No. His proposal was for a Pakistan, a Hindustan and Pricestan. But the Princes were shit. The only question was whether Punjab and Bengal would be partitioned on terms more or less favorable to the Muslims. Had Churchill won the 1945 election and appointed Mountbatten as Viceroy, then Mountbatten's finger would have been on the Muslim side of the scales. The Hindus would have had less incentive to make a Federal structure workable. Thus, if anything, Independence would have come sooner under Churchill than Atlee. Furthermore, the Tories would have had less resolve to prolong the economic pain the British people were undergoing. Also, the quicker the Brits left, the greater the chance that essentially conservative Indian forces would replace them. If the Brits tarried, the Reds might end up taking over the entire shooting match.
A distinguished ex-diplomat, Kishan Rana takes a different view. He sees Churchill as manipulator or betrayer of India who may have played some devilish trick on Nehru & Co.
He writes in 'Open Magazine'-
WINSTON CHURCHILL, BRITAIN’S wartime Prime Minister from May 1940 to August 1945, had a huge impact on British India.
No. He carried on the policies of Zetland and Halifax and other senior Tories. Churchill was considered to be ignorant of, and a bit crazy on, the subject of India. The fall of Singapore- itself perhaps the inevitable outcome of Churchill's decision, as Chancellor, to cut income taxes rather than beef up the Navy- had doomed the Raj. Only American aid could enable it to throw out the Japs but the Yanks would insist that India become independent. This was because they were foolish enough to think the Indians would welcome f.d.i by Ford and GM and GE and so forth to replace inferior tie-ups with British Companies like ICI etc.
The plain fact is, Churchill like other British leaders, had a blind spot when it came to Japan. Indeed, a British Lord who was a known Japanese agent was given an official position at the Admiralty which he used to pass secrets to Japan even after war broke out. He was forced to retire, but wasn't prosecuted.
Strangely, his mismanagement of the ‘Jewel in the Crown’, and his motivation, are under-studied.
There was no mismanagement of India. Provincial autonomy had been granted. Congress resigned its ministries but the administration carried on well enough. India supplied men and materials to the Allies though, no doubt, if captured by the Japanese, some soldiers turned their coats.
That India connection began with Churchill’s three years as a cavalry subaltern, based in Bangalore from October 1896 to May 1899. He travelled widely, pursuing his passion for polo, also seeking military fame,
he was a soldier. He wanted to fight. Shame on him!
first to the Afghan frontier in 1897 (producing the first of 40-plus books), and the next year to the Sudan War, (with another book, in two volumes). Churchill also used that time for intensive self-education, via the books his mother sent from London. That was when he framed his political vision and public affairs strategy.
Not really. He simply followed his father's policy- viz. military retrenchment and free trade- while showing sympathy to the working class. Later, he came under the spell of Lloyd George.
Remember, Churchill had no university education, going directly from Harrow to the Sandhurst Military Academy.
It was rare for soldiers to go to University. If they did so it was because- like Sir John French- they enjoyed sports and socializing. Nobody in their right mind went to Oxbridge to learn useful stuff.
There is no gainsaying Churchill’s crucial role in defeating Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II.
No. He played a crucial role in keeping up morale during the Blitz. But previous Tory administrations had emphasized the role of aircraft as England's last line of defense. The RAF came through- just. England had been saved by the skin of its teeth. Hitler defeated himself by attacking Stalin and then, quite gratuitously, declaring war on the US.
Churchill’s greatness is undeniable. But it is a disservice to verity and history to obfuscate the major dark spot in his life, his comprehensive misrule of British India
he had zero constitutional responsibility for India. Leo Amery, as Secretary of State, found him stupid and bigoted on the subject but he couldn't deny that Indian politics didn't greatly matter. After the fall of Singapore, Congress was bound to go to jail and thus play a waiting game. Churchill had good relations with the League which was backing the war effort. The Commies too got with the program once Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
in those crucial five years, 1940 to 1945, preceding Partition and the Independence of India and Pakistan.
The Provinces had autonomy or, if Congress ministries had resigned, were under Governor's rule. But the Governor's reported to the Viceroy who reported to the Secretary of State for India. Churchill was too busy to get involved in Indian politics.
My book Churchill and India: Manipulation or Betrayal? (2022), is the only one among over 2,000 oeuvres, offering a document-based, forensic, panoramic examination of those India-related actions.
Churchill was concerned with the conduct of the War- which was fucking abysmal in the South East Asian theater. Thankfully, the Americans came to the rescue of the Brits.
The task was difficult, partly owing to suppression of documentary evidence.
