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1999 19: 71South Asia ResearchSanjoy Bhattacharya and Benjamin Zachariah

Post-War Reconstruction in India, 1942-45'A Great Destiny': the British Colonial State and the Advertisement of

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’A GREAT DESTINY’: THE BRITISH COLONIAL STATE AND THEADVERTISEMENT OF POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION IN INDIA, 1942-45*

Sanjoy Bhattacharya and Benjamin Zachariah

This article examines debates within the colonial state preceding and surroundingofficial policies of post-war reconstruction, and the presentation of these proposedpolicies amongst the Indian ’public’. It argues that the selective provision of certaineconomic benefits to sections of the population, combined with promises of moresuch benefits to follow, were intended to form part of the colonial government’sefforts to manage public opinion with a view to containing dissent and creatingsupport for the War Effort and the continuation of the British presence in India, atleast for the duration of World War II. In pursuance of this goal, the Government ofIndia held out to the target population claims of the great possibilities of economicdevelopment which awaited India after the conclusion of the conflict, and theseassertions began to predominate in the official publicity campaigns in the latteryears of the war.

1

.

This piece develops from a series of stimulating discussions between the authors, and isbased on material collected by them from archives in Britain and India during the courses oftheir doctoral projects. While we would like to thank Alex McKay, Biswamoy Pati, Tan TaiYong, Subho Basu, Jim Masselos, Sulagna Roy and Sangeeta Chawla for their valuablereactions to this article, we remain solely responsible for the arguments presented in it. Weare also grateful to Trinity College, Cambridge, the School of Oriental and African Studies,London, Sheffield Hallam University and, not least, the Scouloudi Foundation for providingthe financial support that made this project possible.

1 Studies that have dealt with the uses of official — or, indeed, nationalist — publicity effortshave tended to ignore the importance of defining the target audience. Such a definition iscritical to any attempt to assess the nature and/or the effectiveness of all public relationsefforts, since the messages disseminated by the respective bodies were, or at least oftensought to be, based on the expectations of those targeted. Therefore, depending on theaudience, the advertisement of the War Effort was packaged in strikingly different ways. It isfor this reason that one ought to avoid dismissing all wartime propaganda material as aninvention of the disseminator: a particular publicity item could represent the truth, be anabsolute fabrication, or merely be the truth out of context, depending on the audience or thecurrent strategic situation. For a further explication of this argument, see S. Bhattacharya,"’A necessary weapon of war": State Policies Towards Propaganda and Information inEastern India, 1939-45’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1996.

South Asia Research, 19, 1, 1999SAGE PUBLICATIONS New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London



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The Background2 2Discussions on economic planning and development in India were of course far fromnew to the wartime period. They had emerged in the context of the GreatDepression, both in official and non-official circles, drawing on the example of theSoviet Five Year Plans of 1928 and 1933, as also on those of Roosevelt’s NewDeal, as well as schemes initiated in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan. 3 Onthe official side, the depression also provided a sense of urgency to the debateswhich had first emerged in the aftermath of World War I regarding the role of theEmpire in Britain’s economic world order.4 But these debates also drew on olderarguments. In colonial India, debates on economic matters hinged on the question ofthe effects of imperial domination. The earliest sphere of the development of anationalist critique of colonial rule was centred round this theme;5 but the moraljustification of British rule in India was also traditionally dependent on its claim toan economically improving role. Thus, while those in opposition to the Raj wouldregularly underline the damaging material effects of foreign rule in India, officialpublicists tried to counter such criticism throughout the 1920s and 1930s throughadvertising the underlying benevolence of British rule and the benefits arising fromit.6 In this, the mythology of the imperial civilising mission, which predated the rise

2 The following section is based primarily on arguments developed further in B. Zachariah,’Ideas of Developing India, c.1930-1950’, forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, University ofCambridge.3 R. Chattopadhyay, ’The Idea of Planning in India, 1930-1951’, Unpublished Ph.D.dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra, 1985. Also see idem, ’An EarlyBritish Initiative in the Genesis of Indian Planning’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 22,No. 5, 31 January 1987, pp. 19-29.4 These were reflected at the imperial level in questions of the formation of a moreeconomically integrated empire through ’imperial preference’ and colonial development’. Theconcern with ’developing’ the colonies was not necessarily connected with the British’ ’Left’,one of its main spokesmen being Leo Amery, who in the 1920s served as ConservativeSecretary of State for the Colonies, thereafter Secretary of State for the Dominions, beforeserving as Secretary of State for India and Burma during the War. For the context of theseideas, see W. Roger Louis, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire inthe Age of Churchill, New York, 1992.These debates were also inextricably linked withissues of wide philosophical and moral import, namely, the rights of subject peoples and thelegitimacy of empire. Some of these debates are followed in P. S. Gupta, Imperialism and theBritish Labour Movement, 1914-1964, London, 1975; S. Constantine, The Making of BritishColonial Development Policy, 1914-40, London, 1984, and S. Howe, Anticolonialism inBritish Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918-1964, Oxford, 1993.5 B. Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India: Economic Policies ofIndian National Leadership, 1880-1905, New Delhi, 1966.6 See, for example, note on publicity in U.P. (United Provinces), c. 1932, L/PO/3/3A,Oriental and India Office Collections, British Museum, London (hereafter O.I.O.C.). A varietyof strategies were deployed to spread the government’s view and also to gather informationabout the reactions to it. This would involve practices as diverse as using the village



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of ’economic nationalism’, could be drawn upon to furnish the framework withinwhich to place British arguments. Increasingly, therefore, ’good government’ had tobe defined in economic terms. It was also important directly to address the chargethat colonial rule was responsible for economic, and in particular industrial,backwardness.7 By the 1920s and 1930s, the debates were so well-worn as toalmost automatically trigger appropriate responses on either side.

Whether the government entirely believed its own arguments or not, it was

clear that there was a public relations aspect to official discussions on economicpolicy. These arguments were closely linked with middle-class leadership in politicalagitation; and with the imperial need to conciliate the Indian elites who were seen tobe the custodians of the arguments. The need, at least nominally, to deal with theireconomic grievances had already given rise to mechanisms of representation whereinselected Indian notables were placed on various official commissions and committeesof enquiry. Yet these notables’ ability decisively to influence government policy wasnotoriously limited, regardless of the findings of the committees and commissions.8Moreover, certain other policies reduced the effectiveness of such conciliatorygestures. The Government of India Act of 1935, eight years in the making, includedcertain financial and commercial ’safeguards’, apparently to prevent discriminationagainst Europeans on racial grounds, achieved by the European delegation’s tacticalmanoeuvre of identifying themselves as an Indian ’minority’, and voting with theother Indian minorities at the Round Table Conferences. These ’safeguards’ wereseen by Indian businessmen and politicians as effective means of prolonging Britishcontrol over the Indian economy into an envisaged period of ’responsibleGovernment’ at the centre.9

headman’s or the patwari’s (record-keeper’s) office; kathas (Hindu religious meetings) andbhajan mandalis, agricultural shows and exhibitions’, and officially subsidised sanyasis(travelling mendicants). Confidential Report on Propaganda and Publicity, January 1932 toMarch 1933, L/1/1/424, O.I.O.C.7 See, for instance, A.G. Clow, The State and Industry : A Narrative of Indian GovernmentPolicy and Action in Relation to Industry Under the Reformed Constitution, Calcutta, 1928.Industry was a Provincial Subject under both the 1919 and 1935 Government of India Acts,and was often cited as the reason for the Central Government’s non-interference in suchmatters.8 For numerous instances, especially related to matters of fiscal autonomy and tariffs, see B.Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire: Lancashire and British Policy in India 1919-1939, Delhi,1992.9 The campaign for commercial and financial safeguards at the Round Table Conferences wasrun mainly through the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM),whose main voices were the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the European Association.They took the lead in matters relating to commerce and finance, and constitutional advice inthis matter was provided in the main by Sir Arthur Berriedale Keith, the constitutionalhistorian, as well as other persons close to His Majesty’s Government. See the filesmaintained by Sir Edward Benthall, one of the major campaigners. Boxes II, III, IV and VII,



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Public relations apart, a range of British ’improvement’ schemes of variouskinds had been in existence for some time, especially in the traditional concerns ofcolonial economics - agriculture, agrarian debt and irrigation, and consequentlyvillage uplift.10 With the onset of the Depression, the need for economic solutionsto potential or actual agrarian unrest was seriously discussed - the success of theCivil Disobedience Movement was attributed to the economic distress resulting fromthe collapse in the prices of primary products 11 - and the specific question ofplanning India’s ’development’ had at least once been discussed at the highest levelof the Government of India through the initiative of Finance Member GeorgeSchuster in the early 1930s. But such schemes were refracted through the imperiallends, 12 and were bound to flounder due to considerations of ’sound finance’: balancedbudgets at all costs and the preservation of India’s credit with the City. 1 Schuster’s sdangerous ’Keynesian’ ideas were in any case neither particularly appreciated norwidely held. 14

Benthall papers, Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, University of Cambridge, UnitedKingdom (hereafter C.S.A.S.A.).10 See, for instance, M.L. Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, Oxford, 1925.Also see C. Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service, London,1993.11 See D. Rothermund, India in the Great Depression, 1929-1939, Delhi, 1992, pp. 83-109.12 For a description of Sir George Schuster’s efforts in this direction, see A. Salter, AScheme for an Economic Advisory Organisation in India, Geneva, 1931. Schuster, as financemember, had appealed for the formulation of an economic plan which was to be linked to thepossible closer integration of India into imperial economics through Imperial Preference. G.Schuster, ’Indian Economic Life: Past Trends and Future Prospects’, Journal of the RoyalSociety of Arts, Vol. 83, 31 May, 1935. Also see, address entitled ’Empire Trade Before andAfter Ottawa: A Preliminary Reconnaissance’, delivered on 8 March 1935, and published in aspecial supplement of The Economist, 3 November 1934.13 For the debates regarding the delinking of sterling from the Gold Standard, and theimperative of ’sound finance’, see D. Rothermund, India in the Great Depression, pp. 42-44;B.R. Tomlinson, ’Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930-32’, Economic HistoryReview (2nd Series) (hereafter EHR, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1979; C. Bridges, ’Britain and theIndian Currency Crisis, 1930-32: A Comment’, EHR, 33, 2 (1981), and B.R. Tomlinson,’Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930-32: A Reply’, EHR, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1981. Ithas been plausibly argued that the limited effects of tariff protection on import-substitutinggrowth were cancelled out by the rules of the ’sound finance’ game: stringent controls overthe Indian currency, the high rupee ratio and the failure to delink the rupee from the poundeven after sterling abandoned the Gold Standard. See, A. K. Bagchi, ’Private Investment andPartial Planning in India’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1963.This, of course, is consistent with the latest formulation of the ’finance capitalism’argument; see P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction1914-1990, London, 1993.14 Schuster was suspected of being a Keynesian before Keynesianism became a recognisedand respectable form of economic thought! See, for instance, the arguments of P. J. Grigg(Schuster’s successor as Finance Member) quoted in B.R. Tomlinson, The Political Economy



