“WINSTON, INDIA HAS GAINED FREEDOM” - HOW GANDHI STOPPED CHURCHILL AT HIS DOORSTEP.

Within his homeland, Winston Churchill’s colossal contribution to saving his people from Hitler eclipses all else, and he is widely regarded as the greatest  Briton of all time. So it came as something of a surprise when a senior Labor Party politician described him as a villain for having ordered troops to fire on striking workers in the Welsh town of Tonypandy in 1910.

Outside the United Kingdom, Churchill has always had a decidedly mixed reputation. This was especially so in India, where his undying opposition to freedom for Indians was both well-known and widely deplored. As was his hatred for Mahatma Gandhi, a figure he mocked, calling him a malignant subversive fanatic and a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace.

Winston Churchill was closely connected with India from 1896 until 1947 when India finally achieved independence. No other British statesman had such a long association with the sub-continent or sought to influence its politics in such a sustained and harmful manner. Churchill consistently sought to sabotage moves towards any degree of independence and for five years led opposition to the Government of India Act, crippling the legislation before its passage in 1935. 

In 1939 he congratulated himself that he had created a three - legged stool on which Britain could sit indefinitely. As Prime Minister during the Second World War Churchill worked behind the scenes to frustrate the freedom struggle, delaying India’s Independence by a decade. To this day he is regarded as the archetypical imperialist villain, held personally responsible for the Bengal Famine. This is Churchill at his malign, cruel, obstructive and selfish worst.

But the same man was outstandingly liberal at the Colonial Office, generous to the Boers and the Irish, to the detriment of his career. He later rushed colonies in the Middle East towards Independence.

                                             So why was he so strangely hostile towards India ?

Winston Churchill was a British statesman, soldier, who served as Prime Minister of United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

At the same time when Churchill was earning his stripes a young Gandhi (picture below) was travelling to Pretoria, South Africa, for a legal case on the cold night of June 7, 1893, when a white man objected to his presence in a first-class carriage. Gandhi, naturally, refused to move since he had a valid first-class ticket. The train had reached Pietermaritzburg by then, and Gandhi was unceremoniously thrown from his carriage onto the platform.

The waiting room where he spent the night is today peppered with posters and a computer kiosk presentation that recounts the incident in great detail.

“It was winter, and winter in the higher regions of South Africa is severely cold. Maritzburg being at a high altitude, the cold was extremely bitter. My overcoat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered. I began to think of my duty. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial, only a symptom of the deep disease of color prejudice.” 

It was a long night for Gandhi, one that would make him think about the situation back in India and mull over what he could do about it. “I was born in India but was made in South Africa.” It has been 130 years since that night, but the statue and the waiting room in Pietermaritzburg leave Indians teary - eyed to this day.

Gandhi came to India to fight against British imperialism but the burning urge to free India came from his deep despise for white people manning the swathes of Indian citizens always telling them that they are a colored race and are fit to be ruled.

India’s apartheid was as despicable as that of the South Africa’s. There ran a story -  that was commonly told in Britain -  that the colonization of India - as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So, the fact that the empire was sustained for so long was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence.

Wrong !!

Research published by Columbia University Press deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, it was calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly USD 45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.

The people must know this brutal reality - that USD 45 trillion is 14 times more than the total annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the United Kingdom today !!

The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, buying from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.

While Churchill was a gregarious character Gandhi, by contrast, was a mild-mannered, shy man. If his contemporaries in his younger days had been asked to pick out who among them was most likely to take on the might of the British Empire and win, none would have picked out the reedy, scholarly boy who eschewed friendship for books.

Born into a family in the state of Porbandar, Gandhi rose above his humble origins to study law in London – the beating heart of the empire. After a brief stint back in India, he would set sail for a corner of the empire where he would see with his own eyes what his so-called fellow citizens really thought of people like him, and it was the treatment he received there that would turn from humble servant of empire to the father of his nation.

Gandhi’s time in South Africa had shaped a very different man. By the time he left for India in 1915, gone was the mild-mannered lawyer of old. In his place was a respected political activist, avowed nationalist and seasoned campaigner. He joined the Indian National Congress, India’s leading pro-independence political party. By 1920 he was leading the party and ramping up his demands for an independent India. This culminated in the Indian National Congress declaring independence in 1930.

Unsurprisingly, this declaration was not recognized by the British authorities, but it did bring them to the negotiating table. It also brought the Congress leader into the firing line of Winston Churchill, who was languishing on the back benches after the Tories lost the 1929 general election.

