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'A Great Destiny': the British Colonial State and the Advertisement of Post-War Reconstruction in India, 1942-45 Sanjoy Bhattacharya and Benjamin Zachariah South Asia Research 1999 19: 71 DOI: 10.1177/026272809901900105 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sar.sagepub.com/content/19/1/71.citation

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’A GREAT DESTINY’: THE BRITISH COLONIAL STATE AND THE ADVERTISEMENT OF POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION IN INDIA, 1942-45*

Sanjoy Bhattacharya and Benjamin Zachariah This article examines debates within the colonial state preceding and surrounding official policies of post-war reconstruction, and the presentation of these proposed policies amongst the Indian ’public’. It argues that the selective provision of certain economic benefits to sections of the population, combined with promises of more such benefits to follow, were intended to form part of the colonial government’s efforts to manage public opinion with a view to containing dissent and creating support for the War Effort and the continuation of the British presence in India, at least for the duration of World War II. In pursuance of this goal, the Government of India held out to the target population claims of the great possibilities of economic development which awaited India after the conclusion of the conflict, and these assertions began to predominate in the official publicity campaigns in the latter 1 years of the war.

.

This piece develops from a series of stimulating discussions between the authors, and is based on material collected by them from archives in Britain and India during the courses of their doctoral projects. While we would like to thank Alex McKay, Biswamoy Pati, Tan Tai Yong, Subho Basu, Jim Masselos, Sulagna Roy and Sangeeta Chawla for their valuable reactions to this article, we remain solely responsible for the arguments presented in it. We are also grateful to Trinity College, Cambridge, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Sheffield Hallam University and, not least, the Scouloudi Foundation for providing the financial support that made this project possible.

1 Studies that have dealt with the uses of official or, indeed, nationalist publicity efforts have tended to ignore the importance of defining the target audience. Such a definition is critical to any attempt to assess the nature and/or the effectiveness of all public relations efforts, since the messages disseminated by the respective bodies were, or at least often sought to be, based on the expectations of those targeted. Therefore, depending on the audience, the advertisement of the War Effort was packaged in strikingly different ways. It is for this reason that one ought to avoid dismissing all wartime propaganda material as an invention of the disseminator: a particular publicity item could represent the truth, be an absolute fabrication, or merely be the truth out of context, depending on the audience or the current strategic situation. For a further explication of this argument, see S. Bhattacharya, "’A necessary weapon of war": State Policies Towards Propaganda and Information in Eastern India, 1939-45’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1996. —

South Asia Research, 19, 1, 1999 SAGE PUBLICATIONS New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London

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The Background22 Discussions on economic planning and development in India were of course far from new to the wartime period. They had emerged in the context of the Great Depression, both in official and non-official circles, drawing on the example of the Soviet Five Year Plans of 1928 and 1933, as also on those of Roosevelt’s New Deal, as well as schemes initiated in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan.3 On the official side, the depression also provided a sense of urgency to the debates which had first emerged in the aftermath of World War I regarding the role of the Empire in Britain’s economic world order.4But these debates also drew on older arguments. In colonial India, debates on economic matters hinged on the question of the effects of imperial domination. The earliest sphere of the development of a nationalist critique of colonial rule was centred round this theme;5 but the moral justification of British rule in India was also traditionally dependent on its claim to an economically improving role. Thus, while those in opposition to the Raj would regularly underline the damaging material effects of foreign rule in India, official publicists tried to counter such criticism throughout the 1920s and 1930s through advertising the underlying benevolence of British rule and the benefits arising from it.6 In this, the mythology of the imperial civilising mission, which predated the rise 2

The following section is based primarily on arguments developed further in B. Zachariah, ’Ideas of Developing India, c.1930-1950’, forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, University of

Cambridge. 3 R. Chattopadhyay,

’The Idea of Planning in India, 1930-1951’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra, 1985. Also see idem, ’An Early British Initiative in the Genesis of Indian Planning’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 22, No. 5, 31 January 1987, pp. 19-29.

4

These were reflected at the imperial level in questions of the formation of a more economically integrated empire through ’imperial preference’ andcolonial development’. The concern with ’developing’ the colonies was not necessarily connected with the British’ ’Left’, one of its main spokesmen being Leo Amery, who in the 1920s served as Conservative Secretary of State for the Colonies, thereafter Secretary of State for the Dominions, before serving as Secretary of State for India and Burma during the War. For the context of these ideas, see W. Roger Louis, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill, New York, 1992.These debates were also inextricably linked with issues of wide philosophical and moral import, namely, the rights of subject peoples and the legitimacy of empire. Some of these debates are followed in P. S. Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964, London, 1975; S. Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 1914-40, London, 1984, and S. Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918-1964, Oxford, 1993.

5

B. Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India: Economic Policies of Indian National Leadership, 1880-1905, New Delhi, 1966. 6 See, for example, note on publicity in U.P. (United Provinces), c. 1932, L/PO/3/3A, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Museum, London (hereafter O.I.O.C.). A variety of strategies were deployed to spread the government’s view and also to gather information about the reactions to it. This would involve practices as diverse as using the village

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73 of ’economic nationalism’, could be drawn upon to furnish the framework within which to place British arguments. Increasingly, therefore, ’good government’ had to be defined in economic terms. It was also important directly to address the charge that colonial rule was responsible for economic, and in particular industrial, backwardness.7 By the 1920s and 1930s, the debates were so well-worn as to almost automatically trigger appropriate responses on either side. Whether the government entirely believed its own arguments or not, it was clear that there was a public relations aspect to official discussions on economic policy. These arguments were closely linked with middle-class leadership in political agitation; and with the imperial need to conciliate the Indian elites who were seen to be the custodians of the arguments. The need, at least nominally, to deal with their economic grievances had already given rise to mechanisms of representation wherein selected Indian notables were placed on various official commissions and committees of enquiry. Yet these notables’ ability decisively to influence government policy was notoriously limited, regardless of the findings of the committees and commissions.8 Moreover, certain other policies reduced the effectiveness of such conciliatory gestures. The Government of India Act of 1935, eight years in the making, included certain financial and commercial ’safeguards’, apparently to prevent discrimination against Europeans on racial grounds, achieved by the European delegation’s tactical manoeuvre of identifying themselves as an Indian ’minority’, and voting with the other Indian minorities at the Round Table Conferences. These ’safeguards’ were seen by Indian businessmen and politicians as effective means of prolonging British control over the Indian economy into an envisaged period of ’responsible Government’ at the centre.9 headman’sor the

patwari’s(record-keeper’s) office; kathas (Hindu religious meetings) and bhajan agricultural shows and exhibitions’, and officially subsidised sanyasis mandalis, (travelling mendicants). Confidential Report on Propaganda and Publicity, January 1932 to

March 1933, L/1/1/424, O.I.O.C. See, for instance, A.G. Clow, The State and Industry : A Narrative of Indian Government Policy and Action in Relation to Industry Under the Reformed Constitution, Calcutta, 1928. Industry was a Provincial Subject under both the 1919 and 1935 Government of India Acts, and was often cited as the reason for the Central Government’s non-interference in such 7

matters. 8 For numerous

instances, especially related to matters of fiscal autonomy and tariffs, see B. Tariffs and Empire: Lancashire and British Policy in India 1919-1939, Delhi, Trade, Chatterji, 1992. The campaign for commercial and financial safeguards at the Round Table Conferences was run mainly through the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), whose main voices were the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the European Association. They took the lead in matters relating to commerce and finance, and constitutional advice in this matter was provided in the main by Sir Arthur Berriedale Keith, the constitutional historian, as well as other persons close to His Majesty’s Government. See the files maintained by Sir Edward Benthall, one of the major campaigners. Boxes II, III, IV and VII, 9

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74 Public relations apart, a range of British ’improvement’ schemes of various kinds had been in existence for some time, especially in the traditional concerns of colonial economics agriculture, agrarian debt and irrigation, and consequently With the onset of the Depression, the need for economic solutions village uplift.10 to potential or actual agrarian unrest was seriously discussed the success of the Civil Disobedience Movement was attributed to the economic distress resulting from the collapse in the prices of primary products 11- and the specific question of planning India’s ’development’ had at least once been discussed at the highest level of the Government of India through the initiative of Finance Member George Schuster in the early 1930s. But such schemes were refracted through the imperial lends, 12 and were bound to flounder due to considerations of ’sound finance’: balanced budgets at all costs and the preservation of India’s credit with the City. 1 Schuster’ss dangerous ’Keynesian’ ideas were in any case neither particularly appreciated nor -

-

widely held. 14 Benthall papers, Centre of South Asian Studies Archives,

University of Cambridge, United (hereafter C.S.A.S.A.). Kingdom 10 See, for instance, M.L. Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, Oxford, 1925. Also see C. Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service, London, 1993. 11

See D. Rothermund, India in the Great Depression, 1929-1939, Delhi, 1992, pp. 83-109. For a description of Sir George Schuster’s efforts in this direction, see A. Salter, A Scheme for an Economic Advisory Organisation in India, Geneva, 1931. Schuster, as finance member, had appealed for the formulation of an economic plan which was to be linked to the 12

possible closer integration of India into imperial economics through Imperial Preference. G. Schuster, ’Indian Economic Life: Past Trends and Future Prospects’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 83, 31 May, 1935. Also see, address entitled ’Empire Trade Before and After Ottawa: A Preliminary Reconnaissance’, delivered on 8 March 1935, and published in a specialsupplement of The Economist, 3 November 1934. 13 For the debates regarding the delinking of sterling from the Gold Standard, and the imperative of ’sound finance’, see D. Rothermund, India in the Great Depression, pp. 42-44; B.R. Tomlinson, ’Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930-32’, Economic History Review (2nd Series) (hereafter EHR, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1979; C. Bridges, ’Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930-32: A Comment’, EHR, 33, 2 (1981), and B.R. Tomlinson, ’Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930-32: A Reply’, EHR, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1981. It has been plausibly argued that the limited effects of tariff protection on import-substituting growth were cancelled out by the rules of the ’sound finance’ game: stringent controls over the Indian currency, the high rupee ratio and the failure to delink the rupee from the pound even after sterling abandoned the Gold Standard. See, A. K. Bagchi, ’Private Investment and Partial Planning in India’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1963. This, of course, is consistent with the latest formulation of the ’finance capitalism’ argument; see P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction 1914-1990, London, 1993. 14 Schuster was suspected of being a Keynesian before Keynesianism became a recognised and respectable form of economic thought! See, for instance, the arguments of P. J. Grigg (Schuster’s successor as Finance Member) quoted in B.R. Tomlinson, The Political Economy