The documentary evidence was shit because the Brits had taken their eye off the ball. This was because most people thought the Indians genuinely wanted Independence and thus would cobble together a Federal Government sooner rather than later. The fact is, strange as this may sound, Brits thought Gandhi genuinely wanted them to fuck off. He didn't because he thought the Muslims and the Punjabis would fuck the Hindus in the ass and steal all their cool, shiny, stuff. At least that is what he said in 1939.
Churchill was a notorious hoarder of papers, working assiduously to embellish his own life story.
Why didn't he write a big fat book showing he was a cowardly wanker whose wife beat him regularly?
He frequently said that history would vindicate him, because he would write that history.
Not that frequently. He wasn't a boring cunt.
From the late 1920s Churchill deployed a veritable ‘cottage industry’ of draft-writers, researchers, helpers, a form of collective production. Example: Churchill’s six-volume The Second World War (emerging sequentially, 1948 to 1954). It’s base: official documents that he commandeered after his August 1945 election defeat. They were edited and rewritten, almost always aimed at self-exculpation, gilding his own role — as shown by David Reynolds in In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (2004).
If Churchill had known or cared much about India, he could have spun a yarn about how he cunningly got the Hindu Congress to snooker itself such that they sulked in jail while the Brits were able to borrow lots of money from India which it used to mobilize Indian manpower and materials for the War effort.
I WILL START WITH addressing Churchill’s gross mishandling of the End of Empire, squandering valuable time, mid-1942 to July 1945,
Churchill got about as much out of India as it was capable of yielding. The truth is, Congress was and is useless. The Americans may have thought Nehru was a smart dude who could help the war effort. But Nehru wasn't a smart dude. He was a blathershite. By 1962, this had become blindingly obvious.
failing to prepare for the Partition of British India,
Why prepare for it? If darkies want to kill each other let them do so after the War when it would inconvenience nobody who mattered.
doing nothing to reduce human suffering.
Britain was fighting for its life. Fuck it cared about useless darkies stealing each others' food? The fact is, India could have had a Federal Government under the 1935 Act if enough Indians had agreed to work together. But they preferred to quarrel and talk bollocks.
Elected to Parliament in 1900 aged 25, over the next three decades Churchill held varied high ministerial appointments, none directly dealing with India.
But Halifax and Zetland did. It was they who pushed through the 1935 Act. Churchill railed against it impotently. People thought he was ga ga.
But the mounting Indian demand for autonomy, from the 1910s onwards, drew Churchill’s attention, and hostility.
He joined the Indian Empire League which was set up in 1930 and the India Defense League in 1933. But, those old fogeys couldn't prevent the mainstream Tory party pushing through provincial autonomy under the 1935 Act. In other words, India was already a lost cause before the UK turned to Churchill.
Throughout, Churchill clung to a Victorian vision, that India was the Empire’s ‘Crown Jewel’, on which the sun must never set.
Rana is a cretin. The Sun sets on India. It doesn't on a Global Empire like that of Charles V.
Those were half-digested lessons
Why half-digested? Randolph wasn't a great thinker and died of syphilis soon enough. Churchill was more flexible on Ireland.
imbibed from his father, Lord Randolph, who died in 1895; he remained Churchill’s lifelong mentor. But Churchill failed to grasp his father’s humanity, which of itself was remarkable for those times.
Churchill didn't get syphilis because he was a little bit more discriminating regarding what specimens of humanity he grasped and stuck his dick into.
Remember, in the mid-1880s Randolph had asked that Britain should reach out, to understand the Indian people; he said, ‘the government knows less than nothing of the native mind’.
Randolph called Chandravarkar a 'Bengali babu'. He was a highly reactionary Sec. of State for India. Why is Rana pretending otherwise?
Randolph sought termination of ruthless exploitation, also asking in vain for a parliamentary commission to examine Britain’s rule over India.
Fuck off! He just said whatever all Opposition front benchers say during boring parliamentary debates. As Sec. of State, he pushed for the annexation of upper Burma.
CHURCHILL RELISHED, AND exploited, the division between the Indian National Congress (INC), led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Muslim League (ML) led by Jinnah,
Gandhi and Nehru created those divisions. They were exultant when Jinnah went into self-imposed exile in London between 1930- 1934.
and anything that sharpened the Hindu-Muslim divide.
Actually, Gandhi's demand that the Brits hand over the Army to the INC before leaving caused everybody- including Madrasi non-Brahmins, and Sikhs- to unite against Congress at the Round Table Conference of 1932. The Brits united India but their departure meant that it would split on Religious grounds. First Buddhist Burma went its own way. Then the Muslims got their own State.
