Birth of a nation

How World War II started a chain reaction that resulted in India’s independence

- R. PRASANNAN

LORD LINLITHGOW’S BIGGEST handicap, as Labour Party leader Clement Attlee remarked, was that he lacked “imaginative insight”. Jawaharlal Nehru thought of Linlithgow as a man “heavy of body and slow of mind, solid as a rock and with almost a rock’s lack of awareness”.

Unfortunately, Linlithgow happened to be the viceroy of India when World War II broke out. The man made things difficult for both the Indians and the British.

Though fighting the British for political freedom, most Indian leaders, except Subhas Bose, had been well disposed towards the British cause against Nazism. The Congress working committee had resolved not to make things difficult for Britain, in case of war.

Nehru had a record of anti-fascism that “far surpassed that of the British government”, writes Donny Gluckstein in A People’s History of the Second World War. While the British government of Neville Chamberlain was appeasing the fascists in the 1930s, Nehru toured Europe and declared support to the democratic elements fighting the fascists in Spain and Czechoslovakia. In Italy, he even refused an invitation to meet Benito Mussolini.

In short, Linlithgow only had to ask, and India would have supported the British cause in the war. In return, India wanted self-government, at par with the dominions of Canada and Australia. But Linlithgow had neither the imagination to ask India, nor the sagacity to advise London to promise self-government.