“Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply the number of men”
JL Borges.

The dominant narrative
The dominant narrative – at least within India – about the birth of the Indian nation revolves around Mahatma Gandhi: that the British, when they ruled India, encountered resistance from an indigenous struggle for independence which gained ground from the 1920s onwards. The Mahatma had returned to India in 1914 and in him the British found an implacable foe. He found a novel way to fight the British and this way was non-violence. Gandhi’s non-violent struggle won independence for India and it is the uniqueness of his methods that made him an icon and India’s struggle a model for anti-colonial resistance. Without Gandhi, India might not have won independence in 1947, and it is this perception within India which sees him being regarded as the ‘Father of the Nation’. This is the narrative that most Indians take for granted as the truth about Indian independence but, as with all historical understanding, this is only one possible narrative; the kind of narrative one constructs to explain a historical event depends on the evidence used – and the contradicting evidence overlooked. The following is an alternative, competing narrative around the ‘fathering of the Indian nation’. It does not claim to be the ‘truth’ and its only aim is to bring to light another narrative about India’s independence.

The Mahatma and his image
To all Indians, and indeed following the 1982 biopic Gandhi, to the whole world, M K Gandhi, also called the Mahatma, is the father of the free republic of India. The word Mahatma literally means ‘great soul’ but it has a more specific and narrower meaning in India. Gandhi was not the only Mahatma of recent times in India. Jyotiba Phule the 19th century social reformer was also given the title. It refers to a person who gives up worldly wealth in pursuit of spiritual aims, an action that Indians admire more than anything else. Thus Buddha is called mahatma because he gave up his worldly wealth and power to pursue a life of spiritual fulfilment.

What does Gandhi’s claim to be the Father of the Nation rest on? The story learned at the school level is that he ‘won freedom for India through his philosophy of non-violence’ but even the most important works of modern Indian history place his personal qualities in opposition to colonial rule as the only legitimate means of studying the emergence of modern India:

“In the decades since 1947, the present has moved on. Political scientists studied the first general election of 1952, and then the next one held five years later. Social anthropologists wrote accounts of Indian villages in the 1960s. The past, however, has remained fixed...A vast literature grew – and is still growing – on the social, cultural, political and economic consequences of British colonialism. A (sic) even more vast literature grew – and it too is still growing – on the forms, functions, causes and consequences of the opposition to colonial rule. Leading that opposition was the social reformer, spiritualist, prophet and political agitator Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.” (1)

Implicit in this passage is the assumption that independent India became a possibility only because of Gandhi’s spiritual qualities and to most of us these spiritual qualities include ahimsa and complete non-violence as an essential component. The author does not, for instance, use the term ‘politician’ or ‘political strategist’ as an additional epithet since that would come into conflict with ‘prophet’ and ‘spiritualist’. A closer examination of Gandhi's life shows several occasions when he did not deny support to the British Empire and may even be seen as having endorsed violent solutions to problems. For instance, during the First World War he specifically wrote to King George V promising to ‘rain men’ (i.e. soldiers) on him:

“The other enclosure contains my offer. You will do with it what you like. I would like to do something which Lord Chelmsford would consider to be real war work. I have an idea, that if I became your recruiting agent-in-chief, I might rain men on you. Forgive me for the impertinence.” (2)

This passage is not issuing from a naive Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi but someone who had already sharpened non-violence as a political tool in South Africa. In 1947 he did not take a stand on free India’s military action in Kashmir and a Kashmiri complaint is that he assisted in manipulating Maharaja Hari Singh who was not initially inclined to have Kashmir accede to India:

“Hari Singh, the Maharaja (King) of Kashmir, loathed the Indian National Congress and wanted to stay independent of both India and Pakistan. He asked for a standstill agreement from India and Pakistan so as to be able to pursue his goal of an independent Kashmir.... Nehru acutely aware of these facts wanted to visit Kashmir to be able to pressurize the Maharaja to accede to India.... Lord Mountbatten, the Viceroy of India, did not approve of Nehru’s visit and offered to visit himself. He visited Kashmir on 18th June 1947, and stayed there for four days. Lord Mountbatten was unable to have a proper discussion with the Maharaja, as the Maharaja did not wish to be influenced and advised about the fate of his land and people.... This upset Nehru and he wanted to visit Kashmir himself. Sardar Patel strongly disapproved of this visit but on Nehru’s insistence, he agreed to let Gandhi visit Kashmir, which he thought would be ‘lesser of the two evils.’... Gandhi visited Kashmir by the end of July, 1947. The windows of his car were shattered in Baramullah, where an angry crowd protested his visit. Nevertheless, he was to go ahead and obtain a cure for his and Nehru’s anxiety: a guarantee of Maharaja’s accession to India.” (3)

This segment relies on an account of the Kashmir issue in 1947 by Lord Mountbatten’s press attaché (4), which presents Gandhi’s spiritualism and his ‘inner voice’ more ambivalently than Indian history will have it. It would seem from the account that Gandhi’s ‘inner voice’ was perceived by his adversaries as a way of not having to explain himself in rational terms - which might be argued against. We could, of course, question the veracity of a British (or Kashmiri) account but the proposition here is only that whatever we know about Gandhi and the freedom movement is not so much the ‘truth’ as dominant history constructed after 1947 to enable subsequent generations to picture themselves effectively as free Indians with a morally impeccable past.

Nor is there enough evidence to believe in a causal connection between the movements initiated/promoted by Gandhi under the broad rubric of the freedom struggle and constitutional progress in India. Political and constitutional development in British India went virtually along parallel lines with the nationalist movement and, like all parallel lines, the two did not apparently meet. To rephrase this, the history of India’s freedom movement may not quite coincide with the history of the Empire’s weakening in India. The non-violent movements initiated by Gandhi have been widely written about and form the backbone of the mythology around independence but when we actually examine them it would seem that not many of them followed his teachings in spirit or ended in the expressed goals of each movement being realised. Specifically, Gandhi led three major non-violent movements after his return to India:

a)   1919 to 1922: Non-Cooperation movement,
b)   1930 to 1931: Civil Disobedience Movement
c)   1942: the Quit India Movement.

Beginning with (a) above, the Non-Cooperation movement had its violent underside right from the beginning. In 1919 Gandhi, against the advice of Jinnah and others, aligned himself with the Khilafat Movement (having the same ends in sight that the ISIS has today) led by the Ali brothers. This was by no means a non-violent movement and called for a violent jihad aimed at reestablishment of the Caliphate which had been declared abolished by the British after the defeat of Turkey. By critics, it is regarded as a political agitation based on a pan-Islamic, fundamentalist platform and being largely indifferent to the cause of Indian independence. It is significant here that Jinnah also considered the movement retrogressive. In a letter to Gandhi, Jinnah said that the movement was bound to lead to disaster. He said that this kind of a plan has appealed only to the illiterate and the inexperienced youth of the country. He said that though he had no power to remove the cause, he wished to advise his countrymen against the dire consequences of such an extreme act (5) implying that he was the more moderate. This movement lost its steam after the Turkish Republic itself announced the abolition of the Caliphate. The Non-Cooperation movement petered out by 1921 and was called off after the Chauri Chaura lynching of a police detachment by a crowd professing to be Gandhians.  

The next stage in the constitutional progress of India took place with the establishment of the Simon Commission in 1928. A widespread discontent with the fact that the commission contained no Indian members led to rioting and the fatal beating of Lala Lajpat Rai. Gandhi harnessed the energies of the movement into the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1931, an ostensible protest against the Salt Act of 1930. By 1931 it was clear that the movement had run out of steam. It was called off following the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931 in which Gandhi agreed to cooperate with the Empire by participating in the Round Table Conference in London. Even the limited aim of repealing the Salt Act was not achieved. The Salt Act remained in the statute books till 1946 when it was repealed as a matter of prestige by the Interim Government headed by Nehru. 