Between 1929 and 1939, Churchill’s irritation and hostility towards Gandhi grew. Believing the breakup of empire could lead to catastrophic effects, Churchill was furious that Gandhi’s peaceful direct actions against the British authorities such as the famous Salt March of 1929  were gaining traction  with the Indian public.

From the back benches of the House of Commons, Churchill began to issue dark and terrible warnings about Gandhi. As the 1930’s rolled on, Churchill’s obsession with Gandhi caused many of his colleagues to wonder if he was losing his mind.

In 1931, Gandhi was among the delegates at the First Roundtable Conference to discuss a way forward for India. It did not matter if Churchill was up for it!!

“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King Emperor,” he muttered.

Upon returning to India after a second roundtable conference in Britain, Gandhi was arrested and imprisoned after beginning a second Salt March.

While he was in prison, the British government announced its intention to introduce a new electoral reform that would have created separate electorates based on their religion and class. Incensed at this attempt to change the secular nature of the Indian election system, Gandhi announced he would fast until he died in protest at the law.

“Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting,” was Churchill’s response.

                     “ It would be good riddance of a bad man, and an enemy of the Empire.”

Churchill’s frequent denunciations of Gandhi led him to become popular with the far right of British politics, which did him no favors with his more liberal-minded colleagues.

His fetish for Gandhi  did not end when he became prime minister in 1940. Gandhi opposed sending troops to fight for the empire, which Winston took it as an affront to his office. Flames erupted between the two men in 1942 when Gandhi launched his Quit India campaign.

In an impassioned speech in Bombay, Gandhi reasoned that India should not be fighting a war for freedom when the nation was not free itself. He demanded immediate independence and called on all Indians to stop cooperating with their British rulers.

Churchill was incensed, and Gandhi was again thrown in prison along with the other members of the Congress Working Committee who had organized the Quit India rally. The blame for the violence that erupted after Gandhi’s arrest was placed firmly on his shoulders by the British.

Gandhi was outraged and began another fast in protest. Churchill did not believe he was fasting at all and roped in India’s viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, to try and prove it. Convinced Gandhi was secretly taking glucose tablets to keep himself alive, he egged on Linlithgow to spy on Gandhi to catch him out. No evidence of secret glucose consumption was ever unearthed, but Churchill was having none of it.

Three years after Gandhi’s death, Churchill was still pushing the lie, this time in print.

“It was certain, at an early stage, that he was being fed with glucose whenever he drank water, and this, as well as his own intense vitality and lifelong austerity, enabled this frail being to maintain his prolonged abstention from any visible form of food.” What a preposterous moron he was !!

The full text could be found in the third volume of his war memoirs, The Hinge of Fate.

A year later, Churchill was shown the door at the 1945 general election despite the Allies’ victory in Europe. The new Labor government and a nation exhausted after nearly six years of war had better things to think about than keeping hold of India. Churchill was halted at his doorstep!

Gandhi’s dream was for a united, independent India run along secular lines where the country’s predominantly Hindu and Muslim population would live side by side as they had for centuries. Unfortunately, the balance of power during the independence negotiations had shifted in favor of the pro-partition Muslim League, headed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Jinnah wanted to see India divided along religious lines, and he got his wish when the British partitioned the country into India and Pakistan on 15th of August 1947, much to Gandhi’s dismay. For Gandhi Independence Day held a different meaning – he would spend the Day calling for peace!

Five months after independence, he was assassinated on the 30th of January 1948. As tributes poured in from across the world, one man kept silent – Winston Churchill.

In the end, neither man got his wish. Gandhi’s dream of a united, secular, independent India never came to fruition. By the time Churchill died on the 24th of January 1965, almost seventeen years to the day after his nemesis, the sun had already set on large swathes of his beloved British Empire.

Churchill and Gandhi met once, in November 1906. The Englishman was then the undersecretary of state for the colonies; the Indian, a spokesman for the rights of his countrymen in South Africa. Back then, Gandhi wore a suit, as befitting a lawyer trained in London. It was not clear whether Churchill remembered their meeting when, in the early 1930’s, he began attacking Gandhi, whose Salt March had made waves around the world and established him as the preeminent leader of India’s struggle for freedom from British rule.

Not everything was hatred and betrayal. India also tasted love in those tumultuous days. Lazmi was a beautiful girl when she fell for Jogi, a Punjabi peasant. When Jogi was killed by dacoits she came to Calcutta with her mother. Her friend, Abhimanyu (Abhi) supported her with finding a house and a respectable job !!

Lazmi, with Abhi’s help got, almost immediately a job at Lahore Talkies, Calcutta, helping technicians to fix the sets before a take. Abhi was happy for her as both grew affectionate towards each other, Lazmi often brought lunch for Abhi and he loitered with her in spare time.