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The possibility of serious official intervention in the growing debate ondeveloping the economy had to wait until World War II, when these rules ceased tooperate in their old form; India had become Britain’s creditor instead of being itsdebtor. The War Financial Settlement of April 1940 provided that India would payher ordinary defence expenditure plus additional expenses incurred in ’specificallyIndian interests’, anything over this amount being met by the British Exchequer.15Initially, with India a debtor of Britain’s, the costs of extraordinary defenceexpenditure, war supplies purchases for other than Indian theatres of war, and theraising, equipping and maintaining of additional troops were adjusted against thisdebt. But the debt was soon wiped out, and sterling balances began accumulating inIndia’s name at a rate alarming for British official opinion. This was largely aconsequence of the British need to utilise the industrial potential of India for wartimesupplies for all battlefronts. Being an essential, and indeed predominant, feature ofthe wartime relationship between the British and Indian economies 16 and the AlliedWar Effort in Asian, 17 this had a variety of effects. In view of the focus of thispaper, two elements are of particular interest and merit a more detailed examination,namely, the intensification of official attempts to advertise the nature of Indian’development’ between 1939 and 1945, and the legacy of these efforts in the post-war era.

The Advertisement of ’Wartime Development’ and ’Post-WarReconstruction’ : Audiences and Themes 18The interconnections between the advertisement of the twin issues of

’development’ and ’post-war reconstruction’ and the so-called ’Empire PublicityCampaign’, launched by the Ministry of Information (London) in 1940, have been

of the Raj 1914-1947: The Economics of Decolonisation, London, 1979, pp. 90-91.

Keynesianism was not yet acceptable in Britain either. See P. Clarke, The KeynesianRevolution in the Making 1924-1936, Oxford, 1988.15 Note by K. Wood, Treasury, 14 March 1942, f 247, L/F/7/2861, O.I.O.C.16 See secret memorandum on Indian Sterling Balances by L. Amery, Secretary of State forIndia, Government of Britain (hereafter S.S.I.), 1 August 1942, L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C.17 The entry of Japan into World War II in December 1941 and her advance thereaftertowards India’s eastern frontiers in 1942 created problems of economic readjustment. The wareconomy had to be geared essentially from producing supplies for operational areas west ofIndia to dealing with the pressures of transport, military equipment, food and other suppliesfor troops on the eastern frontiers of India. See War Department History: Transportation andMovements (Sept. 1939-Dec. 1944), New Delhi, 1945, L/R/5/280, O.I.O.C. Japan’ssuccesses in the Far East also increased the rate of accumulation of sterling balancessubstantially. Expenditure on the War Effort rose sharply, though, as the Secretary of Statepointed out, India’s share of the burden of defence expenditure also rose substantially. SeeSecret Memorandum, Indian Sterling Balances by L. Amery, S.S.I., 1 August 1942,L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C.18 This section has largely been drawn from Bhattacharya, ’A Necessary Weapon of War’.



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frequently noted in the historiography dealing with World War II in Britain and herAfrican colonies. Rosaleen Smyth explains, for instance, that the purpose of thecampaign was to counter German propaganda that a venal Britain was ’living inluxury on the wealth collected from 66,000,000 poverty stricken native serfs’, andto tell the British public and the rest of the world, especially the Americans, that thecountry had a colonial record of which one could be proud. 19 Integral to this claimlay the argument that Britain was playing the role of a ’trustee’, by initiating socialand economic development, and thereby training colonial peoples ’to stand on theirown feet’.2° Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941 and the fall of Singaporesoon after caused the Ministry of Information to intensify these publicity efforts,not least because of domestic (British and Indian) and American pressure, whichforced the War Cabinet to restate its colonial policy. Smyth points out that theUnited States’ nervousness about being seen as fighting to restore imperialism inMalaya and Burma forced Britain to seek ’not a change of heart but a new marketingstrategy... to counteract British and American anti-imperialism’. Notably, the issueof post-war reconstruction retained its importance as the theme of partnership waschosen to project the new image of Empire; Britain was now represented as thebenevolent senior partner assisting the backward junior (colonial) partner.21

However, while the significance of public and official opinion in the metropoleand the United States in determining the creation of publicity regarding colonialeconomic development cannot be doubted,22 it is important to note that the rationaleof official public relations efforts needs also to be located within the coloniesthemselves. There, references to development were often dictated from a sense ofcompetition, rather than cooperation, with America. All through the war, andespecially after 1942, India was seen by both protagonists as one of the notablelocations for future Anglo-American trade conflicts. The British Indian anticipationof this struggle was visible through a number of disparate initiatives: censorshipreports, 23 debates on proposed economic policy24 and, not least, discussions aboutplans for future publicity projects. 25

19 R. Smyth, ’Britain’s African Colonies and British Propaganda during the Second WorldWar’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (hereafter JICH), Vol. 14, October1985, pp. 67-68.20 See Ministry of Information Progress Report entitled ’Campaign for Publicity about theEmpire’, January and February 1940, INF 1/3/A32/3, Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey,United Kingdom (hereafter P.R.O.).21 Smyth, ’Britain’s African Colonies’ , pp. 69-70.22 See, for instance, J.H. Voigt, India in the Second World War, Delhi, 1987.23 Secret report by the Officer Commanding, Bombay Censor Station, 15 March 1943, WO208/816, P.R.O.24 See for instance L. Amery, S.S.I., to Linlithgow, Viceroy, India, 5 January 1942, in N.Mansergh, ed., India: The Transfer of Power (12 volumes), London, 1970-83 (hereafter



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The influence of local factors on the production of publicity material dealingwith the issue of development in India becomes even more important in the strategiccontext of 1942, when the colonial authorities in the much-reduced British empirewere forced to redefine their administrative priorities in order to be able to contributematerially to the flagging Allied military effort world-wide. In India, which became amajor base for Allied military operations against Japanese forces after the fall ofMalaya and Burma, the redefinition of official priorities consisted of giving absoluteprimacy to wartime mobilisation. This took many forms. The military commandwas given unprecedented powers to determine strategic policies in the provinces ofAssam, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and United Provinces, as well as all the princely statesin this region, all of which were treated as a ’threatened area’ and a unified

administrative bloc for military purposes. Moreover, the civilian authorities in thisregion were ordered to devote their attention to the needs of the Eastern ArmyCommand - and later the South East Asia Command - which involved

concentrating the material and manpower resources available to them towards thecreation of basic defensive preparations, like barracks, airfields, new railway linesand strategic roads, in an area completely unprepared for a major conflict. Animmediate impact of these policies was the administrative tendency to prioritiseIndian social groups in terms of their strategic ’worth’, and their subsequentdivision into so-called ’priority’ and ’non-priority’ classes. While economic, printand oral propaganda were sought to be targeted at Indian society as a whole, thepaucity of official resources caused by the strains resulting from the Pacific warmeant that the various ’priority’ classes became the primary targets of the variousofficial wartime welfare initiatives and publicity advertising colonial ’development’.

These trends are particularly noticeable when one examines the officialpublicity efforts directed at the civilian population in India. In the first two years ofthe war the state’s primary targets were the politically active, and vocal, ’educatedmiddle classes’, a general term used by senior central and provincial governmentemployees to refer to those conversant with the English language.26 This section ofsociety was considered significant, even though many senior British officialsrecognised that many of them supported the demand for Indian Independence, 27 since

T.O.P.), Vol. I, Doc. 5. Also see letter from E. Bevin, Minister of Labour, Government ofBritain (hereafter G.O.Br.), to L. Amery, S.S.I., 21 September 1942, T.O.P., vol. III, Doc. 5.25 See, for instance, the recommendations made in secret report by the Officer Commanding,Bombay Censor Station, 15 March 1943, WO 208/816, P.R.O.26 See, for instance, the Secret War History of the Bureau of Public Information 1939-45,Government of India (hereafter G.O.I.), L/R/5/295, O.I.O.C., p. 4.27 See, for instance, secret note by Major General N. Molesworth, General Headquarters(hereafter GHQ), India, 1 September 1942, L/WS/1/1337, O.I.O.C. Also see extract of reportby the provincial leader of the Bihar branch of the National War Front, c. 1943, in ChiefSecretary °s Fortnightly Report for the second half of the month (hereafter C.S.F.R.(2)),



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their reactions to the war tended to receive frequent press coverage in Britain andAmerica, as they were seen as being able to contribute to the plethora of war-fundsthat had been set up, and a majority of them had the right to vote in the provincialelections and were, therefore, expected to play an important part in determining thechoice of the inevitably momentous post-war constitutional settlement.28 However,from December 1941, the civilian audiences for state polices of information, andeconomic propaganda, began to be more carefully defined. Whereas the English -educated sections were still targeted, greater attention began to be given to the’poorer middle classes’ subsisting on fixed salaries, who were adversely affected bythe wartime inflation and articulated their discontent in vernacular newspapers,which were considered significant because of their capacity to foment trouble intheir localities.29 Moreover, concerted efforts were made to reach particular’occupational groups’ considered, for varying reasons, to be especially significant tothe war-effort. Since the colonial authorities’ expectations from each of thesegroups differed (and indeed, the inverse was true as well), the issue of ’post-warreconstruction’ was often marketed in strikingly dissimilar forms. A good exampleis a comparison of the aims of, and the themes highlighted in, the publicity blitztargeted at the two civilian ’occupational groups’ given primacy by both theGovernment of India and the military authorities: the big business interests and thelabour employed in the so-called ’war industries’ (factories producing munitions andother commodities of use to army personnel, as well as certain mining andcommunications concems).3°

For the Government of India, the significance of business interests lay in thefact that much of wartime production was left to concerns owned by them. But asthe war wore on, the ever-increasing profitability of industries caused them to beseen as invaluable sources of tax receipts in a period of rapidly rising administrativeand defence costs. For instance, the budget of the Government of India’sEngineering Department, which was responsible for initiating the various defence

Bihar, February 1943, Home Political File (Internal) (hereafter H.P.F.(I)), National Archivesof India, New Delhi (hereafter N.A.I.).28 See, for instance, telegram from the Home Department, G.O.I. to L. Amery, S.S.I, 7 June1942, L/PJ/8/596, O.I.O.C.29 Indeed, increased nationalist criticism about the dislocation of the local economies causeddistrict officers to lay increasing emphasis on the censorship of hostile political publicity. SeeS. Bhattacharya, ’Wartime policies of State Censorship and the Civilian Population: EasternIndia, 1939-45’, South Asia Research (hereafter SAR) Vol. 17, No.2, 1997, pp. 166-72.30 Two-thirds of Bengal’s urban population lived in Greater Calcutta (which included thecities of Calcutta and Howrah, and 40 other municipal towns, most of which were industrialhamlets along the banks of the Hooghly river), which was considered to be one of the mostimportant industrial areas in India since it had a large number of ’war factories’. FamineEnquiry Commission Report on Bengal, Madras, 1945, V/26/830/10, O.LO.C., pp. 4-5.