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75 The possibility of serious official intervention in the growing debate on developing the economy had to wait until World War II, when these rules ceased to operate in their old form; India had become Britain’s creditor instead of being its debtor. The War Financial Settlement of April 1940 provided that India would pay her ordinary defence expenditure plus additional expenses incurred in ’specifically Indian interests’, anything over this amount being met by the British Exchequer.15 Initially, with India a debtor of Britain’s, the costs of extraordinary defence expenditure, war supplies purchases for other than Indian theatres of war, and the raising, equipping and maintaining of additional troops were adjusted against this debt. But the debt was soon wiped out, and sterling balances began accumulating in India’s name at a rate alarming for British official opinion. This was largely a consequence of the British need to utilise the industrial potential of India for wartime supplies for all battlefronts. Being an essential, and indeed predominant, feature of the wartime relationship between the British and Indian economies 16 and the Allied War Effort in Asian, 17 this had a variety of effects. In view of the focus of this paper, two elements are of particular interest and merit a more detailed examination, namely, the intensification of official attempts to advertise the nature of Indian ’development’ between 1939 and 1945, and the legacy of these efforts in the postwar era.

The Advertisement of ’Wartime Development’ and ’Post-War Reconstruction’ : Audiences and Themes 18 The interconnections between the advertisement of the twin issues of ’development’ and ’post-war reconstruction’ and the so-called ’Empire Publicity Campaign’, launched by the Ministry of Information (London) in 1940, have been of the Raj 1914-1947: The Economics of Decolonisation, London, 1979, pp. 90-91. Keynesianism was not yet acceptable in Britain either. See P. Clarke, The Keynesian Revolution in the Making 1924-1936, Oxford, 1988. 15 Note by K. Wood, Treasury, 14 March 1942, f 247, L/F/7/2861, O.I.O.C. 16 See secret memorandum on Indian Sterling Balances by L. Amery, Secretary of State for

India, Government of Britain (hereafter S.S.I.), 1 August 1942, L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C. 17 The entry of Japan into World War II in December 1941 and her advance thereafter towards India’seastern frontiers in 1942 created problems of economic readjustment. The war economy had to be geared essentially from producing supplies for operational areas west of India to dealing with the pressures of transport, military equipment, food and other supplies for troops on the eastern frontiers of India. See War Department History: Transportation and Movements (Sept. 1939-Dec. 1944), New Delhi, 1945, L/R/5/280, O.I.O.C. Japan’s successes in the Far East also increased the rate of accumulation of sterling balances substantially. Expenditure on the War Effort rose sharply, though, as the Secretary of State pointed out, India’s share of the burden of defence expenditure also rose substantially. See Secret Memorandum, Indian Sterling Balances by L. Amery, S.S.I., 1 August 1942, L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C. 18 This section has largely been drawn from Bhattacharya, ’A Necessary Weapon of War’.

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frequently noted in the historiography dealing with World War II in Britain and her African colonies. Rosaleen Smyth explains, for instance, that the purpose of the campaign was to counter German propaganda that a venal Britain was ’living in luxury on the wealth collected from 66,000,000 poverty stricken native serfs’, and to tell the British public and the rest of the world, especially the Americans, that the country had a colonial record of which one could be proud. 19 Integral to this claim lay the argument that Britain was playing the role of a ’trustee’, by initiating social and economic development, and thereby training colonial peoples ’to stand on their own feet’.2° Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941 and the fall of Singapore soon after caused the Ministry of Information to intensify these publicity efforts, (British and Indian) and American pressure, which forced the War Cabinet to restate its colonial policy. Smyth points out that the United States’ nervousness about being seen as fighting to restore imperialism in Malaya and Burma forced Britain to seek ’not a change of heart but a new marketing strategy... to counteract British and American anti-imperialism’. Notably, the issue of post-war reconstruction retained its importance as the theme of partnership was chosen to project the new image of Empire; Britain was now represented as the benevolent senior partner assisting the backward junior (colonial) partner.21 However, while the significance of public and official opinion in the metropole and the United States in determining the creation of publicity regarding colonial economic development cannot be doubted,22 it is important to note that the rationale of official public relations efforts needs also to be located within the colonies themselves. There, references to development were often dictated from a sense of competition, rather than cooperation, with America. All through the war, and especially after 1942, India was seen by both protagonists as one of the notable locations for future Anglo-American trade conflicts. The British Indian anticipation of this struggle was visible through a number of disparate initiatives: censorship reports, 23 debates on proposed economic policy24 and, not least, discussions about plans for future publicity projects. 25 not least because of domestic

19

R.

Smyth,

’Britain’s African Colonies and British Propaganda

during

the Second World

War’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (hereafter JICH), Vol. 14, October 1985, pp. 67-68.

20

See Ministry of Information Progress Report entitled ’Campaign for Publicity about the Empire’, January and February 1940, INF 1/3/A32/3, Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey, United Kingdom (hereafter P.R.O.). 21 Smyth, ’Britain’sAfrican Colonies’ , pp. 69-70. 22 See, for instance, J.H. Voigt, India in the Second World War, Delhi, 1987. 23 Secret report by the Officer Commanding, Bombay Censor Station, 15 March 1943, WO

208/816, P.R.O. 24

See for instance L.

Mansergh, ed., India:

Amery, S.S.I.,

to

5 January 1942, in N. (12 volumes), London, 1970-83 (hereafter

Linlithgow, Viceroy, India,

The Transfer of Power

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77

The influence of local factors on the production of publicity material dealing with the issue of development in India becomes even more important in the strategic context of 1942, when the colonial authorities in the much-reduced British empire were forced to redefine their administrative priorities in order to be able to contribute materially to the flagging Allied military effort world-wide. In India, which became a major base for Allied military operations against Japanese forces after the fall of Malaya and Burma, the redefinition of official priorities consisted of giving absolute primacy to wartime mobilisation. This took many forms. The military command was given unprecedented powers to determine strategic policies in the provinces of Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and United Provinces, as well as all the princely states in this region, all of which were treated as a ’threatened area’ and a unified administrative bloc for military purposes. Moreover, the civilian authorities in this region were ordered to devote their attention to the needs of the Eastern Army Command - and later the South East Asia Command - which involved concentrating the material and manpower resources available to them towards the creation of basic defensive preparations, like barracks, airfields, new railway lines and strategic roads, in an area completely unprepared for a major conflict. An immediate impact of these policies was the administrative tendency to prioritise Indian social groups in terms of their strategic ’worth’, and their subsequent division into so-called ’priority’ and ’non-priority’ classes. While economic, print and oral propaganda were sought to be targeted at Indian society as a whole, the paucity of official resources caused by the strains resulting from the Pacific war meant that the various ’priority’ classes became the primary targets of the various official wartime welfare initiatives and publicity advertising colonial ’development’. These trends are particularly noticeable when one examines the official publicity efforts directed at the civilian population in India. In the first two years of the war the state’s primary targets were the politically active, and vocal, ’educated middle classes’, a general term used by senior central and provincial government employees to refer to those conversant with the English language.26 This section of society was considered significant, even though many senior British officials recognised that many of them supported the demand for Indian Independence, 27 since

T.O.P.), Vol. I, Doc. 5. Also see letter from E. Bevin, Minister of Labour, Government of Britain (hereafter G.O.Br.), to L. Amery, S.S.I., 21 September 1942, T.O.P., vol. III, Doc. 5. 25 See, for instance, the recommendations made in secret report by the Officer Commanding, Bombay Censor Station, 15 March 1943, WO 208/816, P.R.O. 26 See, for instance, the Secret War History of the Bureau of Public Information 1939-45, Government of India (hereafter G.O.I.), L/R/5/295, O.I.O.C., p. 4. 27 See, for instance, secret note by Major General N. Molesworth, General Headquarters (hereafter GHQ), India, 1 September 1942, L/WS/1/1337, O.I.O.C. Also see extract of report by the provincial leader of the Bihar branch of the National War Front, c. 1943, in Chief s Fortnightly Report for the second half of the month (hereafter C.S.F.R.(2)), ° Secretary

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78 tended to receive frequent press coverage in Britain and America, they being able to contribute to the plethora of war-funds a been set and that had majority of them had the right to vote in the provincial up, elections and were, therefore, expected to play an important part in determining the choice of the inevitably momentous post-war constitutional settlement.28 However, from December 1941, the civilian audiences for state polices of information, and economic propaganda, began to be more carefully defined. Whereas the English educated sections were still targeted, greater attention began to be given to the ’poorer middle classes’ subsisting on fixed salaries, who were adversely affected by the wartime inflation and articulated their discontent in vernacular newspapers, which were considered significant because of their capacity to foment trouble in their localities.29 Moreover, concerted efforts were made to reach particular ’occupational groups’ considered, for varying reasons, to be especially significant to the war-effort. Since the colonial authorities’ expectations from each of these groups differed (and indeed, the inverse was true as well), the issue of ’post-war reconstruction’ was often marketed in strikingly dissimilar forms. A good example is a comparison of the aims of, and the themes highlighted in, the publicity blitz targeted at the two civilian ’occupational groups’ given primacy by both the Government of India and the military authorities: the big business interests and the labour employed in the so-called ’war industries’ (factories producing munitions and other commodities of use to army personnel, as well as certain mining and communications concems).3° For the Government of India, the significance of business interests lay in the fact that much of wartime production was left to concerns owned by them. But as the war wore on, the ever-increasing profitability of industries caused them to be seen as invaluable sources of tax receipts in a period of rapidly rising administrative and defence costs. For instance, the budget of the Government of India’s Engineering Department, which was responsible for initiating the various defence their reactions to the as

war

were seen as

Bihar, February 1943, Home Political File (Internal) (hereafter H.P.F.(I)), National Archives of India, New Delhi (hereafter N.A.I.). 28 See, for instance, telegram from the Home Department, G.O.I. to L. Amery, S.S.I, 7 June 1942, L/PJ/8/596, O.I.O.C. 29 Indeed, increased nationalist criticism about the dislocation of the local economies caused district officers to lay increasing emphasis on the censorship of hostile political publicity. See S. Bhattacharya, ’Wartime policies of State Censorship and the Civilian Population: Eastern India, 1939-45’, South Asia Research (hereafter SAR) Vol. 17, No.2, 1997, pp. 166-72. 30 Two-thirds of Bengal’s urban population lived in Greater Calcutta (which included the cities of Calcutta and Howrah, and 40 other municipal towns, most of which were industrial hamlets along the banks of the Hooghly river), which was considered to be one of the most important industrial areas in India since it had a large number of ’war factories’. Famine Enquiry Commission Report on Bengal, Madras, 1945, V/26/830/10, O.LO.C., pp. 4-5.

