INA History Thread

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JayS
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by JayS »

INA veterans got a place in Republic Day Parade for the first time...!! Better late than never..
Rony
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Rony »

Modi government declassifies all files related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Azad Hind Fauj
The Narendra Modi government which had promised to honor the long pending demand has declassifed all files related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. This information was given by the Minister of State of Culture and Tourism, Shri Prahlad Singh Patel in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

Shri Prahlad Singh Patel stated that the government has de-classified all records relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Azad Hind Fauj and placed them in the National Archives of India. Accordingly, a total of 304 declassified records/files have been transferred to National Archives of India by above mentioned Ministries/Offices for permanent retention. Out of 304 files, 303 files are already uploaded on the Netaji web portal i.e. http://www.netajipapers.gov.in.

The National Archives of India is the custodian of declassified files/records of the Government of India. In addition, in 1997 the National Archives of India had received 990 declassified files pertaining to the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) from the Ministry of Defence, and in 2012, 1030 files/ items pertaining to the Khosla Commission (271 files/ items) and Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (759 files/ items) from the Ministry of Home Affairs. All these files/ items are already open to the public under the Public Records Rules, 1997.

The files that have been declassified belonged to various ministries and secretariats. The details of de-classified records relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose are as below:

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ramana
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

Summary of the factors for British leaving India in 1947:
Everyone has heard the story of India’s freedom.

Anyone, anywhere in the world could tell you that the British left India because of the non-violent, Quit India movement led by Mahatma Gandhi.


That’s what we are taught in schools. I too believed in this, until I got interested in reading about one of our greatest actors, Utpal Dutt, who acted in over 200 memorable films like Golmaal. There was much more to Utpal Dutt than his silver screen avatar.

On December 27, 1965, Utpal Dutt was arrested by the Congress government of West Bengal under the Preventive Detention Act and detained for over seven months, as the Congress government feared that his play Kallol, which ran to packed houses at Calcutta's Minerva Theatre, might provoke anti-government protests in West Bengal.

Kallol was based on the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946, which was the real reason why the British left India. And the Congress government didn’t want the common people to know this deliberately omitted fact because it would have busted the Congress’s story that we won freedom only because of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent movement.

Justice PB Chakraborthy, the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and the acting Governor of West Bengal, wrote: "When I was acting Governor, Lord Attlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor's palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhi's Quit India movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they leave?"

"In his reply Attlee cited, ‘the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji’, as the main reason.

That's not all. Chakraborthy added: "Toward the end of our discussion I asked Attlee what was the extent of Gandhi's influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Attlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, m-i-n-i-m-a-l!"

To understand the significance of Attlee's assertion, we have to go back in time to 1945. The Second World War had ended. The Allied forces, led by Britain and the United States, had won. The Axis powers, led by Hitler's Germany, had been vanquished.

The British economy was in big recession to the extent that it didn’t have money to provide for basic facilities to the Royal Army in India.


At the same time, in August 1945, Subhash Chandra Bose had reportedly died, while he collaborated with the Japanese and Hitler to fight the British. After the Second World War was over, three of the top officers of the Indian National Army – General Shah Nawaz Khan (Muslim), Colonel Prem Sehgal (Hindu) and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon (Sikh) were put on public trial at the Red Fort in Delhi.

Due to the sympathy toward Netaji and the INA, there was an instant and large outpouring of passion and patriotism amongst Indians. These stories were being shared via wireless sets and through media on ships, where the sailors who were being given bad treatment and lack of proper service facilities, got inspired to go out and join together in a strike and rebel against the government.

Official British military intelligence reports in 1946 indicated that the Indian soldiers were inflamed and could not be relied upon to obey their British officers. There were only 40,000 British troops in India at the time. Most were eager to go home and in no mood to fight the 2.5 million battle-hardened Indian soldiers who were being demobilised.

In January 1946, due to slow demobilisation and poor conditions of service following the end of World War II, cadres in the Royal Air Force went on a series of demonstrations and strikes at several dozen Royal Air Force stations.

As these incidents involved refusals to obey orders they technically constituted a form of ‘mutiny’. The ‘mutiny’ began at Karachi (RAF Drigh Road) and later spread to involve nearly 50,000 men over 60 RAF stations in India and Ceylon, including the then-largest RAF base at Kanpur.

The protests lasted about eleven days. The issues causing the RAF unrest were ultimately resolved, but it set a precedent and in less than a fortnight, on February 18, 1946, a mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy in which 78 of a total of 88 ships mutinied.

Said Sir Stafford Cripps, intervening in the debate on the motion to grant Indian Independence in the British House of Commons, “… the Indian Army in India is not obeying the British officers… in these conditions if we have to rule India for a long time, we have to keep a permanent British army for a long time in a vast country of 400 million (and) we have no such army….”

The Royal Navy Mutiny started on February 18, 1946 and by next evening a Naval Central Strike Committee was formed where Leading Signalman M S Khan and Petty Officer Telegraphist Madan Singh were unanimously elected President and Vice President, respectively, and soon it spread from Bombay to Karachi, Calcutta, Cochin and Vizag. 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 sailors were in the strike.

Seeing this Naval strike, Bombayites did a one-day general strike. Even the Royal Indian Air Force and local police forces joined in the other cities. The NCOs in the British Indian army openly ignored and defied the orders of the British superiors. In Madras and Pune, the Indian Army revolted in the British Garrisons.

Riots broke out all over the country. The British made to get off their cars and shout ‘Jai Hind’ by the mutineers and the Indian Tricolor was hoisted on most of the ships.

Day 3 into this, the Royal Air Force flew an entire squadron of Bombers over Bombay Harbor to show support. Meanwhile, the sailors had taken over HMIS Bahadur, Chamak and Himalaya and from the Royal Naval Anti-Aircraft School.

It was by that time that the decision to confront the Navy ratings was taken by the British and the sailors aboard the destroyer ‘Hindustan’ were challenged. Many sailors lost their lives and could not fight back much and in the process, the ship ‘Hindustan’ was destroyed.

Despite the extensive support from the public and all wings of the Armed forces (Army, Navy, Air force, and even the police), national leaders did not support the Navy mutineers or their supporters but instead condemned them.

These brave freedom fighters in the Navy were leaderless, surely, but they had achieved what no other generation and group of Indians had achieved in 250 years – turn the Indian Armed forces personnel against their ‘masters’.

Netaji Bose had imagined this kind of a situation.

Ultimately, however, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress party opted for a ‘Quit India Movement’ against the British in 1942 and he spread the slogan ‘Do or Die’, which in fact Netaji had proposed in 1938.

The reasons behind Indian independence are nicely summarized by the esteemed Indian historian Ramesh Chandra Majumdar: “There is, however, no basis for the claim that the Civil Disobedience Movement directly led to independence… the battles for India’s freedom were also being fought against Britain, though indirectly, by Hitler in Europe and Japan in Asia. None of these scored direct success, but few would deny that it was the cumulative effect that brought freedom to India. In particular, the revelations made by the INA trial, and the reaction it produced in India, made it quite plain to the British, already exhausted by the war, that they could no longer depend upon the loyalty of the sepoys for maintaining their authority in India. This had probably the greatest influence upon their final decision to quit India. Without loyal sepoys it was quite impossible for the British to rule in India because it could not have brought enough Englishmen to India to quell any nationalist movement.”

In 1967, during a seminar marking the 20th anniversary of Independence, the British High Commissioner of the time John Freeman said, “…the mutiny of 1946 had raised the fear of another large-scale mutiny along the lines of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, from the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who had participated in the Second World War. The mutiny had accordingly been a large contributing factor to the British deciding to leave India. The British were petrified of a repeat of the 1857 Mutiny, since this time they feared they would be slaughtered to the last man."

Mainstream politicians – from Jinnah to Gandhi to Nehru to Maulana Azad – all seemed to have let these freedom fighters down. They apparently abandoned them and except for preaching they did nothing to help them.

In its last statement, released on the night of February 22, the Naval Central Strike Committee concluded, ‘Our strike has been a historic event in the life of our nation. For the first time the blood of men in the Services and in the streets flowed together in a common cause. We in the Services will never forget this. We know also that you, our brothers and sisters, will not forget. Long live our great people. Jai Hind.’

On March 15, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee accepted that, “The tide of nationalism is running very fast in India and indeed all over Asia… national ideas have spread… among some of the soldiers.”

A year later, they fled before the Empire collapsed on their heads.

Almost 54 years later on December 4, 2001, the Naval Uprising memorial was inaugurated to restore the forgotten history of India’s freedom struggle against the British invaders.

In 2005, Utpal Dutt’s play Kallol, for which he was imprisoned, was revived as a part of the state-funded ‘Utpal Dutt Natyotsav’, on an off-shore stage, by the Hooghly River in Kolkata.

Without the Naval Uprising of 1946, the story of India’s freedom will never be complete.

Share to stop the myth that CongressParty secured India's independence. British and Congress were collaborators. They collaborated with the leftists after independence to custom-write India's history to suit their fake narrative. If you don't know, please know about Antinational Congress Party here:

https://www.straighttalks.in/2019/04/ac ... it-is.html
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Vivek K »

Why waste time re-writing the past? Should we let politics color our history? The BJP now has the opportunity to take India towards success and carefully write the story of the future.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Cyrano »

History as taught today, conditions a nation's psyche. Determines who our heroes are, who are not. Shapes our views about our heritage. Can make children grow up as proud and confident citizen or weak and diffident youth. Correcting biases and untruths that have crept into our history today has its importance.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

Vivek K, We have swept under the carpet many of the unsavory acts of the Congress.

For a nation with motto "Satyameva Jayate", we sure hide a lot.
Atleast now the facts should be released.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by vinamr_s »

Vivek K wrote:Why waste time re-writing the past? Should we let politics color our history? The BJP now has the opportunity to take India towards success and carefully write the story of the future.
“Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.”

You have to analyse your past to take better decisions in the present for writing the great “story of the future” you are talking about.

Re-writing history-textbooks which involves reversing the ‘tampering’ that was done by the Marxist historians cartel forming the textbook-mafia is good.

The real question is what procedure do you adopt for doing so? Replace the old-mafia with a new one? No.

I’m yet to read how the BJP govt is going about this and other proposals inline. So can’t say anything else.
ramana
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

Reviving this historic thread on the historic declaration that Republic Day celebrations will start from 23 January which is Netaji's birthday.

Finally, INA gets the honor they deserved.
Netaji's statue replaces King George V.

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This thread has contributed a small portion to this historic event.

: Pranam: to Netaji and INA veterans who sacrificed so much.
We finally are redeeming your sacrifice.

https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1484547757910421508?s=20
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by RajaRudra »

A lot of left liberal media in US giving -ve coverage to the news of Netaji statue. Changes in band song also questioned by left media people locally.
Both the issues getting good support among common people.
ramana
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

What is their locus standi in India? Zero.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Atmavik »

RajaRudra wrote:A lot of left liberal media in US giving -ve coverage to the news of Netaji statue. Changes in band song also questioned by left media people locally.
Both the issues getting good support among common people.

They can take a hike … and take there desi chamchas with them
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by srikandan »

https://twitter.com/EdwardGLuce/status/ ... 5285757958

The neo-colonial white "liberal" bigots in the USA have started their anti-INA propaganda...doesn't serve the interests of blighty clearly
This American Journalist Edward Luce is quote tweeting the PM and basically calls him a nazi via guilt by association...no nuances requuired here, unlike the nuances in all the genocides committed by the "liberal human-rights loving" white race, and their hero Winston Churchill.
ramana
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

Should take the fight to Twitter directly.
chetak
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

From the net

Netaji may have had no knowledge of Nazi atrocities.

So he is not tainted/linked with nazism. He met and shook hands with hitler, so what... didn't Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Wallis, Duchess of Windsor do that very exact same thing in 1937

What's wrong with celebrating Netaji now?

We have knowledge of Churchill's atrocities and his racist mindset against the colored people.

Churchill had knowledge of Stalin's genocides and purges. Even knowledge of the Ukrainian famine. Yet he consciously allied with him, allegedly, to save britain.

Yet that drunken, racist, colonial and alcoholic bigot is still celebrated as a leader of the free world after 70 years

Has no one in the UK heard of the goose, ganders, sauce, and other culinary justifications for global genocide that drove britshit empire building, or are the britshits intentionally and selectively and hypocritically amnesiac and have become wokely adept at whitewashing their war crimes and atrocities.