Churchill called it the “bulwark” of British rule over India, hoping that this divide “would remain bitter and bloody”. That shaped his actions.
What actions? The dude was fighting a war. He had no time for India.
When did Churchill establish contact with Muhammad Ali Jinnah? No one knows for sure.
Churchill was under the impression that Princes- like the Aga Khan- were the people who mattered. During Jinnah's London sojourn, few predicted he would return to India as the head of the Muslim League.
Jinnah shifted to London after the first Round Table Conference at the end of 1930, staying there for over four years, establishing a prosperous legal practice. He told his sister that the locus of political activity had moved; his self-exile was also expedient in terms of internal ML dissensions. From 1929-35, Churchill was fully committed to obstructing the passage of the Government of India Act of 1935.
He failed miserably. After that, if he started gassing on about India, people rolled their eyes and suggested the old boy should go easy on the Cognac.
For Churchill those miniscule British concessions, partly
fully
opening provincial governance to Indian self-rule, heralded the end of Empire.
D'uh! What Rana doesn't understand is that if the Indians had reached an agreement they could have had their own Federal Government.
Diehard opposition became his one-point agenda, in that futile revolt against his own Tory (Conservative) party. Churchill gathered a ragtag collection of ultra-nationalists; most of his political allies, even friends, deserted him. That obsession left him high and dry, out of office, till World War II broke out in September 1939.
Churchill had opposed the Mody-Lees agreement (as had Nehru, though he didn't have the courage to say so). It was because Churchill was still attached to Free Trade and the Gold Standard and the fucking British Raj that people thought he was senile. Still, he was considered a fighting man and a bitter opponent of 'appeasement'. That's what got him the top job- though his own party didn't like him very much.
At that time Churchill sought out all manner of allies, including the Indian Princely States; he considered flying out to India to muster opposition to the Government of India Act, 1935. How could he have ignored Jinnah, given their political congruence?
Churchill made nice with G.D Birla. He had no problem sucking up to Rich or Royal Hindus. Jinnah, at that time, seemed a man with a brilliant future- behind him.
Both, as sharp politicians, had to ensure that the connections remained hidden.
There was no connection. Churchill was seen as a useless old fogey. Jinnah was disliked by the Brits- e.g. Lord Reading- because they saw he was determined to have Independence.
What was Churchill’s deeper motivation in favouring Jinnah and the ML?
Jinnah supported the War. That's it. There's your motivation.
After the outbreak of WWII, British strategic planners concluded in 1941 that a Muslim state carved out of British India would be their long-term ally in that oil rich, Islamic region (according to Narendra Singh Sarila
an equally stupid ex-diplomat
in The Shadow of the Great Game, 2005).
No. The Brits thought only a united Indian could hold the frontier against a Soviet backed Afghan regime. Don't forget the Brits had divided up Persia with the Soviets during the War. Incidentally, they used Hindu Gurkhas in Iraq against the pro-Axis regime. There was always the fear that Indian Muslim troops might not want to fire upon Arab or Persian Muslims. Don't forget, the Brits and the Americans toppled Mossadegh so the Brits could keep their hands on the oil of Khuzestan. On the other hand, the Americans did use Pakistan for its U2 surveillance flights. But that did not concern the Brits.
At the Churchill Archives (during two-month archival research in 2004, and on subsequent visits to Britain) I located correspondence dating to late 1946 between the private secretaries to Leader of the Opposition Churchill, and another leading member of the Conservative Party, ‘Rab’ Butler.
Who had no problem with getting shot of Britain's Indian headache.
Churchill sent him the ‘file’ containing his correspondence with Jinnah, which was returned a month later. But no such ‘file’, or substantive correspondence, exists in the papers that Churchill personally transferred to the Archives in the early 1960s.
Because the thing didn't matter in the slightest.
My search at the British National Archives brought up Jinnah’s letter to Churchill of January 2, 1941. That is the first known, surviving, substantive message from the one to the other. It has the flavour of a continuing dialogue; Jinnah extravagantly claimed that he enjoyed the support of 90 percent ‘Mussalmans’ of British India. That claim was fiction,
less so than Gandhi's claim that he himself was a 'Harijan' as well as a Muslim and thus represented all Indians.
though Jinnah had gained in support, after the 1938 provincial elections, when ML barely won 23 percent of the seats reserved for Muslims, failing to gain power in a single of the 14 provinces. By the early 1940s, support for the ML had grown, partly through the indirect message to British officials via PM Churchill’s patronage of Jinnah.