Things took a turn when Saifuddin Khan, or Khan Saheb, or Saifu, spotted Lazmi in one of his visits to Lahore Talkies. Saifu was the Producer at Roy Talkies – a business house much bigger than Lahore Talkies and Khan Saheb had enough money power to produce at least two films a month. Lazmi was offered a dance role in one of Saifu’s films with a condition that she had to make an impromptu dance sequence of her own in one of Saifu’s many lavish parties !!

And she did dance to the amusement of the large crowd that night.

Lazmi was in, as a dancer in Saifuddin Khan’s next film. Over time she slowly kept Abhi aside as he was only an assistant to cameraman and Saifu had catapulted her to a rising star of Roy Talkies. She did not shed a tear when her friend, Sheila, told her that Abhi had lost his job at Lahore Talkies, Saifu did not like Abhi and now he was back to being out of employment.

Lazmi was reluctant to give Abhi a hand in his time of distress !!

Saifu was head over heels in love with her and she took it as an opportunity to further her career. Saifu was married with two children but how such triviality did matter to Saifu, he was besotted with Lazmi.

Between Gandhi and Nehru, a fascinating father-son relation blossomed, animated by all the tensions, affections and repressed guilt such a relationship implied. All his life, Nehru had an instinctive need for a dominant personality near him, some steadying influence to whom he could turn in the crises engendered by his volatile nature. His father, a bluff, jovial barrister with a penchant for good Scotch and Bordeaux, had first filled that role. Since his death, it had been Gandhi.

Nehru's devotion to Gandhi remained total, but a subtle change was overtaking their relationship. A phase in Nehru's life was drawing to a close. The son was ready to leave his father's house for the new world he saw beyond its gates. In that new world, he would need a new guru, a guru more sensitive to the complex problems that would assail him there. Although he was perhaps unaware of it as he sat in the Viceroy's study that March afternoon, a vacuum had opened in the psyche of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Nehru dreamed of an India, freed alike of the shackles of poverty and of superstition, unburdened of capitalism, an India in which the smoke stacks of factories reached out from her cities, an India enjoying the plenitude of that Industrial Revolution to which her colonizers had denied her access.

No one might have seemed a more unlikely candidate to lead India towards that vision than Jawaharlal Nehru. Under the cotton khadi he wore in deference to the dictates of Congress, he remained the quintessential English gentleman. In a land of mystics, he was a cool rationalist.

The mind that had exulted in the discovery of science at Cambridge never ceased to be appalled by his fellow Indians who refused to stir from their homes on days the sadhus forbade them to. He was a publicly declared agnostic in the most intensely spiritual area in the world, and he never ceased to proclaim the horror the word religion inspired in him.

Nehru despised India's priests, its sadhus, its chanting monks and pious sheikhs. They had only served, he felt, to impede the nation’s progress, deepen its divisions and ease the task of her foreign rulers.

And yet, the India of those sadhus and superstition-haunted masses had accepted Nehru for thirty years as he had travelled across India haranguing the multitudes. Clinging to the roofs and sides of tramways to escape the slums of India's cities, on foot and by bullock cart in the country sides, his countrymen had come by the hundreds of thousands to see and hear him. 

Many in those crowds could not hear his words nor understand them when they did. For them, it had been enough however just to see, over the ocean of heads around them, his frail and gesticulating silhouette. They had taken darshan, a kind of spiritual communion received from being in the presence of a great man and that had sufficed.

He was a superb orator and writer, a man who treasured words as a courtesan jewels. Anointed early by Gandhi, he had advanced steadily through the ranks of Congress eventually to preside over it three times.

The Mahatma had made it clear that it was on his shoulders that he wished his mantle to fall. For Nehru, Gandhi was a genius. But, surprisingly, Nehru's cool, pragmatic mind had rejected almost all of Gandhi's great moves: civil disobedience, the Salt March, Quit India and many more!

                                                                           But why(?).

In spite of all these tribulations  and in many ways, Nehru’s heart had told him to follow the Mahatma and he, would later admit, had been right.

Gandhi had been, in a sense, Nehru's guru. It was he who had re-Indianized Nehru, sending him into the villages to find the real face of his homeland, to let the fingers of his soul touch India's sufferings. Whenever the two men were in the same place, Nehru would spend at least half an hour sitting at Bapuji's' feet, sometimes talking, sometimes listening, sometimes just looking and thinking. Those were, for Nehru, moments of intense spiritual satisfaction, perhaps the closest brush his atheist’s heart would ever had with religion.