Westerners need to understand that their history or struggles aren't the only truth, there's a much bigger world beyond europe, UK, and amrika

India is celebrating her patriotic national leader Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose

Subhash Chandra Bose is a hero for us...he was, heart and soul, wedded to the idea of uprooting the britishit authority from India....he didn't discard his objectives and principles just because they were inconvenient...he had a simple rule....the enemy of an enemy was a friend.

Hitler was bad , because he occupied other countries and killed people.....and Brits were ruling a quarter of the world because they said please and thank you.....wow

Atrocities against humans are much larger and harsher as done by the rabid communists than any other thought or sect ("peaceful" abrahamic religions apart), do you condemn them, NO. Rather, the west merrily celebrates Marx, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Che Guevara and many others. In comparison, the contrived hate towards hitler is highly selective. No less than a pope supported hitler

What is actually sticking in their craws is not the celebration of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose per se but the permanent removal of the hymn "abide with me" from the repertoire of the music of India's Republic day celebrations.

The dismantling of some of the last connections of the colonial legacy is hurting them badly as is the relegation and the downgrading of the lootyens built colonial Indian parliament building to a museum that no one will visit.

And like many of Modi's actions, another silent, unexpected, and devastating strike
Last edited by chetak on 24 Jan 2022 01:47, edited 1 time in total.
srikandan
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by srikandan »

ramana ji: Should take the fight to Twitter directly.
Not on social media. Just observe without registering an account. People are taking him on in replies but this guy is just one of many starting this whole narrative at their end.

Link to Netaji' speech and the PM's address

https://twitter.com/i/status/1485211063016890372

https://twitter.com/anujdhar/status/1485211063016890372

Anuj Dhar has written on SC Bose
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ManSingh »

Vivek K wrote:Why waste time re-writing the past? Should we let politics color our history? The BJP now has the opportunity to take India towards success and carefully write the story of the future.
Maybe to correct a historic wrong??

My grand-uncle( now long gone ) was a member of the INA. He was a hero for our us but the dominant story that has persisted with us is how he was denied pension and refused any recognition by New Delhi.

Possibly this was orchestrated by the first family of the country who have falsely spread the narrative that it was their contribution alone that led to India's freedom. This "narrative of peaceful azaadi" is not something we easily connect with since we don't have stories passed down generations about how our forefathers attended peaceful gatherings at the behest of J.N. Nehru/Gandhi to ask for freedom.

The stories we talked about 20 years ago ( my great grand uncle + others ) are no longer talked about in our family. Strangely, I have a hard time recollecting my visit to the war memorial in Singapore. If it were not for this government, probably I wouldn't have remembered my grand-uncle.

https://www.narendramodi.in/mobile/pm-v ... -singapore

Hopefully the government will go beyond the statue and attempt to present facts to the nation on India's independence. Nonetheless, this step by the government should be appreciated as it recognizes contribution of those who laid down their life for India's independence.
chetak
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

ManSingh wrote:
Vivek K wrote:Why waste time re-writing the past? Should we let politics color our history? The BJP now has the opportunity to take India towards success and carefully write the story of the future.
Maybe to correct a historic wrong??

My grand-uncle( now long gone ) was a member of the INA. He was a hero for our us but the dominant story that has persisted with us is how he was denied pension and refused any recognition by New Delhi.

Possibly this was orchestrated by the first family of the country who have falsely spread the narrative that it was their contribution alone that led to India's freedom. This "narrative of peaceful azaadi" is not something we easily connect with since we don't have stories passed down generations about how our forefathers attended peaceful gatherings at the behest of J.N. Nehru/Gandhi to ask for freedom.

The stories we talked about 20 years ago ( my great grand uncle + others ) are no longer talked about in our family. Strangely, I have a hard time recollecting my visit to the war memorial in Singapore. If it were not for this government, probably I wouldn't have remembered my grand-uncle.

https://www.narendramodi.in/mobile/pm-v ... -singapore

Hopefully the government will go beyond the statue and attempt to present facts to the nation on India's independence. Nonetheless, this step by the government should be appreciated as it recognizes contribution of those who laid down their life for India's independence.
I think that the dismantling is being managed cleverly in bite sized steps.

Matters, as they have come to pass today, would have been impossible even 10
short years ago, but now, a chomp here, a nibble there, a statue now and then to keep the momentum going is par for the course.

the ghandhys, both with and without hair, are being taken apart publicly, slowly but surely. Books are seeing the light of day now and on topics that hitherto were considered taboo. Savarkar has been mainstreamed, Netaji has been resurrected. Burials of fake icons have commenced in right earnest and the colonial deep state is in grievous pain, and there is no one to "abide with them"

wait for the 100th year dhamaka anniversary of the RSS next year.

pappu is still talking "hindutwadi", while the nationalists are silently strategizing the obliteration of the mafia famiglia's naam aur nishan.

'ज‍िस देश में संसद में 1978 तक नेता जी की फोटो तक नहीं लगी थी, उस देश में राजपथ पर नेता जी की प्रत‍िमा लग जाए ये अपने आप में बड़ी बात है'- लेखक anuj dhar


The presence of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose at India Gate is a long awaited correction of history.
A leader who fought imperialism and compelled decolonization is being fittingly recognized.
S Jaishankar


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This is a message from a New India. We will be true to ourselves when dealing with the world. S Jaishankar
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Sachin »

RajaRudra wrote:Changes in band song also questioned by left media people locally.
To be frank & honest; I have no problems with the tune Abide with me. It is a good tune for the occassion (evening & sun set). But what I don't understand is what was the proof that Mahatma Gandhi liked the tune, as that was taken as the reason to add this tune to the Beating Retreat function? As far as I know, the Beating Retreat ceremony was actually choreographed by British officers only. And they could have added this tune as it gels well with the overall function. I think it was only after 1960s that Indian Armed Forces units started having their own original tunes (composed by Indian band masters). Till then even many of the regimental marches were all British.
chetak wrote:Books are seeing the light of day now and on topics that hitherto were considered taboo. Savarkar has been mainstreamed, Netaji has been resurrected.
+1. The number & type of books now available in Amazon (Kindle et.al) is just amazing. I can only call it as major blow to secularism :lol:. There is even one book which lists out 100+ blunders of Bandit-ji. I remember my school class mate mentioning that her son was pretty upset after knowing some of the experiments of Mahatma Gandhi ;) 8). So idols are getting broken up.

On the other side; in another discussion forum I also noticed another attempt to 'redefine' history. This was done by leftists who used INA and Subhash Bose to ridicule the current Indian Army units who still have their British Indian Army days as part of their regimental history. A leftist historian was abusing the IA unit as rice soldiers (i.e mercenaries who joined the British for free food), and that INA was only India's true army. Off course the next story line is of the great communal harmony which existed in INA and how the current IA units are all Hindutwavadis (due to their religion-caste composition & war cries etc.).
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

^^^^^^^

Sachin ji,

even Godse has been onboarded.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

One of the major mistakes that the britshits made was practically dismantling the Royal Indian Army in europe and other war zones and sending back to India the Indian troops that had fought in the two world wars. It was a mistake that they repeated without gaming the consequences because of their stupid ideas of invincibility, pride, and arrogance in their empire, on which apparently, the sun never set

These were well trained and battle hardened troops who had proven their mettle in places as diverse as europe, africa, and palestine etc, fighting and prevailing against some of best white armies, especially in europe and under conditions of the harshest freezing winters and the inhospitable deserts of africa.

and when push came to shove, especially after the sham trial of the INA officers at the Red Fort in dilli and the Naval mutiny, the terrified britshits, ever in the psychological grip of the ferocious mutiny of 1857, realized even at that time in the aftermath of the 1857 war, they would never be able to hold India and it was just a matter of time before they were made to leave.

That is why the Naval mutiny so terrified them, especially the thought of almost a million and a half of britshit trained, battle hardened Indian troops waiting, watching, and more than willing to join the mutineers. These were also very fine Indian troops comfortable in their brown skins and no longer in any awe of the once great white father/mother across the seas. They also had trustworthy Indian military leadership whom they would follow loyally. They were also well exposed to britshit battle tactics and warfighting strategies.

This million, two million men completely queered the pitch for the britshits and closed off almost all their imperial and colonial options for holding India.

The demobbing of these trained and battle proven troops was to be their true undoing.

The britshits saw this game, set and match situation rapidly unfolding before their very eyes.

Left with no other options, the britshits simply cut and ran, panicked by the imagined terror of these allegedly vengeful and rampaging natives. The britshits also had no money, no army worth the name or even the will to fight what would have been a disastrous and globally humiliating defeat for churchill's rapidly dissolving empire. They used djinnah, neverwho and ghandy to vivisect the nation so that in the short to medium term there would be no viable threat from India to their plans in the middle east and their desperate quest for energy security in the gelf.

The Indian colonial supply chain had been lost to them forever. The very same supply chain of men, material, money, and grain that helped the free loading britshits to stave off the nazi attack

The britshits also feared the hungry russian bear slobbering and eagerly waiting in the wings, in what became east germany, close enough for stalin to walk across and possibly make the channel crossing that hitler could not do.

The BIF games also started around the very same time. The Hindus were effectively disenfranchised, neutered, and forced to accord primacy to the minorities, thus stymying the rise of the Hindus in their own ancestral homelands using the constitution. That colonial constitution is yet to be amended because of some so called basic structure doctrine.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsuhNwmtg1Y



Netaji at India Gate - On his Jayanti, Anuj Dhar asserts that Netaji got us freedom, not Gandhi


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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

A movie named “Why I Killed Gandhi”, which is set to release on OTT platforms on 30th Jan, the anniversary of ghandy’s assassination has riled up the entire jhund of wokes, commies, liberandus, and especially the congi parivaris and darbaris.

High time that Godse had his say onlee.


After the lethal shock of the events on 23 rd January at India Gate, comes another deadly blow for the mafia famiglia.

"Why I killed Gandhi " which is to be released soon, has another sting in its tail ...

It also has the unkindest cut of all: the actor playing Godse is a lok sabha MP Amol Kolhe, from the NCP and they kept it quiet all this while

now the congis will have tears in their eyes without cutting any allium cepa

The treacherously tailored, and traitorously written perfidious history, as evily imagined and vilely conjured up by forces loyal to the corrosive colonial collective comprising the commies, britshits, jehadis, the BIF and above all, the treasonous congis, is starting to unravel at an alarming rate.

the mafia famiglia is very very quiet, no... no doubt that foreign consultations are on....and another mysterious vacation may be in the offing


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Re: INA History Thread

Post by srikandan »

https://twitter.com/chandrachurg/status ... Hv8Z4pAAAA

Bandit Nehru was a british collaborator and a traitorous scumbag -- Netaji identified him as such in his letter to his nephew. All markers of the murderous Nehru and his dynasty needs to be wiped clean from India.
Nobody has done more harm to me personally and to our cause in this crisis than Pandit Nehru...His open propaganda against me has done me more harm than the activities of the 12 stalwarts.'
https://twitter.com/vjgtweets/status/14 ... 7379406848

As that tweet shows, Brits were aware that Netaji would break India free from the Raj and trained the venal/megalomaniac low-IQ moron Nehru to destroy India's independence movement.'
chetak
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

Anuj Dhar@anujdhar·1h

How IB became the mistress which served two masters: Under a Top Secret clause of Transfer of Power in 1947, IB was made subservient to British intelligence. And so, IB supplied to London, inter alia, intell about Subhas Bose

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This SB Shetty was keeping a tab on Netaji related matters in 1950s as well. He must have dutifully passed on all the intell to London.

The whole thing is so dirty that making it all public will cause major embarrassment to India as a country. All self-respecting Indians would be shaken to the bone. Can't say that for those who continue to amplify the PoV of those who aligned with the foreign occupiers of India.

Some tweets missing
chetak
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

"Dominion status is not the same as Independence.... It’s not true that a community is independent when its Ministers have in fact taken the Oath of Allegiance to the King."

-- Winston Churchill to Attlee on Indian Independence Bill, 1947
#TransferofPower #AzadiKaAmritMahotsav

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+ Attlee was British PM at that time. Churchill was his predecessor.
Churchill was annoyed that India Bill (to be passed by British Parliament) was being dubbed as ‘The Indian Independence Bill’. He said it was, in fact, ‘The Indian Dominions Bill’.
chetak
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

ABSTRACT

This article throws light on Lord Mountbatten’s enduring involvement in India after 1964, an overlooked feature of his later life. On a number of issues such as the abolition of titles, privileges and privy purses of Indian Princes (1967–71), imposition of Emergency in India (1975), arms sales, expulsion of BBC (1970–72) and evolution of history-writing on Partition, this article evaluates his changing role as a ‘friend of India’ in Britain, while becoming an irksome interlocutor for both the British and Indian ‘official mind’. This draining of Mountbatten’s influence, though not involvement, through the 1970s, represented an inter-generational dilation of Indo-British relations.

Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: after Nehru
chetak
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Posts: 32282
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

ABSTRACT

This article throws light on Lord Mountbatten’s enduring involvement in India after 1964, an overlooked feature of his later life. On a number of issues such as the abolition of titles, privileges and privy purses of Indian Princes (1967–71), imposition of Emergency in India (1975), arms sales, expulsion of BBC (1970–72) and evolution of history-writing on Partition, this article evaluates his changing role as a ‘friend of India’ in Britain, while becoming an irksome interlocutor for both the British and Indian ‘official mind’. This draining of Mountbatten’s influence, though not involvement, through the 1970s, represented an inter-generational dilation of Indo-British relations.

Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: after Nehru


Introduction
When Lord Louis Mountbatten came to India in May 1964 for his friend Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s funeral, President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan told him that ‘he was confident that Lal Bahadur Shastri will become Prime Minister’. Mountbatten promptly conveyed this to R.H. Belcher, then-acting British High-Commissioner (HC) in New Delhi.1 A waiting Belcher was grateful: ‘Your talk with the President was … of immense help and … it has been most fortunate that Radhakrishnan’s expectations turned out to be the truth.2 Mountbatten also congratulated Prime Minister Shastri, who, while agreeing to have a quiet lunch with him, declined his requests to let Nehru’s sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit represent India at the upcoming Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference or return to London as India’s envoy.3 This episode captures the changing contours of independent India’s first Governor-General’s influence in India, with the passing away of his friend and India’s first Prime Minister.

This decline was an inter-generational dimming, but it did not decimate Mountbatten’s involvement in India. It side-lined it to a listening vantage—on the margins but privileged. This article is an exercise in tracing this trajectory of tailing off, which despite dwindling returns, throws an interesting light, from Mountbatten’s unique perch into certain Indian affairs and their inter-play with Indo-British relations, from the mid-1960s; a time called ‘the Other Transfer of Power in India’.4 V.P. Menon, Mountbatten’s constitutional adviser during the original transfer of power in 1947, assured him that notwithstanding Shastri’s diminutive stature, ‘there are only two and odd years to go for the next general elections … and … therefore the cabinet will hold together’.5 S.S. Khera, the last of the seven Cabinet Secretaries who served Nehru, added that ‘the story that [Nehru’s friend] Krishna [Menon] and [daughter] Indira [Gandhi] were lined up against [Shastri] was a figment of imagination’.6 This correspondence from the first month after Nehru’s death helped Mountbatten contribute to steady the British ‘official mind’, at an uncertain time in their outlook towards India.

Yet, in the considerable scholarship on Mountbatten and India, there has not been much discussion of Mountbatten’s enduring interest in Indian affairs after June 1948, i.e. after leaving the subcontinent where he had arrived in March 1947 as British India’s last Viceroy and where he stayed on in August 1947 as Dominion of India’s first Governor-General.7 In Mountbatten’s official biography, the post-1948 period, unsurprisingly, covered his naval career that saw him become First Sea Lord (1955–59) and Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) (1959–65).8 Writers appreciative of Mountbatten’s time in India remain limited to praising his ‘mission’ in 1947–48,9 while those critical of him also make their case for the same time.10 Likewise, whether the biographies of Nehru,11 or the historiography on the Partition of India,12 they are focused on the ‘first year(s)’ of Partition, Independence, Integration of the Indian states and their contentious events.13

It is in the histories of independent India and of Indo-British ties under the New Commonwealth (1949),14 itself his contribution (with others), that Mountbatten appears frequently, if episodically. The latter include (a) the first India–Pakistan conflict on Kashmir (1947–49) and its diplomatic aftermath,15 (b) the first decade of Indo-British relations within the Anglo-American pact-politics of the early-Cold War,16 (c) the Indo-China conflict (1962) and its side effect of seeking a resolution of the Kashmir dispute,17 (d) India’s defence preparedness in 1963,18 and (e) the India–Pakistan war of 1965.19 Before and after these, he found himself involved in events as diverse as his friend Nehru agitating the Anglo-Americans in allowing the military annexation of the Portuguese enclave in India, Goa in 1961,20 and them, in turn, being anxious around the questions After Nehru Who/What?21

Alongside these overt instances, evidence from the Mountbatten Papers indicates his behind-the-scenes involvement in issues like the princely state of Hyderabad and its enforced accession into the Indian Union in 1948 and arms sales to the Indian (and Pakistani) Navy(s),22 while maintaining an ‘influence of friendship’ in matters personal and of personnel in Indian diplomatic affairs.23 This made him a ‘friend of India’ in the West as well as a successful channel for successive British government(s) to reach out to Nehru. In short, for two decades from 1947, he was the one Viceroy, who refused to disappear from New Delhi and remained a considerable figure of recently recalled colonial authority,24 (if waning) in post-colonial India.25 Indeed, his prolonged influence in ‘unofficial capacities … with post-independence India and Burma’ has not been entirely unexplored though neither singularly nor, given the wider aim of looking ‘at the royal family in promoting Britain’s foreign policy’,26 at depth.

This article, drawing upon Mountbatten papers and British official archives as well as supplementing them with personal papers of two of his Indian contacts, begins where such accounts finish that is with the end of Nehru’s life—the time of Mountbatten’s maximum impact in New Delhi as well as in London as the CDS—and brings to light those matters relating to India on which Mountbatten remained interested, informed and tried to involve himself longer than hitherto acknowledged, albeit with mounting imperviousness in both the capitals and among their respective bureaucracies. Apart from (a) an assortment of ‘high politics’, miscellaneous matters around history-writing, public memorialising (1965–70) and palace intrigues (1974–76), this long-drawn-out British narrative includes (b) reaching out to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on the fate of Indian princes when their privy purses were sought to be abolished between 1967 and 1971 and (c) on the freedom of press in reporting from India as an Emergency was imposed there in 1975. Together they serve to (a) elongate a personal history of an imperial intermediary after empire in the post-imperial half of the 20th c. in India, (b) outline the shadow of a retrospective regime and (c) portray a certain British-Indian experience. Throughout, Mountbatten and his staff continued to prove highly ‘idiosyncratic’ interlocuters as befits a self-publicist and akin to his irksome initiative ‘between 1964 and 1966 to create new conference for the Commonwealth’27; of the highest status, if not quality, for the newly created Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) (1968) and its High-Commissioners.28

War & peace, history & memory
As he began to work as Nehru’s successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri started hard enough to suffer a heart attack within three weeks, setting waves of concern across New Delhi as well as in London. Mountbatten read from V.P. Menon that this was a ‘tragedy greater than [Nehru’s] death … if anything happens to [Shastri], Indira would succeed him … Please therefore make a lot of fuss about her.29 This, then, was part of the personal roles that Mountbatten was involved in from this time. Sir Saville Garner, Permanent Under-Secretary (1962–65) at the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), asked Mountbatten to help, when he read from Belcher that Indira Gandhi was contemplating a holiday in either Britain or Yugoslavia, with the latter “being considered as more likely to offer privacy”. Belcher and his officials in New Delhi were naturally “not happy” and felt that “it would be a positive gain if [she] could come to Britain instead”. Mountbatten was consulted as much for his influence with Gandhi, as for his provision of “a simple and secluded house”.30 In the event, Gandhi, alongside India’s Finance Minister, came to Britain in July 1964 to represent Shastri at the Commonwealth premiers’ conference. Afterwards, Vijayalakshmi Pandit shared with Mountbatten that ‘Indira [was] “emotionally unable” to contest [Nehru’s] seat’, which the Congress party was naturally keen to retain to ‘stop a wave of demoralisation’.31 With party workers ‘disappointed’ at Gandhi’s refusal to succeed her in father’s constituency, it was Pandit who stepped in. The by-election was held on 22 November 1964 and Pandit duly won, citing her brother’s ‘memory and love for him [as] decisive’.32

Nothing, however, was more awkward politically for London than an ‘unfinished business of partition’,33 the dispute on Jammu and Kashmir, where notwithstanding New Delhi’s pliant regime in its capital Srinagar, the paramount leader of Kashmiri self-determination, Sheikh ‘Abdullah’s popularity [had] not much impaired’.34 Shastri, not enjoying his predecessor’s friendship with the Sheikh, who had nevertheless been ousted as premier in August 1953 and been largely in prison till April 1964,35 was being looked at anxiously by Britons and Indians alike as to ‘whether [he] will support Abdullah in bringing about an understanding between India and Pakistan’.36 Such was the engagement with Mountbatten and his staff by the CRO on these early post-Nehru days that some of their communications were copied. For instance, Mountbatten’s long-time secretary, Sir Ronald Brockman’s correspondence with V.P. Menon and that of the then-British High-Commissioner in India (1960–65), Sir Paul Gore-Booth’s with Mountbatten were at times exact, both drawing upon the latter’s Indian contacts. The early summary of their combined feelings was as under:

The new PM has more “liberal” ideas on Kashmir than Nehru had until the last few weeks of his life but (1) he lacks Nehru’s presence and support and (2) the efforts to be more liberal produced an outburst from extreme Hindus and professional anti-Pakistanis … The important thing [is] to give him moral support and to induce President Ayub [of Pakistan] to keep up the conciliatory line.37

Their ideal, improbable scenario was India ‘accepting East Pakistan for Kashmir’, while a related theme of India ‘offer[ing] Ladakh’ was difficult ‘in the present state of the triangle (India/Pakistan/China)’.38 Their utopian ‘broader theme [was] of an ultimate special relation (con-federal) of India and Pakistan’. Instead, less than a year later, India and Pakistan were daggers drawn in the Rann of Kutch,39 and Mountbatten, as the British CDS, found himself at a security meeting in New Delhi on 7 May 1965. That eventually two-parts, of four-weeks each, indecisive war was waged as much by soldiers in the theatres of Kutch, Kashmir and Punjab as by its reportage then and scholarship recently.40 From London’s perspective, as Mountbatten informed Gore-Booth’s successor John Freeman, the Indian Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan and his Chiefs of Staff were ‘irritated about the British … that [they] had not come out more strongly to support the Indian case’. Freeman agreed and ‘hoped Mountbatten would … impress on the PM [Harold Wilson] the undesirability of equating India and Pakistan’. It was a suggestion after Mountbatten’s heart, who also emphasised ‘how Pakistan had sold themselves for American aid … and were also employing pressure by misusing CENTO and SEATO’.41 A month earlier on 7 April 1965, Mountbatten had urged the Secretary of State for Defence to be ‘sympathetic towards India’s requests for frigate building, weapon-class destroyers, fleet tanker and training submarines’, over-and-above their effect on Pakistan. A week later, he had conveyed to Prime Minister Wilson the Indian government’s ‘anxiety for an early decision on the Oberon [submarine] for India’,42 reiterating his role as the central conduit for Indian approaches ‘so far’ and requesting for the ‘usual channels’ to take over.43

As for himself, he drew upon unusual contacts to supplement information. In mid-September 1965, with the India–Pakistan war in its climactic days, Mountbatten sent to Wilson’s Cabinet Office an appreciation of the conflict, prepared by Ms Mansell, whom he described as ‘an intelligent Indian woman, a friend of Nehru’s and married to an Englishman’. She was joined by Ms Paulette Pratt, former assistant editor of The Queen, who had visited India in 1964. Their appreciation seemed to the officials ‘to pre-suppose a degree of long-standing collusion between Pakistan and Communist China’, which the British Intelligence did not support then but which events since have confirmed.44 In view of ‘the respect’ in which Mountbatten held Mansell’s views, the Cabinet Office forwarded the report to the CRO and the Foreign Office (FO).45 In the event, before any consideration could be called for, a ceasefire was announced, but Mountbatten warned General J.N. Chaudhuri, India’s army chief who had been his ADC in 1945, that he could not ‘pretend that Indian PR helped very much … a war correspondent said that he was received with open arms by Pakistan [while] every sort of difficulty was made by the Indian army’.46 In the lead-up to the Soviet-sponsored Tashkent (January 1966) talks, he reached out to General K.M. Cariappa, the first Indian Commander-in-Chief (1949–53), to re-emphasise his impression that ‘the PR machine of Pakistan work[s] more effectively’.47