No. Once Congress resigned office, there was a power vacuum and lots of money to be made in various black markets. Muslim entrepreneurs saw that without Hindu competition they could get very very rich. Also, without the British umpire, Civil Servants could be as corrupt as fuck. However, it was the Army which would do best in 'the land of the Pure'. Still, so long as the Japs were at the gate, Churchill's patronage didn't greatly matter. The sly Mahatma's policy of sulking in Jail might win Congress the favor of the new Imperial masters of India.
We know from David Stafford’s Churchill and Secret Service (2007) that Churchill was among the very first leaders to actively deploy intelligence agencies.
The Brits in India had a better intelligence setup than the folks back home. Churchill's secret service was full of Commie agents.
But those British papers remain closed;
Lots of them were shit. My grandfather is accused of stealing granny's jewelry to give to prostitutes in a secret police file. The truth is, his father-in-law was a Police Inspector who knew him to be of good character- which is why he married his daughter to him. As for the prostitutes, Grandfather had indeed been part of a Jain philanthropist's scheme to rehabilitate them.
India’s pre-1947 Intelligence Bureau sent to London all its sensitive papers, and destroyed the remainder, before the August 1947 transfer of power.
Thus curbing a nuisance.
NATURALLY, SAFEGUARDING BRITAIN through World War II, steering the Allies to victory, was Churchill’s topmost priority.
Congress's top most priority was to sulk safely in jail while other people did the fighting. The Mahatma's 'do or die' actually meant 'do nothing and thus avoid dying'.
And we have ample evidence of his strong leadership. But his remit included Empire affairs, including management of British India, especially the insistent self-rule demands of the INC and the ML.
The problem was that everybody thought Churchill was not entirely sane on the subject of India. Still, he managed to fight off American interference well enough. What helped was the Yankee obsession with China. But this also worked in Nehru's favor. Chiang Kai Shek thought Nehru would be a valuable ally- unlike the cretin Bose.
One of Churchill’s greatest WWII follies was his personal failure to initiate preparations for Partition.
No. That was a wholly Indian affair. If darkies want to stab each other, fuck has it to do with Whiteys?
Though unannounced, we have proof that Churchill had decided this by 1942. Evidence: Roosevelt’s message to Churchill of May 11, 1942 (analysed in my book).
Churchill said the Allies needed Indian troops. What was wrong with that? The fact is the Indians couldn't fight off the Japs on their own. They would have to do a deal and drop out of the war. They might become a puppet state like Thailand.
Obsessed with his India hatred,
This man is obsessed with his Churchill hatred.
he profoundly disliked that outcome.
Churchill didn't like the fact that the war was causing his country to lose a lot of blood and treasure.
But ostrich like denial of looming reality was not governance — he abdicated responsibility.
He had no responsibility. While the Brits were in power, minorities were safe enough. How is it the fault of Churchill if darkies killed each other after he was out of office and his successor decided to get the fuck out of India?
The Subcontinent paid that price.
It paid the price of being populated by Indians, not nice British people. Naturally, when the former started to run things, a lot of people died. Still, Churchill did send the Japs packing- a feat Gandhi and Nehru and Jinnah could not have achieved even if they had been united.
It is extraordinary that Indian diplomats still don't understand that without the Brits and the Americans, India would now be a province of the Japanese Empire. Nehru refused to pay the price necessary to secure India's territorial integrity as was discovered in 1962. You need to pay for Armies and Navies and smart people to direct them.
Our historians are divided over the wisdom of the August 1942 Gandhi-Nehru ‘Quit India’ call (after the failure of the March- April 1942 Cripps Mission).
Gandhi thought the Japs would win. He hadn't been to America and did not know how strong it was.
That played into British hands.
Churchill didn't have to bother much with Gandhi & Co because they did stupid shit. Still, they stayed safe in jail while Churchill and Roosevelt dealt with the big danger India faced at that time- viz. turning into a Japanese province.
On August 8, 1942, the entire working leadership of INC was jailed, from Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Maulana Azad, right down to middle ranking personalities, numbering over 70,000.
Jail was safe. The battlefield wasn't. Anyway, soon enough, Bose would arrive at Singapore having previously persuaded Indians to join Hitler's Waffen SS.
The leaders were isolated, bereft of mutual consultation for nearly three years.
Boo hoo! Meanwhile brave men were dying in battle.
And throughout, Jinnah was groomed as the putative Pakistan’s leader, privileged, protected, ‘sponsored’.
Rajaji opposed Quit India and resigned from Congress. He was protected to the same extent as Jinnah.
But no preparation was undertaken for Partition.
