A BRITISH PLEA FOR INDIA'S FREEDOM
Utley, Freda
A British Plea.For India's Freedom SUBJECT INDIA, by H. N. Brailsford. The John Day Company. $2.50. Reviewed by Freda Utley "HISTORY never repeats itself; it is apt to do AT something worse."...
...Britain's insistence on maintaining the rights of the princes of India, meant not only the maintenance of autocratic government in the native states, but also the retention by Britain of a "strategical key" calculated to preserve her power...
...Brailsford is well aware of the facts which a Churchill ignores...
...Not only is it timely...
...the British Raj...
...There has been no other book recently to compare with this one written by an Englishman who is both a scholar and a man who has himself seen and felt the poverty and subjection of the Indian people...
...The "Herrenfolk" attitude of the British and all whites is perhaps even more responsible for the deadlock...
...Its negative meaning is readily grasped: it is a reaction of the self-respect and the instinct of self-preservation of the Asiatic peoples against Western Imperialism and the white man's color bar...
...but that the Cripps offer "was not a satisfactory attempt either in the procedure adopted or in its contents...
...As he expresses it: "In our generation there has grown up in the vast area that lies between Bombay and Tokyo a new sense of the fraternity of the Asiatic peoples...
...With Gandhi and Nehru in British prisons, and the only Indian Nationalist leader who is free on Japan's side, history does in fact look like doing "something worse...
...who is a liberal free of national egotism and prejudice and is also a master of English prose...
...Hence, British insistence on the sanctity of the treaties which maintain the autocratic power under the British Raj, of these "royal instruments" of the British Crown—as Canning described them in an age when Englishmen were not ashamed to be imperialists...
...It failed," he writes, "because not Congress only but Indians generally saw in it no intention on England's part to surrender the reality of power today...
...Churchill's at a Mansion House banquet will suffice to keep it intact...
...Brailsford believes that if "a more perceptive messenger had carried a better offer at the nadir of our fortunes in the spring of 1942," it would not have been too late...
...These words of Brailsford's sound unpleasantly prophetic now that Japanese troops are already on the soil of India, and Japan is evidently preparing to set up an Indian "National" government under Britain's irreconcilable enemy, Chandra Bose...
...They are free within...
...The clarity and ease of his style, his profound humanity, and his sensitive understanding of people of a different race, philosophy, and culture from his own, give his book a rare distinction...
...These inner fetters Gandhi broke...
...The offer of future self-determination, which Cripps is supposed to have brought to India, was completely vitiated by the provision that these "puppets" were to nominate one-third of the Constituent Assembly...
...Take, for instance, his account of Gandhi...
...Analyzing the real issues which prevented a settlement in 1942, he has little doubt that the British Tories did not intend India to gain freedom after the war, however fair-seeming the Cripps offer may have appeared to outsiders...
...The solution of the problem of India is not only economic and political...
...If we had settled in India as the Moguls did and buried our fathers' bones in its soil, we might have levied a much more ruthless tribute and yet have done less economic and social harm...
...This subjective liberation was a mighty event in Indian history...
...The British Empire is being liquidated and "no boast of Mr...
...It is typical of a man of such rare qualities of mind and heart as Brailsford that he can plead with his countrymen, not only to relinquish their Empire with grace, but to aid India to overcome her poverty by giving her "irrigation pumps" in the future as they give machine guns today...
...He perceives also that what Gandhi has done is to give Indians self-respect and freedom within...
...A century ago a British Governor of Madras wrote frankly that while other conquerors had been more violent and cruel, "none has treated the natives with such scorn,as we...
...This meant that the scales would always be weighted in favor of reaction and subservience to Britain...
...The Japanese, with what success it is difficult to estimate, have sought to promote it and exploit it...
...Moreover, the white superiority complex has prevented a solution of India's economic problems...
...To this reviewer who has for long admired the author and his works, a book like Subject India represents the finest flowering of English civilization—a civilization which has produced not merely conquerors and statesmen and pro-consuls of a far-flung Empire, but also men who can be both generous and intelligent, fair to their country's subjects and to its enemies, and understanding of alien values and ways of life...
...Although Brailsford admits that what Gandhi says and thinks seems to him negative, reactionary, pessimistic, and other-worldly, he recognizes him as "the Hindu conscience" and strives not only to understand this alien philosophy, but to give to it its due...
...England may not have another chance, such as she had in 1939, and again in 1942, of effecting a peaceful Indian settlement...
...It is to be hoped that many people will read this book...
...Describing Churchill as a man of blinkered vision combined with a genius for action, and paying due tribute to his courage, his indomitable will, and his consummate artistry in expressing what the average Englishman feels, Brailsford nevertheless insists that "no man's will can turn back the shadow on the dial of history...
...For Indians were oppressed even more by their own fatalism and their own sense of racial inferiority than by...
...Britain has given India order and peace and economic unity, railways and famine relief, but "even security was imposed: the laurels with the pensions went overseas...
...He writes: "To all Indians who have come under the influence of his teaching he has given an inner sense of independence...
...The yoke of the Conquest snaps when they stand erect and perform, be it the most innocent act of rebellion...
...Although today it is less blatant, together with memories of the past it survives to create a wall of misunderstanding and distrust...
...If," he concludes, "India decides to quit us, then let us give her a dowry worthy of our pride...
...There have been many books and articles "explaining" the Indian problem and giving the American reader one-sided or uninformed and superficial accounts of why and how the Cripps mission failed...
...If once the princes were to concede responsible government with civil rights to their subjects they would become useless to the Empire...
...The "realists," who have postponed action until after the war, may once again be proved to have been tragically wrong...
...As Brailsford shows in detail, the existence of a foreign administration and the investment of capital producing profits to be spent outside India, together with the centuries old treatment of India as primarily a source of raw materials and a market for manufacturers, have drained the country of its wealth and prevented its modernization...
...It is now necessary for all thinking Americans as well as Englishmen to know the facts about the country where American as well as British soldiers are fighting Japan...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 17