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projects between 1942 and 1944, spiralled upwards after the onset of the PacificWar (see Table 1).

Table 1The Progressive Rise in the Budget of the Engineering Department,

G.O.L, 1939-44

Source: War Department History, Engmeer Matters (September 1939-August 1945), p. 3,L/R/5/282, India Office Library, London.

Indeed, various official schemes were initiated with the purpose of skimming offsome of the profits being made by Indian business from the onset of the war.Typical of this were two wartime ’insurance’ schemes. The first was the ’WarRisks (Goods) Insurance Ordinance’, which was legislated on 1 October 1940 andwhose ’compulsory provisions’ came into force the following month. Following theonset of the war in the Pacific theatre in December 1941, a ’War Risks (Factories)Insurance Ordinance’ was promulgated on 8 April 1942. The declared ’...object ofthe scheme was mainly to create and maintain the necessary confidence in industryand to ensure increasing industrial production, the bulk of which was devoted to theWar Effort.’ 31 Both schemes - to which owners of industries, mines, gas-supplyundertakings and electricity companies located throughout India were forced by lawto subscribe - were run at a healthy profit by the Government of India; the totalpremia collected amounted to Rs 42 crores, while the expenditure incurred by theauthorities in administering the schemes did not exceed Rs 50 lakhs. 32

Later projects - such as the ’Excess Profits Tax’, which was imposed in

1942, and a new subsection of the Defence of India rules which sought to plug alegal loophole, whereby costs incurred during the setting up of ancillary industrieswere deducted from the taxable profits used by Indian industrialists to avoid thepayment of this levy - had similar motives. At the same time, these forms ofofficial intrusion were also an attempt to counter the inflationary trends created bythe way in which the war was financed: production for the War Effort in India underthe principles of ’Lend Lease’ was on a system of credit whereby the Government

31 History of the War: ’The War Risks Insurance Scheme’, UR/5/301, O.I.O.C., p. 6.32 Ibid., pp. 7-25.



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of India paid private producers in India for goods produced on behalf of theGovernment of Britain, in rupees which were rolled out of the printing presses at atremendous rate. 33 The backing for this proliferation of paper was the theoreticalbuilding-up of sterling balances in the Reserve Bank of India’s London Branch, to berepaid at a later unspecified date.34 Although certain ’priority classes’ such as urbanlabour and certain sections of the government service were provided with dearnessallowances to combat the effects of the consequent inflation, 35 this proved aninadequate solution, and in many cases certain daily necessities were provided in kindas it was no longer viable to provide dearness allowances at a rate high enough toenable people to buy the ordinary necessities of life. 36 But it was also obvious that

33 See D. Rothermund, ’Die Anfaenge der indischen Wirtschaftsplanung im ZweitenWeltkrieg’, in P. Habluetzel, H.W. Tobler and A. Wirz, eds, Dritte Welt: HistorischePraegung und politische Herausforderung: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Rudolf vonAlbertini, Wiesbaden, 1983. Rothermund actually provides figures of the number of rupeesprinted during the war and shows how the increase in circulation of money corresponded withthe period in which goods for civilian consumption were becoming scarce within the colonialeconomy. See Dietmar Rothermund, An Economic History of India, New York, 1986, pp.119-20.34 For the debates and anxieties created around the issue of the sterling balances seeL/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C. For the nationalist arguments, see the resolutions of the NationalPlanning Committee advanced in 1945. Reprinted in K.T. Shah, ed., Report: NationalPlanning Committee, Bombay, 1949, pp. 234-35.35 The Government of India’s Railway Department, for instance, sanctioned to the temporaryrailway staff (whether employed on munitions or railway work) a bonus of one day’ s pay foreach completed month of continuous employment. In the spring of 1941 the first dearnessallowance was given to the workers with ’back effect from September 1940’. It was

subsequently increased on 1 November 1941, on 15 June 1942 and yet again on 1 February1943. Note on staff matters, undated, War History of Mechanical Department’s (Railways)Activities, L/R/5/293, O.I.O.C.36 Even though the ’dearness allowances’ sanctioned to the railway workers were steadilyincreased during the war, ’the danger of inflation necessitated a revision of the Government’sattitude in regard to relief in cash’ and forced the rapid expansion of the organisation of’railway grainshops’. War History of Mechanical Department’s (Railways) Activities, pp.28-29, L/R/5/293, O.I.O.C. Similar trends were also noticeable with regard to policepersonnel and civil servants attached to other departments. See, for instance, secret weeklyintelligence reports from the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Government of Assam, forthe weeks ending 3 June 1943 and 9 June 1943, Police File No. 174/58/42 (C), N.A.I.;extract from the record of the proceedings of the National Defence Council, c. November1942, H.P.F.(I) 3/84/1942, N.A.I., and Note by D. Pilditch, Intelligence Bureau, HomeDepartment, G.O.I., 10 December 1942, Police File No. 174/58/42 (C), N.A.I. As a result ofa substantial grant made by the central Home Department, the Government of Biharannounced an immediate increase in pay for its police forces. Constables were given an extraRs 5 a month, armed police an increase of Rs 3 a month and ’ordinary police’ an additional Rs2 a month. The province’s 57,000 chowkidars were awarded a ’war bonus’ of Rs 2 permonth. Letter from T. Rutherford, Governor, G.O.B to Linlithgow, Viceroy, 13 February



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inflation had to be fought at a more effective level by taking larger amounts ofmoney out of circulation, 37 and the imposition of the Excess Profits Tax was seenas an adequate way of tackling the problem. However, senior officials recognised theimportance of getting businessmen to accept this legislation with as much goodwillas possible. To this end, meetings were called with the affected industrialists toexplain what the tax implied, how it worked, and how it was beneficial to businessin the long run. 38

Another major official effort to conciliate big business was made after thepublication of the ’Bombay Plan’ for the economic development of India. Thisdocument, co-authored by a number of businessmen, was largely an initiative of theTatas (written by Dr John Matthai, a Tata employee) 39 which, despite conceding afew apparently socialist principles went on to defend the role of private capital in afuture Indian economic system. Notably, it stated that the government under whichthe plan was to come into operation was a fully independent national government.4°The Government of India, remarkably, decided to take a ’friendly’ attitude to thePlan and to refrain from ’destructive criticism’.41 Sir Theodore Gregory, theEconomic Adviser to the Government of India, who was often called upon toarticulate the government’s position in academically respectable language,42prepared detailed notes on the Plan.43 These were intended not only to address’fallacies and technical defects in economic and financial argument’44 but also toexpress agreement regarding general aims and objectives. The Information

1943, R/3/1/23, O.I.O.C.; also see, Secret War History of the Home Department, pp. 25-28,L/R/S/289, O.I.O.C.37 It was also pointed out that given the fact that the war demand was a priority, there wouldbe an absolute shortage of consumable goods for civilian consumption. As a result, unlessproductive power could be increased to meet both war and civilian demand, dearnessallowances in cash would themselves add to inflationary tendencies. Confidential letter fromthe Dearness Allowance Sub-Committee to B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the TripartiteLabour Conference and Member for the Department of Labour, Viceroy’s Executive Council,20 January 1944, ff 15-19, Gregory Papers, MSS.EUR.D.1163/8, O.I.O.C.38 See, for instance, ’Proceedings of the first meeting of the Reconstruction Committee(Trade, International Trade Policy and Agricultural Policy) held at New Delhi on the 22nd and23rd May 1942’. Copy in Gregory Papers, ff. 20-28, MSS.EUR.D. 1163/4, O.I.O.C.39 Matthai would serve as Finance Minister under Jawaharlal Nehru after Independence.40 P. Thakurdas et al., A Plan of Economic Development for India (2 parts), Bombay,January and December 1944.41 Cipher telegram from Wavell, Viceroy, India, to L. Amery, S.S.I, 12 June 1944, f 93,L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C.42 Gregory had been, before entering the employ of the Government of India, CassellProfessor of Political Economy at London University and was a well-known conservativeeconomist of neo-classical inclinations.43 See, ff 95-104 and ff 27-29, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C.44 Cipher telegram from Wavell, Viceroy, India, to Amery, S.S.I., 12 June 1944, f 93,L/1/1/1061, O.I.O.C.



