Inferno - Max Hastings [267]
Americans, from their president downwards, never entirely forgave Churchill and his nation for the manner in which the peoples of the subcontinent were excluded from the ringing promises of freedom enshrined in the Atlantic Charter. Americans serving in India—performing liaison and logistical tasks, training Chinese soldiers and flying bomber operations against the Japanese—recoiled from British treatment of its inhabitants and believed their own behaviour more sympathetic. Indians were less convinced: a letter writer to the Statesman newspaper denounced the conduct of the Americans as vigorously as that of the British, describing them uncharitably as “venereal disease–ridden and seducers of young women.” The British saw hypocrisy as well as moral conceit in criticism of their imperial governance by an ally which sustained racial segregation at home.
Most of Churchill’s political colleagues recognised the inevitability of granting early independence to India, and hesitated only about the timing. But the old Victorian imperialist remained implacable: he clung to a delusion that British greatness derived in substantial measure from the Raj, and was disgusted by the perceived treachery of Indian politicians who sought to exploit Britain’s vulnerability and sometimes rejoiced in its misfortunes. Throughout the war, the prime minister spoke and wrote about Indians with a contempt that reflected his only acquaintance with them, as a nineteenth-century cavalry subaltern; his policies lacked the compassion which generally characterised his leadership.
By the autumn of 1942 more than 30,000 Congressmen were imprisoned, including Gandhi and Nehru. But British treatment of dissenters throughout their empire was incomparably more humane than that accorded by the Axis to domestic foes and occupied nations. For instance, Anwar Sadat was jailed after being implicated in his conspiracy with the German spies in Cairo, but so casually guarded that he was able to make two easy escapes; after the second, in 1944, he remained free, though in hiding, for the rest of the war. In India, Nehru could write letters freely, enjoy such favourite books as Plato’s Republic and play badminton during a relatively privileged fortress incarceration. But his weight fell dramatically, and confinement weighed as heavily upon the fifty-two-year-old Indian leader as on any other prisoner. In one letter, he told his wife, Betty, to abandon the notion of sending him Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy “when there is tragedy enough at present.”
Some nationalists believed that drastic methods should be employed to get the British out. In 1940 Subhas Chandra Bose, the Congress president, demanded a campaign of civil disobedience. When Gandhi rejected this, Bose resigned his post and made his way to Berlin via Kabul. Once in Germany, he recruited a small “Indian Legion” from prisoners captured in the Western Desert, which served the Third Reich without notable distinction. In the summer of 1943 Bose returned to Southeast Asia. The Japanese granted his “provisional Indian government” a nominal seat in the occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and he was soon attracting big crowds for public meetings under Japanese auspices. Wearing uniform and top boots, he spoke in terms that mirrored Churchill’s call for blood, toil, tears and sweat. Indian National Army recruits, he told his audiences, must face “hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches and death. Only when you pass this test will freedom be yours.” INA soldiers called Bose Netaji—“Esteemed Leader.” One of them, Lt. Shiv Singh, said: “After being captured in Hong Kong, Gen. Mohan Singh