The Quit India movement of 1942 was a more problematic case as it happened in the middle of the Second World War after the USA, with its overwhelming industrial and military resources had entered the war and the tide was definitely turning against the Axis. The decisive naval battle of Midway had been fought and won by USA in June 1942. We could say that the movement was directed against a weak adversary which was otherwise engaged. Moreover, it is doubtful that Gandhi actually led the movement since he was arrested early in its inception and the leadership of the movement fell on the shoulders of the second rung Congress leaders. But the Freedom Movement pales into insignificance before what was happening in the War around the same time.

Britain, the US and India
The entry of the US into the war forced a sea change in Britain’s attitude to India. Even before this, following the defeat of France in 1940, Britain was compelled to go cap in hand to the neutral United States for money and resources to fight the world war. President Roosevelt drove a hard bargain. Indeed he carried all the British bullion reserves in South Africa to the US on an unarmed freighter, risking U boat attacks.  Roosevelt was very clear that the British Empire, with its system of preferential tariffs within a bloc dominated by Great Britain, was an obstacle to free trade. In a conversation recorded by Henry Wallace, his Vice President, he had said that one of his ambitions was the destruction of the British Empire, beginning with India (6). The relationship between USA and the British Imperial system had never been a happy one. In 1936 Roosevelt had ordered an invasion by the US Marines of Canton Island (a minor British possession) because Pan-Am needed a refuelling point in its trans-Pacific flights.

By 1940, Great Britain was in deeply in debt to the USA. The famous speech of Churchill's “We shall fight on the beaches.....we shall never surrender” has a lesser known coda which goes “until in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old”. In other words “Our job is to hang on till the Americans bail us out”. That bailing out came at a high price. In exchange for some valuable pieces of British Empire real estate in the Caribbean, the British received 50 obsolete destroyers, none of which saw action in World War II, with the single exception of the HMS Campbelltown which was filled with explosives, towed to the St. Nazaire harbour and blown up to prevent German battleships from accessing it (7).

The following conversation between Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill recorded by Elliot Roosevelt, the President’s son, provides us with insights into how the US was arm-twisting Britain at the time over India:

 “But the difference was beginning to be felt. And it was evidenced first, sharply, over Empire.
Father started it.

'Of course,' he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, 'of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade.'
He paused. The P.M.'s head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.

'No artificial barriers,' Father pursued. 'As few favoured economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.' His eye wandered innocently around the room.

Churchill shifted in his armchair. 'The British Empire trade agreements' he began heavily, 'are--'
Father broke in. 'Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.'

Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. 'Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Dominions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers.'

'You see,' said Father slowly, 'it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.

'I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now--'

'Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?'

“But the difference was beginning to be felt. And it was evidenced first, sharply, over Empire.
Father started it.

'Of course,' he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, 'of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade.'
He paused. The P.M.'s head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.

'No artificial barriers,' Father pursued. 'As few favoured economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.' His eye wandered innocently around the room.

Churchill shifted in his armchair. 'The British Empire trade agreements' he began heavily, 'are--'
Father broke in. 'Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.'

Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. 'Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favoured position among the British Dominions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers.'

'You see,' said Father slowly, 'it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.

'I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now--'

'Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?

'Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation--by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.'

Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. Hopkins was grinning. Commander Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.

'You mentioned India,' he growled.

'Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.'”(8)

Being a memoir of the President’s son, this is evidently not a disinterested account but since India was only a distant issue, there is no reason to doubt its implication that getting access to Indian markets (then wholly controlled by the British) after the War was a primary goal of Roosevelt. As soon as America officially entered the war in the European theatre (following a declaration of war against it by Hitler - a colossal blunder of war-losing proportions) Roosevelt went about twisting Churchill's arm with respect to the Indian National Congress (which had resigned from all provincial assemblies over the declaration of war by the v(9) to negotiate terms by which the Congress could be persuaded to join the Government. Ironically when the Congress governments had resigned in 1939, Cripps had urged his friend Nehru to stay ‘firm as a rock’ against the British establishment. Little did he realise that the metaphor would be turned against himself a while later. That Churchill was half-hearted in this move is evident from his war memoirs (10). He believed that Roosevelt mistakenly thought of the Indian National Congress as the modern day equivalent of the Continental Congress of 1776. Churchill himself thought the Congress represented nobody but themselves (11).