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79

projects between 1942 and 1944, spiralled upwards

after the onset of the Pacific

War (see Table 1).

Table 1 The Progressive Rise in the Budget of the Engineering G.O.L, 1939-44

Source: War Department History, Engmeer Matters L/R/5/282, India Office Library, London.

Department,

(September 1939-August 1945),

Indeed, various official schemes

p. 3,

were initiated with the purpose of skimming off of the profits being made by Indian business from the onset of the war. Typical of this were two wartime ’insurance’ schemes. The first was the ’War Risks (Goods) Insurance Ordinance’, which was legislated on 1 October 1940 and whose ’compulsory provisions’ came into force the following month. Following the onset of the war in the Pacific theatre in December 1941, a ’War Risks (Factories) Insurance Ordinance’ was promulgated on 8 April 1942. The declared ’...object of the scheme was mainly to create and maintain the necessary confidence in industry and to ensure increasing industrial production, the bulk of which was devoted to the War Effort.’ 31 Both schemes to which owners of industries, mines, gas-supply and electricity companies located throughout India were forced by law undertakings to subscribe were run at a healthy profit by the Government of India; the total premia collected amounted to Rs 42 crores, while the expenditure incurred by the authorities in administering the schemes did not exceed Rs 50 lakhs. 32 Later projects such as the ’Excess Profits Tax’, which was imposed in 1942, and a new subsection of the Defence of India rules which sought to plug a legal loophole, whereby costs incurred during the setting up of ancillary industries were deducted from the taxable profits used by Indian industrialists to avoid the had similar motives. At the same time, these forms of payment of this levy official intrusion were also an attempt to counter the inflationary trends created by the way in which the war was financed: production for the War Effort in India under the principles of ’Lend Lease’ was on a system of credit whereby the Government

some

-

-

-

-

31 32

History of the War: ’The War Risks

Insurance Scheme’, UR/5/301, O.I.O.C., p. 6.

Ibid., pp. 7-25.

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of India paid private producers in India for goods produced on behalf of the Government of Britain, in rupees which were rolled out of the printing presses at a tremendous rate. 33 The backing for this proliferation of paper was the theoretical building-up of sterling balances in the Reserve Bank of India’s London Branch, to be repaid at a later unspecified date.34 Although certain ’priority classes’ such as urban labour and certain sections of the government service were provided with dearness allowances to combat the effects of the consequent inflation, 35 this proved an inadequate solution, and in many cases certain daily necessities were provided in kind as it was no longer viable to provide dearness allowances at a rate high enough to enable people to buy the ordinary necessities of life. 36 But it was also obvious that 33 See D. Rothermund, ’Die Anfaenge der indischen Wirtschaftsplanung im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in P. Habluetzel, H.W. Tobler and A. Wirz, eds, Dritte Welt: Historische Praegung und politische Herausforderung: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Rudolf von Albertini, Wiesbaden, 1983. Rothermund actually provides figures of the number of rupees printed during the war and shows how the increase in circulation of money corresponded with the period in which goods for civilian consumption were becoming scarce within the colonial

economy. See Dietmar Rothermund, An Economic History of India, New York, 1986, pp. 119-20. 34 For the debates and anxieties created around the issue of the sterling balances see L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C. For the nationalist arguments, see the resolutions of the National Planning Committee advanced in 1945. Reprinted in K.T. Shah, ed., Report: National Committee, Bombay, 1949, pp. 234-35. Planning 35 The Government of India’s Railway Department, for instance, sanctioned to the temporary railway staff (whether employed on munitions or railway work) a bonus of one day’ s pay for each completed month of employment. In the spring of 1941 the first dearness allowance was given to theworkers with ’back effect from September 1940’. It was 1941, on 15 June 1942 and yet again on 1 February subsequently increased on 1 1943. Note on staff matters, undated, War History of Mechanical Department’s (Railways) Activities, L/R/5/293, O.I.O.C. 36 Even though the ’dearness allowances’ sanctioned to the railway workers were steadily increased during the war, ’the danger of inflation necessitated a revision of the Government’s attitude in regard to relief in cash’ and forced the rapid expansion of the organisation of ’railway grainshops’. War History of Mechanical Department’s (Railways) Activities, pp. 28-29, L/R/5/293, O.I.O.C. Similar trends were also noticeable with regard to police personnel and civil servants attached to other departments. See, for instance, secret weekly intelligence reports from the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Government of Assam, for the weeks ending 3 June 1943 and 9 June 1943, Police File No. 174/58/42 (C), N.A.I.; extract from the record of the proceedings of the National Defence Council, c. November 1942, H.P.F.(I) 3/84/1942, N.A.I., and Note by D. Pilditch, Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, G.O.I., 10 December 1942, Police File No. 174/58/42 (C), N.A.I. As a result of a substantial grant made by the central Home Department, the Government of Bihar announced an immediate increase in pay for its police forces. Constables were given an extra Rs 5 a month, armed police an increase of Rs 3 a month and ’ordinary police’ an additional Rs 2 a month. The province’s 57,000 chowkidars were awarded a ’war bonus’ of Rs 2 per month. Letter from T. Rutherford, Governor, G.O.B to Linlithgow, Viceroy, 13 February

continuous

November

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.

81

inflation had to be fought at a more effective level by taking larger amounts of 37 money out of circulation, and the imposition of the Excess Profits Tax was seen as an adequate way of tackling the problem. However, senior officials recognised the importance of getting businessmen to accept this legislation with as much goodwill as possible. To this end, meetings were called with the affected industrialists to explain what the tax implied, how it worked, and how it was beneficial to business in the long run. 38 Another major official effort to conciliate big business was made after the publication of the ’Bombay Plan’ for the economic development of India. This document, co-authored by a number of businessmen, was largely an initiative of the Tatas (written by Dr John Matthai, a Tata employee) 39 which, despite conceding a few apparently socialist principles went on to defend the role of private capital in a future Indian economic system. Notably, it stated that the government under which the plan was to come into operation was a fully independent national government.4° The Government of India, remarkably, decided to take a ’friendly’ attitude to the Plan and to refrain from ’destructive criticism’.41 Sir Theodore Gregory, the Economic Adviser to the Government of India, who was often called upon to articulate the government’s position in academically respectable language,42 prepared detailed notes on the Plan.43 These were intended not only to address ’fallacies and technical defects in economic and financial argument’44 but also to express agreement regarding general aims and objectives. The Information

1943, R/3/1/23, O.I.O.C.; also see, Secret War History of the Home Department, pp. 25-28, L/R/S/289, O.I.O.C. 37

It

be

an

also pointed out that given the fact that the war demand was a priority, there would absolute shortage of consumable goods for civilian consumption. As a result, unless productive power could be increased to meet both war and civilian demand, dearness allowances in cash would themselves add to inflationary tendencies. Confidential letter from the Dearness Allowance Sub-Committee to B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the Tripartite Labour Conference and Member for the Department of Labour, Viceroy’s Executive Council, 20 January 1944, ff 15-19, Gregory Papers, MSS.EUR.D.1163/8, O.I.O.C. 38 See, for instance, ’Proceedings of the first meeting of the Reconstruction Committee (Trade, International Trade Policy and Agricultural Policy) held at New Delhi on the 22nd and 23rd May 1942’. Copy in Gregory Papers, ff. 20-28, MSS.EUR.D. 1163/4, O.I.O.C. 39 Matthai would serve as Finance Minister under Jawaharlal Nehru after Independence. 40 P. Thakurdas et al., A Plan of Economic Development for India (2 parts), Bombay, and December 1944. January 41 Cipher telegram from Wavell, Viceroy, India, to L. Amery, S.S.I, 12 June 1944, f 93, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C. 42 Gregory had been, before entering the employ of the Government of India, Cassell Professor of Political Economy at London University and was a well-known conservative economist of neo-classical inclinations. 43 See, ff 95-104 and ff 27-29, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C. 44 Cipher telegram from Wavell, Viceroy, India, to Amery, S.S.I., 12 June 1944, f 93, L/1/1/1061, O.I.O.C. was

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82

Department’s unofficial note on the first part of the Plan, prepared in pursuance of the Viceroy’s request for the India Office to provide ’confidential guidance’ to editors, 45 stated that: there can be no two opinions about the ideals aimed at in the Bombay Plan and there is no difference between Government and the authors in regard to the ultimate objectives.46 The complete texts of Gregory’s two notes on the Bombay Plan, intended for internal official circulation, were also sent to Geoffrey Crowther, Editor of the Economist, a publication with which the India Office had extremely amicable relations and which could be relied upon to protect the source of its information so as to make its eventual story appear to be an unofficial view.47 A consequence of the government’s sympathetic attitude to the ’Bombay Plan’ was the incorporation of Sir Ardeshir Dalal, one of the document’s authors, into the Viceroy’s Executive Council as Member for the newly created Department of Planning and Development, which took over the job of coordinating ’post-war reconstruction and development’ from the ’Inter-departmental Reconstruction Committee of Council’.48 To the Government of India’s concern not to alienate business interests was added a concern for another ’priority class’.: workers attached to ’strategically’ significant industries. The importance of the rationale for this the stabilising of factory production in India, which despite being important to Britain’s strategic imperatives from 1939 took on an added significance for the Allied War-Effort in the is obvious. The operation of ’war Far East from December 1941 onwards industries’ was dubbed an ’essential public service’ from February 1941 onwards and this allowed the colonial authorities to ’legally’ deploy coercive measures with a view to preventing ’mass migrations...as a result of panic’ from industrial areas.49 In fact, the Essential Services (Maintenance) Ordinance of 1941, which affected labour, declared that the legislation authorised an -