Curzon had partitioned Bengal but the Indian's protested and so the thing was reversed. If, at a later point, Hindus and Sikhs didn't want to live under Muslim rule and vice versa, how is this Churchill's fault?
Oh. Silly me. Churchill should have forcibly converted all Indians to the Anglican faith. That way there would have been no Partition. Either that or he should have ordered all Hindus and Sikhs to move out of Muslim majority areas.
That was at the heart of Churchill’s misgovernance.
No. What was at the heart of the misgovernance of India was the shittiness of Indians- Princes or politicians or pundits or Maha-fucking-atmas.
Roosevelt’s February 1943 plea for the release of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and Azad was spurned. (FDR had addressed that request to Viceroy Linlithgow, through US representative in Delhi, William Phillips, not to Churchill).
Bose arrived in Singapore in July. Nehru had made some pugnacious remarks about fighting the Japs but his people were cowards. Congress was safer in jail where they could pretend they were 'fighting' rather than sulking while saving their own skins.
But Roosevelt had wearied of pushing Churchill on self-determination for India, failing in his repeated efforts of 1940-42, always brusquely rejected by Churchill.
Because America thought it needed British India so as to supply the Japs 'over the hump'. The Thais, in alliance with the Japs, had cut off the Burmese route. Still, it must be said, British military performance was so shitty in 1943 that one can't blame Congress for preferring comfy jail cells.
IN THE PITHY language of the Chinese classics, Confucius advises: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”
The proper name for a country whose people are so shitty they can't feed or defend themselves is 'shithole'.
For too long, the catastrophic famine that decimated the people of East India during World War II has been mislabelled the “Bengal Famine”.
Because it actually occurred in Bournemouth.
That suited British India.
It suited the Muslim League administration in Calcutta. Lots of their people made a lot of money out of it.
The 1944-45 Commission of Inquiry (Woodhead Commission), excluded the starvation deaths and suffering in neighbouring provinces, Assam, Bihar, and Orissa, limiting the official death toll to 1.5 million. “The Great Famine of 1942-44” better captures that gross neglect of governance, the worst calamity in two centuries of British India rule.
Food had been a Provincial subject since 1937. Suppose India had created a Federal Government with responsibility for Defense, then I'd be writing this in Japanese.
The facts are straightforward. Japan’s 1942 attack in South-East Asia, coincided with low rice production in East India. The customary supplies from Burma were blocked when Burma was occupied by Japan. Fearing further land attack on India
there was a further land attack because the Japs needed Indian food and materials. Failing to get food, they starved. General Slim won by going around starving Jap troops.
and occupation, the British Indian Army destroyed private rice stocks across East India, including the food holdings of small farmers.
Nonsense! They destroyed boats but bought rice.
Merchants hoarded that staple,
Hindu Merchants- or so Suhrawardy claimed.
driving prices beyond the common man’s reach. The Administration’s disaster management collapsed.
Because Bengalis were running things just as they were in 1974.
Viceroy Linlithgow did not once visit East India, the traditional device to spur on-ground relief.
Because Linlithgow was an expert on agriculture.
British India officials endlessly begged London for extra ships for relief supplies.
Why not also demand that the Brits chuck the Japs out of Burma? India needed Burmese rice.
That had no chance; Churchill’s close aide, Lord Cherwell oversaw global shipping allocations;
No. But he did want Britain to have a larger food stock- which was perfectly sensible. As in the Great War, it was the home island which made the maximum sacrifice. I doubt whether the Brits would have bothered to defend India if America hadn't been obsessed with supplying China 'over the hump'.
his hatred for India was known.
It paled into insignificance compared to various Indians hatred for other Indians.
Those officials foolishly refused to offset food grain shipments against their regular ship allocations. Mounting starvation deaths went unheeded.
Because, in a total war, you only feed those who are contributing most to the war effort. True, the Bengalis were welcome to institute rationing so as to save lives. But, they were equally welcome to steal from the famine relief budget.
The fact that the transition to democracy led to big famines in Bengal in both 1943 and 1974 proves that Churchill kept stealing rice from poor Bengalis even after he was dead.
Leo Amery was the cabinet minister handling India affairs throughout Churchill’s first premiership. A Harrow-mate, senior in school to Churchill by a few years, his daily diary is a revealing resource, deserving close study by Indian historians.
Not really. Amery had different views from Churchill. Because provincial autonomy had gone through, the role of the Sec. of State for India was diminished. Amery was frustrated. Worse, his son had gone over to the Nazis. His was a bed of nails.