The Congress for its part played into Churchill’s hands by working on the principle that if the enemy was willing to concede so much they could push the limits of what they could demand (12). Being unaware of the American hand they appear to have seen this as a sign of Britain’s weakness vis-à-vis their freedom struggle. Gandhi famously and contemptuously dismissed the Cripps offer as a ‘post dated cheque on a failing bank’ implying that Britain was in no position to make offers.  An important sticking point was the responsibility for the defence of India. One Colonel Louis Johnson was dispatched by Roosevelt to India (under a US Advisory Mission) (13).  Johnson soon exceeded his brief and made himself disliked by the British establishment for trying to come to a compromise between the Congress and the British Government on turning over responsibility of the defence of India to the former. An alarmed Churchill, who had seen the breakdown of the Cripps mission as a god-sent opportunity to back off on assurances he had made to Roosevelt, took the Cripps offer off the table.

This was regarded as an act of extreme bad faith by the Congress which assumed that their refusal of the Cripps offer was to be considered as merely a stage in prolonged negotiations (14). The development also saw Congress reach a dead end politically because, after this, they were out of options. They had voluntarily resigned power in the Provincial Assemblies in 1939. The Cripps Mission had failed. The war was continuing without their participation and the rest of India including the Muslim League was actively, indeed enthusiastically, cooperating with the British. The war effort and the contracts that flowed there from were filling the coffers of the top business houses. ‘Middle class unemployment’ had fallen to a temporary low. India had never had it so good and the Congress had had no part in it.

The Congress therefore issued a declaration in Pune to the effect that the British should withdraw from India immediately (the Quit India Resolution) on the ground that their very presence in India was a provocation to the Japanese Empire to invade India. Ironically at the other end of geographical and ideological India, Subhash Chandra Bose was unsuccessful in persuading the Japanese to invade India (15).

The British Indian government reacted with predictable swiftness and arrested all the leading lights of the Congress, including Gandhi and Nehru. The leadership of the movement and the reaction to what Gandhi described as ‘leonine violence’ by the British lasted for a few weeks before being wholly suppressed. This brief agitation, initially disowned by the Congress which blamed it entirely on the British, but later enthusiastically embraced by it, was what came to be known as the Quit India Movement. By the end of 1942 however, the tide of war turned decisively against the Axis with the defeat at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 – 1943 and the Battle of Kursk in 1943 not to speak of the great battles of Midway and El Alamein in 1942.  

But a sea change had occurred in British society. The age old class system was now in its dying throes. The gentleman class had been thoroughly discredited in its handling of the war in the 1930s and 1940s especially the defeats at Dunkirk, Crete, Greece, and Singapore. Britain’s national debt, mainly to the United States stood at 250% of GDP in 1945. The empowerment of the working class and women which had been initiated in the 1890s had become a full fledged political movement. The Labour Party confirmed in its manifesto that it would build a new society with universal health care, state ownership of industries, and free housing, and would ensure among other things, ‘advancement of India towards self government’. This was of course making a virtue out of necessity, as a bankrupt and deeply indebted Britain could no longer hold on to its Indian Empire while still pursuing the socialist ends in the Labour manifesto. (The Empire in any case had been cash-flow negative since the First World War).Thus, the victory of the Labour party in the 1945 elections made Indian independence a foregone conclusion.

When considering the facts above, it will be seen that the slow progress towards Indian self -government that had been initiated by the Minto-Morley Reforms (1909) and the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms (1919) followed by the Government of India Act (1935) needed a decisive push before Indian independence became a reality. This was not within the power of the Gandhian Congress and its non-violent movements. The outbreak of the Second World War saw just this push from President Roosevelt whose hostility to the British Empire’s preferential trading system was no secret.