-

officer...to prohibit any person engaged in any employment covered by the ordinance to depart, without the consent of government...out of any such 45

See, f 93, L/I/1061, O.I.O.C. Unofficial note on theBombay Plan’, f 105, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C. 47 A. H. Joyce’s confidential memorandum to MacGregor, Bilicliffe, Crawley and Booker (of the India Office), 26 May 1944, f 116, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C. Also see correspondence between Joyce and Geoffrey Crowther, c. February 1945, ff 2, 23-24, 26, ibid. 48 See L/I/1/1129, O.I.O.C. Also see R. Chattopadhyay, ’The Idea of Planning’, pp. 178-242. 49 See, for instance, most secret letter from the Defence Co-ordination Department, G.O.I. to all Chief Secretaries and Chief Commissioners of provinces, 12 March 1941, H.P.F. (I) 15/1/41, N.A.I. 46

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83 may be specified. The ordinance makes it an offence with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year and with fine, for any person to abandon such employment or absent himself without reasonable excuse. The fact that a person apprehends that by continuing in his employment he will be exposed to increased physical danger does not constitute a reasonable excuse.50 area or areas as

punishable

However, it was recognised by civil servants within the Government of India’s Defence Co-ordination Department that attempts to impose severe penalties could be rendered ineffective by the sheer magnitude of the task and the shortage of official personnel, and so the use of ’advance propaganda’ was recommended. 51 Between 1942,and mid-1944, this primarily took the form of a wide range of benefits, material or otherwise. 52 The provision of subsidised food and other scarce ’essentials’ (like cloth, cooking fuels and medicines like quinine) proved an effective weapon for the government. The authorities could use it to entice workers to stay at their posts and also to tackle the intermittent outbreaks of industrial action, which they had been unable to eradicate with the Defence of India Rules. This was particularly true during the famine of Bengal, when special canteens and shops were opened and successfully run by civil servants, with the assistance of the managements of the factories, in all the major industrial centres.53 Indeed, an advertisement of these official initiatives remained an integral constituent of the print and oral publicity disseminated amongst labour. While the adverse effect of the rising costs of living and difficulties in obtaining foodstuffs was never denied, 50

Note

on wartime legislation affecting labour, c. 1941, H.P.F. (I) 318/42, N.A.I. See, for instance, most secret letter from the Defence Co-ordination Department, G.O.I. to all Chief Secretaries and Chief Commissioners of provinces, 12 March 1941, H.P.F. (I) 15/1/41, N.A.I. 52 See, for instance, note on coal mines welfare, n.d, War History of the Labour Department, L/R/5/291, O.I.O.C.

51

53

The prominence given to the needs of the industrial workers caused a delay in the initiation of rationing measures for the poorer sections of the ’non-productive’ civilian population. Indeed, foodgrains rationing for them was a rather late measure, which actually began after the disasters of 1943. See, Famine Enquiry Commission, Final Report, pp. 37-38. In January 1943, Theodore Gregory, the Permanent Economic Adviser to the Government of India, had noted that the rationing of the urban population was a ’formidable undertaking’, and the administrative problems of such a course were too great. He advocated instead, cheap grain shops for supply to certain sections of the population. Gregory Collection, ff 14-15, MSS.EUR.D.1163/6, O.I.O.C. Although Gregory did not identify the target population, files detailing the distribution of food aid during these disastrous months clearly indicate the industrial labour employed by the ’war-industries’, apart from the state’s’subordinate services’, as being the principal civilian recipients of such assistance. See, for instance, letter from T. Rutherford, Acting Governor, Bengal, to Linlithgow, Viceroy, India, 2 October 1943, R/3/2/49, File No. 2, Coll. ix, O.I.O.C.

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made to underline the ’special measures’ principally in the form of that had been undertaken on behalf of industrial workers ’cost-price’ grain shops of the various ’war factories’. Another important aspect of ’labour welfare’ was the safety of employees during enemy air raids. In addition, the official role in legislating the War Injuries (Compensation and Insurance) Act of 1943, which was imposed on employers to pay compensation to workers who had sustained war injuries, was underlined. Importantly, the danger from bombing raids were not denied, but downplayed, and descriptions of the government’s role in appointing teams of A.R.P. experts to ensure adequate protection, in the form of ’slit trenches’ and bomb shelters, was also repeatedly reiterated. 54 From December 1943 increasing emphasis also began to be given to describing the aims, and the activities, of the Labour Investigation Committee. One publicity note declared that it had been appointed by the Central Government so as to ’collect data for evolving plans for the social security of Industrial Labour’ in the post-war period. 55 While the gradual improvement of the Allied strategic situation from the latter half of 1944 caused an increase in official propaganda dealing with the special treatment accorded to workers and the post-war ’welfare schemes’ being made on their behalf, publicity material began to delve into the nature and potential of wartime industrial gains. Frequent ’material assessments’ of ’industrial India’ abounded, and one leaflet, referring to the country’s economic achievements, claimed that she ’was following her steady course towards a great destiny, grateful for her present, and confident of her future’. 56 Full of photographs of dynamic industries, it also promised that India’s

efforts

were

-

-

struggle in war is only a prelude for the peace to come. Her war industry already contains the germs of the great industries which will follow the cessation of hostilities. The technical skill and equipment that are at present being devoted to the assembly of motor vehicles and ship building and repairing, will be diverted to the peaceful development of great automobile factories and ship-building yards. Our war needs have already indicated the lines of subsidiary industries vital for peace-time

development.57 However, the audience that attracted the greatest attention of colonial administrators was the Indian element of the colonial army serving in the subcontinent. Indeed, they remained the most important audience for all official 54

Note on Labour Welfare and Labour Legislation, c. 1943, L/I/1/1145, O.I.O.C. Unofficial (press) note on the ’Investigation of Indian Labour Problems [and] Appointment of a Fact Finding Committee’, 31 December 1943, L/I/1/1145, O.I.O.C. 56 India Tomorrow, Vol. 1, No.2, June 1944, p. 1. 57 Ibid., p. 3. 55

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85 wartime propaganda economic and/or ideological campaigns.58 This group had been the country’s British rulers’ first line of defence against internal trouble since the inception of the Raj, and the political climate in the 1920s and the 1930s had only underlined its significance.59 The Congress’s decision to oppose Britain’s decision to involve India in World War II, through a series of agitations from 1939 onwards, and the Government of India’s declared resolve to crush them,6° only stressed the significance of the sepoy in the colonial order.61 The ’Quit India’ Movement of August 1942 caused the Indian army to be widely seen in official circles as being the most important defence against possible ’rebellions’ in a country which the authorities had decided to treat as ’an occupied and hostile country’ for the duration of the conflict. 62 In addition, Indian troops were regularly utilised to protect lines of communication (roads, railway tracks and telegraph wires) from saboteurs attached to a melange of revolutionary outfits, and to tackle a variety of local, yet sometimes serious, disturbances.63 The necessity of moulding the Indian soldiers’ -

58

It is

-

resources remained an integral implemented by the concerned organisations with the purpose of sustaining a variety of ideological campaigns or stances. While the allotment of a variety of benefits by the colonial administration, or the Congress,

important to remember that the distribution of material

aspect of all propaganda activities, since such schemes

were

to selected

audiences has been touched upon in a number of studies, their authors have not identified these as being integral components of larger propaganda policies. For example, while T.Y. Tan’s valuable description of the working of the District Soldiers’ Boards in the Punjab refers to the distribution of a variety of economic benefits by the state apparatus within the colonial army’s recruiting areas, he does not perceive these as having constituted a potent propaganda tool. (T.Y. Tan, ’The Military and the State in Colonial India, 19001939’, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1992.) 59 T. Y. Tan, ’Maintaining the Military Districts: Civil-Military Integration and District Soldiers’ Boards in the Punjab, 1919-1939’, Modern Asian Studies (hereafter MAS) Vol. 28, No. 4, 1994, p. 833. 60 Secret letter from R. Tottenham, Additional Secretary, Home Department, G.O.I., to the Chief Secretaries of all provincial governments, 2 August 1940, Political Department General File No. 69/12, Bihar State Archives, Patna, India (hereafter BSA) 61 The measures suggested in this regard included, ’Actions to curtail the spread of subversive doctrines and the activities of agitators in villages and trains.... Such steps as may be possible to improve and increase pro-government propaganda and foster the growth of a healthy public opinion particularly in regard to the general attitude towards the prosecution of the war.’ See report entitled ’A Survey of the Sikh Situation as it Affects the Army’, c.

1941, H.P.F.(I) 232/1940, N.A.I.

62

This decision

was

taken

as

the

movement had proved, according to the in India were inadequately staffed and provisioned. India to the War Office, G.O.Br., 15 January 1943,

’Quit India’

military authorities, that the police forces Most secret note from the L/WS/1/1337, O.I.O.C.