As Shastri was meeting Ayub in Tashkent, Mountbatten was corresponding with Chaudhuri, about his continuing ‘distress at the poor public relations by India; in particular regard to Kashmir’. He ‘stressed the care needed to put newspaper proprietors in the UK—Lord Thomson, Sir Max Aitken, Lord Astor, Daniel Astor, Cudlipp and Mr Jacobson—straight’.48 Then, in June 1967, when the Chancellor of Exchequer James Callaghan tried ‘to link British refusal to grant India credit for Leander [frigates] to Indian stand on the West Asian conflict’, Mountbatten was approached by the Government of India (GoI) as an ‘appropriate person to intervene’.49 Indira Gandhi, before becoming Prime Minister, had felt ‘a lack of contact between India and the British public’ in the aftermath of the 1965 war. She saw the ‘Britishers of [her] generation and earlier [as] prejudiced against India because of their colonial memories but … the younger generation [as] perhaps merely bored with India’.50 Within a month of her taking over the premiership in January 1966, then India’s Deputy-High-Commissioner in London and later her Secretary (1967–73) P.N. Haksar set out his disbelief in ‘the elaborate mythology … about our post-independence relationship with Britain’ thus:

Our becoming part of the Commonwealth saved us from the Cold War … Britain too derived benefits … [Now] … we have to develop direct relationship with the USA as we have developed with USSR … we simply must now stop rushing to this country [UK].51

In mid-1968, as someone who was a pillar of this mythology, Mountbatten ‘accepted an invitation from the President of India to chair a centenary celebration committee’ in Britain of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth centenary (1869–1969). For the newly created FCO, this proved a peculiar challenge as they knew ‘remarkably little’ about the financial and other resources Mountbatten had in mind, as well as his ‘precise plans’. As far as they were concerned, ‘the onus’ was entirely on Mountbatten and their ‘role [was] ancillary’ but they worried that it was ‘very likely that there will be insufficient public interest or private financial contribution [and] that HMG will be asked to provide funds’. Instead, they mulled over ‘an inexpensive act … a Gandhi commemorative postage stamp’ in the GPO’s list for 1969.52 Their worries were not unfounded, for Mountbatten sought and received GBP 5, 000 from the Chancellor of Exchequer towards this centenary committee, to organise a number of public events that involved the Prime Minister, the Prince of Wales and the Archbishop of Canterbury.53 In addition, the treasury contributed GBP 4, 000 towards the cost of a statue of Gandhi in Tavistock Square, London and GBP 10, 000 for a British pavilion at the Gandhi Exhibition in New Delhi. And, the GPO issued the commemorative stamp, while the India Office Library mounted a special exhibition.54 In a stark but unsurprisingly unequal contrast, seven years later, during the centenary celebrations of the birth of Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1976), founder of Pakistan, Mountbatten was conspicuous by his absence.55 Nor did the British government of the day do anything comparable to 1969.56

Alongside this selective public memorialising, this was also the time when history-writing on the Partitioned end of British empire in India took off in right earnest at the hands of professional historians, with the persona of Mountbatten right at the centre of it. It began with the publication in 1970 of The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935–1947 (Allen & Unwin), edited by C.H. Philips and M.D. Wainwright, and H.V. Hodson’s book The Great Divide: Britain—India—Pakistan (OUP, 1969). Hodson, an All Souls scholar and ex-editor of The Sunday Times who had been Reforms Commissioner in New Delhi in the 1940s and Director of the Empire Division in Ministry of Information in London in the 1930s, was given privileged access to Mountbatten Papers and allowed to quote from them by the former Viceroy, whose historical vanity was next to none and fuelled his desire to encase the early historiography on Partition around his agency.57 Hodson’s access led Indian historians B. Krishna (for his biography of Vallabhbhai Patel) and S. Gopal and B. Nanda (for their biographies of Jawaharlal Nehru) to request Mountbatten to see documents from 1947 to 48. Earlier, in 1962, another Indian historian Dr. Tara Chand had approached the British government for ‘access to private collections of papers of Indian interest in UK’ for his GoI-sponsored history of the Indian freedom movement. The CRO had replied then that while he could see all the ‘open period’ papers, there was ‘no immediate likelihood’ of either the Churchill or the Mountbatten papers, adding that ‘it would [not] be appropriate for the CRO to intervene’.58 Now, eight years later, Mountbatten’s staff asked the HMG for advice and the FCO replied that, for the period before 15 August 1947, Indian biographers should be asked to give the following undertakings:

(i) Not to publish … any documents which they see or make references to them, (ii) To submit their ms to the Secretary of the Cabinet for scrutiny and to accept any amendments … (iii) Access to the papers relating to the period after 15 August is a matter between Mountbatten, the Queen and the Government of India.

Mountbatten was further urged to ‘institute some guidelines for the use to which the material is put [as] much of it concerns Kashmir [and] a malicious historian could cause a lot of trouble’. Moreover, it was decided not to relinquish royal ‘control over these records’, not only because London would lose influence over their use but also because ‘it might result in their publication before those on the Transfer of Power and other documents covered by the 30-year rule’; the magnum opus XII–volumes undertaking under the chief editorship of Prof. Nicholas Mansergh that was sanctioned in 1967 by the Prime Minister and was to be periodically published between 1970 and 1983.59 Finally, since Hodson had quoted some documents, ‘it was possible that [Indians] may argue that they are being treated more harshly’ but, ‘if extracts were published out of context’, they could be ‘harmful and Mountbatten’s attention should be drawn to them’.60 Consequently, while selections from the 4000 files of Mountbatten papers were included in volumes VII to XII of the Transfer of Power series and the above-mentioned biographies would appear over 1975–80, it was not until 1991 that a summary catalogue of the Mountbatten collection was prepared and published.61

The Indian princes & their privy purses
From the late-1960s, Mountbatten began to be ‘terribly worried’ at the ruling Congress party’s resolution to abolish the privy purses of Indian princes. In the process, he tremendously worried the CRO/FCO and successive British High-Commissioners in New Delhi, in a saga that stretched from mid-1967 to mid-1970. This was his last private hurrah in India and it ended by rendering him irrelevant by both sides of the Indo-British inter-governmental relations.62 As the Congress party’s resolution became a major political controversy in India, in addition to involving legal and constitutional problems for the Indira Gandhi government,63 the Prime Minister, who in the past had openly criticised the princes and disliked the successful political activities of some of them, came under increasing pressure to implement the resolution, which was easier said than done.64 Meanwhile, Mountbatten felt ‘personally committed’ to this matter as it was his close collaboration with Nehru and his deputy Vallabhbhai Patel, minister responsible for the princely states, in 1947–48 that had prevailed upon the rulers to accept the privy purse as a ‘quid pro quo for the surrender of their sovereignty’ and accession to India.65 To that extent, he regarded the proposed abolition as ‘a breach of [his] solemn undertaking’.

Approached by the princes, Mountbatten regarded it as ‘his duty to make a personal appeal to Mrs Gandhi’. It was obvious to the CRO that there was ‘a risk that his intervention may be resented’ and they would convey this to him but, as he felt that he must ‘go ahead’, they were limited to working over his drafts and restraining him from not seeking ‘any publicity’. Their intention was to strike a balance between delivering Mountbatten’s ‘purely personal approach’ to the Indian authorities, while underlining that ‘the HMG in no way associate[d] themselves with [it]’. Indeed, as these privy purses were arranged by the Indian government after independence, London had no locus standi in the matter. Though understanding of Mountbatten’s motivations, the CRO were ‘very doubtful’ from the beginning, ‘whether it will be effective’. Instead, their concern was that, ‘in the present, sensitive stage of our relations with India, it will … cause damage’.66 They warned Garner that

If Lord Mountbatten becomes involved over princely privileges, it would lead to charges of his and our interfering in matters, which were the sole concern of Indians. This would be unhelpful to our general relations and also result in erosion of Lord Mountbatten’s high standing in India … It would be preferable to give a general warning to [him] about the political delicacy of this problem.67

This last bit was a reference to the 1967 general elections in India, wherein some princely families—opposed to the Congress—had demonstrated their considerable electoral power in their states.68 Garner hosted Mountbatten on 26 July 1967, when the latter called to express his concern, having been ‘approached by the Maharaja of Jaipur’. The Maharaja had claimed that he would lose something like GBP 180, 000 a year post-abolition of his privy purse and would ‘take up residence in this country’. Mountbatten, adding that ‘many of the lesser princes would be vitally affected [with] privy purses [their] only source of livelihood’, told Garner that he felt ‘a deep sense of personal responsibility since he [had] induced the Princes to accept the arrangements’ in 1947. He was wondering ‘how best’ to help, as he accepted ‘that any publicity would be fatal and it would be unwise to reveal the princes’ approach … ’ Thinking aloud that perhaps ‘the best course would be for him to write privately to Mrs Gandhi emphasising his own personal responsibility and her father’s reputation’, Mountbatten was told by Garner that they ought to consult the British High-Commissioner in New Delhi, John Freeman. While ‘open to suggestion’, Mountbatten was ‘anxious to despatch his letter’ soonest through Freeman and produced a flowery draft, paragraphs of which Garner wished ‘could be watered down’,69 as he forwarded it to Freeman. An impatient Mountbatten independently reached out to Freeman thus: ‘Maharaja of Jaipur came to see me … Maharaja of Bikaner wrote to me … My honour is at stake … but for my relationship to the King and the trust they placed in me, they would never have accepted [privy purses]’.70

Simultaneously, Mountbatten also left two letters from the Maharaja of Jaipur, who was then serving as India’s Ambassador in Spain, for his wife and son and asked Garner to get these delivered by the High-Commission. The Maharaja claimed that his mail, sent through the Indian diplomatic bag, was being opened and Garner added to Freeman that ‘there was perhaps occasion for turning blind eyes’.71 Two days later, on 28 July 1967, Mountbatten approached Garner again, informing that in response to a request from the Indian High-Commission in London to contribute in a publication commemorating the 20th anniversary of Indian independence, he ‘had the brainwave of writing a brief historical review … an indirect way of making my views on the privy purses known … If you feel this would be counter-productive and embarrassing then [it] could be watered down but it would be dishonest to omit’.72

Faced with these missives, John Freeman replied to Garner in no uncertain terms. He began by cautioning that privy purses were a subject of ‘acute political sensitivity’, on which Indira Gandhi had ‘a certain personal commitment’. However much, Mountbatten emphasised that he was acting in a ‘private capacity’, for him to write to her could be ‘construed as interference in Indian affairs and would not help the cause’, especially in light of Mountbatten’s recent rebuffed interventions in New Delhi over the appointment of India’s envoy in London. In April 1967, Mountbatten had suggested to Gandhi that his friend and her aunt Vijayalakshmi Pandit should be re-sent as India’s envoy in London.73 Justice Shanti Dhavan was appointed instead and a bitter Pandit would frame her self-serving anguish at Mountbatten in terms of ‘the West writing India off’.74 Still, Freeman acknowledged Mountbatten’s ‘sense of personal honour’ and was ‘ready to communicate his letter’, but with some deletions. Freeman also sought the authority to state that Mountbatten was writing in a ‘purely personal capacity’, that to transmit the letter was ‘an act of courtesy’ to him and that London did not ‘associate themselves with it’.75 The passage that Freeman wanted deleted read as follows and reflect Mountbatten’s sense of himself, his surroundings and Indian sensibilities:

If the GoI and particularly a Congress party government, which gave their word to the original settlement, were now to break it, the damage to India’s good faith would be immeasurable and India’s image in international affairs fatally affected … If there is anything I can do to help you, please let me know as I am so anxious to help preserve your father’s good name, as well as that of the GoI.

On 1 August 1967, Mountbatten’s watered-down letter to Indira Gandhi was despatched to New Delhi. It dwelt, respectively, on the historical background and ‘his honour apart from those of your father and Vallabhbhai [Patel]’, called ‘privy purses the price paid for the integration of India’ and ended with re-emphasising the ‘good faith of your father’. His simultaneous letter to the Maharaja of Jaipur also confirmed Mountbatten’s meetings with Sir Michael Adeane, private secretary (1953–72) to the Queen, since he was responsible directly to the King after 15 August 1947 as the Governor-General. He also wrote to the Maharaja of Bikaner, reassuring him that he would do all he could while admitting ‘that any move indicating pressure from outside would make the position difficult’.76 And, Mountbatten conveyed the same to the Maharao of Kutch, another ex-ruler, who had been in touch.