Other key players have written of the Churchill-Amery ‘frenemy’ relationship, and spectacular fights at Cabinet meetings. What do we learn from those accounts?
The Empire was fucked. Without America, the Japs would have taken a big chunk out of East India, if not the whole country. Bose's mistake was to underestimate America. Otherwise he'd have been the Rashtrapati of a Japanese puppet state.
One: the first time Churchill discussed a strategy for dealing with India was in 1945; he detested dealing with India.
After the fall of Singapore, India was lost- unless the Americans decided otherwise and the British Indian Army could take a break from sucking ass big time. But Roosevelt's pound of flesh was Indian independence. America wouldn't support the Dutch when they tried to retake Indonesia. France in Vietnam was a different kettle of fish because of the Communist threat.
Two: Amery’s first mention of the Great Famine was on December 24, 1942. Later: “… the Cabinet generally treated the matter as a bluff on India’s part…” (August 4, 1943).
Punjab mattered because Punjabis were good soldiers. Bengal didn't.
“Winston was prepared to admit that some things should be done but very strong on the point that Indians are not the only people who are starving in this war…it is just as important to get food to Greece…” (September 24, 1943).
The Greeks had kicked Mussolini's ass. They had tied up a lot of German troops. Bengal's Bose had gone over to the Axis. Fazl ul Haq was allied to his elder brother.
“My statement (in Parliament) that perhaps a million may have died from famine or its indirect consequences in Bengal made no stir…” (January 20, 1944).
Because Bengal had an elected Premier. Westminster wasn't responsible for what was happening there.
Three: Churchill corresponded directly with Viceroy Linlithgow, with Amery left out, evidently via the secret services.
So what? Amery wasn't in the War Cabinet. One worry for the Brits was reports that certain Princes were in contact with Axis powers. The other, obviously, had to do with Bose and other revolutionaries.
None of this is available. Four: on his final fast in early 1944, when Gandhi came close to dying, Churchill saw this as farce, claiming Gandhi dined better than he did.
Gandhi's fast was pure farce. Millions were 'doing and dying'. Others- including the Dutch- were starving to death. The Maha-crackpot was neither doing nor dying nor starving. He soon gave up his fast.
Five: for all their rancour, Amery makes no reference to Churchill’s dialog with Jinnah, safeguarding that secrecy.
Why would Jinnah keep any such dialog secret? Churchill was important back then. If the guy is talking to you, you make sure, one way or another, everybody knows.
Fearing land attack, the British Indian Army destroyed rice stocks across East India, including food holdings of farmers.
No. They bought food. Boat denial was a different matter. But what it signaled was that the Brits wouldn't defend Bengal. They would run away as they had run away from Burma. It was only after America leapt in with both feet and lots and lots of aeroplanes that General Slim was able to go on the offensive. Even then, he preferred to go around Japanese pockets rather than fight them. Starvation killed more Japs than allied bullets.
Churchill’s personal responsibility?
That fucking racist bastard prevented a large portion of India becoming a Japanese colony. Fuck you Churchill! Fuck you very much!
He ignored disaster relief; not a single of his famous directives (‘Action This Day’), was issued.
Because India had Provincial Autonomy. In any case, its people were shit. Left to themselves, they would have become a Japanese colony.
The Viceroy downwards, the British India administration remained conspicuously maladroit; Churchill ignored that gross failure.
After the fall of Singapore, Churchill counted for little. The Brits would have to surrender or run the fuck away from Burma and points East on their own initiative.
Field Marshal Wavell, commanding the Indian Army,
he was so shit at that job that he was kicked upstairs. His big idea was to evacuate the White population from Hindu majority areas towards Karachi from where they could embark for South Africa or Blighty or whatever.
took charge as Viceroy in August 1943. He promptly went to Bengal to spur relief, the very first Viceregal journey to the disaster zone.
He knew he had to rebuild morale. Soldiers could feel good about themselves for doing a bit of relief work. However, American air-power was needed for the Allies to go on the offensive. The big problem in Burma was
1) re-supply. The Allies could get air-drops and thus wait out the starving Japs.
2) Malaria. Slim forced his men to take their anti-malarial tablets though they tasted horrible. Still, it was only after the Burmese turned against the Japs that Slim could make progress. It must be said, in this theater, as elsewhere, Mountbatten was useless.
Viceroy Wavell said: London treated India with “neglect…sometimes even hostility and contempt”.
Lots of people hated Churchill. It was only after he had a stroke that his Party canonized him.
Churchill’s refrain: the Greeks needed food grains more than the Bengalis, “who were half starved anyway”.