G.H.Q.,

63

The primary ’internal security’ role of the colonial army consisted of ’duties in aid of civil power’. Army m India Training Manual (hereafter A.I.T.M.), No. 2 (1940), L/MIL/

17/5/2240, O.I.O.C. In 1939, of the 35 battalions available

in

India, 26

were

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allocated to

86 was further emphasised by the reverses inflicted on the Allied armies by the Axis forces worldwide between 1940 and 1943, as well as the arduous road taken towards victory over the next two years. Thus, not unexpectedly, it was felt in official circles that efforts needed to be made to rid the indigenous element of the colonial army of any ’defeatism’, especially since ’high morale’ was seen to be ’the foremost weapon’ against the ‘enemy’. ~4 In the first two years of the war, this involved giving the soldiers and their families special treatment in the allocation of increasingly expensive consumer goods like foodstuffs, cloth and medicines, advertising such activities in the recruiting areas and the units, and linking such propaganda with appreciative descriptions of India’s contributions to the Allied efforts.65 However, official endeavours in this regard were complicated by the great increases in the levels of recruitment from 1942 onwards, which brought a variety of ’non-martial classes’ into the army, and especially into its administrative, medical and technical corps.66 The shift in recruitment patterns was also highlighted by an estimate made in June 1942 that 33 per cent of the infantry and cavalry came from the ’educated middle classes’. The authorities remained continually apprehensive about demobilising this section of the army since they feared that knowing ’little about land’ the new type of soldiers would ’swell the ranks of the unemployed’ and become ’dacoits’.67 Moreover, the new ’classes’ of Indians were seen as being more ’politically conscious’, and so it was decided that ’the old loyalty’ based on the superior martial capabilities of particular Indian communities would need to be

opinions

’internal security’. During the ’Quit India’ movement, 57-and-a-half battalions (many from the field army) had to be employed to crush the Congress ’rebellion’ and to protect the railway lines from sabotage. By mid-1943, only 12 battalions were allocated to internal security. Secret letter from India Office, G.O.Br., to T. E. Williams, War Office, G.O.Br., 6 July 1943, L/WS/1/1337, O.I.O.C. ., No. 12 (1941), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C. A.I.T.M 64 65 A.L T.M., No. 6 (1941), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C. Also see G. Dunbar, India at War. A Record and a Review, 1939-40, London, 1940, p. 28, L/MIL17/5/4260, O.I.O.C. 66 Required levels of recruitment were kept up only by the induction of what was considered to be ’other than first line’ material. By November 1942, a million-and-a-half soldiers had been recruited and many of these recruits came from these ’untried classes’. The main problem for the military administrators was that the so-called ’martial races’- the Punjabi Muslims, Hindu Jats, Sikh Jats, the Dogras, the Pathans, the ’Mahrattas’ and the Rajputs — were unable to meet the increased demand for recruitment. Secret memorandum on Indian manpower from the Adjutant General’sBranch, 3 November 1942, L/WS/1/968, O.I.O.C. ’Madrasis’ (Tamils, Telugus and Malayalis), high-caste Marathis, Bengali Muslims and Assamese were taken in ’large numbers’ into the mechanised units as drivers. Secret War Department History — Expansion of the Armed Forces in India, pp. 26-33, L/R/5/273, O.I.O.C. 67 Appendix E to Secret Letter from Adjutant General’s Branch, G.H.Q. (India) to all branches of G.H.Q., 1 June 1942, L/WS/1/1335, O.LO.C.

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87 with a new ’sense of purpose’,68 which would instead emphasise the soldiers’ material self-interest. 69 This, in turn, caused increased prominence to be given to questions of ’development’, which took many forms. Apart from continuously highlighting the comfortable conditions in the localities from which the Indian troops were recruited and the battle-front,~° the issue of post-war reconstruction began to be regularly stressed Moreover, this issue began to be combined with the publicity about the inevitable demobilisation of the wartime army. It was given much attention between 1943 and 1945 since unit intelligence reports frequently warned the General Headquarters (India) that soldiers from the so-called ’martial races’ or otherwise were worried about their prospects after the conflict and were demanding information on the issue.72 This caused the official publicity material disseminated in the recruiting areas and units consistently to describe the enormous potential of employing demobilised soldiers in the industries that had come up during the war and in the ’cooperatives’ which were going to be set up after the cessation of hostilities. For instance, the plans enunciated by the ’Policy Committee on [the] Re-settlement and Re-employment of troops’, which was set up in the last quarter of 1943 with Firoz Khan Noon at its head, were given great prominence in propaganda disseminated among troops. Some of these strategies included the creation of ’large scale transportation companies’ which would help in providing employment to the vast mass of lorry drivers in the Indian army; creation of vocational training courses for troops within various battalions to prepare them for new jobs after the war; the building of new canal systems within the Punjab allowing the government to settle many troops in the newly irrigated lands, and the establishment of ’cooperative savings banks’ to assist ex-servicemen.73 The White Paper prepared by the Government of India in October 1944 made similar promises, and its text was widely publicised in all ’unit formations’, 74 and publicity about the availability of a wide variety of jobs after demobilisation remained a prominent feature of the propaganda campaign directed at the Indian military personnel and their families till the end of the war.75

replaced

-

-

68

Most Secret Weekly Intelligence Summary (India Internal) (hereafter W.I.S. (I.I.)) 23 July 1943, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. Also see, most secret W.I.S. (I.I.) 21 August 1942, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. 69 A.I.T.M, No. 16 (1942), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C. 70

Matters of Interest to Indian Soldiers and their Families, Calcutta, 1943, pp. 1-2. See W.I.S.(I.I.) for 1944 and 1945 in L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. 72 See, for instance, secret W.I.S. (I.I.) 6 October 1944, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. 73 Telegram from Bureau of Public Information, G.O.I., to Information Department, India Office, 3 March 1944, L/WS/1/1335, O.I.O.C. 74 Secret W.I.S. (I.I.), 27 October 1944, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. 75 Secret W.I.S. (I.I.), 3 August 1945, L/WS/1/1433. O.I.O.C. 71

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88

Promises into Practice? Whereas this article concentrates on the public relations aspects of the official initiatives discussed above, the question nonetheless arises as to whether the efforts originating in concerns relating to wartime propaganda were intended merely as efforts to manage public opinion, or whether they were meant also to be translated into action. A discussion might, therefore, be relevant here. Although the distribution of material resources remained an integral aspect of the Government’s propaganda activities (as is evident from the selective provision of dearness allowances and essential goods in kind), these had limited and specific goals. Moreover, the likelihood of carrying out the various larger promises being made by the colonial authorities during the duration of World War II, at least by a British Government of India, was always doubtful. This was especially true given the time required to carry out the schemes outlined, the extreme uncertainty of the political situation, and after the Cripps offer of March 1942 India’s right to secede from the Empire having been acknowledged. 76 Many participants in the discussions recognised this: as one official put it, ’This is not a time for long-term measures’.77 Despite this, however, long-term measures were contemplated, and a great many such long-term schemes found their way onto paper. One such report, outlining a scheme for restructuring the Indian educational system, was intended to come to full fruition in 40 years’ time. 78 This need not be seen as surprising. A bureaucrat acting according to a specific brief produces work according to that brief; accordingly, a good deal of detailed work went into various planning projects. 79 Of these schemes, many were either produced by Indian bureaucrats or ’experts’ who shared at least some of the enthusiasm of the ’nationalists’ for the project of economic planning, or by British officials who were sincere adherents of the mythology of ’good government’. The main signatory of the report on public heaHh,~ Sir Joseph Bhore, had long been seen as sympathetic to Indian -

-

76

The offer made by the Cnpps Mission, announced at a press conference on 29 March, 1942, was Dominion Status, with the power to secede, if India so chose; from the British Commonwealth, ’after the cessation of hostilities’. For the complete text see T.O.P., Vol. 1, Doc. 256. 77 Note by W.D. Croft, Deputy Under-Secretary, India Office, 27 August 1942, f 357, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. 78 Bureau of Education, India, Post-War Educational Development in India: Report by the Central Advisory Board of Education (4th edn), New Delhi, January 1944, p. 12; copy in Government of India, Finance Department, Planning-II Branch, K.W. to File No. 3(6)-

PII/47, N.A.I. 79 For a list, though

not a comprehensive one, see A.H. Hanson, The Process of Planning: Study of India’s Five-YearPlans 1950-1964, Oxford, 1966, pp. 37-40. Some of these had been begun previously, but were later integrated within the framework of post-war reconstruction planning. 80 Health Survey and Development Committee (1943-45), Delhi, 1946, V/26/840/12-15,

A

O.I.O.C.

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89

nationalism, which fact had been attributed by Sir James Grigg, former Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, and a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet, to Bhore’s ’mixed marriage and the parti-coloured results of it’.81 Indeed, there were other British officials who were quite critical of the failure of British imperialism hitherto to live up to its promised benevolence, and keen to make amends. 82 But such bureaucrats were far outnumbered by colleagues who considered the dissemination of publicity about post-war reconstruction and economic development, or the introduction of special wartime rationing, to be nothing more than a temporary, albeit important, administrative measure. Indeed, the activities of this group of administrators, which included both Europeans and Indians, were very often informed by divergent factors. Some officers particularly those in charge of districts and subdivisions initiated public relations campaigns to counter local discontent.83 Others, especially senior administrators posted at New Delhi and the provincial headquarters, merely treated these campaigns as a means of soliciting goodwill for the British war-effort in South Asia, remaining remarkably insouciant about actually being able to deliver what they were promising to their audiences. The priorities and pressures of the India Office were also informed to a great extent by what was deemed possible by political opinion at Home and by equations within the War Cabinet. There were optimistic moments, however. Leopold Amery wrote to Linlithgow in May 1942 that it might be possible to steal the robes of the Congress by attempting, ’regardless of conventional financial restraints’, a ’complete overhaul of India’s national life’, with the British playing the role, after the war, of a ’bold, farsighted and benevolent despot, determined in a few years, in a series of five-year -

-

81

Letter from J. Grigg to F. Stewart at the India Office, 23 July 1934, PJGG 2/20/6(b), Grigg Papers, Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Stewart politely agreed that Bhore was a nationalist, but defended him as ’a very moderate and reasonable nationalist’, while gently alluding to the possible racist connotations of Grigg’s remarks. See, letter from Stewart to Grigg, 10 August 1934, PJGG 2/20/8(a), ibid. 82 See, for instance, P. Moon, Strangers in India, London, 1944. Moon resigned from the Indian Civil Service in 1943 after a disagreement with the then Viceroy, Linlithgow, but returned to India in 1946, staying on beyond the transfer of power to serve the newly independent government of India, notably as a member of the Planning Commission. 83 For instance, O.M. Martin, an I.C.S. officer who had been posted in Bengal during the war, described how district officials ’did a lot of propaganda throughout the villages’ around strategic areas like Chittagong and Noakhali. Memoirs of O.M. Martin, I.C.S., Martin Papers, C.S.A.S.A., p. 314. Also see W.I.S. (I.I), 19 June 1942, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.; Letter from J. Herbert, Governor, G.O.B. to Linlithgow, Viceroy, 8 May 1942, MSS EUR F. 125/42, O.I.O.C. ; Report on the Police Administration in the Province of Assam for the Year 1943, Shillong, 1943, V/24/3259, O.I.O.C., p.3; and Note on the War in Assam, 1939-45 by H.F.G. Burbridge, Indian Police Service, undated, MSS.EUR.F.161/32, O.I.O.C., no

pagination.