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Department’s unofficial note on the first part of the Plan, prepared in pursuance ofthe Viceroy’s request for the India Office to provide ’confidential guidance’ toeditors, 45 stated that:

there can be no two opinions about the ideals aimed at in the Bombay Planand there is no difference between Government and the authors in regard tothe ultimate objectives.46

The complete texts of Gregory’s two notes on the Bombay Plan, intended forinternal official circulation, were also sent to Geoffrey Crowther, Editor of theEconomist, a publication with which the India Office had extremely amicablerelations and which could be relied upon to protect the source of its information soas to make its eventual story appear to be an unofficial view.47 A consequence ofthe government’s sympathetic attitude to the ’Bombay Plan’ was the incorporationof Sir Ardeshir Dalal, one of the document’s authors, into the Viceroy’s ExecutiveCouncil as Member for the newly created Department of Planning and Development,which took over the job of coordinating ’post-war reconstruction and development’from the ’Inter-departmental Reconstruction Committee of Council’.48

To the Government of India’s concern not to alienate business interests was

added a concern for another ’priority class’.: workers attached to ’strategically’significant industries. The importance of the rationale for this - the stabilising offactory production in India, which despite being important to Britain’s strategicimperatives from 1939 took on an added significance for the Allied War-Effort in theFar East from December 1941 onwards - is obvious. The operation of ’warindustries’ was dubbed an ’essential public service’ from February 1941 onwardsand this allowed the colonial authorities to ’legally’ deploy coercive measures with aview to preventing ’mass migrations...as a result of panic’ from industrial areas.49 Infact, the Essential Services (Maintenance) Ordinance of 1941, which affectedlabour, declared that the legislation authorised an

officer...to prohibit any person engaged in any employment covered by theordinance to depart, without the consent of government...out of any such

45 See, f 93, L/I/1061, O.I.O.C.46 Unofficial note on the Bombay Plan’, f 105, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C.47 A. H. Joyce’s confidential memorandum to MacGregor, Bilicliffe, Crawley and Booker (ofthe India Office), 26 May 1944, f 116, L/I/1/1061, O.I.O.C. Also see correspondence betweenJoyce and Geoffrey Crowther, c. February 1945, ff 2, 23-24, 26, ibid.48 See L/I/1/1129, O.I.O.C. Also see R. Chattopadhyay, ’The Idea of Planning’, pp. 178-242.49 See, for instance, most secret letter from the Defence Co-ordination Department, G.O.I.to all Chief Secretaries and Chief Commissioners of provinces, 12 March 1941, H.P.F. (I)15/1/41, N.A.I.



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area or areas as may be specified. The ordinance makes it an offence

punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one yearand with fine, for any person to abandon such employment or absenthimself without reasonable excuse. The fact that a person apprehends thatby continuing in his employment he will be exposed to increased physicaldanger does not constitute a reasonable excuse.50

However, it was recognised by civil servants within the Government of India’sDefence Co-ordination Department that attempts to impose severe penalties couldbe rendered ineffective by the sheer magnitude of the task and the shortage ofofficial personnel, and so the use of ’advance propaganda’ was recommended. 51Between 1942,and mid-1944, this primarily took the form of a wide range ofbenefits, material or otherwise. 52 The provision of subsidised food and other scarce’essentials’ (like cloth, cooking fuels and medicines like quinine) proved an effectiveweapon for the government. The authorities could use it to entice workers to stay attheir posts and also to tackle the intermittent outbreaks of industrial action, which

they had been unable to eradicate with the Defence of India Rules. This wasparticularly true during the famine of Bengal, when special canteens and shops wereopened and successfully run by civil servants, with the assistance of the

managements of the factories, in all the major industrial centres.53 Indeed, anadvertisement of these official initiatives remained an integral constituent of theprint and oral publicity disseminated amongst labour. While the adverse effect of therising costs of living and difficulties in obtaining foodstuffs was never denied,

50 Note on wartime legislation affecting labour, c. 1941, H.P.F. (I) 318/42, N.A.I.51 See, for instance, most secret letter from the Defence Co-ordination Department, G.O.I. toall Chief Secretaries and Chief Commissioners of provinces, 12 March 1941, H.P.F. (I)15/1/41, N.A.I.52 See, for instance, note on coal mines welfare, n.d, War History of the LabourDepartment, L/R/5/291, O.I.O.C.53 The prominence given to the needs of the industrial workers caused a delay in the initiationof rationing measures for the poorer sections of the ’non-productive’ civilian population.Indeed, foodgrains rationing for them was a rather late measure, which actually began afterthe disasters of 1943. See, Famine Enquiry Commission, Final Report, pp. 37-38. In January1943, Theodore Gregory, the Permanent Economic Adviser to the Government of India, hadnoted that the rationing of the urban population was a ’formidable undertaking’, and theadministrative problems of such a course were too great. He advocated instead, cheap grainshops for supply to certain sections of the population. Gregory Collection, ff 14-15,MSS.EUR.D.1163/6, O.I.O.C. Although Gregory did not identify the target population, filesdetailing the distribution of food aid during these disastrous months clearly indicate theindustrial labour employed by the ’war-industries’, apart from the state’s ’subordinateservices’, as being the principal civilian recipients of such assistance. See, for instance, letterfrom T. Rutherford, Acting Governor, Bengal, to Linlithgow, Viceroy, India, 2 October1943, R/3/2/49, File No. 2, Coll. ix, O.I.O.C.



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efforts were made to underline the ’special measures’ - principally in the form of’cost-price’ grain shops - that had been undertaken on behalf of industrial workersof the various ’war factories’. Another important aspect of ’labour welfare’ was thesafety of employees during enemy air raids. In addition, the official role in legislatingthe War Injuries (Compensation and Insurance) Act of 1943, which was imposed onemployers to pay compensation to workers who had sustained war injuries, wasunderlined. Importantly, the danger from bombing raids were not denied, butdownplayed, and descriptions of the government’s role in appointing teams ofA.R.P. experts to ensure adequate protection, in the form of ’slit trenches’ andbomb shelters, was also repeatedly reiterated. 54

From December 1943 increasing emphasis also began to be given to describingthe aims, and the activities, of the Labour Investigation Committee. One publicitynote declared that it had been appointed by the Central Government so as to ’collectdata for evolving plans for the social security of Industrial Labour’ in the post-warperiod. 55 While the gradual improvement of the Allied strategic situation from thelatter half of 1944 caused an increase in official propaganda dealing with the specialtreatment accorded to workers and the post-war ’welfare schemes’ being made ontheir behalf, publicity material began to delve into the nature and potential ofwartime industrial gains. Frequent ’material assessments’ of ’industrial India’abounded, and one leaflet, referring to the country’s economic achievements,claimed that she ’was following her steady course towards a great destiny, gratefulfor her present, and confident of her future’. 56 Full of photographs of dynamicindustries, it also promised that India’s

struggle in war is only a prelude for the peace to come. Her war industryalready contains the germs of the great industries which will follow thecessation of hostilities. The technical skill and equipment that are atpresent being devoted to the assembly of motor vehicles and ship buildingand repairing, will be diverted to the peaceful development of greatautomobile factories and ship-building yards. Our war needs have alreadyindicated the lines of subsidiary industries vital for peace-timedevelopment.57

However, the audience that attracted the greatest attention of colonialadministrators was the Indian element of the colonial army serving in thesubcontinent. Indeed, they remained the most important audience for all official

54 Note on Labour Welfare and Labour Legislation, c. 1943, L/I/1/1145, O.I.O.C.55 Unofficial (press) note on the ’Investigation of Indian Labour Problems [and] Appointmentof a Fact Finding Committee’, 31 December 1943, L/I/1/1145, O.I.O.C.56 India Tomorrow, Vol. 1, No.2, June 1944, p. 1.57 Ibid., p. 3.



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wartime propaganda - economic and/or ideological - campaigns.58 This group hadbeen the country’s British rulers’ first line of defence against internal trouble sincethe inception of the Raj, and the political climate in the 1920s and the 1930s hadonly underlined its significance.59 The Congress’s decision to oppose Britain’sdecision to involve India in World War II, through a series of agitations from 1939onwards, and the Government of India’s declared resolve to crush them,6° onlystressed the significance of the sepoy in the colonial order.61 The ’Quit India’Movement of August 1942 caused the Indian army to be widely seen in officialcircles as being the most important defence against possible ’rebellions’ in a countrywhich the authorities had decided to treat as ’an occupied and hostile country’ for theduration of the conflict. 62 In addition, Indian troops were regularly utilised to protectlines of communication (roads, railway tracks and telegraph wires) from saboteursattached to a melange of revolutionary outfits, and to tackle a variety of local, yetsometimes serious, disturbances.63 The necessity of moulding the Indian soldiers’

58 It is important to remember that the distribution of material resources remained an integralaspect of all propaganda activities, since such schemes were implemented by the concernedorganisations with the purpose of sustaining a variety of ideological campaigns or stances.While the allotment of a variety of benefits by the colonial administration, or the Congress,to selected audiences has been touched upon in a number of studies, their authors have notidentified these as being integral components of larger propaganda policies. For example,while T.Y. Tan’s valuable description of the working of the District Soldiers’ Boards in thePunjab refers to the distribution of a variety of economic benefits by the state apparatuswithin the colonial army’s recruiting areas, he does not perceive these as having constituted apotent propaganda tool. (T.Y. Tan, ’The Military and the State in Colonial India, 1900-1939’, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1992.)59 T. Y. Tan, ’Maintaining the Military Districts: Civil-Military Integration and DistrictSoldiers’ Boards in the Punjab, 1919-1939’, Modern Asian Studies (hereafter MAS) Vol. 28,No. 4, 1994, p. 833.60 Secret letter from R. Tottenham, Additional Secretary, Home Department, G.O.I., to theChief Secretaries of all provincial governments, 2 August 1940, Political DepartmentGeneral File No. 69/12, Bihar State Archives, Patna, India (hereafter BSA)61 The measures suggested in this regard included, ’Actions to curtail the spread ofsubversive doctrines and the activities of agitators in villages and trains.... Such steps as maybe possible to improve and increase pro-government propaganda and foster the growth of ahealthy public opinion particularly in regard to the general attitude towards the prosecution ofthe war.’ See report entitled ’A Survey of the Sikh Situation as it Affects the Army’, c.1941, H.P.F.(I) 232/1940, N.A.I.62

This decision was taken as the ’Quit India’ movement had proved, according to themilitary authorities, that the police forces in India were inadequately staffed and provisioned.Most secret note from the G.H.Q., India to the War Office, G.O.Br., 15 January 1943,L/WS/1/1337, O.I.O.C.63

The primary ’internal security’ role of the colonial army consisted of ’duties in aid of civilpower’. Army m India Training Manual (hereafter A.I.T.M.), No. 2 (1940), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C. In 1939, of the 35 battalions available in India, 26 were allocated to



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opinions was further emphasised by the reverses inflicted on the Allied armies bythe Axis forces worldwide between 1940 and 1943, as well as the arduous roadtaken towards victory over the next two years.