A brief look at the tone of these approaches gives a glimpse of the personal feelings that were being availed upon by these princes. The Maharaja of Bikaner had reminded Mountbatten that as ‘the first Governor-General … the word of the GoI was conveyed through you [and] it would be for you to [state] the importance of sacred agreement’. The Maharao of Kutch had begun by recalling Mountbatten explaining to him in 1947 ‘the advantages to India and to Kutch, acceding’. While the constitutionally amended loss of privy purses was a financial blow to many princes, worse was their ‘feeling’ that the present government were ‘prepared to repudiate solemn obligations [for] their immediate convenience’. He, of course, knew that Mountbatten had ‘long ceased to exercise any responsibility for India’ but called upon his ‘esteem … as one of the architects of new India … at the prospect of such a blow to [it] which the princes relied on’.77 Meanwhile, forewarning Freeman of Mountbatten’s letter in his incoming post, the CRO expressed their gratitude for his advice as a result of which it was now amended, while adding their concern that against their advice, his ‘letters to the Maharajas go too far in revealing the action’. As a ‘final embellishment’, they informed Freeman about the simultaneous approach from the Indian High-Commission in London to Mountbatten to contribute in the volume commemorative of the transfer of power and his insistence on not removing ‘the references to privy purses altogether’ from it.78 Garner added his personal appreciation as well as apology to Freeman

If the letters from Maharaja of Jaipur … caused any embarrassment … I hope the occasion will not recur. But, the object of the exercise is to persuade Mountbatten to be as reasonable as possible … It would not have helped to refuse Mountbatten’s request and he is not a particularly easy person to say “no” to.79

He was more right about the apology than the appreciation, for despite their misgivings, this business of ‘sending by hand of a Chancery Secretary [in New Delhi] the two letters from the Maharaja of Jaipur to his wife and son’ had the potential of metamorphosing into a major diplomatic row. Officials at the High-Commission were ‘afraid that the Jaipurs may refer to [this] in some future correspondence (which may be opened by Indian authorities)’ and Freeman decreed that henceforth his ‘High-Commission should not be involved in any of the princely families’.80 For the moment, he was delivering Mountbatten’s letter to the Prime Minister, to her trusted secretary P.N. Haksar on 10 August 1967. Sending to Garner the gist of their conversation, he wrote that while Haksar said that he ‘fully understood HMG’s position’, he also ‘wondered’ if they had not ‘already compromised it by delivering such a letter’. Freeman fell back on the line of showing ‘proper consideration for Lord Mountbatten’s unique position without compromising the correctness of HMG’s relations with GoI’. Haksar mischievously claimed that he was actually ‘troubled on [Freeman’s] behalf that the existence of the letter would become known’. He went on to make a ‘heavy weather’ of different eventualities and pondered whether Freeman would object to the ‘diplomatic lie’ that ‘Mrs Gandhi had received the letter direct through the post’! Upon Freeman’s demurral, Haksar said that it would be ‘wisest to sound out Mrs Gandhi herself on whether she would be prepared to authorise [it]’. The message from an ‘entirely friendly’ if disingenuous Haksar was clear: ‘Mountbatten had every right to express his personal views to Mrs Gandhi in private [but] HMG [should] not be unwittingly involved in a highly controversial domestic affair’.81 It was received by Garner with an appropriate defensiveness:

I take it that there is no difficulty over the use of the diplomatic bag for the conveyance of a confidential letter from a former Governor-General to a PM without any responsibility for it. I assume that Haksar’s anxiety centres on you delivering the letter … You should take the letter back and send it through the post.82

While there proved no need for it, as the Prime Minister accepted the letter ‘without rancour’ recognising Freeman as no more than ‘a postman’,83 attempts to use the diplomatic bag by Mountbatten for non-government business were increasing. Jai Singh, second son of the Maharaja of Jaipur, came to the British High-Commission and informed officials that Mountbatten had ‘asked [for] three documents’ from 1947 to 48. He had come to deliver these, ‘for them to be forwarded’. The once burnt twice shy High-Commission staff declined, whereupon Jai Singh urged them ‘to keep [them] pending any reply from London’.84 His hope was extinguished when Freeman repeated his unhappiness at this continuing misuse of the official bag to the future Permanent Under-Secretary (1973–75) at the FCO, Sir Thomas Brimelow, who conveyed Freeman’s feeling to Mountbatten adding his own ‘fear to use the bag for … persons in dispute with the Indian government’.85 The FCO’s South Asia Department’s worries could not be stressed more:

Due to the delicate correspondence, great pains were taken by the British HC not to disclose that our bag was being used … the only reason why [this] was agreed to was that these letters would undoubtedly have been intercepted by the Indian authorities … However, were [they] to learn of our cooperation … the consequences to HMG would be grave.86

By now, John Freeman was also having second thoughts over personally delivering Mountbatten’s letter. He reflected that perhaps he ‘took too big a risk’ but wondered if ‘it was a calculated risk’. He was confident that they will ‘hear no more’ but guessed if it will be ‘the same about the Jaipur letters and [those] to the various princes’. Ultimately, they had ‘with the greatest practicable discretion … choked off any intention the princes may have formed … to use the HC as a continuing channel to Mountbatten’. It remained ‘politically a loaded subject’ and they needed to remain ‘very careful, to persuade Mountbatten to be reasonable’ and that required judging ‘the degree of facility it was tactically wise to afford him’. Eventually, he hoped that Mountbatten ‘will feel that he has done his duty and can let things take their course’.87 It was a hope that Garner was eager to share, having ‘told Mountbatten in no uncertain terms how tiresome [and] tricky’ the matter was.88 In the meantime, all they could do was watch out for any press reference to Mountbatten’s letter to Gandhi. That did not take long to come albeit in an indirect, approving and thus inconsequential manner, when on 2 September 1967, March of the Nation—a Bombay weekly with a circulation of 6300, which supported the opposition Swatantra Party that, in turn, supported the Princes—had a front-page story titled ‘Mountbatten suggests caution’.89 More embarrassing were the continuing pleas for support like those from Rao Govardhan Singh (legal adviser to the Rajmata of Partabgarh), who asked Freeman in all seriousness ‘whether Lord Mountbatten will be pleased to come over to India if recalled by the Rulers of Indian States Coordination Committee as an Adviser’ or if ‘a deputation of the Indian Princes should meet HM Queen’! He believed that there still were ‘chances for the rulers’ revival if HMG offer[ed] their support in view of their past relations’.90 Not content thus, he went on to claim that as in 1947, ‘Lord Mountbatten had advised a separate States Dominion … [he] should be appointed as the Governor-General and HMG should repeal the Indian Independence Act’!91

Freeman straight-batted this entreaty by replying that ‘unfortunately [it was] not possible to assist in approaching Lord Mountbatten or HM Queen to discuss [these] matters’.92 Mountbatten though was still exuding confidence in his personal correspondence. Relating his recent efforts to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, he concluded ‘that the effect on India’s credit abroad would be disastrous if they are prepared to … go back on their word of honour’.93 He showed himself out of touch with the gathering public mood and the growing political confidence of the Prime Minister, and by July 1968, Gandhi’s government had decided to go ahead with the abolition of the privy purses albeit ‘in a manner that should avoid undue hardship’. The question for the British officials now was whether to draw this to Mountbatten’s attention and the answer was obvious. It was neither in the princes’ interest and certainly not in London’s interest ‘to re-awaken Lord Mountbatten’s interest’.94 It was about to prove more, when in November 1968, Mountbatten took ‘his case’ to Robert McNamara, then-president of the World Bank, and tackled some numbers. Privy purse payments to the princes had ‘fallen from £4.25 million in 1951 to £2.5 million in 1968 [and] were expected to come down to £2 million over the next [decade]’. Mountbatten believed that ‘the princes were pawns in a [intra-Congress] power struggle’ and asked McNamara to talk to Morarji Desai, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in Gandhi’s government, without mentioning his name.95 Simultaneously, Mountbatten reached out to his oldest, and once highest-ranked, contact in India: Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, who had succeeded him as Governor-General in June 1948. Rajaji, as he was popularly called, had since drifted away from Nehru and formed his party, Swatantra in 1959. In the two general elections of 1962 and 1967, it had won 18 and 44 seats, respectively, and the latter figure gave it a certain crucial position in the parliamentary voting on the constitutional amendments required to abolish the privy purses. The government needed two-thirds majority in both houses to be able to do so and Rajaji’s party, which stood for a certain kind of ‘Indian conservatism’,96 could thwart it. So, Mountbatten wrote to him:

If a country is prepared to vote by a 2-3rds majority for a change in the constitution to escape their legitimate financial contracts, foreign interests would become chary … It is the intention of [government] to try and rush this measure … The balance of power rests with you … If anyone knew I had been urging this line of action on you, it would be counter-productive.97

This correspondence between the first and second Governor-Generals of independent India, twenty years on from their holding of those posts, is a fascinating mix of myth and memory. That month, Mountbatten delivered the second Nehru Memorial Lecture at Trinity College, Cambridge, ‘Jawaharlal’s old college’, while Rajaji urged him to consider writing a letter to The Times on the privy purses’ topic. Both affirmed to each other of their efforts ‘to prevent [government] from obtaining a 2–3rds majority in [this] unworthy move’.98 That month, Mountbatten also received another visit from the Maharaja of Bikaner in London ‘to see whether [he] could [make] a last-minute appeal’. He was again getting restless but realised enough of the sensitivities involved, to draw the line at writing to The Times ‘without government approval’. He reached out to Sir Paul Gore-Booth, now Permanent Under-Secretary (1965–69) of the FO and Head of HM Diplomatic Service (1968–69) for advice albeit with a typical boast: ‘It is absolutely monstrous that this man, [Y.B.] Chavan (on whose head I had a price when I was Viceroy as he was a Goonda) should be breaking the pledges given by Nehru and Patel … What can we do about this?’99 Much like the Garner-Freeman tag-team of 1967, now Gore-Booth wrote to Sir Morrice James, Freeman’s successor in New Delhi to coordinate their response to Mountbatten.

James reported that the legislation on abolishing privy purses was ‘likely to take form of a compromise’ by ‘phasing [them] out over 20–30 years’ and this made them further acceptable to ‘Indian opinion (apart from Swatantra Party and the Princes)’. There was thus nothing to be done but to ‘sympathise with Mountbatten’s feelings … ’ If anything, James took exception to Mountbatten’s letter to Rajagopalachari, calling it ‘a direct interference in Indian internal affairs … very imprudent’. To James, ‘at 90, Rajaji [had] the unpredictability of extreme old age’ and ‘could prove an awkward ally’ to Mountbatten. James termed Rajaji’s suggestion to Mountbatten to write to The Times as ‘thoroughly mischievous’. More serious though was his concern ‘about the terms in which Mountbatten refers to Chavan’. As India’s Home Minister, Chavan’s position was like that of Mountbatten’s old comrade Patel and as the third most powerful person in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet, the strong regional satrap from Bombay/Maharastra—the spearhead behind the abolition—was a ‘potential future PM’ whom, it was ‘foolish [to] risk antagonising’.100 It was now Gore-Booth’s turn to pass on James’ message to Mountbatten that a ‘public intervention’ by him would be ‘widely resented as gratuitous … likely be harmful to princes’, link Mountbatten ‘with HMG in the minds of many Indians’ and do ‘serious damage to our relations’. As Mountbatten had ‘already put [his] views to Mrs Gandhi’ in 1967, Gore-Booth could not see ‘what else’ he could do. It was ‘for the Princes to negotiate’ and Mountbatten could ‘speak to Mrs Gandhi at the Commonwealth PM meeting, [urging] “minimum of hardship” to [them]’, in early-1969.101

Instead, in a case of delayed reaction, Mountbatten’s August 1967 letter became a matter of public controversy now and on 1 January 1969, as she was leaving for London for this Commonwealth premiers’ meeting, Indira Gandhi was asked in a press conference in New Delhi for her views on Mountbatten’s ‘communication’. She deflected the question by asking, ‘on his communication or privy purses?’ When the questioner replied ‘on privy purses’, she responded, ‘then why bring in Mountbatten? Government’s views are very well known and I am fully committed to them’.102 When one of the correspondents persisted and pointedly asked, ‘what business has Lord Mountbatten to interfere in our affairs?’, the Prime Minister replied in words rather wounding: ‘If somebody writes a personal letter giving his views, I do not think it is interference. A lot of people write to me … ’103 In parliament next month, she would confirm the receipt of a ‘very private’ communication from Mountbatten but also that ‘no reply had been sent’.104 With the Lord thus reduced to ‘a lot of people’, Gandhi’s reaction was not lost on the High-Commissioner. Morrice James hastened to write to Gore-Booth that ‘in case, Mountbatten returns to the charge’, let him know about this ‘exchange’. James’ reading of the Prime Minister’s reaction was that