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90 new level of physical well-being and few months later, was more cautious. In trying to efficiency’.8’ Amery, just to consider Stafford persuade Linlithgow seriously Cripps’ scheme for ’A Social and Economic Policy for India’ which was being debated by the Cabinet, he argued that

to raise India’s millions to a

plans,

a

time like this your Government is too fully engaged in repression to think of construction But whatever [the] arguments against doing anything may be[,] I am sure you will see positive propaganda advantages and after all it might be a refreshing change from our present activities.85 at

a

....

The Cripps proposals to which Amery referred had emerged as a successor scheme to the former’s failed Mission; they stressed education, population control, the raising of agricultural productivity, factory legislation and the promotion and control of industrialisation through the utilisation of the sterling balances. They also recommended the use of ’modern techniques of economic planning and the modem device of the Public Corporation’ and the coordination of Provincial programmes into an ’All-Indian Programme of Industrial Development’. 86 Cripps positioned his scheme as a way to win over Indian public opinion, especially that of the ’masses’; he proposed that instead of the British Government relying for its political viability on negotiations with elite leaders of the Hindu and Muslim communities, it should attempt to mobilise popular support, not on the basis of community, but of class. Viewing the initiative as ’a good opportunity to rally the mass of Indian Opinion to our side’, he stressed It is most important that the Indian workers and peasants should realise that it is a British initiative which is working for them against their Indian oppressors; this will entail a proper publicity service in India.87

Cripps viewed this only as

a short-term solution, however. He emphasised that full Dominion status and ’the inherent right of self-determination’, which post-war included the right to secede, had already been conceded to India; ’the sole question is, therefore, how can we make India most useful or least embarrassing to the United Nations for the rest of the war’. For the present, however, such a constructive

84

Linlithgow’s response, in his margin note, was ’Good Lord!’. See communication from L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to Linlithgow, Viceroy, India, 27 May 1942, MSS.EUR.F. 125/11, O.I.O.C. 85 Draft

telegram,

L.

Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br.,

to

Linlithgow, Viceroy, n.d.,

f 349,

L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. 86 S. Cripps to L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., 15 December 1942, in enclosure dated 10 December 1942, ff 231-40, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. 87 Note by S. Cripps, 2 September 1942, ff 339-41, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.

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91

policy as he suggested could

’demonstrate

itself, the determination of the Government

to

opinion here, in America and in India peoples of

to serve the interests of the

India’. 88 The Cripps proposals won a certain amount of public support, among others from Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery, who had long believed that the British Empire should serve as an integrated and protected market, and was strongly against the ’American Lebensraum’ economics of US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, which had opposed the policy of Imperial Preference as practiced by Britain because it restricted the USA’s access to the British Empire markets and interfered with its ’desire to create an American export hegemony in the world’.89 For Amery, social reforms, one of the key dimensions of the Cripps proposals, involved spending money in India and were therefore unviable, given the already acute problem of the building up of the sterling balances.9° On the other hand, the economic side of reforms was quite compatible with the sterling balances problem: the balances would enable India to equip herself with much-needed ’industrial and irrigation plant[s]’91 and would be available for every kind of long-range re-equipment of India, whether for industry, irrigation, railways or other public works. These things would probably do more to raise the standard of living after the war than anything else, and would incidentally dispose of the sterling balances in the shape of orders for capital goods from here, and to that extent help the employment situation during the years of transition from war to peace.922

88

Note by S. Cripps, 2 September refuse to credit Cripps with any

1942, ff 339-41, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. It is

not necessary

good intentions for such a move. In order to sell the idea to a Cabinet led by so unapologetic an imperialist as Churchill, he could not afford to overemphasise its socially radical content, if that were indeed his intention. He further emphasised that such action would have to be combined with efforts to make the Viceroy’s Council ’more representative of the wider class interests of India’; if personnel could not be found to represent ’those communal sections which are prepared to co-operate and also the different class interests’, then ’the class constitution should prevail’. 89 L. Amery, quoted in Louis, In the Name of God, Go! pp 25-26. For a statement of Amery’s position on the subject see L. Amery, The Framework of the Future, London, to

1935. L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to S. Cnpps, 2 October 1942, f 299, L/E/812527, O.I.O.C. As a possible alternative Amery suggested that it might be better to think of some other public relations scheme which involved spending sterling donations to build mosques for Indian lascars in Britain, or a grant to the School of Oriental and African Studies. Note by Amery, 23 October 1942, ff 278-80, L/E/9/2527, O.I.O.C. 91 L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to S. Cripps, 2 October 1942, f 299, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. 92 Note by L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., 23 October 1942, ff 278-80, L/E/9/2527, O.I.O.C. 90



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92 Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour and National Service in the War Cabinet in Britain, agreed that it was short-sighted of Britain to think of sales of consumer goods to India after the war; it would have to be capital goods, and Britain had to get her act together quickly lest the Americans beat her to it.93 Others were sympathetic to some aspects of the ideas for various reasons; Amery’s account of the origins of the proposal credits Churchill’s ’suggestion that it would really pay us to take up the cause of the poor peasant and confiscate the rich Congressman’s lands and divide them up’ with starting off discussions on the scheme, after which others, particularly Ernest Bevin, chipped in.94 However, most officials, particularly in the India Office, were hostile or indifferent to these deliberations. 95 Notably, Linlithgow remained unconvinced both of the practical and public relations value of the proposals, and marshalled a great deal of official opinion in his favour which ultimately killed the Cripps proposals in order to argue that the scheme was impractical and unworkable, while arguing at the same time, through his advisers, that whatever was possible was already being done through the mechanisms of the Viceroy’s Executive Council’s own Post-War Reconstruction Committee. Among the opinions which he had forwarded in this regard to Amery was that of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Hutton, Secretary of the Reconstruction Committee of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. Hutton saw some merit in the Cripps proposals, but suggested that actual social reforms or economic measures be subordinated to their public relations value: -

-

We have yet to realise that a country can be very largely governed, as well as educated and reformed, by propaganda alone. The success of government, as of individuals, depends more on what people think of their achievements than on what they have actually done.966

93

E. Bevin, G.O.Br., to L. Amery, S.S.I, G.O.Br., 21 September 1942, f 270, and enclosed censorship excerpt, f 271, L/E/9/2527, O.I.O.C. 94 Bevin was already the author of a scheme for training skilled Indian labour in Britain in order to provide specialised manpower otherwise lacking in India for the war economy. This

scheme came to be known as the ’Bevin Scheme’ and the trainees ’Bevin Boys’. For details of the scheme, see Government of India Departmental and Miscellaneous Histories of the War: Labour Department: Note on ’Bevin Training Scheme’, L/R/5/291, O.I.O.C. 95 See L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. For a more detailed account of the Cripps proposals, their connection with the sterling balances question and with the question of an anticipated market for British capital goods after the war, and their ultimate rejection, see B. Zachariah, ’Imperial Economic Policy for India, 1942-44: Confusion and Readjustment’, in B. Pati, ed., Turbulent Times: India 1940-44, Bombay, 1998. 96 T. Hutton, Reconstruction Committee of Council to G. Laithwaite, Secretary to Viceroy of India, 27 and 28 April 1943, T.O.P., Vol. 3, Doc. 672.

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93 This seems to be the spirit in which Hutton ran his Committee, which was the custodian of the various schemes announced with much fanfare, and the direct predecessor of the short-lived Planning and Development Department, which produced the most-cited document of the government’s publicity campaigns around economic issues in the last years of the war, namely, the Second Report on Reconstruction Planning. This Report appeared to concede most of the nationalist demands on economic matters, including an interventionist and protectionist policy on the part of the government in order to encourage industrialisation. 97 By this time, however, any proposal which had to be taken seriously had to appear to reject conventional imperialism, to dress itself in nationalist colours, and in addition to concede socialism. The rhetoric of the Second Report duly conceded all these things. The year 1944, the year of its publication, also saw the publication not only of the ’Bombay Plan’ of the Indian industrialists’ lobby,98 the government’s ’constructive’ approach to which has already been noted, but also the ’People’s Plan’ of M. N. Roy’s Indian Federation of Labour, 99 a ’Gandhian Plan’, authored by S. N. Agarwal with a foreword by the Mahatma himselfloo and a plan formulated by the Planning Committee of the All-India Muslim League.101 In advertising these plans vociferously, its backers were united in at least one common point: an attack on Imperialism as a possible framework for ’development’. It was in this environment that officially sponsored plans had to place themselves. This is not to suggest that there were no takers among the highest levels of British administration for a ’development’ policy in India. But this form of ’development’ was specifically a form of imperialism, which was acknowledged internally among colonial officials, but which of course could not be admitted publicly.lo2 The issue of development seemed only to receive serious consideration 97