Thus, not unexpectedly, it was felt in official circles that efforts needed to bemade to rid the indigenous element of the colonial army of any ’defeatism’,especially since ’high morale’ was seen to be ’the foremost weapon’ against the‘enemy’. ~4 In the first two years of the war, this involved giving the soldiers andtheir families special treatment in the allocation of increasingly expensive consumergoods like foodstuffs, cloth and medicines, advertising such activities in therecruiting areas and the units, and linking such propaganda with appreciativedescriptions of India’s contributions to the Allied efforts.65 However, officialendeavours in this regard were complicated by the great increases in the levels ofrecruitment from 1942 onwards, which brought a variety of ’non-martial classes’into the army, and especially into its administrative, medical and technical corps.66

The shift in recruitment patterns was also highlighted by an estimate made inJune 1942 that 33 per cent of the infantry and cavalry came from the ’educatedmiddle classes’. The authorities remained continually apprehensive aboutdemobilising this section of the army since they feared that knowing ’little aboutland’ the new type of soldiers would ’swell the ranks of the unemployed’ andbecome ’dacoits’.67 Moreover, the new ’classes’ of Indians were seen as being more’politically conscious’, and so it was decided that ’the old loyalty’ based on thesuperior martial capabilities of particular Indian communities would need to be

’internal security’. During the ’Quit India’ movement, 57-and-a-half battalions (many fromthe field army) had to be employed to crush the Congress ’rebellion’ and to protect therailway lines from sabotage. By mid-1943, only 12 battalions were allocated to internalsecurity. Secret letter from India Office, G.O.Br., to T. E. Williams, War Office, G.O.Br., 6July 1943, L/WS/1/1337, O.I.O.C.64 A.I.T.M., No. 12 (1941), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C.65 A.L T.M., No. 6 (1941), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C. Also see G. Dunbar, India at War. ARecord and a Review, 1939-40, London, 1940, p. 28, L/MIL17/5/4260, O.I.O.C.66 Required levels of recruitment were kept up only by the induction of what was consideredto be ’other than first line’ material. By November 1942, a million-and-a-half soldiers hadbeen recruited and many of these recruits came from these ’untried classes’. The main

problem for the military administrators was that the so-called ’martial races’ - the PunjabiMuslims, Hindu Jats, Sikh Jats, the Dogras, the Pathans, the ’ Mahrattas’ and the Rajputs —were unable to meet the increased demand for recruitment. Secret memorandum on Indian

manpower from the Adjutant General’s Branch, 3 November 1942, L/WS/1/968, O.I.O.C.’Madrasis’ (Tamils, Telugus and Malayalis), high-caste Marathis, Bengali Muslims andAssamese were taken in ’large numbers’ into the mechanised units as drivers. Secret WarDepartment History — Expansion of the Armed Forces in India, pp. 26-33, L/R/5/273,O.I.O.C.67 Appendix E to Secret Letter from Adjutant General’s Branch, G.H.Q. (India) to allbranches of G.H.Q., 1 June 1942, L/WS/1/1335, O.LO.C.



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replaced with a new ’sense of purpose’,68 which would instead emphasise thesoldiers’ material self-interest. 69 This, in turn, caused increased prominence to begiven to questions of ’development’, which took many forms. Apart fromcontinuously highlighting the comfortable conditions in the localities from whichthe Indian troops were recruited and the battle-front,~° the issue of post-warreconstruction began to be regularly stressed

Moreover, this issue began to be combined with the publicity about theinevitable demobilisation of the wartime army. It was given much attention between1943 and 1945 since unit intelligence reports frequently warned the GeneralHeadquarters (India) that soldiers - from the so-called ’martial races’ or otherwise- were worried about their prospects after the conflict and were demandinginformation on the issue.72 This caused the official publicity material disseminated inthe recruiting areas and units consistently to describe the enormous potential ofemploying demobilised soldiers in the industries that had come up during the war andin the ’cooperatives’ which were going to be set up after the cessation of hostilities.For instance, the plans enunciated by the ’Policy Committee on [the] Re-settlementand Re-employment of troops’, which was set up in the last quarter of 1943 withFiroz Khan Noon at its head, were given great prominence in propagandadisseminated among troops. Some of these strategies included the creation of ’largescale transportation companies’ which would help in providing employment to thevast mass of lorry drivers in the Indian army; creation of vocational training coursesfor troops within various battalions to prepare them for new jobs after the war; thebuilding of new canal systems within the Punjab allowing the government to settlemany troops in the newly irrigated lands, and the establishment of ’cooperativesavings banks’ to assist ex-servicemen.73 The White Paper prepared by theGovernment of India in October 1944 made similar promises, and its text was

widely publicised in all ’unit formations’, 74 and publicity about the availability of awide variety of jobs after demobilisation remained a prominent feature of thepropaganda campaign directed at the Indian military personnel and their families tillthe end of the war.75

68 Most Secret Weekly Intelligence Summary (India Internal) (hereafter W.I.S. (I.I.)) 23 July1943, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C. Also see, most secret W.I.S. (I.I.) 21 August 1942,L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.69 A.I.T.M, No. 16 (1942), L/MIL/17/5/2240, O.I.O.C.70

Matters of Interest to Indian Soldiers and their Families, Calcutta, 1943, pp. 1-2.71 See W.I.S.(I.I.) for 1944 and 1945 in L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.72 See, for instance, secret W.I.S. (I.I.) 6 October 1944, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.73 Telegram from Bureau of Public Information, G.O.I., to Information Department, IndiaOffice, 3 March 1944, L/WS/1/1335, O.I.O.C.74 Secret W.I.S. (I.I.), 27 October 1944, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.75 Secret W.I.S. (I.I.), 3 August 1945, L/WS/1/1433. O.I.O.C.



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Promises into Practice?Whereas this article concentrates on the public relations aspects of the officialinitiatives discussed above, the question nonetheless arises as to whether the effortsoriginating in concerns relating to wartime propaganda were intended merely asefforts to manage public opinion, or whether they were meant also to be translatedinto action. A discussion might, therefore, be relevant here.

Although the distribution of material resources remained an integral aspect ofthe Government’s propaganda activities (as is evident from the selective provisionof dearness allowances and essential goods in kind), these had limited and specificgoals. Moreover, the likelihood of carrying out the various larger promises beingmade by the colonial authorities during the duration of World War II, at least by aBritish Government of India, was always doubtful. This was especially true giventhe time required to carry out the schemes outlined, the extreme uncertainty of thepolitical situation, and - after the Cripps offer of March 1942 - India’s right tosecede from the Empire having been acknowledged. 76 Many participants in thediscussions recognised this: as one official put it, ’This is not a time for long-termmeasures’.77 Despite this, however, long-term measures were contemplated, and agreat many such long-term schemes found their way onto paper. One such report,outlining a scheme for restructuring the Indian educational system, was intended tocome to full fruition in 40 years’ time. 78 This need not be seen as surprising. Abureaucrat acting according to a specific brief produces work according to that brief;accordingly, a good deal of detailed work went into various planning projects. 79 Ofthese schemes, many were either produced by Indian bureaucrats or ’experts’ whoshared at least some of the enthusiasm of the ’nationalists’ for the project ofeconomic planning, or by British officials who were sincere adherents of themythology of ’good government’. The main signatory of the report on publicheaHh,~ Sir Joseph Bhore, had long been seen as sympathetic to Indian

76 The offer made by the Cnpps Mission, announced at a press conference on 29 March,1942, was Dominion Status, with the power to secede, if India so chose; from the BritishCommonwealth, ’after the cessation of hostilities’. For the complete text see T.O.P., Vol. 1,Doc. 256.77 Note by W.D. Croft, Deputy Under-Secretary, India Office, 27 August 1942, f 357,L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.78 Bureau of Education, India, Post-War Educational Development in India: Report by theCentral Advisory Board of Education (4th edn), New Delhi, January 1944, p. 12; copy inGovernment of India, Finance Department, Planning-II Branch, K.W. to File No. 3(6)-PII/47, N.A.I.79 For a list, though not a comprehensive one, see A.H. Hanson, The Process of Planning:A Study of India’s Five-YearPlans 1950-1964, Oxford, 1966, pp. 37-40. Some of these hadbeen begun previously, but were later integrated within the framework of post-warreconstruction planning.80 Health Survey and Development Committee (1943-45), Delhi, 1946, V/26/840/12-15,O.I.O.C.



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nationalism, which fact had been attributed by Sir James Grigg, former FinanceMember of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, and a member of Churchill’s WarCabinet, to Bhore’s ’mixed marriage and the parti-coloured results of it’.81 Indeed,there were other British officials who were quite critical of the failure of Britishimperialism hitherto to live up to its promised benevolence, and keen to makeamends. 82

But such bureaucrats were far outnumbered by colleagues who considered thedissemination of publicity about post-war reconstruction and economic

development, or the introduction of special wartime rationing, to be nothing morethan a temporary, albeit important, administrative measure. Indeed, the activities ofthis group of administrators, which included both Europeans and Indians, were veryoften informed by divergent factors. Some officers - particularly those in charge ofdistricts and subdivisions - initiated public relations campaigns to counter localdiscontent.83 Others, especially senior administrators posted at New Delhi and theprovincial headquarters, merely treated these campaigns as a means of solicitinggoodwill for the British war-effort in South Asia, remaining remarkably insouciantabout actually being able to deliver what they were promising to their audiences.The priorities and pressures of the India Office were also informed to a great extentby what was deemed possible by political opinion at Home and by equations withinthe War Cabinet.

There were optimistic moments, however. Leopold Amery wrote to Linlithgowin May 1942 that it might be possible to steal the robes of the Congress byattempting, ’regardless of conventional financial restraints’, a ’complete overhaul ofIndia’s national life’, with the British playing the role, after the war, of a ’bold, far-sighted and benevolent despot, determined in a few years, in a series of five-year

81 Letter from J. Grigg to F. Stewart at the India Office, 23 July 1934, PJGG 2/20/6(b),Grigg Papers, Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Stewartpolitely agreed that Bhore was a nationalist, but defended him as ’a very moderate andreasonable nationalist’, while gently alluding to the possible racist connotations of Grigg’sremarks. See, letter from Stewart to Grigg, 10 August 1934, PJGG 2/20/8(a), ibid.82 See, for instance, P. Moon, Strangers in India, London, 1944. Moon resigned from theIndian Civil Service in 1943 after a disagreement with the then Viceroy, Linlithgow, butreturned to India in 1946, staying on beyond the transfer of power to serve the newlyindependent government of India, notably as a member of the Planning Commission.83 For instance, O.M. Martin, an I.C.S. officer who had been posted in Bengal during the war,described how district officials ’did a lot of propaganda throughout the villages’ aroundstrategic areas like Chittagong and Noakhali. Memoirs of O.M. Martin, I.C.S., Martin Papers,C.S.A.S.A., p. 314. Also see W.I.S. (I.I), 19 June 1942, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.; Letterfrom J. Herbert, Governor, G.O.B. to Linlithgow, Viceroy, 8 May 1942, MSS EUR F.125/42, O.I.O.C. ; Report on the Police Administration in the Province of Assam for the Year1943, Shillong, 1943, V/24/3259, O.I.O.C., p.3; and Note on the War in Assam, 1939-45 byH.F.G. Burbridge, Indian Police Service, undated, MSS.EUR.F.161/32, O.I.O.C., nopagination.



