Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [182]
the country to be plunged into full-scale civil disobedience or armed revolt in the new year of 1947. Aung San flew on ahead of the delegation to meet Indian leaders and stayed at Nehru’s house in Delhi between 2 and 6 January. Nehru and Aung San had struck up a friendship when the RAF ‘reds’ had flown the Indian leader into Rangoon on his way to meet Mountbatten. Nehru eulogized Aung San to the Indian press. Wavell, now in his final weeks as viceroy, invited him to lunch. He was less complimentary: ‘He struck me as a suspicious, ignorant but determined little tough.’47 This underestimated Aung San’s growing political sophistication. Passing through Karachi, he had arranged to meet Jinnah. Whatever deal the Muslim League leader managed to wring from independence, a large Muslim majority population would abut the northern frontier of Burma in Arakan. But when he arrived at Karachi airport, Aung San was faced with a diplomatic dilemma. Members of the Congress had arrived in a separate car from the Muslim League leaders and they both tried to whisk him off to their respective accommodations. In a Solomonic gesture, Aung San put his staff in the Congress car with half his luggage and went himself in the League car to find a neutral hotel in which to stay.48 Aung San’s speeches during his stay in India also reflected a dawning consciousness of the outside world. He remained suspicious of British intentions, replying in a non-committal way to Indian journalists’ questions about whether he would resort to non-violent or armed rebellion should the London talks fail. He also alluded to the contemporary situation in Indo-China, where Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese republic was fighting for its life against French reaction.49 European imperialism was far from dead and this informed Aung San’s demeanour at the London meetings. It was not that the Indians and Burmese saw eye to eye on everything. The end of the war had revived the Burmese fear of being ‘swarmed’ by Indian immigrants, as one of their delegates later put it. At his press conference, Aung San declared that ‘Indian vested interests – like any vested interests – are not in favour of independence.’50 This might easily have soured relations but for the fact that Nehru took an almost equally jaundiced view of Indian business interests and ignored the widespread clamour from those who wanted untrammelled entry to Burma again.
Before Aung San left for London, Nehru performed one final service for his Burmese friend. Despite his growing knowledge of the world, Aung San was unable to dress the part. The only clothes he had brought with him were a longyi and an old and dirty military uniform. Nehru had a new uniform properly tailored for him and it was in this that he appeared in London’s January cold. Not all India’s leaders were as indulgent to Aung San’s bucolic ways. In Delhi the Burmese delegation also met Krishna Menon, Nehru’s special foreign relations adviser and effectively now India’s foreign minister, a suave left-wing negotiator with long years of political experience in Britain. The uneasy relationship of tutelage and resentment between Burmese and Indian nationalism was played out at a personal level. Kyaw Nyein, another delegate, remembered that Aung San met Krishna Menon again when they were both in London. The youthful Aung San, ‘lazy as ever’, had received the austere Indian intellectual stretched out on his hotel bed. Menon asked Kyaw Nyein in confidence whether Aung San could possibly be as influential as he was made out to be. He evidently felt he had been snubbed by meeting the Bogyoke prostrate in a bedroom. Kyaw Nyein mused: ‘Aung San never thought about it; but he wouldn’t think of meeting an Englishman in that way.’51
The cabinet papers record only the dry bones of the discussions.52 But Kyaw Nyein kept a private record of the proceedings. He confirmed that Attlee and, to a lesser extent, Cripps were responsible for the sea change that had overtaken British attitudes the previous autumn. Apparently Pethick-Lawrence and William Hare, Lord Lis-towel, who was now