Abhi was pained at what Lazmi did to her, in fact it still did not go down with him that she was in Saifu’s arms – how did he not recognise such a licentious woman eager to splay for money, how could she be so indecent and lewd hurling Abhi out of the window in a flash not knowing that corrupt Saifu would milk every inch of her skin and would throw her away !!

Shreshta, the next-door neighbour of Abhi, was right about Lazmi, when she assessed her as an opportunist swimming with the tide to make money. That day Abhi realised the worth Shreshta had in his life, how so different she was from the wine gulping and cigar smoking Lazmi !!

Abhi decided to marry Shreshta at the first opportune moment, immediately after getting a fresh job, his father would be very happy to have Shreshta at the Family.

As soon as Abhi got a job at Roy Talkies as a waiter he married Shreshta Roy – it did not matter to him a bit that Lazmi was working at the same studio - she was an actress now!

Life had taken a brutal turn for Abhi and he would reminisce his early days, the long walks with Lazmi, the happy lunch time together at Lahore Talkies, the friendly staff there always pushing them as a lovely pair and above all, the togetherness Lazmi showed. Was it all unreal?

                                          You will later learn that Lazmi always loved Abhi !!

Churchill made disparaging remarks about Indians, was it driven by color, one would never know but the future beheld very unkindly to Winston as modern England loathed him as a racist and all the good work he so studiously gained and reputation nurtured went down the drain.

In his view, India was not ready for home rule because he believed that the Brahmins would gain control and further oppress both the untouchables and the religious minorities. In March 1931, when riots broke out in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) between Hindus and Muslims, he claimed that the situation proved his case.

On 19th May 1940, Winston Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister. With defeat in France imminent and speaking just seven days before the start of the Dunkirk evacuation, he paddled down Nazi invasion in Biblical terms. Churchill urged Britons: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict, for it is better for us to die in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.

Churchill spoke haltingly, but passionately – “I have to declare the decision of His Majesty’s Government – and I feel sure it is a decision in which the great Dominion will, in due course, concur – but we must speak out now, at once, without a day’s delay. I have to make a declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose: we are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this, nothing will turn us – nothing. We will never parley; we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang.”

“We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God’s help, we have rid the Earth of his shadow and liberated his people from his yoke. Any man or State who fights against Nazism, will have our aid. Any man or State who marches with Hitler is our foe. That is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and Allies in every part of the world to take the same course and to pursue it as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end.”

Winston Churchill had won the day for Britain.

Like all human beings, Churchill also had a lighter side to his persona where he would be playful with his mates, but very rarely. In one occasion his famous V sign for victory was interpreted as up your bum by one of his office secretaries – the hilarious encounter brought quite a different  side to Winston’s persona (picture below).

Winston had a very troubled childhood. While at Harrow Winston Churchill wrote 76 times to his parents between 1885 and 1892, and received not more than six letters. In one of these, his mother Jennie remonstrated him over his schoolwork and thoughtlessness, adding you repay your father’s (Lord Randolph) kindness to you badly. Lord Randolph remained convinced that his eldest son Winston would never amount to anything and took little interest in him. Once Lord Randolph castigated Winston for incessant complaints and his total lack of application at Sandhurst.

Wealthy, privileged and fiercely independent New Yorker Jennie Jerome (Winston’s mother) took Victorian England by storm. As Lady Randolph Churchill she gave birth to a man who defined twentieth century: her son Winston. But as the family’s influence soared, scandals exploded and tragedy befell the Churchills. Jennie was inescapably drawn to the brilliant and seductive Count Charles Kinsky – diplomat, skilled horse racer and a deeply passionate lover. She disrupted lives, including her own, as their impossible affair only intensified leaving Randolph Churchill’s sanity frayed. Forced to decide where her heart truly belonged, Jennie risked everything – even her son – on both sides of the Atlantic !

Violet, one of Jennie’s many accomplices, once quipped – Jennie barely spared Winston a thought when he was a boy. Only when he was old enough to be interesting – to worship her as she liked – did she bother to take him. Poor chap might have been raised by wolves !!

A wayward mother and a whimsical father were what Winston got and the upbringing in those venomous surroundings brought about in him, apart from other reasons, a deep hatred for India.

In 1943, India then still a British possession, experienced a disastrous famine in the north-eastern region of Bengal - sparked by the Japanese occupation of Burma the year before. At least three million people were believed to have died - and Churchill's actions, or lack thereof, had been the subject of criticism. He refused to meet India’s need for wheat and continued to export rice to fuel the war effort. The War Cabinet ordered the build-up of a stockpile of wheat for feeding European civilians after they had been liberated. So, 170,000 tons of Australian wheat were stored, starving India - destined not for consumption. Churchill even blamed the Indians for the famine, claiming they bred like rabbits.