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plans, to raise India’s millions to a new level of physical well-being andefficiency’.8’ Amery, just a few months later, was more cautious. In trying topersuade Linlithgow to consider seriously Stafford Cripps’ scheme for ’A Social andEconomic Policy for India’ which was being debated by the Cabinet, he argued that

at a time like this your Government is too fully engaged in repression tothink of construction .... But whatever [the] arguments against doinganything may be[,] I am sure you will see positive propaganda advantagesand after all it might be a refreshing change from our present activities.85

The Cripps proposals to which Amery referred had emerged as a successor schemeto the former’s failed Mission; they stressed education, population control, theraising of agricultural productivity, factory legislation and the promotion and controlof industrialisation through the utilisation of the sterling balances. They alsorecommended the use of ’modern techniques of economic planning and the modemdevice of the Public Corporation’ and the coordination of Provincial programmesinto an ’All-Indian Programme of Industrial Development’. 86 Cripps positioned hisscheme as a way to win over Indian public opinion, especially that of the ’masses’;he proposed that instead of the British Government relying for its political viabilityon negotiations with elite leaders of the Hindu and Muslim communities, it shouldattempt to mobilise popular support, not on the basis of community, but of class.Viewing the initiative as ’a good opportunity to rally the mass of Indian Opinion toour side’, he stressed

It is most important that the Indian workers and peasants should realisethat it is a British initiative which is working for them against their Indianoppressors; this will entail a proper publicity service in India.87

Cripps viewed this only as a short-term solution, however. He emphasised thatpost-war full Dominion status and ’the inherent right of self-determination’, whichincluded the right to secede, had already been conceded to India; ’the sole question is,therefore, how can we make India most useful or least embarrassing to the UnitedNations for the rest of the war’. For the present, however, such a constructive

84 Linlithgow’s response, in his margin note, was ’Good Lord!’. See communication from L.Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to Linlithgow, Viceroy, India, 27 May 1942, MSS.EUR.F. 125/11,O.I.O.C.85 Draft telegram, L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to Linlithgow, Viceroy, n.d., f 349,L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.86 S. Cripps to L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., 15 December 1942, in enclosure dated 10December 1942, ff 231-40, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.87 Note by S. Cripps, 2 September 1942, ff 339-41, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.



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policy as he suggested could ’demonstrate to opinion here, in America and in Indiaitself, the determination of the Government to serve the interests of the peoples ofIndia’. 88

The Cripps proposals won a certain amount of public support, among othersfrom Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery, who had long believed that theBritish Empire should serve as an integrated and protected market, and was stronglyagainst the ’American Lebensraum’ economics of US Secretary of State CordellHull, which had opposed the policy of Imperial Preference as practiced by Britainbecause it restricted the USA’s access to the British Empire markets and interferedwith its ’desire to create an American export hegemony in the world’.89 For Amery,social reforms, one of the key dimensions of the Cripps proposals, involvedspending money in India and were therefore unviable, given the already acuteproblem of the building up of the sterling balances.9° On the other hand, theeconomic side of reforms was quite compatible with the sterling balances problem:the balances would enable India to equip herself with much-needed ’industrial andirrigation plant[s]’91 and would be

available for every kind of long-range re-equipment of India, whether forindustry, irrigation, railways or other public works. These things wouldprobably do more to raise the standard of living after the war than anythingelse, and would incidentally dispose of the sterling balances in the shape oforders for capital goods from here, and to that extent help the employmentsituation during the years of transition from war to peace.92 2

88 Note by S. Cripps, 2 September 1942, ff 339-41, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. It is not necessaryto refuse to credit Cripps with any good intentions for such a move. In order to sell the ideato a Cabinet led by so unapologetic an imperialist as Churchill, he could not afford tooveremphasise its socially radical content, if that were indeed his intention. He furtheremphasised that such action would have to be combined with efforts to make the Viceroy’sCouncil ’more representative of the wider class interests of India’; if personnel could not befound to represent ’those communal sections which are prepared to co-operate and also thedifferent class interests’, then ’the class constitution should prevail’.89 L. Amery, quoted in Louis, In the Name of God, Go! pp 25-26. For a statement ofAmery’s position on the subject see L. Amery, The Framework of the Future, London,1935.90 L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to S. Cnpps, 2 October 1942, f 299, L/E/812527, O.I.O.C. Asa possible alternative Amery suggested that it might be better to think of some other publicrelations scheme which involved spending sterling — donations to build mosques for Indianlascars in Britain, or a grant to the School of Oriental and African Studies. Note by Amery,23 October 1942, ff 278-80, L/E/9/2527, O.I.O.C.91 L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., to S. Cripps, 2 October 1942, f 299, L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.92 Note by L. Amery, S.S.I., G.O.Br., 23 October 1942, ff 278-80, L/E/9/2527, O.I.O.C.



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Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour and National Service in the War Cabinet inBritain, agreed that it was short-sighted of Britain to think of sales of consumergoods to India after the war; it would have to be capital goods, and Britain had to gether act together quickly lest the Americans beat her to it.93 Others were sympatheticto some aspects of the ideas for various reasons; Amery’s account of the origins ofthe proposal credits Churchill’s ’suggestion that it would really pay us to take upthe cause of the poor peasant and confiscate the rich Congressman’s lands and dividethem up’ with starting off discussions on the scheme, after which others,particularly Ernest Bevin, chipped in.94

However, most officials, particularly in the India Office, were hostile orindifferent to these deliberations. 95 Notably, Linlithgow remained unconvinced bothof the practical and public relations value of the proposals, and marshalled a greatdeal of official opinion in his favour - which ultimately killed the Cripps proposals- in order to argue that the scheme was impractical and unworkable, while arguingat the same time, through his advisers, that whatever was possible was alreadybeing done through the mechanisms of the Viceroy’s Executive Council’s ownPost-War Reconstruction Committee. Among the opinions which he had forwardedin this regard to Amery was that of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Hutton,Secretary of the Reconstruction Committee of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.Hutton saw some merit in the Cripps proposals, but suggested that actual socialreforms or economic measures be subordinated to their public relations value:

We have yet to realise that a country can be very largely governed, as wellas educated and reformed, by propaganda alone. The success of

government, as of individuals, depends more on what people think of theirachievements than on what they have actually done.96 6

93 E. Bevin, G.O.Br., to L. Amery, S.S.I, G.O.Br., 21 September 1942, f 270, and enclosedcensorship excerpt, f 271, L/E/9/2527, O.I.O.C.94 Bevin was already the author of a scheme for training skilled Indian labour in Britain inorder to provide specialised manpower otherwise lacking in India for the war economy. Thisscheme came to be known as the ’Bevin Scheme’ and the trainees ’Bevin Boys’. For details ofthe scheme, see Government of India Departmental and Miscellaneous Histories of the War:Labour Department: Note on ’Bevin Training Scheme’, L/R/5/291, O.I.O.C.95 See L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C. For a more detailed account of the Cripps proposals, theirconnection with the sterling balances question and with the question of an anticipated marketfor British capital goods after the war, and their ultimate rejection, see B. Zachariah, ’ImperialEconomic Policy for India, 1942-44: Confusion and Readjustment’, in B. Pati, ed., TurbulentTimes: India 1940-44, Bombay, 1998.96 T. Hutton, Reconstruction Committee of Council to G. Laithwaite, Secretary to Viceroyof India, 27 and 28 April 1943, T.O.P., Vol. 3, Doc. 672.



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This seems to be the spirit in which Hutton ran his Committee, which was thecustodian of the various schemes announced with much fanfare, and the direct

predecessor of the short-lived Planning and Development Department, whichproduced the most-cited document of the government’s publicity campaigns aroundeconomic issues in the last years of the war, namely, the Second Report onReconstruction Planning. This Report appeared to concede most of the nationalistdemands on economic matters, including an interventionist and protectionist policyon the part of the government in order to encourage industrialisation. 97 By this time,however, any proposal which had to be taken seriously had to appear to rejectconventional imperialism, to dress itself in nationalist colours, and in addition toconcede socialism. The rhetoric of the Second Report duly conceded all these things.The year 1944, the year of its publication, also saw the publication not only of the’Bombay Plan’ of the Indian industrialists’ lobby,98 the government’s ’constructive’approach to which has already been noted, but also the ’People’s Plan’ of M. N.Roy’s Indian Federation of Labour, 99 a ’Gandhian Plan’, authored by S. N. Agarwalwith a foreword by the Mahatma himselfloo and a plan formulated by the PlanningCommittee of the All-India Muslim League.101 In advertising these plansvociferously, its backers were united in at least one common point: an attack onImperialism as a possible framework for ’development’. It was in this environmentthat officially sponsored plans had to place themselves.