Government of India, Planning and Development Department, Second Report on Reconstruction Planning, New Delhi, 1944. Also published, between 1945 and 1946, were a series of publicity pamphlets, with plenty of photographs, on the subject of post-war planning and reconstruction. See copies in L/I/1/1139, O.I.O.C. Also see Hutton’s own account of post-war reconstruction planning. T. Hutton, ’The Planning of Post-War Development in India’, Asiatic Review Vol. 43, April 1947. 98 P. Thakurdas et al., A Plan of Economic Development for India, Parts I and II, Bombay, and December 1944 respectively. Apnl 99 B. N. Banerjee et al., People’s Plan for Economic Development of India, Delhi, 1944. 100 S. N. Agarwal, The Gandhian Plan of Economic Development for India, Bombay, 1944. 101 See I. Talbot, ’Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Committee of the All-India Muslim League 1943-46’, MAS, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1994, pp. 877-86. 102 Amery himself, as has been noted earlier in this article, had long been a campaigner for ’development’ as an adjunct to imperialism. See L. S. Amery, Empire and Prosperity (2nd edn), London, 1931; and L.S. Amery, The Forward View, London, 1935. There is a curious congruence between the ideas of George Schuster the Liberal and Amery the Conservative tariff reformer; for what Louis writes of Amery is in agreement with what Schuster writes of his own views: ’By Imperial Preference he [Amery] meant a form of protection by which the

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94 in communications describing how the industrialisation of India might enable Britain to meet her sterling debts to India in goods, mainly capital goods, thereby providing British industry with a post-war market. This optimistic view of the sterling balances was, however, rejected by the Treasury, where it was pointed out that Britain would not have enough capacity to export such goods, as she would need them herself after the War.lo3 The serious doubts which existed as to whether such promises of capital goods could be kept notwithstanding, they continued to be emphasised in the Government of India’s propaganda campaign. On the other hand, the British government’s anxieties regarding Britain’s ability to pay back the sterling balances at all were deliberately sought to be hidden from the Indian public, as it was considered extremely dangerous for confidence in Britain’s financial stability, in terms of its effects on educated and business opinion in India, consequently on the Indian participation in the War Effort.104 It was also considered fearfully important to keep a probably soon-to-be-independent India within the British, as opposed to the American, sphere of influence, especially given the need to maintain the cohesion of the Sterling Area. These considerations were to play an important role in post-war commonwealth relations even after the transfer of power to the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan. After the war, in fact, India emerged as the largest holder of sterling balances, which were later divided between the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan after Independence. These sterling balances, which were released at controlled rates of a certain amount per annum, acted as a soft loan for Britain after the war, enabling her to a certain extent to rebuild her economy and to subsidise, through her present and former colonies, her welfare state. By 1944, it was already more than evident that Britain would not be able to meet her promised commitments, even given the will to do so. Nationalist and business scepticism about the promises being made, and anxieties regarding the fate of the sterling balances, were confirmed by reports of the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. The Indian delegation had argued that the proposed International

Empire and the

Dominions would become a single economic unit’; Amery ’held that the British needed raw materials and colonial markets for which in exchange they could offer manufactured goods and services’. Louis, In the Name of God, Go! p. 32. Compare this with Schuster’s statement of the need, arising especially as a result of the Depression, for the ’rationalisation of economic effort throughout a group like the British Commonwealth’. See, Schuster, ’Empire Trade Before and After Ottawa’. 103 See, for instance, L. Amery, S.S.I., to K. Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 7 August 1942, L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C.; and the comment of John Maynard Keynes, then adviser to the treasury, that Amery was a ’dangerous lunatic’: margin note in Treasury copy of aforementioned letter, quoted in Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire, p. 479. Also see, J.M. Keynes to T. Gregory, Economic Advisor to the G.O.I., Treasury Chambers, 11June 1943, ff 2-4, Gregory papers, MSS.EUR.D.1163/6, O.I.O.C. 104 See L/F/7/2861, O.I.O.C.

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Monetary Fund should assist in providing convertibility for a part of the sterling balances, especially in the light of, as Finance Member Jeremy Raisman put it on behalf of his delegation, India’s ’programme of considerable industrial development’ on which she expected to embark in the immediate post-war years, and the consequent need to finance imports of capital equipment. A. D. Shroff pleaded for some amount of convertibility, on behalf of Indian business. He realised that a very large proportion of the sterling balances had to be liquidated through direct exports from the United Kingdom, but pointed out that the United Kingdom’s capacity to provide India with consumer and capital goods would be extremely limited in the immediate post-war years. If, on the other hand, a reasonable proportion of the sterling balances could be converted into other currencies after the war, it would, he argued, assist Indian industrial development process, and thereby the flow of international trade. 105 The British delegation insisted, however, that this was a bilateral matter; and the furthest progress that was made was through John Maynard Keynes’ promise that Britain would take up the issue of the settlement of the debt ’without delay, to settle honourably what was honourably and generously given’. 106 After the war, long-term considerations on Britain’s part were indeed successfully accommodated, in which the ’development’ of India was not a priority. Britain was largely able to alleviate the worst effects of her weakened world position through programmes of colonial development, the preservation of the Sterling Area and the Sterling Area Dollar Pool, 107 and a Commonwealth specially restructured for 105

the Indian Delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference Woods (July 1 to July 22, 1944), New Delhi, 1945, pp. 13-14, 41. Shroff sarcastically commented, ’it appears that although we have four billion dollars worth of Sterling balances, we have practically no foreign exchange reserves’. Speech by A.D. Shroff at Bretton Woods, 7/7/1944, quoted in Report of the Indian Delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, p 41. 106 Speech by Keynes, 10/7/1944, reprinted in Report of the Indian Delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, p. 44. 107 The economies of the Sterling Area remained closely allied to Britain’s, not least because of the wartime Sterling balances and the tying-up of their Dollar earnings in the Dollar Pool. At the same time the bargaining about the sterling balances and their convertibility into hard currency also began to reflect British economic weakness: her inability to supply India with capital goods and her reluctance to release Dollars from the Pool for development purposes, because she needed them herself. For an account of the sterling balances negotiations, see B.R. T’omlinson, ’Indo-British Relations in the Post-Colonial Era: The Sterling Balances Negotiations 1947-49’, JICH, Vol. 13, 1985. Also see, files on Sterling Balances Negotiations 1948-1950: Economic and Overseas Department Collection (copies of Commonwealth Relations Office files), L/E/9/303-365, O.I.O.C., and the papers of the Sterling Area Development Working Party, L/E/5/76, O.I.O.C. For a summary of the problems associated with Sterling balances in the Commonwealth and British Empire as a whole, see Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, Chapter 11, pp. 265-66. Evidence from the African colonies and the Caribbean also suggests that the colonial power’s indebtedness to a colony was far from incompatible with the continued flow of economic benefits. See the

Report of

at Bretton

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the purposes The Treasury’s predictions regarding capital goods exports by Britain to India came true, as industrial re-equipment in India was affected by Britain’s lack of industrial capacity; even post-independence agricultural schemes could be seen to suffer due to Britain’s inability to supply simple capital goods such as tractors, and her unwillingness to release dollars from the Dollar Pool to enable India to buy them from USA or elsewhere. l09 India’s role in the Sterling Area and in the British adjustment to the post-war economy was on terms which did not fit the main purposes of Britain’s policy smoothly: the Indian economy was not a dollar earner, and Britain was inadequately equipped as a source of supply to enable her to be more of a dollar saver. Nonetheless, as a Sterling area country with a huge dollar deficit, and the biggest holder of sterling balances, she needed to be provided with the capital goods she required lest she buy them for dollars drawn from the dollar Pool against those balances.I 10 India was thus incorporated into a broad policy aimed debates followed by Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, Chapter 10, pp. 303-48. Also see, Herward Sieberg, ’Koloniale Industrialisierung: Die Diskussion um Britische-Westindien (1944-1952)’ in Habluetzel, Tobler and Wirz, eds, Dritte Welt. 108 See R J Moore, Making the New Commonwealth, Oxford, 1987. Also see idem, Endgames ofEmpire: Studies of Britain’s India Problem, Oxford, 1988, p 8: ’the endgames of empire in South Asia culminated in the celebrated London Declaration of 28 April 1949, rather than the midnight revels of 14 August 1947’. This restructuring of the Commonwealth and its role in coordinating the economic life of the former Empire, as Amery had imagined, and as by now the Labour Party also accepted, was also reflected in such initiatives for ’development’ as the Colombo Plan, which sought to coordinate the development plans of the Asian former possessions of the British Empire. See Philip Charrier, ’India, Britain and the Colombo Plan’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1995. 109 See Sterling Balances Negotiations: Telegram, India (High Commission) to Commonwealth Relations Office, 20/1/1948, copy in L/E/9/303, O.I.O.C. 110 It is difficult to accept that ’the economic role of the Indian consumer, with his new-found taste for British capital goods, was seen as a liability’; B. R. Tomlinson, ’The Sterling Balances Negotiations, 1947-49’, p. 58, outside of government circles, who were concerned with providing for domestic needs. The tensions between national planners and the private sector, which was soon to appear in India, was a factor here in the British case. The problem was to ensure that home requirements were met and then decide on export priorities as a matter of ’long-term planning’. If priority export commitments, on the ’Russian model’, were imposed over a great extent of Britain’s export potential, there would not be enough room for private profit. It was considered necessary, however, as mentioned above, to give some priority of supply to the Sterling Area countries lest they seek supplies outside the area and spend dollars or other hard currency. The solution was to let private profit motives govern exports to hard currency areas while planning exports to the Sterling Area. Private profit motives would govern exports to hard currency areas and would be in consonance with the national need to earn such currency for which enough export capacity had to be left to in order to the ’disperse impact of the priority commitments’ to the Sterling private industry Area. See O.N.(48)85, Confidential, 9/2/1948, Cabinet Overseas Negotiations Committee, Bilateral Availabilities, Note by Ministry of Supply, copy in L/E/5/76, O.I.O.C. —

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preservation of Sterling Area dollar resources, with Britain’s effective custodianship of the Sterling balances of the colonies, Dominions and the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan (the share of the last two together constituting overwhelmingly the largest part of the sterling balances) ensuring her good bargaining power These attitudes force one to question the recently propounded argument about the ’marks of the imminent birth in India’ of a ’new constructive imperialism before partition and independence aborted it’. This ’constructive imperialism’ was apparently ’prefigured in wartime government intervention in the economy and in the official propaganda which Jonathan Israel [sic] and others have begun to chart’.112 This is a problematic view considering the widespread cynicism within official circles about the viability of the many promises being made. ln Indeed, what can be witnessed in this period is the division of opinion among the state personnel civil and military; European and Indian into two well-defined camps: the who believed that the Raj would continue long after the cessation of World minority War II, and the majority who expected the Indian empire to be abandoned in the near at

the

-

-

future. The wartime debates about the mode of dissemination of all forms of state propaganda, material and/or ideological, highlighted the isolation of the former group and the predominance of the latter, especially in the higher echelons of power, between 1942 and 1947. A manifestation of this was the primacy given to the short term goal of winning the war in India at the expense of the needs of the general civilian population and, as a result, the advertising of the British government’s good intentions for India began to subordinate attempts to put welfare or development schemes into operation. These trends, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of official public relations projects, especially in the localities of eastern and southern India, as 111