… while it has not caused offence to her … it would cause irritation … for him to make any public demarche. That Mountbatten’s private letter should be the subject of … a press conference reinforces the point that no exchange of this kind can be regarded as confidential … I hope therefore that Mountbatten will be prepared to … leave the matter.105

This communication triggered anticipation of any apology(s) that might be required. Mountbatten informed Prime Minister Wilson’s office that he will ‘say that he is sorry to hear his letter was leaked, had no intention of interfering but felt personally involved’, when he saw Gandhi in London. The FCO prepared itself to admit, ‘if asked directly’, that Mountbatten’s letter in 1967 was delivered by Freeman as ‘a perfectly normal courtesy’ but no more and instructed the High-Commission accordingly.106 The South Asia Department prepared their talking points for Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Denis Greenhill’s talk with the visiting P.N. Haksar. These recognised ‘privy purses to be a domestic matter’ and reduced Mountbatten’s views to ‘personal opinions’.107 This damage-control, however, did not end the saga here. Later that year, on 15 June 1969, Mountbatten was called upon by the visiting president and general secretary of the Congress party.108 A concerned James had reiterated to the FCO to warn him against raising the question of the privy purses with them. This time though, one line of thought in the FCO was willing to let Mountbatten ‘use his own discretion’. It pointed out that Mountbatten was playing host at the FCO’s ‘request (made at James’ suggestion)’ and, as both sides knew of each other’s ‘strong views’, it could be considered ‘impertinent’, to ask Mountbatten to ‘refrain’ it. Then, some FCO officials did not believe that Mountbatten’s views were ‘likely to harm Indo-British relations … ’ any more. Finally, there was a ‘limit to [giving] advice’ in such matters. Recently, on Morrice James’ say-so, the FCO had asked Mountbatten to ‘decline to provide a message for a commemorative volume on the birthday of the Rajmata Scindia of Gwalior [state] (an opponent of Congress)’. Mountbatten had ‘very courteously’ demurred because of his ‘close personal friendship’ but equally had provided a ‘perfectly innocuous message’.109 After all, he still considered himself ‘the Ombudsman for the Indian Princes’.110

In September 1970, post the parliamentary stalemate (the bill was passed in the lower house but stumbled in the upper house, falling short of required two–thirds majority by a narrow margin), the President of India, acting on the advice of the government, issued an ordinance ‘de-recognising’ the Indian princes. They challenged the order in the Supreme Court and the judiciary decided that it was ultra vires of the constitution. The princes had ceded their states to India (or Pakistan) in 1947 on the understanding that their position would be recognised in perpetuity and they would receive privy purses as compensation for loss of revenue/property. With Indira Gandhi using the issue as a symbol of her so-called ‘leftward turns’ to ‘destroy privilege and spread equality’,111 it was a matter of time and London pre-empted Mountbatten by re-declaring that it had no locus standi and no intention of ‘becoming involved’.112 Before the month was out, however, it was faced with involvement of another kind. In September 1970, the Maharao of Kutch approached Mountbatten claiming that he could ‘no longer live in Kutch, where [his] reduction to the status of a private citizen will expose [him] to harassment’. Recalling that his ‘house [had] always been loyal to the Crown’, he plaintively asked if it ‘would be possible for [him] to acquire British citizenship or permission to reside permanently in Britain?’113 Mountbatten sent this letter to Greenhill adding thus: ‘Madan Singh’s letter is really rather pathetic … I need hardly say that I will go surety for him’.114

The FCO officials now set their mind to this turn of events and weighed the implications of their response to this request. They noted that this was ‘the first [such] letter’ received and while the answer to this individual enquiry was simply that ‘provided the Maharao has adequate funds in this country, he would get permission to stay and, after five years, could apply for British nationality’, there were two clouds on the horizon: one, the immigration act of 1971 was shortly to come before the parliament and was expected to ‘make the situation more difficult’ for cases like these,115 and two, this might be ‘the first of many requests from the Princes’ and necessitated a ‘general policy’.116 It was considered ‘not unlikely that other dispossessed rulers may appeal’ to Mountbatten or that ‘he has already [not] been active on their behalf’.117 They were right, for after her comprehensive victory in the general elections held in March 1971, Mountbatten again appealed to Gandhi to ‘feel inclined to be generous’ and emphasising that her father ‘would have approved of what I am writing now’, he appealed to ‘his daughter’.118 He was even cautiously hopeful in his communication with the Maharaja of Bikaner that he had ‘continued to help … but [had] to be careful not to come out into the open as this proved counterproductive’.119 He could not be more wrong about both his relevance and her generosity and in late-1971, her government successfully achieved an amendment to the constitution in the newly elected parliament, bringing the curtain down on this relic of the Raj.

Part two in next post
chetak
BRF Oldie
Posts: 32282
Joined: 16 May 2008 12:00

Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

Part 2: continued from the previous post


Indira’s India, the emergency & British institutions
In the years 1971 to 1975, Indira Gandhi’s political vigour compromised with none, backed as she was by ‘the Indian people’.120 Whether parlaying with her Pakistani counterpart Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at Simla in 1972, in the aftermath of India’s victory in the December 1971 war that saw the birth of Bangladesh,121 or pushing back the Communist Party of India (Marxists) in the West Bengal state election of the same year,122 she felt the onset of ‘momentous’ times.123 One of the unexpected targets of this tumult turned out to be the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In the summer of 1970, the broadcast of two Louis Malle documentary films, Calcutta and Phantom India offering ‘impressionistic sketches of everyday life’ on BBC2, caused outrage amongst Indians in Britain and the Indian government, ‘for what were perceived as prejudicial and negative depictions’. As a result, the BBC was expelled from India and would remain so until 1972.124

During this period, its Director-General Charles Curran and its Controller for Overseas Donald Stephenson tried many approaches, one of whom happened to be Mountbatten who, while he may have felt ‘utterly powerless’ on the princes’ question,125 was never short of advice in matters Indian. In October 1970, Stephenson wrote to Mountbatten relating his woes as the GoI withdrew the BBC’s accreditation, requiring him ‘to discontinue the office in New Delhi’ established in 1942. Calling him as the one person ‘whose reputation in Indian minds remained such as to make a personal letter to Mrs Gandhi a factor, which might just tip the scale’,126 Stephenson requested for it. Mountbatten took a week to reply on this ‘self-inflicted wound’ by New Delhi, and concluded with a parenthesis, symbolising the shifting sands of time:

A few months ago, I would have written to Mrs Gandhi without hesitation for we have been friends for 23 years … [However] … recently we have been at odds … over the Indian princes … and she has gone diametrically against every word of advice I have given her. I feel it might be positively counter-productive for me to enter into the problem of the BBC.127

Instead, he sent Stephenson’s letter to Morrice James and deferred to James’ judgement on whether ‘a tactfully worded letter from me would still have the effect’. To James too, Mountbatten confessed his ‘greatly weakened position with Mrs Gandhi over [his] failure [on] the Princes’. In this particular instance though, he did wonder why the GoI were ‘damaging themselves when … they took no steps against the French, who made the films and showed them first’.128 James, who was careful to copy his reply to the FCO, wrote predictably. He did not think that ‘a letter … would serve a useful purpose’ and based this opinion on ‘Mrs Gandhi’s imperviousness to recent approaches from [Mountbatten]’. However, it seemed to James that ‘some good could be done if Mountbatten were to speak suitably to [Indian HC in London] Apa Pant … this would carry more weight’.129 This advice was to no avail either and in 1971, Gandhi’s annus mirabilis, Mountbatten did not do more than give a letter of introduction to Lady Alexandra Metcalfe (Curzon) for Haksar, when she went to India in June–July 1971 as Chairperson of the Overseas Relief and Welfare Committee for the East Pakistan Refugees in India,130 and meet Gandhi for a breakfast meeting on 2 November 1971, at her London hotel, before she left for Oxford to receive her honorary degree.131

Mountbatten’s next brush with Indian officialdom came in the summer of 1973. That year, his long-time secretary Brockman’s son travelled to India and, upon his return, complained to Mountbatten about ‘anti-British propaganda’ being aired at the Red Fort in Delhi. He had gone to the Son-et-Lumiere show there and saw its historical portions depicting (a) ‘direct causal relationship’ between the Indian ‘mutiny’ of 1857 and the Indian independence of 1947 and (b) the British ‘fighting the Indian National Army [INA] and nobody else in Burma’ in 1944–45 in the Second World War.132 Mountbatten took this seriously enough to forward the complaint to the British High-Commission in New Delhi, adding to it from his own memories as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in South East Asia thus:

There was only one INA division that “fought” against us … They were most useless … and it seems ludicrous that the real brave Indians who fought to defend India and clear the Japanese out of Burma should be belittled. Is there anything we can do about this?133

The British High-Commission was in no mood to fight these battles of the past. It patiently explained that the said Son-et-Lumiere was a mere tourist attraction; a dramatised recreation of history and, to that extent, ‘biased’. Second, it linked it to Gandhi’s attempts ‘to revive the memory of the independence struggle of which the younger generation has no experience’. The main motive was ‘to remind young voters that they owe their freedom to the Congress Party’, at a rather shaky time for it.134 Third, it reassured Mountbatten, by bringing up a series of floats in the Republic-Day parade from January 1973, that these paid ‘tribute to the British worthies of the early Congress’, with the ‘final one dedicated to reconciliation with British friends—amongst whom, you figured prominently’. Finally, it reminded him that in domestic politics and national memory, members of the INA—a group put together from the Indian soldiers who had surrendered in Singapore in 1942—were ‘freedom fighters … ’135 One of these, Shah Nawaz Khan, had been a parliamentary secretary and deputy minister under Nehru and had risen to the cabinet under Gandhi. The moving spirit behind the INA, Subhash Chandra Bose (1897–1945) was a ‘national hero’.136 Given all this, it was futile to apply any ‘outside pressure’. Ultimately, it assured Mountbatten that ‘these myths and attitudes [had no] serious effect’ on Indo-British relations,137 which was a sentiment shared by their Indian counterpart in London, B.K. Nehru, who would report to New Delhi, later in the year, after calling on Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home that ‘relations had never been as good as they were now’.138

Still, in June 1973, Mountbatten brought up the INA issue with Indira Gandhi, when she visited London, linking it with the retention of 90, 000 Pakistan POWs in Indian camps; 18 months from the 1971 war.139 Letting her know that this was ‘doing India’s image a great deal of harm, not only in the UK’, he suggested that while the ‘2–300 men accused of crimes be kept back and tried … the rest should be sent home’. Bringing up German and Italian POWs and their return ‘at the end of the war in Europe’, he claimed that he himself ‘returned all the 600, 000 Japanese POWs … only [keeping] back the war criminals’.140 Whether POWs or diplomatic personnel, Mountbatten’s interventions in Indian affairs now remained largely personal. In 1974, he received two letters from Vijayalakshmi Pandit requesting him to intervene with the Prime Minister ‘to protect’ Pandit at Dehradun. Mountbatten refused to do so citing the ‘strength of feelings that exist[ed] between them’ and continuing that ‘even when I have a successful talk with [Gandhi], she does not do what she has promised to help her aunt’.141 On 21 October 1974, Gandhi wrote to Mountbatten addressing him as ‘Lord Louis’ instead of ‘Dickie’, ending ‘Yours Sincerely’ instead of ‘Yours Affectionately’ and signing herself ‘Indira Gandhi’, in full. Mountbatten noted this and sought to put it down either to overwork or to the formal nature of the letter, but it symbolised their distant relations.

Soon though, he was planning his last chukka in Indian affairs, which has gone overlooked in the scholarship on him, ‘the royal family, and British influence in post-independence India’. In fact, it is a fit case to looked at, for it illuminates ‘his dealings in private [with] the royal family in promoting Britain’s foreign policy’.142 The episode began in November 1974, when B.K. Nehru met Thomas Brimelow (PUS, FCO) and informed him that some time ago, Mountbatten had mentioned to Nehru that he would be attending the coronation event of the King of Nepal in February 1975 with Prince Charles and ‘intended to pay a visit to India thereafter’. Mountbatten had added that Prince Charles was ‘most enthusiastic’ and it was subsequently confirmed to Nehru that ‘the Queen was agreeable to such a visit’. He had accordingly obtained the authority from New Delhi to issue an invitation, which was ‘delivered last Saturday’.143 Much of this was news to Brimelow, who only knew that the Prince of Wales was to represent the Queen in Nepal at Birendra Bir Bikram Shah’s coronation in February 1975.