This is not to suggest that there were no takers among the highest levels ofBritish administration for a ’development’ policy in India. But this form of’development’ was specifically a form of imperialism, which was acknowledgedinternally among colonial officials, but which of course could not be admittedpublicly.lo2 The issue of development seemed only to receive serious consideration

97 Government of India, Planning and Development Department, Second Report onReconstruction Planning, New Delhi, 1944. Also published, between 1945 and 1946, were aseries of publicity pamphlets, with plenty of photographs, on the subject of post-warplanning and reconstruction. See copies in L/I/1/1139, O.I.O.C. Also see Hutton’s ownaccount of post-war reconstruction planning. T. Hutton, ’The Planning of Post-WarDevelopment in India’, Asiatic Review Vol. 43, April 1947.98 P. Thakurdas et al., A Plan of Economic Development for India, Parts I and II, Bombay,Apnl and December 1944 respectively.99 B. N. Banerjee et al., People’s Plan for Economic Development of India, Delhi, 1944.100 S. N. Agarwal, The Gandhian Plan of Economic Development for India, Bombay, 1944.101 See I. Talbot, ’Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Committee of the All-India MuslimLeague 1943-46’, MAS, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1994, pp. 877-86.102 Amery himself, as has been noted earlier in this article, had long been a campaigner for’development’ as an adjunct to imperialism. See L. S. Amery, Empire and Prosperity (2ndedn), London, 1931; and L.S. Amery, The Forward View, London, 1935. There is a curiouscongruence between the ideas of George Schuster the Liberal and Amery the Conservativetariff reformer; for what Louis writes of Amery is in agreement with what Schuster writes ofhis own views: ’By Imperial Preference he [Amery] meant a form of protection by which the



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in communications describing how the industrialisation of India might enable Britainto meet her sterling debts to India in goods, mainly capital goods, thereby providingBritish industry with a post-war market. This optimistic view of the sterlingbalances was, however, rejected by the Treasury, where it was pointed out thatBritain would not have enough capacity to export such goods, as she would needthem herself after the War.lo3 The serious doubts which existed as to whether suchpromises of capital goods could be kept notwithstanding, they continued to beemphasised in the Government of India’s propaganda campaign. On the other hand,the British government’s anxieties regarding Britain’s ability to pay back thesterling balances at all were deliberately sought to be hidden from the Indian public,as it was considered extremely dangerous for confidence in Britain’s financialstability, in terms of its effects on educated and business opinion in India,consequently on the Indian participation in the War Effort.104 It was also consideredfearfully important to keep a probably soon-to-be-independent India within theBritish, as opposed to the American, sphere of influence, especially given the needto maintain the cohesion of the Sterling Area. These considerations were to play animportant role in post-war commonwealth relations even after the transfer of powerto the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan. After the war, in fact, India

emerged as the largest holder of sterling balances, which were later divided betweenthe two new Dominions of India and Pakistan after Independence. These sterlingbalances, which were released at controlled rates of a certain amount per annum,acted as a soft loan for Britain after the war, enabling her to a certain extent torebuild her economy and to subsidise, through her present and former colonies, herwelfare state.

By 1944, it was already more than evident that Britain would not be able tomeet her promised commitments, even given the will to do so. Nationalist andbusiness scepticism about the promises being made, and anxieties regarding the fateof the sterling balances, were confirmed by reports of the Bretton Woodsconference in 1944. The Indian delegation had argued that the proposed International

Empire and the Dominions would become a single economic unit’; Amery ’held that theBritish needed raw materials and colonial markets for which in exchange they could offermanufactured goods and services’. Louis, In the Name of God, Go! p. 32. Compare this withSchuster’s statement of the need, arising especially as a result of the Depression, for the’rationalisation of economic effort throughout a group like the British Commonwealth’. See,Schuster, ’Empire Trade Before and After Ottawa’.103 See, for instance, L. Amery, S.S.I., to K. Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 7 August1942, L/PO/2/16, O.I.O.C.; and the comment of John Maynard Keynes, then adviser to thetreasury, that Amery was a ’dangerous lunatic’: margin note in Treasury copy ofaforementioned letter, quoted in Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire, p. 479. Also see, J.M.Keynes to T. Gregory, Economic Advisor to the G.O.I., Treasury Chambers, 11 June 1943,ff 2-4, Gregory papers, MSS.EUR.D.1163/6, O.I.O.C.104 See L/F/7/2861, O.I.O.C.



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Monetary Fund should assist in providing convertibility for a part of the sterlingbalances, especially in the light of, as Finance Member Jeremy Raisman put it onbehalf of his delegation, India’s ’programme of considerable industrial development’on which she expected to embark in the immediate post-war years, and theconsequent need to finance imports of capital equipment. A. D. Shroff pleaded forsome amount of convertibility, on behalf of Indian business. He realised that a verylarge proportion of the sterling balances had to be liquidated through direct exportsfrom the United Kingdom, but pointed out that the United Kingdom’s capacity toprovide India with consumer and capital goods would be extremely limited in theimmediate post-war years. If, on the other hand, a reasonable proportion of thesterling balances could be converted into other currencies after the war, it would, heargued, assist Indian industrial development process, and thereby the flow ofinternational trade. 105 The British delegation insisted, however, that this was abilateral matter; and the furthest progress that was made was through John MaynardKeynes’ promise that Britain would take up the issue of the settlement of the debt’without delay, to settle honourably what was honourably and generously given’. 106

After the war, long-term considerations on Britain’s part were indeedsuccessfully accommodated, in which the ’development’ of India was not a priority.Britain was largely able to alleviate the worst effects of her weakened world positionthrough programmes of colonial development, the preservation of the Sterling Areaand the Sterling Area Dollar Pool, 107 and a Commonwealth specially restructured for

105 Report of the Indian Delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conferenceat Bretton Woods (July 1 to July 22, 1944), New Delhi, 1945, pp. 13-14, 41. Shroffsarcastically commented, ’it appears that although we have four billion dollars worth ofSterling balances, we have practically no foreign exchange reserves’. Speech by A.D. Shroffat Bretton Woods, 7/7/1944, quoted in Report of the Indian Delegation to the United NationsMonetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, p 41.106 Speech by Keynes, 10/7/1944, reprinted in Report of the Indian Delegation to the UnitedNations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, p. 44.107 The economies of the Sterling Area remained closely allied to Britain’s, not least becauseof the wartime Sterling balances and the tying-up of their Dollar earnings in the Dollar Pool.At the same time the bargaining about the sterling balances and their convertibility into hardcurrency also began to reflect British economic weakness: her inability to supply India withcapital goods and her reluctance to release Dollars from the Pool for development purposes,because she needed them herself. For an account of the sterling balances negotiations, seeB.R. T’omlinson, ’Indo-British Relations in the Post-Colonial Era: The Sterling BalancesNegotiations 1947-49’, JICH, Vol. 13, 1985. Also see, files on Sterling BalancesNegotiations 1948-1950: Economic and Overseas Department Collection (copies ofCommonwealth Relations Office files), L/E/9/303-365, O.I.O.C., and the papers of theSterling Area Development Working Party, L/E/5/76, O.I.O.C. For a summary of theproblems associated with Sterling balances in the Commonwealth and British Empire as awhole, see Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, Chapter 11, pp. 265-66. Evidence fromthe African colonies and the Caribbean also suggests that the colonial power’s indebtednessto a colony was far from incompatible with the continued flow of economic benefits. See the



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the purposes The Treasury’s predictions regarding capital goods exports byBritain to India came true, as industrial re-equipment in India was affected byBritain’s lack of industrial capacity; even post-independence agricultural schemescould be seen to suffer due to Britain’s inability to supply simple capital goods suchas tractors, and her unwillingness to release dollars from the Dollar Pool to enableIndia to buy them from USA or elsewhere. l09 India’s role in the Sterling Area and inthe British adjustment to the post-war economy was on terms which did not fit themain purposes of Britain’s policy smoothly: the Indian economy was not a dollarearner, and Britain was inadequately equipped as a source of supply to enable her tobe more of a dollar saver. Nonetheless, as a Sterling area country with a huge dollardeficit, and the biggest holder of sterling balances, she needed to be provided withthe capital goods she required lest she buy them for dollars drawn from the dollarPool against those balances. I 10 India was thus incorporated into a broad policy aimed

debates followed by Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, Chapter 10, pp.303-48. Also see, Herward Sieberg, ’Koloniale Industrialisierung: Die Diskussion umBritische-Westindien (1944-1952)’ in Habluetzel, Tobler and Wirz, eds, Dritte Welt.108 See R J Moore, Making the New Commonwealth, Oxford, 1987. Also see idem,Endgames ofEmpire: Studies of Britain’s India Problem, Oxford, 1988, p 8: ’the endgames ofempire in South Asia culminated in the celebrated London Declaration of 28 April 1949,rather than the midnight revels of 14 August 1947’. This restructuring of theCommonwealth and its role in coordinating the economic life of the former Empire, as Ameryhad imagined, and as by now the Labour Party also accepted, was also reflected in suchinitiatives for ’development’ as the Colombo Plan, which sought to coordinate the

development plans of the Asian former possessions of the British Empire. See PhilipCharrier, ’India, Britain and the Colombo Plan’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Universityof Cambridge, 1995.109 See Sterling Balances Negotiations: Telegram, India (High Commission) to

Commonwealth Relations Office, 20/1/1948, copy in L/E/9/303, O.I.O.C.110 It is difficult to accept that ’the economic role of the Indian consumer, with his new-foundtaste for British capital goods, was seen as a liability’; B. R. Tomlinson, ’The SterlingBalances Negotiations, 1947-49’, p. 58, outside of government circles, who were concernedwith providing for domestic needs. The tensions between national planners and the privatesector, which was soon to appear in India, was a factor here in the British case. The problemwas to ensure that home requirements were met and then decide on export priorities as amatter of ’long-term planning’. If priority export commitments, on the ’Russian model’,were imposed over a great extent of Britain’s export potential, there would not be enoughroom for private profit. It was considered necessary, however, as mentioned above, to givesome priority of supply to the Sterling Area countries lest they seek supplies outside the areaand spend dollars or other hard currency. The solution was to let private profit motivesgovern exports to hard currency areas while planning exports to the Sterling Area. Privateprofit motives would govern exports to hard currency areas and would be in consonance withthe national need to earn such currency — for which enough export capacity had to be left toprivate industry in order to ’disperse the impact of the priority commitments’ to the SterlingArea. See O.N.(48)85, Confidential, 9/2/1948, Cabinet Overseas Negotiations Committee,Bilateral Availabilities, Note by Ministry of Supply, copy in L/E/5/76, O.I.O.C.



