Jawaharlal Nehru had chosen not to become Prime Minister of U.P- India's largest province- in 1937. Instead that job went to Govind Vallabh Pant- a British lady of aristocratic rank. Indeed, at that time, all the Premiers of the Provinces (which were completely autonomous) were British ladies. Miss Fazl ul Haq would often play croquet with Miss Pant. I believe they had known each other at Roedean. By contrast, all the Princes of India were truculent Yorkshireman whose broad dialect, Nehru- a simple Indian peasant- had difficulty in understanding.
In his 'Discovery of India' he points out that
The background of the British governing personnel in India was entirely different.
They had been to Public Schools like Harrow or attended Universities like Cambridge. Nehru had been raised by wolves in the jungle. His original name was Mowgli. Kipling has described his early education at the hands of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther.
Indeed nothing is more striking than the vast gulf that separates the mind of the British and the Indians and, whoever may be right or wrong, this very fact demonstrates the utter incapacity of the British to function as a ruling class in India.
Which is why it is a lie to say Brits had been ruling much of the country for the past 150 years. Lord Curzon was a belly dancer from Egypt. Lord Reading was actually a penguin.
For there must be some harmony, some common outlook, between the rulers and the ruled if there is to be any advance; otherwise there can only be conflict, actual or potential.
The last conflict had been in 1857. The Brits prevailed.
The British in India have always represented the most conservative elements of Britain; between them and the liberal tradition in England there is little in common.
The Indian National Congress was set up by a Scottish ICS officer who was the son of a radical MP.
The more years they spend in India, the more rigid they grow in outlook, and when they retire and go back to England, they become the experts who advise on Indian problems.
They did so to such good effect that Britain continued to rule India though, no doubt, its Parliament had decided to try to make the country self-administering and self-governing as was the case in 'settler' colonies.
They are convinced of their own rectitude, of the benefits and necessity of British rule in India, of their own high mission in being - the representatives of the imperial tradition.
Nehru founded a dynasty which made the INC its ancestral property. Sadly, it has no rectitude and is as stupid as shit.
Because the national Congress
established by an ICS man and supported by ICS men like Wedderburn & Cotton
has challenged the whole basis of this rule and sought to rid India of it, it has become, in their eyes, Public Enemy No. 1. Sir Reginald Maxwell
who advised the Secretary of State for India after retiring from the ICS in 1944. Interestingly, he was kept on in that post after Labour came to power.
, the then Home Member of the Government of India, speaking in the Central Assembly in 1941, gave a revealing glimpse of his mind.
What he revealed was common knowledge. India needed to defend itself. It must stop listening to the nutter Gandhi. Ahimsa has no magic power. If Indians refused to join the army and fight, the Japanese would enslave them.
He was defending himself against the charge that Congressmen and socialists and communists, detained without trial in prison, were subjected to inhuman treatment, far worse than that given to German and Italian prisoners of war.
Was this charge true or false? It was false. In any case, if you mistreat enemy POWs the enemy will mistreat your POWs.
He said that Germans and Italians were, at any rate, fighting for their countries, but these others were enemies of society who wanted to subvert the existing order.
In June, after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Maxwell hand delivered a letter to the jailed leadership of the Indian Communist Party. It was from Harry Pollitt, of the British Communist party, demanding that the CPI abandon opposition to the Government. They did so immediately and the CPI was made legal. It simply isn't the case that Maxwell wanted to preserve the 'existing order'. If the Communists suggested sensible ways to change Society such that the common aim of defeating the Axis was achieved, they would be listened to.
Evidently, it seemed to him preposterous that an Indian should want freedom for his country or should want to change the economic structure of India.
Yet such was the aim of the British Government- Churchill excepted.
As between the two his sympathies were obviously for the Germans and Italians, though his own country was engaged in a bitter war against them.
No. He said POWs are patriots- this included Indian POWs in the hands of the enemy.
To be fair, Nehru was writing as a politician. If he convinced the Americans that Churchill was a lunatic who thought the War a good excuse to crush the INC, then he had served his party well.
The Government of India
Congress was part of that Government till it decided unilaterally to boycott the Legislative Council
certainly was anxious to help in every way in the war against the Axis powers.
Congress was not. That's why Nehru & Co were sent to jail.
But in its mind that victory would be incomplete if it was not accompanied by another victory—the crushing of the nationalist movements in India as represented mainly by the Congress.
Jinnah was a Nationalist. So was Rajaji. Why were they not in jail?
The Cripps negotiations had perturbed it and it rejoiced at their failure.
Nehru & Co were so sweet and nice that they caused the Cripps negotiations to fail just so Viceroy could rejoice.
The way was now open to deal the final blow at the Congress and all those who sided with it. The moment was favourable, for at no previous time had there been such concentration of unlimited power, both at the centre and in the provinces,
because Congress had resigned office
in the hands of the Viceroy and his principal subordinates.
Congress believed it had a duty to help anyone who wanted to crush it.
The war situation was a difficult one and it was a feasible argument that no opposition or trouble could be tolerated. Liberal elements in England and America,
were interested in defeating Hitler. They didn't give a fuck about darkies.
interested in India, had been quietened by the Cripps affair and the propaganda that followed.
Propaganda Congress failed to counter.
In England the ever-present feeling of self-righteousness in relation to India had grown.
It would grow yet more after England saw Nehru preside in Delhi over the ethnic cleansing of Muslims. Still, it wasn't till 1962 that they could safely say that they alone had enabled India to feed and defend itself and protect its minorities. Nehru had failed utterly to do so.
Indians, or many of them, it was felt there, were intransigent, troublesome persons, narrow in outlook, unable to appreciate the dangers of the situation, and probably in sympathy with the Japanese.
Bose had gone over to them. Nehru would appoint Nambiar, Bose's number 2 in Germany, as his Ambassador in Bonn. Nambiar had recruited Indians for the Waffen SS.
Mr. Gandhi's articles and statements, it was said, had proved how impossible he was and the only way left open was to put an end to all this by crushing Gandhi and the Congress once for all.
Some Congress leaders were locked up just as they had been in the early Twenties and early Thirties. Should Nehru have stood with Rajaji and supported the war effort? Yes. The Communists would have turned to him after Hitler invaded Russia. With British help, a legend of his efficiency and strategic skill could have been built up. By making himself independent of Congress (which he considered a Bania dominated party) he might have had greater appeal for Muslims and Dalits. He could then have been the 'Rashtrapati' of a united, albeit Federal, India.
His problem was that so long as he was within Congress, the Banias would have to support him lest he lurch to the Left and deny them a monopoly of power. The moment he left the Congress fold, he would be reliant on the Brits to prop him up. After all, he wasn't efficient and had zero strategic skill. Moreover, the charge would be made that he was just a brown Englishman. Churchill wanted to pass power to a fellow Harrovian. The safer course was to sit and sulk in jail. Nehru's genius was to spend his enforced leisure in writing a book which the Americans liked. They felt Nehru was the one man in India who had a sensible plan for the place. Sadly, their confidence in him was misplaced. The truth about Nehru is he started off as a Theosophist before becoming the acolyte of a crazy Saint. But, that crazy Saint's blessing enabled him to found a dynasty which turned Hume's INC into its ancestral property.
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