FRANCES GUNTHER'S 'REVOLUTION IN INDIA'

...Issue Of Economic Losses The reader will find the necessary figures and facts about India although not in as much detail as in H. N. Brailsford's Subject India (reviewed in The Progressive of Apr...

...It is, of course, true that the cost of Empire is high both in armaments and wars...

...In England the Labor Party and the Liberals have never been anti-imperialist...

...it is if anything 200 times more evil...

...According to Time, Britain had "smiled on the ambitious Bombay 15 year plan" of T.R.D...

...This could be true of the peoples themselves, but I very much fear that those governments which are not fighting merely to hold their own are hoping to grab something new to hold, if and when they get the chance...

...This month the Viceroy of India appointed a member of the House of Tata to a seat on his Executive Council and to be in charge of postwar industrial planning...

...So when Japan decides that China is to be the most truly bright jewel in the crown of the Japanese King-E!mperor, or when Hitler decides that Poland and France are to constitute the glory and strength of the German Empire, India is the moral precedent for their claim...

...By failing to give India her freedom voluntarily in the past, the British may already have destroyed the possibility of an India free, but friendly, and therefore no more anxious than the Dominions to swap the economic ties which bind her to the Empire...

...But only a small minority has been out and out anti-imperialist and these have not, for the most part, understood that the relinquishment of Empire would either lower the British standard of life, or cause such painful readjustments that revolution might result...

...There is, however, a new prospect being opened up in India...

...It is not easy to accept the truth of her statements that "a modern democratic revolution in internal affairs" is now going on in the world...

...It is, of course, a "prejudiced" book—prejudiced because of its passionate'belief that all peoples have the right to freedom, and because of its dismissal as phony all the arguments about India's unfitness to rule itself...

...NOT, of .course, that Frances Gunther is unaware of the fact that an England deprived of her colonial Empire would be "reduced to the status of the other states of the world," or in Churchill's words, "to the status of a minor power...

...But it is also true that Britain, in the world economic crisis, was saved from ruin or revolution by possession of the Empire...

...If it could succeed mankind might at long last be freed from the unending cycle of wars, conquest, revolt, redivision of the world into new Empires...

...One is tempted to go on quoting at length from this book, but it is better to advise all readers of The Progressive to buy it and read it for themselves...

...Or, if with sceptical cynicism, one accepts the evil acts that are 200 years old, then again why need we fight the dictators now...

...She will have none of the argument that imperialists who proclaim that they are doing good are better than imperialists naked and unashamed...

...THE terrifying prospect with which we are perhaps faced is that of a new type of Imperialism in which the masses benefit from foreign conquest—or from "policing the world against aggressor nations"—a kind of "Common Man Imperialism" in which the profits of Empire are no longer monopolized by the few...

...For the first time in history, man would have fought and won his freedom from his enemy-man by friendship...

...We need only go quietly to bed—and 200 years later their conquests will be as legal as ours...

...Concise, based on first hand observation as well as study, written in forceful prose, sparkling with witty epigrams and illustrated by apt quotations, it is of value not only in presenting the case for India's independence, but also in enlightening the reader on the basic world issues which have already caused two world wars, and whifth victory alone cannot solve...

...The Gandhi Method To all the above arguments Frances Gunther would no doubt reply, with considerable justification, that India, under the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru, has introduced a new political and ethical concept into the world which might yet save it from self-destruction through greed and stupidity...

...That concept she calls "the will to Power by Love...

...She- conceives of the problem of Indian freedom as mainly one of "disentangling the English from the myth of their self-anointed mission...

...However heartily one agrees with Frances Gunther that so long as Britain hangs onto her colonial Empire other nations will be tempted by her example to attempt the conquest of new Empires, one finds it hard to share her faith that the solution of world problems is as simple as she implies...

...TO those who say that British acts of aggression all happened .long ago and therefore don't matter, she replies: "If an act is evil for one year, then it is not any better for lasting 200 years...

...And obviously, a Common Man Imperialism would be both more oppressive and more secure than the old Empires, since the whole population of the imperialist country would have a direct interest in its perpetuation...

...For, as she so clearly shows, India, and India alone, has attempted to resist armed might and win freedom by moral force...