                                    Goodness Winston !! Was Jennie speaking for you(?).

There is nothing sadder in India’s Independence than the way it traversed its way. At three minutes before midnight on 14th August 1947 the unity of the Indian subcontinent was broken. Pakistan was established as an independent, sovereign state. Exactly five minutes later India became independent.

The British Empire could not hold on to the Jewel in their Crown. In spite of all efforts !!

In 1943 Archibald Wavell was appointed by Churchill as the Viceroy. He was supposed to sit tight and keep India quiet through the war. But to Churchill’s great irritation he did something what his earlier political masters had never done – he came up with a policy precisely opposite of what history and instincts would have suggested, but it was correct and it was what his successor, Mountbatten would do.

Wavell saw that nothing the politicians had been doing had prepared India to look after herself as there was no economic preparation. The choice was to stay for another generation – which Wavell thought would be impossible. He felt the Empire’s attitudes towards India negligent, hostile and contemptuous to a degree nobody had anticipated. Repeatedly the Indians would find being offered a form of words which was known to mean one thing to them and quite another to those making the promise. The weasel statements, the deliberate misunderstandings were difficult to excuse.

They were the reasons that Indian politicians, then and now, accused and accuse the British of bad faith. Well, Winston, you lost your hat here !

The War over, Britain no longer had the means, financial or otherwise, or indeed the strength of will, to hold on to India. But the Labor Government which was elected in 1945 had no wish to let go of India entirely. For geo-strategical and prestige reasons India was to be kept in the Commonwealth and tied in to defense commitments. It was envisaged that an area around Delhi would not pass out of British control and that there would be a continuing British presence.

                                            Sadly, it did not happen. It was never meant to be.

While Winston Churchill kept fuming, India got freedom beating all his appalling tribulations. One can see above when he, with his wife, in one of the many ceremonies at Buckingham Palace, kept pointing his sinister eyes at Lord Mountbatten (not in the frame) whispering in her ears:

This is the man who engineered everything. He gave India away !!

Shut up! Clementine Churchill was quick to retort.

Footnote:

Churchill never had a clue of the depth with which Gandhi spoke. One instance, where he lectured the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), Bombay on 8th of August, 1942 forced the British administration to sit up and notice the amazing abilities of the great man.

“Gentlemen, I want to declare to the world, although I may have forfeited the regard of many friends in the West and I must bow my head low; but even for their friendship or love I must not suppress the voice of conscience - promoting of my inner basic nature today. There is something within me impelling me to cry out my agony. I have known humanity. I have studied something of psychology. Such a man knows exactly what it is.”

“I do not mind how you describe it. That voice within tells me - you have to stand against the whole world although you may have to stand alone. You have to stare in the face the whole world although the world may look at you with bloodshot eyes.”

“Do not fear. Trust the little voice residing within your heart. It says : forsake friends, wife and all; but testify to that for which you have lived and for which you have to die. I want to live my full span of life. And for me I put my span of life at 120 years. By that time India will be free, the world will be free.”

The world stared wide eyed in wonder ! Churchill was halted at its steps, he listened with bated breath what this man, whom he once called a half-naked fakir, was capable of, how he spoke with aplomb, how distinguished an orator he was.  

“It is, however, with all these things as the background that I want Englishmen, Europeans and all the United Nations to examine in their hearts what crime had India committed in demanding Independence. I ask, is it right for you to distrust such an organization with all its background, tradition and record of over half a century and misrepresent its endeavours before all the world by every means at your command?”

“There is a chorus of disapproval and righteous protest all over the world against us. They say we are erring, the move is inopportune. I had great regard for British diplomacy which has enabled them to hold the Empire so long. Now it stinks in my nostrils, and others have studied that diplomacy and are putting it into practice. They may succeed in getting, through these methods, world opinion on their side for a time; but India will speak against that world opinion.”

                                “ I have pledged the Congress and the Congress will do or die.”

References: 

1.        India’s Struggle for Independence - Bipin Chandra

2.       India After Gandhi - Ramchandra Guha

3.       A Passage to India - E. M. Forster

4.       Train to Pakistan - Khushwant Singh

5.       Freedom At Midnight - Dominique Lapierre & Larry Collins

Disclaimer: The names Lazmi, Abhi, Sheila, Shreshta, Saifu are imaginary and do not have any resemblance to any person(s) dead or alive.