Greeks weren't stabbing each other or stealing money from famine relief. It was worthwhile saving them from Communism. India was welcome to go down the toilet which, under Nehru, it did pretty thoroughly.
Most Churchill biographers have skated lightly over these facts.
Because saying 'Indians were and are shit' isn't politically correct.
Churchill scholar Piers Brendon writes: “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Churchill’s reluctance to alleviate the Bengal Famine stemmed, at least in part, from a racist animus.”
It is harder to avoid the conclusion that Indians are shit. If they hadn't been shit they wouldn't have been ruled by Turks and Brits. Sadly, Churchill prevented their coming under the benevolent rule of the Japanese.
F ROM THE 1920s onwards, Churchill had but one formula to deal with India’s demand for self-governance: extern Gandhi, out of India.
Okay. He was a silly-billy. Externing hadn't worked with Zaghloul. The UK had to accept unilateral Egyptian independence in 1922 a short while after the Maha-crackpot surrendered unconditionally. What is unforgiveable about Churchill is that he prevented India surrendering unconditionally to Japan or Thailand or the Patagonians or any other country which showed an interest in enslaving that shithole.
Days after August 8, 1942, when 70,000+ INC leaders and middle rankers were arrested, Churchill’s Cabinet instructed Viceroy Linlithgow to shift Gandhi to Aden, and other top leaders to East Africa.
If that is the case, Churchill's writ did not run in India.
The Labour leaders in the Cabinet, supposedly friends of INC, did not dissent.
Why did 'Labour leaders' want to win the war? Why didn't they heed Gandhi's advise and surrender to Hitler? It is because they weren't genuine chaddi buddies of the INC. Also, my own research has revealed, many of them were White and didn't even like curry.
But the otherwise spineless Linlithgow balked; he and his 12-member Executive Council unanimously refused.
Because they knew Gandhi was shit. Still, he could be useful. If the Brits had to evacuate India, they could say Gandhi had given them permission to depart though, in 1939, he wrote that the Brits mustn't leave till they handed over the Army to the INC because, otherwise, the Muslims and the Punjabis (regardless of creed) would enslave the non-violent Hindoooo.
They understood how such actions would set India on fire.
No. They understood that having Gandhi close at hand could be useful- if Indians showed some sign of wanting to make themselves useful in the defense of their own country.
Commencing around 1926, Churchill constantly abused Gandhi, Hindus and India, with singularly nasty language, full of invective.
Muslims never abused Hindus. However, it was only the Japs who turned up on the border with their cocks out to ram up India's arsehole.
“Half-naked fakir” was his epithet for Gandhi that stuck.
'Seditious barrister' was true enough. But Gandhi was posing as a Hindu Mahatma, not a Muslim fakir.
Churchill could not grasp the political calculation and ‘image branding’ behind Gandhi’s choice of attire.
Yes he could. The guy was pretending to represent the poor. Actually, he was representing the rich. That's why Churchill was very friendly to G.D Birla.
Gandhi’s response? Attending the 1930 Second Round Table Meeting
which occurred in 1932
in London, Gandhi sought a meeting, to no avail.
His son, Randolph, met Gandhi. Later Churchill met Birla. But Churchill didn't count for much at that time. Gandhi had frustrated the two attempts by Labor governments to do something for India. The third time was the charm. This was because Atlee (who had been part of the Simon Commission) had taken Gandhi's measure. He would ignore the Maha-crackpot so as to abandon India to whatever fate it might chose for itself.
In 1935 and 1936, Gandhi sent two emissaries to meet Churchill, with olive branches, even thanking Churchill for his concerns for India’s poor. Churchill graciously received GD Birla, major industrialist, and Mira Behn, formerly Madeleine Slade, daughter of a British Admiral. But beyond nice, empty words, Churchill did not move an iota.
He had no power. The Tory mainstream passed and then implemented the 1935 Act. Congress sulked but ultimately formed Ministries.
That raw animosity in Churchill’s hatred for Hindus remains inexplicable.
Because it didn't exist. If he believed Dr. Ambedkar, he was showing faith in a particular type of Hindu- a highly educated Dalit Hindu- who said high caste Hindus treated his people worse than shit.
His direct 1896-99 experiences, dealing with Indians were confined to the typical servants of British subalterns, and local merchants at the periphery of cantonments, especially the Hindu moneylenders, to whom Churchill took frequent recourse.
Churchill served in a Muslim regiment and thus, like many Brits, developed an admiration for Islam and a preference for Muslim culture. The fact is, A.O Hume, who set up the INC, was a Vedantin who advocated cow protection. Sir Syed Ahmed and other Muslim notables had sought to create a parallel organization but Muslims were disunited. Many hated the Aligarh boys or remained obsessed with ancient sectarian animosities.
