Promise Freedom to India after War with Japan

Abstract

June 25, 2012 (9:21 pm) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3201\russell 32,1 060 red.wpd 1 “Promise Freedom to India after War with Japan”, Bombay Chronicle, 10 March 1945; reprinted in Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India 1945, ed. Bimil Prasad (India Council of Historical Research; New Delhi: Oxford U. P., 2008), pp. 228–9. 2 “Bertrand Russell on Indian Freedom”, The Modern Review, Calcutta, 77, no. 4 (April 1945): 147. 3 “My Program for India”, Common Sensez 13 (Feb. 1944): 51. 4 Less than a month before Russell’s Cambridge speech, for example, the Bombay Sentinel had published an editorial highly critical of him: “Revival of Cripps Plan Not a Solution”, 7 Feb. 1945; reprinted in Towards Freedom, pp. 136–8. See also Russell’s exchanges with the American writer Louis Fischer, a future biographer of Gandhi, in “z‘What about India?’z”, The American Forum of the Air, Washington, d.c., 4, no. 41 (11 Oct. 1942): 7–13. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 32 (summer 2012): 75–9 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 PROMISE FREEDOM TO INDIA AFTER WAR WITH JAPAN Bertrand Russell introduction by andrew g. bone The text presented below showcases a recently unearthed report, in the Wrst person, of a speech delivered by Russell to the Cambridge Majlis on 6 March 1945.1 The bracketed portions contain material absent from a shorter report2 that has long been known to exist. The textual diTerences between the two versions are quite interesting, and attention is brieXy drawn to them below. The Cambridge Majlis was a university club and debating society set up for Indian students in 1891 and often addressed by prominent supporters of India’s independencez—zboth from the ranks of the indigenous nationalist movement and its left-wing allies in Britain. As a former chair (from 1930 to 1939) of the India League, the anti-colonial campaign’s British arm, it was perfectly natural for Russell to have received an invitation to speak. Only the previous year he had described himself as “a life-long friend of Indian freedom”.3 Yet the sincerity of Russell’s commitment to this cause had been questioned during wartime as his views on India had moved into surprisingly close alignment with those of a British government led by that diehard upholder of the Raj, Winston Churchill .4 Britain’s oUcial policy had been encapsulated early in 1942 in the “Cripps June 25, 2012 (9:21 pm) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3201\russell 32,1 060 red.wpd 76 bertrand russell 5 The Labour politician Sir StaTord Cripps (1889–1952) had led the British mission that arrived in Delhi in March 1942. A senior member of the War Cabinet who had emerged as something of a rival to Churchill, Cripps was also (like Russell) a longstanding supporter of India’s political aspirations whose sympathies had been muted temporarily by the more urgent priority of winning the war. 6 “Gandhi’s Stand Disapproved” (letter to ed.), New York Times, 5 Aug. 1942, p. 18. See also “To End the Deadlock in India”, Asiaz 42 (June 1942): 338–40. 7 See above, n. 6, and “Bertrand Russell Writes of India, Britain, and the u.s.a.” (letter to ed.), PM, New York, 20 Oct. 1942, p. 15; and “The International SigniWcance of the Indian Problem”, Free World, New York, 5 (Jan. 1943): 63–9. The two last items were co-signed by Patricia Russell. 8 P.yJ. Cain and A.yG. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914– 1990 (London and New York: Longman, 1993), p. 195 and n.85. oTer” (to which Russell referred in Cambridge) of full independence after the war combined with “opt-out” entitlements for India’s Muslim majority provinces .5 In return, Indian nationalists were asked for their full backing of the Allied war eTort. But the Congress Party refused to accept a deal that took no immediate steps towards dismantling the Raj while also raising the spectre of freedom without unity. To force the issue, Gandhi launched a “Quit India” campaign, which resulted in the internment of hundreds of...