tempted to attack India. “The very novelty of the British stroke will confound the Japanese,” he said with unintentional irony, and “dissolve hatred against the British.” If the Japanese belligerency did not evaporate in the face of this amazing gesture, and Gandhi was never sure that it would, Indians would have to oppose them non-violently. Just what this might entail, he revealed at the beginning of April:
…the resisters may find that the Japanese are utterly heartless and that they do not care how many they kill. The non-violent resisters will have won the day inasmuch as they will have preferred extermination to submission.
Gandhi had become utterly careless with the lives of his countrymen. He told a News Chronicle journalist that the British would have to “leave India in God’s hands, but in modern parlance to anarchy, and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time. From this a true India will rise in the place of the false one we see,” which no doubt would comfort the survivors. Alternately beset by Japanese and British tax gatherers, Indians might, he conceded, have to defend themselves. For this purpose, he recommended “gymnastics, drill, lathi play, and the like.” All that mattered for Gandhi was that the British left India; the future could take care of itself. This was the irresponsibility of a man for whom every other consideration was subordinate to a single aim: the emancipation of India on his own terms. Nothing else mattered, least of all the reality of the war being waged outside India. He must have known the human costs of a brief spell of anarchy to the ordinary people of India – his own journal, Harijan, had described them in some detail.
Gandhi’s plan followed well-established lines in the first phases, with token infractions of minor laws, withdrawal of co-operations at all levels of government, boycotts, and strikes. Stages five and six were novel and contrived to hamper the war effort: disruption of trains, cutting telegraph and telephone lines, withholding rents and taxes and picketing soldiers. Participants were cautioned not to undertake any activity which might endanger life, but in the past such warnings had not been heeded.
After several months of debate and prevarication and not without severe misgivings among its member, Congress took the plunge on August 8. It invited the British to ‘Quit India’ and, correctly guessing what the response would be, called on its supporters to make the country ungovernable. Early the next day, Gandhi, Nehru and most of Congress’s leadership were arrested and interned. Just before his arrest Gandhi called on his followers to “go out to die not to live” and, aware that Congress’s superstructure was about to be swept away, urged every demonstrator to become his own leader. From the start, he knew that it would be impossible for the movement to be directed or synchronized from above, although the resourceful Congress leaders in Delhi had procured loudspeaker equipment beforehand. They used it to broadcast the news of Gandhi’s arrest in the streets on August 9, in what turned out to be the prelude to riots, attacks on Europeans and damage to government and railway property. The pattern was much the same across the country. The distribution of food was disrupted and caused shortages in the larger cities. Crowds gathered, clashed with the police and assaulted anybody or anything which represented authority. Revenue offices and police stations were the favorite targets for assaults and arson, and, most alarmingly to the army, stations and signal boxes were burned. Railway tracks were torn up and telegraph and telephone lines were torn down.
Linlithgow told Churchill on August 31, that “I am engaged here in meeting by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857, the gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed from the world for reasons of military security…Mob violence remains rampant over large tracts of the countryside and I am by no means confident that we may not see in September a formidable effort to renew this widespread sabotage of our war effort.” Churchill was at his most adamant and made clear his position on the uprising and India in general with this declaration:
…we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.
Days later, the irony of his words was proved apparent, as the Japanese renewed their offensive and attacked the hastily assembled British troops on the Imphal line. General Yoshiro’s four division vanguard of mobile troops effected a small breakthrough and poured through the gap in a race to reach Calcutta. The rest of the mobile troops under Yamashita followed quickly and moved to exploit the breach and push the majority of defending units to positions north of the Ganges. General Lockhart gamely attempted to extract his army from its predicament along the railways to the west, but was hampered by the effects of the uprising. Communications were spotty, and trains had difficulty getting through with supplies or returning with troops. He bitterly concluded in a dispatch to Viceroy Linlithgow, that he was now operating in an “occupied and hostile country.”
Three weeks later, on October 3, General Yoshihiro arrived at Calcutta and severed the Bengal rail lines. Lockhart had succeeded in extracting half his force from the trap, but those forces were in no condition to fight a mobile defensive battle as they were suffering a shortage of trucks and horses. They promptly began retreating towards Delhi. At the beginning, this retreat was orderly, but it soon developed into a panicked rout. Yoshihiro followed hard after this force, and, in a series of minor skirmishes, continued to pursue up the Ganges river valley. Behind him the full might of the Imperial Japanese Army spread out and began occupying the central plains of the subcontinent with the ultimate objectives of Bombay and Madras. No British or Indian troops existed between this army and Persia. Indians now sensed as never before that the days of the British Raj were numbered.
