Cripps, Nehru and Gandhi

Partial transcript

1. Sir Stafford Cripps’ broadcast on India
(i) Text of the broadcast.
27.7.42

“I have always been a firm friend of India and I have done my best in the past to work for the freedom of India. When I joined the British War Cabinet and found the British Government anxious and willing to put forward a proposal for Indian self-government, I volunteered to travel the 20 thousand miles to India and back to put the case directly to the Indian political leaders on behalf of the British Government and people.

We offered to the Indian people complete liberty the moment the war was over, to devise and set up their own form of government. We suggested the broad outlines of how they should proceed. But there was no rigidity in these suggestions. It was left open to the various religions and races to agree upon some other method. But to my regret they neither accepted, nor put forward any agreed alternative.

It was not this future arrangement, however, but the immediate situation which caused the Congress Party in India to reject the proposals.

We offered the representative Indian political leaders immediate office in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, a body of ministers like those who advise your President. Mr. Gandhi has demanded that we should walk out of India leaving the country, with its deep-rooted religious divisions, without any constitutional form of government and with no organized administration. No responsible government could take such a step – least of all in the midst of war.

The Moslems, of whom there are at least 80 millions, are deeply opposed to Hindu domination as are also the tens of millions of the depressed classes. To have agreed to the Congress party or to Mr. Gandhi’s demands would have meant inevitable chaos and disorder. This is not merely my assertion, it is stated by Mr. Gandhi himself. Quite recently he has said: “Anarchy is the only way. Someone asked me if there would be anarchy after British rule. Yes, it will be there, but I tell the British to give us chaos.”

India is now an essential and vital part of the world front against the Axis powers. There are British, American and Chinese forces as well as Indians fighting side by side to defend India against Japan, and if the obligations of the British Government to the American and Chinese allies are to be observed, we must ensure that India remains a safe base in and from which to operate against the Japanese enemy, and we cannot allow conditions to be created by any political party or leader in India which will jeopardise the safety of the United Nations’ armies and air forces or throw the door open to the advance of our enemies into this new and dangerous theatre of war. That is an obligation, not only to the British and American forces in India, it is an obligation to the Indian peoples themselves.

That is why your country and my country find themselves both intimately concerned with the condition of India at this moment. Your sons as well as our sons are helping to defend India and wage war against the Japanese.

Your policy as well as our policy is to defend India. But Mr. Gandhi and the Congress Party have other views.

Mr. Gandhi I have always regarded with respect as a great nationalist and religious leader, but I am bound to say that in the present circumstances he is not showing himself to be practical and realistic.

Certainly the action which is now threatening – mass civil disobedience by his followers – is calculated to endanger both your war effort and our own, and to bring the greatest aid and comfort to our common enemies.

Mr. Gandhi’s views are not always easily defined, or always consistant, but let me read a few of his recent statements:
“We do not want these allied troops for our defence or protection. If luck favours us, the Japanese may see no reason to hold the country after the Allies have withdrawn.