U.S.-India Relations

Abstract

I n the fall of 1941, I enrolled for an M.A. in history at The American University in Washington, D.C. My thesis was to be on U.S. opinion vis-avis India, 1895-1935.' After the United States entered World War II, I joined the government service and by late 1943 was the desk officer on South Asia in the Division of Cultural Relations, U.S. Department of State. In that post, I worked closely with the late Dr. Horace I. Poleman, head of the India Section of the Library of Congress, on various cultural for India and adjacent nations.2 Through Dr. Poleman, I met Professor W. Norman Brown of the University of Pennsylvania and consulted with him on suitable cultural/educational projects for India.3 My duties as desk officer for South Asia also brought me into close contact with persons in the District of Columbia who were professionally concerned with India. Some of these people-Horace Poleman, for example-also became personal friends. Most of my associates were pro-Indian National Congress (INC), as was I, favoring progress toward independence for India soon after the end of the war. That was not, however, the official policy of the U.S. government. Nor were there very many people in the U.S. government who supported early independence for India. Public opinion, as far as we could gauge it, was ambiguous. The political desk officer in the Department of State, with whom I had to deal, was quite pro-British and followed the Churchill line on India at all times. Meanwhile, the British Information Services were expending a great deal of time, effort, and money trying to influence our media and public opinion in the direction of the official propaganda of His Majesty's government regarding India.4 They even reissued and handed out copies of the notorious anti-Indian book by Katherine Mayo-Mother India. It painted In-