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at the preservation of Sterling Area dollar resources, with Britain’s effective

custodianship of the Sterling balances of the colonies, Dominions and the two newDominions of India and Pakistan (the share of the last two together constitutingoverwhelmingly the largest part of the sterling balances) ensuring her goodbargaining power

These attitudes force one to question the recently propounded argument aboutthe ’marks of the imminent birth in India’ of a ’new constructive imperialism beforepartition and independence aborted it’. This ’constructive imperialism’ wasapparently ’prefigured in wartime government intervention in the economy and inthe official propaganda which Jonathan Israel [sic] and others have begun tochart’.112 This is a problematic view considering the widespread cynicism withinofficial circles about the viability of the many promises being made. ln Indeed, whatcan be witnessed in this period is the division of opinion among the state personnel- civil and military; European and Indian - into two well-defined camps: theminority who believed that the Raj would continue long after the cessation of WorldWar II, and the majority who expected the Indian empire to be abandoned in the nearfuture. The wartime debates about the mode of dissemination of all forms of state

propaganda, material and/or ideological, highlighted the isolation of the formergroup and the predominance of the latter, especially in the higher echelons of power,between 1942 and 1947. A manifestation of this was the primacy given to the shortterm goal of winning the war in India at the expense of the needs of the generalcivilian population and, as a result, the advertising of the British government’s goodintentions for India began to subordinate attempts to put welfare or developmentschemes into operation. These trends, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of officialpublic relations projects, especially in the localities of eastern and southern India, as

111 As far as India and Pakistan were concerned, there was a fear, during the Sterling balancesnegotiations of 1948, that they might be externed from the Sterling Area for not playing thegame of saving Dollars. But the possible unpleasant consequences to Britain, due to essentialitems of Indo-British trade such as jute possibly being invoiced in dollars, heavier exportduties on tea or diversion of such exports to Dollar areas, made the British Government morereceptive to Indian demands for greater releases of their balances in dollars to meet theirDollar deficit. ’Secret Memorandum on Sterling Balances Negotiations’, L/E/9/303, O.I.O.C.112 C. A. Bayly, ’Returning the British to South Asian History: The Limits of ColonialHegemony’, South Asia, Vol. 17, No.2, 1994, p. 17.113 Bayly has, in the aforementioned piece, referred to, among other things, an article bySanjoy Bhattacharya as proof for the existence of this ’constructive imperialism’, at leastduring World War II. See reference to S. Bhattacharya, ’The Colonial State and theCommunist Party of India, 1942-45: A Reappraisal’, SAR, Vol. 15, No.1, 1995, in Bayly,ibid., fn. 76. While Bhattacharya did indeed mention instances of wartime economicintervention by the state, he referred, at the same time, to two critically important issues

informing these measures: the public relations aspect of such official campaigns and therequent administrative (British and/or Indian) fear about the outbreak of disorder. Both theseints have, unfortunately, been ignored by Bayly.



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district officers fearful of riots within their spheres of influence desisted frommaking grandiose promises of providing economic relief and attempted instead totackle the situation with the use of force. It was a tactic that was doomed to failureas the campaigns of forced requisitioning and rationing were adversely stricken by ashortage of staff and competing military demands: the relief provided was, thus,woefully inadequate, and the result was an ever-increasing reliance on the forcedrequisitioning of grain, which only seemed to assist in annoying many rural notablesallied to the British administration Indeed, local civilian administrators oftenfrowned upon the special provisions being made on behalf of the ’priority classes’- especially the military personnel posted in their jurisdictions and the industrialworkers in Calcutta - and wondered about the efficacy of advertising India’s ’greatdestiny’ in the post-war era in localities in eastern India that had been ravaged byfamine and pestilence. 115 The publicity campaign about wartime, and post-war,economic ’development’ had other official detractors as well. For instance, one

114 The administrators of the localities of Bihar, Eastern United Provinces and Assam worstaffected by the famine conditions began increasingly to resort to the forced requisitioning ofhidden hoards of grain. Interestingly, efforts were always first made to request the affectedlandlords/merchants that they voluntarily surrender their hoards so as to assist the officialeffort to ’curtail the possibility of food riots’, which would cause ’the destruction of bothpublic and private property and life’. However, such appeals seemed largely ineffective,causing the use of official force to extract the surplus food. See extracts from secret reportsby District Magistrates in Bihar, Eastern United Provinces and Assam, c. 1943, W.S.F.63/iii/43, B.S.A. References of resistance — armed or otherwise — remain surprisinglyfrequent. Ibid. A similar situation seems to have been noticeable in Orissa as well. I.H.Macdonald, an I.C.S. officer posted in the province, mentions how civil servants responsiblefor requisitioning grain were always accompanied by bodyguards since their duties wereunpopular, especially because they were done with ’a certain element’ of coercion. Memoirsof I.H. Macdonald, Macdonald Papers, O.I.O.C., p. 41.115 These attitudes are revealed in the local officials’ responses to a letter from E. Wood, theAdditional Secretary to the Food Department, G.O.I., where provincial and district officers inBengal and Bihar were encouraged, amongst other things, to ’emphasise and re-emphasisethat the Government of India ha[d] set up the Food Deptt. [sic] whose job [wa]s to see thatno one starves...and that if food [wa]s found to be short in any place, the Food Departmentw[ould] produce the goods’. Confidential letter from E. Wood to Chief Secretaries of Bengaland Bihar, cSeptember 1943, W.S.F. 50(iv)/1942, B.S.A. Responses from the districtheadquarters and subdivisional capitals of both provinces attests to widespread cynicismtowards Wood’s suggestions. Even officials based in the tribal belts, which had been focus ofofficial food-relief and health operations (due to the fact that these areas were importantrecruiting grounds for the ’labour battalions’ involved in the construction of strategicprojects), doubted the advisability of promising ’too much’ in the likely case the

administration could ’not deliver’. Indeed, it was widely feared that an incapacity to fulfilofficial promises of food aid would stoke ’popular anger’ and possibly ’cause the explosion ofriots’. See Secret Notes from the Deputy Magistrate of Dumka, G.O.B; the DeputCommissioner of the Santhal Parganas, G.O.B., and the Commissioner of the Chota NagpDivision, G.O.B., c. October 1943, W.S.F. 55/2(vii)/1943, B.S.A.



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report in October 1944 mentioned the recurring complaint made by some seniormilitary officers that ’post-war reconstruction’ was being ’over-stressed’. Advisingrestraint in the tone of such propaganda material, they had argued, in

communications to the General Headquarters (India Command), that ’more might bedone towards making him [the Indian soldier] appreciate that the war must be wonfirst’.116

Unfortunately for the colonial administrators, their efforts to assuage the’priority classes’ during the war often remained unappreciated at the time, and wereignored after the conclusion of the conflict. Whereas industrial activism was stifledby the selective distribution of economic benefits between 1941 and 1945, workers’discontent was never very far from the surface and exploded into the openimmediately after the war. However, unlike in the period after the First World War,when increased labour activism forced industrialists into a renewed alliance with thecolonial authorities, the situation after August 1945 was strikingly different. Bigbusiness had gradually, yet very definitely, shifted its political alliances away fromthe Raj, not only in anticipation of the now inevitable transfer of power but alsobecause of its tenuous relationship with the government. in wartime. Specialmeasures, like the Excess Profits Tax and the special sub-clauses of the Defence ofIndia Regulations, which prevented re-investment of wartime gains in certainsectors had remained immensely unpopular, and there were fears that the sterlingbalances would not be repaid in full by Britain; in a period of political renegotiation,these restrictions were adroitly denounced by Indian business groups as the stiflingof ’legitimate national aspirations’ of the Indian nation. lit

This hostility between Government and business was exacerbated by theGovernment’s suspicion that business interests were now backing and financing theCongress activities, especially during the Quit India agitations. 118 Businessmen onthe other hand resented the Government’s single-mindedness in supplying the WarEffort, while making efforts to ensure that no industry capable of competing withBritish industry for the Indian market after the war came into being. l9 The mistrustof the Government by business was not assuaged by selected business

representatives being incorporated into the Viceroy’s Executive Council - forinstance, Homi Mody and Nalini Ranjan Sircar were inducted into the Viceroy’s

116 Most Secret W.I.S. (I.I.) 12 November 1944, L/WS/1/1433, O.I.O.C.117 See file 235 in P. Thakurdas Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi(hereafter N.M.M.L.). Also see, K.T. Shah, ed., Report; National Planning Committee, pp.234-35.118 Strictly Secret Report entitled ’Congress and "Big Business"’, 28 February 1944,L/P&J/8/618a, O.I.O.C.119 See files 81 and 563 in W. Hirachand Papers, N.M.M.L.



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Executive Council during the warl2° - or the government’s various Committees onpost-war reconstruction, albeit in subordinate positions. Indeed, Ardeshir Dalal hadan extremely short stint within the Planning and Development Department (set upin 1944), and as he resigned, he convincingly claimed that nothing could be done tofurther the cause of Indian industry from within the Government. 121 Some seniorcolonial officials had, of course, always feared that such a situation might arise.Linlithgow, for instance, had been aware of these problems of public relations, andhad been far less sanguine than Thomas Hutton about the potential dividends ofsimply disseminating ideological propaganda on the issue. He had, in a propheticdescription about the situation prevalent in the last two years of the war and theperiod immediately after it, declared that in the light of public suspicion of Britishintentions, ’any well-advertised development policy might well be acclaimed by thepeople as only a belated attempt to remedy past omissions’.122

Thus, by 1942, it had become impossible for the Raj to implement thepromises of post-war reconstruction in India. Partly as a consequence of thewidespread realisation of this, the publicity campaign regarding economic mattersproved largely ineffective. Despite the presence of good intentions among variousofficials within the colonial administration, the overall picture that emerges is thatthe dominant concern among the colonial administration between 1942 and 1947

was to ensure that economic and political benefits continued to accrue to Britain,notwithstanding the difficulties of the Indian situation at the time. This, of course,brings us back to an old point: that imperialism is neither explicable in terms of agrand conspiracy theory, nor in terms of ’good’ or ’bad’ intentions of its officials.Even making allowances for over-optimism and self-delusion, rather than cynicalattempts at self-serving manipulation, the balancing of Indian and British interestswas by the end of the war, widely accepted to be unrealistic. Indeed, as Britain’sinitial economic calculations for the post-war period were rapidly upset, her wartimeplans for Indian development, announced with so much fanfare, were quietly allowedto rest in their filing cabinets, while new schemes designed to allow Britainfavourable access to an independent Indian economy were lobbied.

120 Both Mody and Sircar resigned in response to Gandhi’s fast, not wishing to bear theresponsibility in case of his death. See copy of their resignation letter, dated 17 February1943, in f42, Subject File No. 13, H.P. Mody Papers, N.M.M.L.121 See R. Chattopadhyay, ’The Idea of Planning in India’, pp. 214-42. Also see Hanson,The Process ofPlanning, p. 44. The Department was abolished in 1946, soon after Dalal’s

departure.122 Telegram from Linlithgow, Viceroy, India to L. Amery, S.S.I., 16 July 1943, ff. 106-7,L/E/8/2527, O.I.O.C.



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