Keeping India in the Commonwealth: British Political and Military Aims, 1947-49

Abstract

On 27 April 1949, the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London accepted India's request to allow her to remain in the Commonwealth as a republic. The Indian republic would not owe allegiance to the British Crown, which was the keystone of the Commonwealth, and the King would have no place in the government of India. This settlement marked a break with the Statute of Westminster of 1931, which had declared Commonwealth members to be united by 'a common allegiance to the Crown'. Republicanism, in the past synonymous with secession, was now accepted as compatible with full membership. The resolution passed by the constituent assembly on 22 January 1947 had declared that India would become a sovereign, independent republic. However, in order to facilitate a smooth transfer of power, India agreed to temporary dominion status in August 1947, although no final decision about continuing membership in the Commonwealth was then taken. It was in December 1948 that the Congress passed a resolution expressing the desire of a republican India for continued association with the Commonwealth.' India's reasons for wishing to stay in the Commonwealth as a republic have already been analysed by historians.2 Why the British acceded to India's request has not been detailed so far. Two main questions will therefore be raised in this paper, which is based largely on official British sources made available to scholars only recently under the third year rule. First, how did the British conceive the Commonwealth in the post-1945 era; second, why did they wish to keep India in it? Partly by accident, partly by deliberation, the Commonwealth had seldom been defined. Lord Rosebery is first said to have used the term in 1884, while assuring an Australian audience that the 'fact of your being a nation need not imply any separation from the Empire... There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a commonwealth of nations.' English socialists apparently liked the idea of a Commonwealth of communities flying the British flag. That ideologue of the Commonwealth, Lionel Curtis, considered