...There 'does not even seemj to be much hope that we shall learn from Confucius and the Chinese to be reasonable...

...She admits that without India the English will not be able to live "in the style to which the Old World Order had accustomed them...

...Wars, murder, inquisition of scholars, torture of askers, suppression and mutilation of truth, have been and are being committed in India in the name of God—the God of England...

...Such a development, although it would in time raise the standard of life of the Indian people, would not mean the triumph of the principles and aims which Nehru and Gandhi stand for...

...and that "the overwhelming majority of the people of the United Nations are fighting for a new and good and modern life for themselves and their peoples," and that "Russia and China are fighting for Indian freedom no less than for their own...

...Precedent Of Political Crimes Referring to the fashionable security through preponderant armed forces theories of our American neo-imperialists, Frances Gunther writes: "We do not really achieve our way of life by taking more and more military power—and with it more and more economic wealth— by dominating more and more seas, and with them the lives of more and more peoples living on those seas.___" And in reply to Winston Churchill's past and present statements concerning Britain's intention to continue "effectually controlling Indian life" and his determination not to "cast away that most truly bright and precious jewel in the Crown of the King which, more than all our dominions and dependencies, constitutes the glory and strength of the British Empire," she boldly states: "India is the consummated precedent for all the political crimes that are being committed today...

...If the Gandhi method of war-by-love should succeed —if India wins its freedom without resort to war—by arms—it would mean an incalculable rise in human stature, and in the development of human society...

...They are the precedent for the wars, murders, etc., that are being committed in other parts of the world—in the name of the Gods of Germany, Italy, Japan...

...Frances Gunther may be right in th'inking that the Indian Revolution is the major event of World War II as the Russian Revolution was of World War I. But to judge from the gospel of hate and revenge which our Rex Stouts and other professing Christians are now spreading, there is little chance that Gandhi will be more successful than Christ in teaching men to love and forgive their enemies...

...If it should fail, it will at least have been one of the most heroic attempts ever made by man to rise above his animal ancestry, and to act like his own concept of God...

...the Indians may live in it...

...a prospect which is too recent for Frances Gunther to have been able to take cognizance of it...

...They have wanted to treat the subject peoples more kindly, and they have wanted to prevent the "capitalists" or "the ruling class" from enjoying the main benefits of Empire...

...Tata to spend $30,000,000,000 on industrializing and modernizing India...

...24) and with less attention paid to the reverse side of the case for Indian freedom and the economic consequences...

...Hence she is inclined, I think, to minimize the economic losses which would accrue to England through the loss of India, in spite of the many quotations she gives to show that English statesmen have frankly admitted that "we in England have to live on India...

...As the author says herself, her book intentionally stresses the "psychological aspect of the Anglo-Indian conflict" which seems to her the crux of the situation...

...It is also a "shocking" book because of its author's scorn for the "filthy garments of hypocrisy" which Archibald MacLeish considers better than no clothing at all...

...Had Hitler been successful this might have been the German type of Imperialism: the Herrenvolk as a whole, not merely their rulers, were to enjoy the fruits of the labors of the conquered "lesser breeds without the law...

...The finest quality of Revolution In ! India, to my mind, is its fearless awareness of the fact that so long as we support and justify British Imperialist rule over subject peoples, or advocate a new streamlined Imperialism for America, Britain, and Russia, along the lines proposed by Walter Lippmann and others, we have no moral grounds on which to oppose Japanese or German Imperialism...

...True also that only a minority of Englishmen get profits out of India either in the shape of returns on investments, or trade, or banking, or well-paid appointments in India and pensions also paid for by India...

...She argues at length that the English people as a whole would be better off if they let India go and ceased to attempt the impossible task of controlling the "Empire Life Line" which necessitates dominion over the Seven Seas and wars to retain or obtain innumerable bases and ports and territories all over the globe...

...But she thinks they ought not to mind because they would benefit in many other ways if they would give up carrying the golden cross of Empire...

...If this news means that henceforth the British are going to "cooperate" with India's capitalists, instead of continuing to base their power on the princes, landowners, moneylenders, and other feudal elements, the British Empire may get a new lease on life...