Consequently, on 1 November 1974, the Protocol & Conference Department asked ‘for the views of [different sections] on … our attitude about a visit to India, bearing in mind the extent to which the idea has been given publicity and the GoI involved (no doubt by Lord Mountbatten)’. The note added that ‘ideally the HRH should [not] visit India under the wing of Lord Mountbatten who though his junior in rank, is an older man and a great figure [there] and might … put him in the shade’.144 Another note continued that the Protocol & Conference Department had earlier enquired if the Prince of Wales ‘might be amenable to visit Saudi Arabia on the way back from Nepal’. They were told that ‘his commitments at the Royal Naval College would prevent’ this. On the other hand, Mountbatten, who was ‘going privately to Nepal’, had been telling the British Ambassador there, apart from the Indian High-Commissioner here, that he ‘and Prince Charles [were] going to India after Nepal’. Meanwhile, New Delhi’s invitation to the Prince of Wales and Nehru’s intimation to Brimelow that ‘he understood that the visit had been approved by the Queen (which it was not)’, had complicated matters. Now, the Prince of Wales’ secretary had written to say that ‘Lord Mountbatten has revived the idea of a visit to India with Prince Charles, who seems keen, if both the FCO and MOD (Navy) see no objection’. The crux of the matter was this: should ‘the HRH go to Saudi Arabia (which does not expect him) instead of India (which now apparently does) … with FCO blessing?’145 Next, the position of the British High-Commissioner in New Delhi was sought. Sir Michael Walker welcomed the proposed visit but with the following conditions that

… we were not to get into difficulties with the Indians over their nuclear explosion [and] the programme would be organised to emphasise the British contribution to economic and social developments [here] … In the way that the invitation has come about, the programme for the Prince is more likely to be an extension of that which [Lord Mountbatten] wishes … 146

With the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due in May 1975 and with India having successfully exploded a nuclear test in May 1974,147 the FCO considered it ‘optimistic that there would [be] no further alarm … [even] a further Indian nuclear explosion’. They saw ‘little value … from an official visit by Princes Charles at this particular time and quite a few snags … ’ Indeed, Foreign Secretary James Callaghan had conveyed to B.K. Nehru, among other matters, Pakistan’s ‘great concern at India’s nuclear explosion’.148 Callaghan was worried enough to suggest that ‘the Queen [be made] aware of the foreign policy considerations [and] hoped that [she] would agree that … Prince Charles’ naval duties should take precedence’. This was so because he was equally concerned that ‘Lord Mountbatten should not be able to represent to the press that the wicked government was frustrating the wishes of the Queen’.149 From New Delhi, Walker was reiterating his hope that ‘official talks [on India’s nuclear explosion would not be] mixed up with this visit’.150 However, in December 1974, the Indian press announced the upcoming arrival in Delhi of Prince Charles for a two-day visit in February, arranged in consultation with Mountbatten and Nehru, on his way to Nepal. He was even reported as likely to pay a longer visit later.151

In the event, the visit took place over 20–22 February 1975 and went well. Prince Charles and Mountbatten were received at the airport by the Vice-President of India. They ‘lunched with Prime Minister and dined with the President’. Staying at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mountbatten led Charles on a tour around it ‘from the kitchen to the turret’, to the constraint of Indian officials and chagrin of their British counterparts. The ‘prospect of such an inspection from a former tenant’ caused the staffs of Rashtrapati Bhavan and British High-Commission alike ‘some concern’ but the beleaguered GoI, beset with mounting domestic difficulties, needed a spectacle and made it clear that ‘nothing which would please Charles and Mountbatten was too much trouble’. With little going their way politically, given the then-climaxing JP movement against Gandhi,152 her officials, ministers and party men, especially the ‘old-hands’ from 1947, took momentary refuge in nostalgia as Mountbatten ‘reconstructed the history of independence’, whose ‘memory … and of people who took part in them still meant [so much] to him’. Thereafter, the Prince of Wales laid a wreath at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial Raj Ghat, toured the Red Fort and the Old Fort and cruised around the Connaught Circus. Time was even found for the Prince to play an exhibition game of polo and after a reception at the High-Commission, the party left for Nepal. Press coverage was ‘unusually full and entirely favourable’ and Walker was pleased to report that ‘it concentrated upon HRH [with] many friendly references for Lord Mountbatten’.153 The FCO’s concern that Charles would be overshadowed by Mountbatten in India was partly because of the former’s status as the next head of the Commonwealth and his persona on the trip thus reflected upon the prestige of this institution.

However, over July–August 1975, their proposed longer visit, due from 24 October to 4 November 1975,154 was postponed, from the British side ‘in the desire to prevent any deterioration in relations’, given the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi in June.155 To B.K. Nehru, ‘it was unfortunate … as an expression of disapproval’,156 and Mountbatten was still capable of filling in a personal frame and letting the FCO know that the background to this attitude of Nehru’s was that he was ‘terrified’ that Gandhi would ‘recall him’. Nehru had told Mountbatten that he had ‘heard a rumour that Callaghan had advised Prince Charles to not go’ and added, a touch dramatically that ‘Prince Charles would never be welcome in India’. When he expressed the hope that at least Mountbatten ‘would go on his own’, Mountbatten admitted that ‘he did not wish to go when the Indian government were behaving so badly to the Maharani of Jaipur [under arrest] and others of his friends’. He left Nehru in little doubt about the ‘bad effect, which had been caused by the expulsion of British journalists’ from India, as the freedom of press was suspended.157 Callaghan was not impressed. That Nehru had chosen to telephone Mountbatten and not come to the FCO did not look good. That Mountbatten had not ‘kept quiet [nor] told Nehru [to] ask the FCO’ was worse. As a result, their ‘carefully laid plans [emphasising Prince Charles’ naval duties had] gone awry’.158 Ironically, it was Mountbatten who eventually drafted the telegram on behalf of Prince Charles that was sent on 3 September 1975 to India, citing service duties and invoking Mountbatten’s hopes to accompany Charles in future.159 In New Delhi, Michael Walker mused that ‘taking the state of opinion in Britain and everything else into account, there was really no alternative’. Indians could be ‘sensitive’ but as the government censor was ‘instructed not to allow stories about the postponement’, there was ‘no adverse publicity’!160

The other side-show in the lead-up to the Indian Emergency that Mountbatten tried to involve himself in was India’s take-over of the former princely state of Sikkim in 1975.161 Mountbatten took the line that Sikkim had been a ‘British protectorate since 1861ʹ and it was this special relationship that the GoI took over ‘under the Indo-Sikkim Treaty of 1950ʹ. London’s line was that it had ‘no standing to intervene’ especially as New Delhi’s stand echoed that of Mountbatten’s, i.e. ‘events in Sikkim [were] their internal affairs’. The American Government took a similar position and this was conveyed to Mountbatten by Brimelow in November 1974.162 In late-1974 and early-1975, as the Chogyal (ruler) and his supporters in Sikkim started to be suppressed by India, they reached out to the international community. The South Asia Department of the FCO concluded that ‘the less successful the Chogyal and his supporters are internally, the more they will step up their campaign internationally. But, they will [not] find much active support and [SAD was] inclined to agree with the Indians—that it would be in their own best interests to come along quietly’.163

Once the Emergency was proclaimed in June 1975, Mountbatten was reduced to writing to old associates like Nawab Ali Yavar Jung (Governor, Maharashtra) that there was a ‘paramount need to lift censorship … the one barrier the true friends of India have to contend with’.164 He was being restrained from pleading for old friends like Gayatri Devi (Maharani of Jaipur). On 6 August 1975, he had asked for advice from the British High-Commission as he was ‘seriously thinking of writing to [Gandhi] about [her] on the grounds that the Jaipur family have been friends for so long, asking whether she would consider granting bail’. The High-Commission, expectedly, discouraged him that ‘it would do no good’ and suggested that he spoke with Nehru. With the FCO, it shared its doubts ‘whether this will satisfy him … he will only collect a rebuff … pressure from Mountbatten may simply strengthen the Lady’s determination to keep [her] locked’.165 What stayed Mountbatten’s hands was Gayatri Devi’s son Jagat Singh ringing him up ‘to say that … it would be better’ that Mountbatten did not write on behalf of his mother, as ‘it might annoy Mrs Gandhi and make her take away some of the privileges she has in prison’. So, he wrote to High-Commissioner Walker instead, fuming that Gayatri Devi ‘should never have been arrested’ and fretting about ‘anything I can do’.166 In reply, Walker (relieved that Mountbatten had not written to Gandhi) informed him that Gayatri Devi was ‘being reasonably well-looked after, is able to receive visits and [there are] rumours of her being released’. Supporting Jagat Singh’s judgement, Walker cautioned that ‘while he did not know for sure, she may have been arrested because of ‘infringement of foreign exchange regulation’ and reminded him that ‘this was also Mrs Pandit’s advice’.167 Thwarted in India, Mountbatten turned towards the other domain he considered himself intimately linked with: the British Royal Family. Prompted by Mountbatten, the Queen asked the Prime Minister about Gayatri Devi’s case. A peeved FCO prepared a backgrounder for Wilson, which after ascertaining that Mountbatten was ‘clearly the source of the Royal Family’s knowledge’, made clear the official position thus:

We have no standing to intervene in an internal affair of the Indian government concerning an Indian citizen. An informal initiative by a member of the Royal Family would be unlikely to do any good … The best course is to wait for circumstances in which some kind of intervention (if Lord Mountbatten still wanted to do something) would have more hope of success … 168

The note also added some details of the case. Gayatri Devi was arrested on 30 July 1975 for violating ‘conservation of foreign exchange and prevention of smuggling act’, when gold and jewels worth GBP 7 ½ million were found in her Jaipur Palace. With their ‘de-recognition’, princely families were now ‘within the scope of legislation designed to stamp out hoarding of gold and tax evasion’. This technicality apart, there was party politics involved, as Gayatri Devi had been an opposition MP, representing the Swatantra Party, in the lower house of parliament since 1962. Her husband, the Maharaja, had died in 1970 while playing polo in Britain and the Jaipur family had ‘links with the British royal family’, thus prompting Mountbatten’s gambit, which was also made possible by his direct line of communication with the Queen and Prince Philip, his nephew, and deep consciousness of the royals’ presence, important but ill-defined and thus at the mercy of precedent, at the heart of the Commonwealth. Of course, all this was unmistakably happening against and because of the backdrop of the Indian Emergency, which the Indian High-Commissioner in London was defending unconvincingly thus: ‘failure to enforce the law for years had caused conditions to deteriorate to … chaos which was checked by the Emergency’.169

Mountbatten got to speak his mind to Indira Gandhi during and about the Emergency, when a private trip of his to Mauritius coincided with her official visit there in October 1976. Both attended the opening of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute and in a ‘short, private meeting’ alongside, Mountbatten spoke ‘frankly to Mrs Gandhi about the need to improve her image … by allowing greater freedom of the press’ and warned that ‘unless things took a turn for the better before next year’s Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting, she was likely to have a frosty reception in England’.170 This did not come to pass, as she was out of office sooner than anyone had anticipated. In January 1977, she announced that general elections would take place in March and with this resumption of democracy in India, the Indian President pointedly noted to the then-Head of Mission of the British High-Commission that ‘our two countries had so much in common that it was not really sensible to criticise each other’.171 Perhaps in that spirit, when the Larry Collins/Dominique Lapierre blockbuster Freedom at Midnight was published during the Emergency, with Mountbatten given top-billing, it ‘got plenty of space in the Indian press’ and, while there were isolated calls ‘demanding an Indian riposte’ to many a residual Mountbatten ‘revelation … wounding Indian amour propre’ about the events of 1947, nothing much came of it.172

Indira Gandhi wrote to Mountbatten only once in those 19 months of the Emergency, in February 1977. The nature of this communication, too, was more personal and less political. Writing amidst ‘the election campaign [and] travelling a great deal’, she reflected that Vijayalakshmi Pandit, her aunt had ‘never been favourably inclined’ towards her but it was ‘sad that she should have joined openly with those who were most virulently and viciously against my father’.173 In what was almost her last letter to him, this was a reference to Pandit campaigning for the opposition in an election that saw a ‘revolutionary change … a meaningful exercise in re-orientation’ in ushering the first non-Congress government in independent India headed by Morarji Desai174; Gandhi’s deputy in 1966 and an ex-Congressman since 1969. Mountbatten was on the official guest list for Desai’s banquet dinner during his visit to Britain in June 1978 and found himself seated next to violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin.175 A year later, Vijayalakshmi Pandit—born in the same year as Mountbatten, 1900—and his last-remaining friend in India sketched the political scene for him, 20 days before he was assassinated:

We are going through a distressing time. … People were getting discontented and Morarji [Desai] has had to step down … Our new PM, Charan Singh, can only last with … the help of the Lady [for] whom he had during these past two years call[ed] for a “Nuremberg type trial” … He now woos [Indira] and she is making this an opportunity of a comeback … That she will return to full power seems entirely possible.176

Conclusion
Five months from this letter, Indira Gandhi returned to office by a landslide victory in the general elections of January 1980. By then, Mountbatten was dead; assassinated on 27 August 1979, in a bombing incident for which the IRA took responsibility. His funeral at Westminster Abbey on 5 September saw a considerable Indian presence. An Indian Memorial Service was conducted the same day, in which messages from many state legislatures were read. The Gazette of India had brought out an extraordinary obituary notice a day earlier and an India League condolence meeting took place two days later. The All-India Radio had broadcasted a 15-minute tribute on 28 August itself, with a message from Gandhi, and the state-run television channel followed with a 30-minute broadcast entitled ‘Tribute to Lord Mountbatten’, led by Prime Minister Charan Singh and including Gandhi and others.177 In his death, like in life, Mountbatten remained a ‘friend of India’ but not so for the FCO. It had looked, ‘at one stage, as if the Pakistanis were going to be excluded altogether’ from the ceremonies in London. In view of the ‘massive Indian representation, that would have looked gratuitously offensive’ and the FCO scrambled ‘to ensure with the Lord Chamberlain’s office that [Pakistan’s Defence Attaché] Brigadier Khan was invited to the Abbey’. A week later, a relieved FCO was assuring the British Embassy in Islamabad that they ‘have had no comments’ on this disparity. After all, as it added, ‘those who understand the background will not complain’.178

Considering the extent and array of Mountbatten’s continuing involvement with India, not only after his departure from there in 1948 but, as this article tries to show, after Nehru’s death in 1964, it has gone under-remarked. As this slice-of-life account of his later life has shown, Mountbatten remained typically mixed up in various ways and on diverse issues in an example of slowly fading but not outrightly vanishing contours of lasting colonial afterlife in post-colonial states. Except, increasingly and unlike Nehru’s time, it was neither entirely appreciated nor sought-after by both sides of the Indo-British inter-governmental relations. Indeed, in this period, more than the merely wary Indians, their British official counterparts were rather mistrustful of Mountbatten’s propensities. From the India–Pakistan war of 1965 to the Privy Purses imbroglio over 1967–71, from arms procurement in the mid-1960s to the BBC’s travails in the early-1970s, and in seeking to intervene before and during the Emergency on behalf of the British royal family as well as the Indian princes, within the framework of Indo-British relations, Mountbatten enjoyed access and attempted its use with the ‘official mind’ in London and New Delhi alike. Mountbatten’s much-remarked legendary, if exaggerated, ability ‘to communicate, persuade and charm’,179 reached their limit in Indian affairs in the 10 years from the late-1960s to the late-1970s as he stood out as a remaining relic of empire in post-imperial institutional exchanges. He was either heard but not listened to or he was altogether held back from holding forth, seen as an inconvenience, even a hindrance. He continued relentlessly (if not entirely regardless) to offer his views politically as well as to shrewdly frame history-writing and its pertinence or relevance is a matter of analysis and emphasis, that it was there cannot be denied. His historical and increasingly ‘informal’ influence outlasted his ‘friendship’ with Nehru, for he had more Indian friends than one albeit none as influential as the first Indian Prime Minister. More than anybody else and longer than everybody else, Mountbatten symbolised the lingering colonial legacies, which continued to impact upon Indo-British relations deep into the decades of the New Commonwealth.

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the reviewers and editors for their thoughtful observations and patient support. I am grateful to Professors Ian Talbot, Chris Woolgar and Adrian Smith for their supervision, guidance and conversations, since 2011, on the Mountbatten papers at the Special Collections, University of Southampton.
ramana
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

One thing restoring Netaji and INA, RIN Revolt to their glory erases a blot in the recent history of India. This is a very much needed catharsis of the Freedom struggle.

Glad NaMo could do this during the 75 years of Independence.
This thread has served its purpose when it was started in 2006.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by ramana »

Long forgotten Signal Corps revolt in Jabalpur in 1946

https://t.co/Sf5S10lUqB
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Re: INA History Thread

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Some questions on INA by Maj Gen VK Singh

https://veekaysarticles.blogspot.com/20 ... d.html?m=1
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Re: INA History Thread

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It’s time to put SCB on the Rs. 100 note. MKG can stay on the others for now.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by chetak »

Not to forget the pedo padres and their favorite supporters

padres joining Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler, with a Nazi salute.

did SCB ever debase himself in a position like this.....


how do they explain away the thousands of pictures of these popes and padres, proudly posing with, praising lavishly, and making common cause with the oppressors of jews and other "races" that they considered their "inferiors"

as opposed to the odd picture of Bose shaking hands with hitler being touted as the very epitome of evil incarnate.

same old and very familiar story of the goose, gander, and sauce being trotted out in order to explain the unexplainable and divert attention away from the actual culprits, two of whom have been oppressing the jews for centuries and have actively and almost genocidally gone after them over the millennia.


Image


https://twitter.com/MDVengas/status/148 ... 76/photo/1
Last edited by chetak on 31 Jan 2022 14:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Sachin »

ramana wrote:Some questions on INA by Maj Gen VK Singh
The article is quite interesting. It may sound harsh; but to be honest the fund collection tactics of INA had very good resemblance to the tactics of the LTTE 8). Some of the speeches made by Bose (if they are true) is clearly bringing out the the dictatorial traits.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by LakshmanPST »

Mort Walker wrote:It’s time to put SCB on the Rs. 100 note. MKG can stay on the others for now.
Personally, I feel no one's photos should exist on currency notes...
Even MK Gandhi's pic shouldn't have been there in the first place...
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Re: INA History Thread

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Sachin wrote:
ramana wrote:Some questions on INA by Maj Gen VK Singh
The article is quite interesting. It may sound harsh; but to be honest the fund collection tactics of INA had very good resemblance to the tactics of the LTTE 8). Some of the speeches made by Bose (if they are true) is clearly bringing out the the dictatorial traits.
We need to temper that thought with the World War situation and what bitter fruits that Congress type of Democracy gave British India.
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Re: INA History Thread

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I have a book on Bose and financing INA. The majority was by South Indian immigrants.
Also all teh INA regiments were All India compostie class regiments unlike British India Class regiments.
About 20 years later Indian army abolished class regiments in new raisings which was similar to INA.
So in one way INA view prevailed on the post Independence Indian Army.
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Re: INA History Thread

Post by Sachin »

LakshmanPST wrote:Personally, I feel no one's photos should exist on currency notes...
Even MK Gandhi's pic shouldn't have been there in the first place...
Agreed. It would just open up a Pandora's box. The "seculars & liberals" can start demanding the picture of every Ram & Shyam in the notes; and if not provided use that to cause further fissures in the community. Better to avoid people; and use other stuff like monuments etc.
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Re: INA History Thread

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USI Journal Paper on

India's Freedom Struggle :INA role Eulogized

Chandra B. Khanduri
India’s Struggle for Freedom: INA’s Role Eulogised
Author: Chandra B Khanduri

Period: Jul - Sep 2022

While the nation paid tribute to Netaji Subhas Bose by installing his magnificent statue at India Gate with great fanfare, it is desirable to remember some of the landmarks of our struggle for what Nehru used to call our ‘final emancipation’.

A brief look at our history is, in fact, needed for that. It will be recalled that the British had consolidated their rule in India by early 1800 and virtually turned it into a colony. In their long-sited endeavour to deepen their roots, the British administration, on recommendation of historian Thomas Macaulay had introduced the English language in India with the orchestrated aim of ‘training a new class of English speakers in India, creating thus a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect’. It set in what then appeared, an irreversible process of intellectual colonisation and even spiritual domination. It was aimed in a strategic sense, turning India into ‘a permanent possession’ within the British Empire’. A far thinking British nation with grand vision!

As a result, they built their regional armies: Bengal, Bombay and Madras and consolidated their hold on administration besides subduing and defeating rulers such as Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab and even sent Indian ‘indentured labour’ to other territories.

The Indian opposition to the foreign rule appeared spasmodically. And it began from men in uniform: An odd regiment of newly raised Bengal Army rebelled in 1820s and its twenty-four ring leaders were blown from guns. These carried on in degrees-large and small -leading finally to 1857. It again began from 34th Native Infantry located at Barrackpore and it spread like wild-fire to Meerut, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi and Delhi. Sadly, the mutinous opposition melted as the British consolidated their forces and though ‘Bravest of the Brave Rani Jhansi’ and several others like her fought gallantly, the British managed to beat this what can easily be called, ‘first contingent of our freedom fighters’. In this unique fight the Firangis were reinforced by Gorkhas of Nepal.

The next violent incident of our history of struggle happened in 1919 at the famous Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar where a cocky Brigadier General Dyer used Indian Gorkha troops to mow down 379 unarmed and innocent Indians which some British admit, ‘Arose from an empire of Fear of a repeat of 1857’, and ‘British paranoia’. And it, decidedly resuscitated the Indian spirit of freedom, besides unifying all communities including Muslims in renewed spirit of struggle for freedom. It also killed, once for all, the British dream of turning India into an ‘Indian –British Colony’.

Rise of the INA

Although the Indian spirit of freedom and struggle under Gandhiji remained alive throughout the two World Wars-1914-18 and 1939-45- it was, fortuitously, the formation in Singapore of the Indian National Army (INA), by the most dynamic leader of the India’s Freedom struggle, Subhash Bose in 1943 that caused tremors at Imperial Delhi. Around this time half a century of ceaseless non-violent political struggle was also culminating into the “Quit India’ movement under Gandhi. While Gandhi’s political struggle became the primary cause for the departure of colonizers, without doubt, the rise of the INA expedited the exit.

It needs to be recalled that World War II really expedited the process of the unduly procrastinating process of ‘Indianization of the Indian Armed Forces’ especially the Army – the most loyal force available to the colonisers. A large scale build-up of the Emergency Commissioned Officers starting early 1940 and the Malayan Debacle where over 85,000 British and Colonial troops were captured by the Japanese at Singapore in February 1942 as POWs had added fuel to fire.

The Japanese, on their part, were quick to subvert the loyalty of the Indian soldiers thus captured. The troops of the Indian Army felt that their British Officers had let them down as they had failed to provide them with the desired battlefield leadership against the formidable Japanese. Although Captain Mohan Singh pioneered the initial organisation, it was eventually Subhash Bose who gave the newly formed Indian National Army its teeth, its spirit and overall mission.

Soon, those who joined the INA and those who provided leadership to it, believed in driving away the British from India completely. Soon also, the charismatic leadership of Bose and some support from the Japanese saw 13,000 INA force take pledge on August 25, 1943 with the great and golden words of the emerging Indian Military history. Bose had said to this great force of volunteers (1):

“This Army has been drawn up in military formation on the battlefield of Singapore – which was once the bulwark of the British Empire. This Army is not the only army that will emancipate India from the British yoke; it is also the army that will hereafter create the future National Army for free India – Give me blood and I will promise you independence”.

This force, in fact, about 40,000, added sufficiently to the Japanese “March on Delhi” by taking part in the Japanese attack on the Palel airfield in Manipur as also the pioneering Japanese offensive into the fabled `Admin Box’, in the Arakans in Burma. Psychologically, it caused large despondency amongst the higher British echelons, which saw it as `Loyalty of the Indian troops of the Indian Army becoming questionable, doubtful’. “Psychologically, this force”, in the words of Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister (1944-51) “did more than Gandhi’s Satyagraha to compel the British pull- out of India”.

More distressing developments took place in the Indian Armed Forces, in 1946. The mutinies in the Royal Indian Air Force, the Royal Indian Navy, and the Corps of Signals made the then British Governor General Field Marshal Wavell activate his Operation Madhouse – the plan for evacuation – put to practice faster than anyone expected in London! Wavell had also written to Sir Winston Churchill: “I am at the head of a crumbling regime. The administration has declined … We have lost all powers to control events, we all are simply running on the momentum of our previous prestige”.

In fact, it took less than two years to the last British soldier to march out of Gateway of India, Bombay in July 1947.

References-

Subhash Chandra Bose- The nationalist and The Commander.


Brig Khanduri is Fellow of the Indian Council of Historical Research & author of a dozen books including the latest: Essence of Hinduism; India’s Military Experience besides Treatises on Sun Tzu and Kautilya.
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