As far as India and Pakistan were concerned, there was a fear, during the Sterling balances negotiations of 1948, that they might be externed from the Sterling Area for not playing the game of saving Dollars. But the possible unpleasant consequences to Britain, due to essential items of Indo-British trade such as jute possibly being invoiced in dollars, heavier export

duties on tea or diversion of such exports to Dollar areas, made the British Government

more

receptive to Indian demands for greater releases of their balances in dollars to meet their Dollar deficit. ’Secret Memorandum on Sterling Balances Negotiations’, L/E/9/303, O.I.O.C. 112 C. A. Bayly, ’Returning the British to South Asian History: The Limits of Colonial South Asia, Vol. 17, No.2, 1994, p. 17. Hegemony’, 113 Bayly has, in the aforementioned piece, referred to, among other things, an article by Sanjoy Bhattacharya as proof for the existence of this ’constructive imperialism’, at least during World War II. See reference to S. Bhattacharya, ’The Colonial State and the Communist Party of India, 1942-45: A Reappraisal’, SAR, Vol. 15, No.1, 1995, in Bayly, ibid., fn. 76. While Bhattacharya did indeed mention instances of wartime economic intervention by the state, he referred, at the same time, to two critically important issues informing these measures: the public relations aspect of such official campaigns and the

requent administrative (British and/or Indian) fear about the outbreak of disorder. Both these

ints have, unfortunately, been ignored by Bayly.

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98 district officers fearful of riots within their spheres of influence desisted from making grandiose promises of providing economic relief and attempted instead to tackle the situation with the use of force. It was a tactic that was doomed to failure as the campaigns of forced requisitioning and rationing were adversely stricken by a shortage of staff and competing military demands: the relief provided was, thus, woefully inadequate, and the result was an ever-increasing reliance on the forced requisitioning of grain, which only seemed to assist in annoying many rural notables allied to the British administration Indeed, local civilian administrators often frowned upon the special provisions being made on behalf of the ’priority classes’ especially the military personnel posted in their jurisdictions and the industrial workers in Calcutta and wondered about the efficacy of advertising India’s ’great in the destiny’ post-war era in localities in eastern India that had been ravaged by famine and pestilence. 115 The publicity campaign about wartime, and post-war, economic ’development’ had other official detractors as well. For instance, one -

-

114

The administrators of the localities of Bihar, Eastern United Provinces and Assam worst affected by the famine conditions began increasingly to resort to the forced requisitioning of hidden hoards of grain. Interestingly, efforts were always first made to request the affected landlords/merchants that they voluntarily surrender their hoards so as to assist the official effort to ’curtail the possibility of food riots’, which would cause ’the destruction of both public and private property and life’. However, such appeals seemed largely ineffective, causing the use of official force to extract the surplus food. See extracts from secret reports by District Magistrates in Bihar, Eastern United Provinces and Assam, c. 1943, W.S.F. remain surprisingly armed or otherwise 63/iii/43, B.S.A. References of resistance frequent. Ibid. A similar situation seems to have been noticeable in Orissa as well. I.H. Macdonald, an I.C.S. officer posted in the province, mentions how civil servants responsible for requisitioning grain were always accompanied by bodyguards since their duties were unpopular, especially because they were done with ’a certain element’ of coercion. Memoirs of I.H. Macdonald, Macdonald Papers, O.I.O.C., p. 41. 115 These attitudes are revealed in the local officials’ responses to a letter from E. Wood, the Additional Secretary to the Food Department, G.O.I., where provincial and district officers in Bengal and Bihar were encouraged, amongst other things, to ’emphasise and re-emphasise that the Government of India ha[d] set up the Food Deptt. [sic] whose job [wa]s to see that no one starves...and that if food [wa]s found to be short in any place, the Food Department w[ould] produce the goods’. Confidential letter from E. Wood to Chief Secretaries of Bengal and Bihar, cSeptember 1943, W.S.F. 50(iv)/1942, B.S.A. Responses from the district headquarters and subdivisional capitals of both provinces attests to widespread cynicism towards Wood’s suggestions. Even officials based in the tribal belts, which had been focus of official food-relief and health operations (due to the fact that these areas were important recruiting grounds for the ’labour battalions’ involved in the construction of strategic projects), doubted the advisability of promising ’too much’ in the likely case the administration could ’not deliver’. Indeed, it was widely feared that an incapacity to fulfil official promises of food aid would stoke ’popular anger’ and possibly ’cause the explosion of riots’. See Secret Notes from the Deputy Magistrate of Dumka, G.O.B; the Deput Commissioner of the Santhal Parganas, G.O.B., and the Commissioner of the Chota Division, G.O.B., c. October 1943, W.S.F. 55/2(vii)/1943, B.S.A. —



Nagp

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99

report in October 1944 mentioned the recurring complaint made by

some

senior

military officers that ’post-war reconstruction’ was being ’over-stressed’. Advising restraint in the tone of such propaganda material, they had argued, in communications to the General Headquarters (India Command), that ’more might be done towards making him [the Indian soldier] appreciate that the war must be won first’.116

Unfortunately for the colonial administrators, their efforts to assuage the ’priority classes’ during the war often remained unappreciated at the time, and were ignored after the conclusion of the conflict. Whereas industrial activism was stifled by the selective distribution of economic benefits between 1941 and 1945, workers’ discontent was never very far from the surface and exploded into the open immediately after the war. However, unlike in the period after the First World War, when increased labour activism forced industrialists into a renewed alliance with the colonial authorities, the situation after August 1945 was strikingly different. Big business had gradually, yet very definitely, shifted its political alliances away from the Raj, not only in anticipation of the now inevitable transfer of power but also because of its tenuous relationship with the government. in wartime. Special measures, like the Excess Profits Tax and the special sub-clauses of the Defence of India Regulations, which prevented re-investment of wartime gains in certain sectors had remained immensely unpopular, and there were fears that the sterling balances would not be repaid in full by Britain; in a period of political renegotiation, these restrictions were adroitly denounced by Indian business groups as the stifling of ’legitimate national aspirations’ of the Indian nation. lit This hostility between Government and business was exacerbated by the

suspicion that business interests were now backing and financing the Congress activities, especially during the Quit India agitations. 118 Businessmen on the other hand resented the Government’s single-mindedness in supplying the War Effort, while making efforts to ensure that no industry capable of competing with British industry for the Indian market after the war came into being. l9 The mistrust of the Government by business was not assuaged by selected business for representatives being incorporated into the Viceroy’s Executive Council instance, Homi Mody and Nalini Ranjan Sircar were inducted into the Viceroy’s Government’s

-

116

Most Secret W.I.S. (I.I.) 12 November 1944, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. See file 235 in P. Thakurdas Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (hereafter N.M.M.L.). Also see, K.T. Shah, ed., Report; National Planning Committee, pp. 234-35. 118 Strictly Secret Report entitled ’Congress and "Big Business"’, 28 February 1944, O.I.O.C. L/P&J/8/618a, 119 See files 81 and 563 in W. Hirachand Papers, N.M.M.L. 117

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100 Executive Council

during the warl2°

-

or

the

government’s various Committees on

post-war reconstruction, albeit in subordinate positions. Indeed, Ardeshir Dalal had an extremely short stint within the Planning and Development Department (set up in 1944), and as he resigned, he convincingly claimed that nothing could be done to further the cause of Indian industry from within the Government. 121 Some senior colonial officials had, of course, always feared that such a situation might arise. Linlithgow, for instance, had been aware of these problems of public relations, and had been far less sanguine than Thomas Hutton about the potential dividends of

simply disseminating ideological propaganda on the issue. He had, in a prophetic description about the situation prevalent in the last two years of the war and the period immediately after it, declared that in the light of public suspicion of British intentions, ’any well-advertised development policy might well be acclaimed by the people as only a belated attempt to remedy past omissions’.122 Thus, by 1942, it had become impossible for the Raj to implement the promises of post-war reconstruction in India. Partly as a consequence of the widespread realisation of this, the publicity campaign regarding economic matters proved largely ineffective. Despite the presence of good intentions among various officials within the colonial administration, the overall picture that emerges is that the dominant concern among the colonial administration between 1942 and 1947 was to ensure that economic and political benefits continued to accrue to Britain, notwithstanding the difficulties of the Indian situation at the time. This, of course, brings us back to an old point: that imperialism is neither explicable in terms of a grand conspiracy theory, nor in terms of ’good’ or ’bad’ intentions of its officials. Even making allowances for over-optimism and self-delusion, rather than cynical attempts at self-serving manipulation, the balancing of Indian and British interests was by the end of the war, widely accepted to be unrealistic. Indeed, as Britain’s initial economic calculations for the post-war period were rapidly upset, her wartime plans for Indian development, announced with so much fanfare, were quietly allowed to rest in their filing cabinets, while new schemes designed to allow Britain favourable access to an independent Indian economy were lobbied.

120

Mody and Sircar resigned in response to Gandhi’s fast, not wishing to bear the responsibility in case of his death. See copy of their resignation letter, dated 17 February 1943, in f42, Subject File No. 13, H.P. Mody Papers, N.M.M.L. 121 See R. Chattopadhyay, ’The Idea of Planning in India’, pp. 214-42. Also see Hanson, The Process ofPlanning, p. 44. The Department was abolished in 1946, soon after Dalal’s Both

departure. Telegram from Linlithgow, Viceroy, India to L. Amery, S.S.I., 16 July 1943, ff. 106-7, 122

L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.

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