One should also mention the influence of the charismatic W.S Blunt, a great friend of his father, on the young Winston. I should explain, Blunt- who introduced Mohammad Abduh to Randolph and was a patron of al-Afghani- was so fucking stupid that he became a pawn in Cromer's hand such that a 'veiled protectorate' was established in Egypt. Churchy-baby- as T.E Lawrence called Winston any time he came upon his tits- looked forward to a time when nice Muslim Sultans or Nawabs or Caliphs or whatever would handsomely reward the Brits for agreeing that the only people worse than kaffirs were the fucking Yahudis.
The polo-playing princes and their retinue, with whom he consorted in his passion for that game, did not figure in his ‘Hindu’ typology.
Like his Daddy, Churchy-baby didn't like 'Babus'- Bengali or otherwise. Princes, however, were totes cool- provided they were as rich as fuck.
Strangely, it was Katherine Mayo’s venomous Mother India (1927) that gave him the vocabulary for Hindu hatred, weaponising latent hostility.
Fuck off! Lesbian Mayo was bought and paid for by the Publicity Division staffed by cunts like, the Kipling wannabe, Edmund Candler who wrote 'Sri Ram, Revolutionist'.
There is a surfeit of evidence for Churchill’s racist venom.
It's not racist to prefer Muslim to Hindu darkies or to feel more sympathy for Ambedkar's people than the fucking Nehru dynasty.
Did that anger partly owe to his obsessive, futile five-year campaign against the Government of India Act, 1935, which so badly damaged his own political career?
The fucker had fucked up big fucking time and was, in political terms, deader than the fucking dodo. He had been a shit Chancellor and the Gallipoli albatross remained affixed around his neck. Still, he wrote well and was in better health than Lloyd George
SHORTLY AFTER RELEASE from 33 months of prison, Gandhi wrote to Churchill, his only direct communication. After a self-deprecating reference to a “naked fakir” he said: “I approach you then as such and ask you to trust and use me for the sake of your people and mine and through them those of the world.”
Gandhi, like Bertrand Russell, some years earlier, had told the Brits to surrender to the Nazis. Neither of those senile cunts could be of any fucking use for the duration of the hostilities.
That was an extraordinary act, overcoming rancour, to cope with the looming turmoil of the Partition.
Triggered by Gandhi. Why the fuck did he negotiate with Jinnah as an equal?
Churlishly, Churchill did not respond, later claiming he never received the letter (though sent through the Viceroy’s Office in New Delhi).
OMG! Rana has found proof that Churchill was a politician! He sometimes lied about getting letters from nutters.
Where was Churchill’s statesmanship, or fair play?
It was there where Germany and Japan surrendered.
As Indians we should know our past.
We should understand that we have been shit for a thousand years. That's how come Turks and Brits ruled over us. But for Churchy-baby, we would now be writing in Japa-fucking-nese.
History is too important to be confined to simplified textbooks, learnt by rote at school, and then forgotten, save in stylised images.
History isn't important at all. Money is. Do stuff which makes you lots of it. Then immigrate to where Whitey will protect your wealth.
Nor should we treat history as a political football, as happens easily in our social media age, when we enjoy ubiquitous access to global audiences through smartphones, and quick soundbites. Without deeper Indian research, how shall we tell our story to the world at large?
What is that story? India was and is and will always be shit compared to England or Japan or other countries which, for some strange reason, don't want to be shit just so as to be able to blame dead White dudes for their continuing shittiness.
Churchill was correct that understanding the past deepens our capacity to anticipate the future,
Churchill didn't anticipate shit. The 'economic consequences' of Winston, contra Keynes, was the loss of Britain's South Asian Empire. Churchy & his posh chums let Japan go ass-to-mouth on the Royal Navy.
though he did not live up to that adage.
No. He was the descendant of John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. He lived up to that heritage well enough. India and Pakistan remained within the Commonwealth- (Burma, parts of which his daddy annexed, didn't)- and the mountebank Mountbatten remained very close to Nehru till the latter died.
History helps us understand ourselves,
Us guys were fucked by Churchill. But it wasn't just Churchy who looted us. Who stole our sense of humor? It was P.G Woodhouse's elder fucking brother!
the world around us. It enriches our lives.
Emigrating to some White controlled, or otherwise Capitalist, patch of the 'world around us' can indeed enrich our lives- that's true enough. But so can shitting on elderly ex-IFS officers who write worthless tripe.
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