I wish this was the speech that was made in May 2014. I am sure someone attempting this counterfactual would have many other points to make.
Dear Friends, Brothers and Sisters
The nation has spoken. You have given your mandate, your trust, to our party. You have given us your instructions very clearly. To govern this country so that everyone progresses, and everyone becomes prosperous. We are grateful and humbled. And I, as the leader of the party, bow down my head in humility to you the people of India. You are 130 crore people – rich and poor; Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain; you speak 26 languages and live in 29 states. And yet, when you speak, you speak clearly and without any doubt. I have heard you loud and clear and as your servant, I bow my head to you.
During the campaign I promised you that this Government will be very different, a government of change. I plan to live up to that promise. You have seen our program in the manifesto. But the time for elections is over, and the time for talking is done. Now, as your servant, you are entitled to know what we plan to do and how it will better your lives. Allow me to lay out the big changes that we will make.
The first job of a government is to ensure that the prosperity of the nation goes up. Without money in the bank, without a job, without food in your stomach, you cannot be a good citizen. If people are seeing their prospects improve, tensions in society will decrease. Most of the tensions we have in our country are about competition for resources – for jobs, houses, land. Our goal is to end these tensions by increasing prosperity.
Prosperity can only come when entrepreneurs and industrialists feel that they can set up companies without any interference or problems. These companies will create jobs. You should no longer expect that the government will be the source of all jobs. Those days are gone. If we keep generating non-productive jobs for people, then we will just be paying salaries. Then how can we invest in roads, railways, ports, airfields, in the latest arms for our defence forces?
To ensure job creation in the private sector, we will do the following
First, reduce the number of clearances and permissions the business needs. We have to ensure the business does not harm the environment, takes care of pollution, and adopts fair labour practices. Other than checking these, we will not interfere in how they run. Permissions will be granted quickly, in fourteen days time, once they satisfy us on these three.
Second, we will give all businesses tax reliefs on their initial years of running. New businesses, and existing businesses expanding operations will be given tax reliefs that are linked to employment generation as well as quantum of investment.
Third, private companies are invited to invest in road infrastructure. We will announce our project preferences in two months time. We will give interested private companies one month to respond to tenders. Every such investment will receive a tax holiday for fifteen years provided the project is completed on time and to our satisfaction.
Fourth, we will cut corporate taxes to bring them in line with other countries in Asia with whom we compete for investment.
Fifth, there will be no tax on dividends. This will encourage people to start investing in stocks and shares to help private companies to invest.
Sixth, in selected sectors like defence, government will announce a Future Purchase Program to enable indigenous industries to plan and develop technologies for investment.
Seventh, we will announce Strategic Industry Partnership Initiatives to create annex exploit technologies for water conservation in farming, river cleanliness, ground water recharge, waste management and alternate energy sources.
In the field of agriculture, the country has made tremendous progress. But more needs to be done to ensure that our farmers can earn good incomes from agriculture. Wherever possible, we will use Minimum Support Prices to help farmers shore up income. But going forward, we will ask FCI to implement cold storage systems to help store food surpluses of items like onions which cause a lot of suffering due to wild price fluctuations – both to farmers as well as to consumers.
We will ask the State Agriculture Ministries to help farmers move to less water-intensive modes of cultivation. This will take a few years to accomplish but we must start now. The country has the lowest per-capita availability of water among all major countries. Global warming is here and it will affect rainfall patterns. We need to be prepared.
Access to credit for farmers will improve in our administration, but to maintain a healthy flow, we will ask farmers to repay loans. Not paying back a loan does not reflect well on our culture. We will ask the States to be extra sensitive to this aspect.
Coming to the Banking system. The previous government had started the Asset Quality Review which is a good step. But we will take it further. First, all politically directed lending will stop. Bank officers will be allowed to make their own decisions on credit. Further if a credit decision is made on the basis of facts, the bank officers will not face criminal prosecution. This will allow them to function freely and without hindrance.
To enable the public sector banks to act without political interference, we are hereby abolishing the Department of Financial Services. There will be no privatisation of the banks but these banks will now have to manage their affairs freely under the total supervision of the RBI. We will appoint individuals of repute to act as Independent Directors representing the government as a stockholder in these banks. But there will be no more remote control.
The tax burden in this country is borne by a very few people. To make this fairer, we propose to do the following.
Income tax will now be paid by all. The threshold for no tax will be set high enough so that poor farmers and poor people do not have to pay. Tax rates for low incomes will be low. It is a national duty to pay to keep your country safe and prosperous. The Income Tax Act will be amended to reflect this aim.
Further this government will abolish all state level Octroi and Sales Taxes and move to a national Goods and Services Tax system. It will take two years to design it properly and two years for it to stabilise. I ask my countrymen to be patient. If we get this right, the immediate benefits can be illustrated as follows: a truck of Alphonso Mangoes from Ratnagiri will take three days to get to the Capital, without any Octroi stops, instead of ten days at present. A separate commission consisting of all states will be set up to ensure that the states do not lose revenue. But if some states do, they should remember the whole nation benefits. Farmers benefit. Industries benefit. Customers benefit.
The Government will provide incentives to those who pay at shops by debit or credit card or by IMPS. The incentive will be credited directly to the payer within 15 days of such payment. Insist on paying by card at a shop. India has the lowest merchant charges, and the merchant saves money in cash handling. WE will introduce schemes to ensure that every Indian is able to pay by card.
Turning to foreign policy – India has always desired peaceful relations with our neighbours, particularly Pakistan. I ask my fellow Indians to be patient. Pakistan is a country in great trouble. But they are our neighbours – and we cannot chose our neighbours. Our government will engage Pakistan at civil society, inter-governmental and in people to people levels. We will punish anyone who launched a terrorist attack on us from their soil. But we will reward such countries for good behaviour.
Last and most important – I wish to address the question of our approach to secularism. There has been a lot of scaremongering about our party during the elections. Do not believe these rumours. There will be some changes but here is what I want to tell my Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain and other brothers and sisters from any religion. You are Indian first and last. Hindus are Indian first and last. As Indians you are equal in the eyes of the law. There will be no discrimination – either positive or negative – on the basis of religion. Any person caught doing so will be punished under the Constitution. At the same time, my brothers and sisters from the minority religions, you will agree with me that a lot of misuse of secularism has taken place in the past. Vote bank politics, encouraging illegal migration, fomenting communal violence – all of this has been done by political parties in the past. This ends now. The civilisation of this country has benefited from Islam, Christianity and other religions. But it is largely a Hindu one. This should not scare you. It is the same Hindu religion that welcomed the Parsis, the earliest Christian evangelists, that co-existed with Jainism and Buddhism, and enabled Islam to become an Indian religion. My government will ensure this is not forgotten but this is not at the expense of our fellow Indians from other religions.
My friends, we have a lot to do. Let us swear an oath to work hard. I and my government, as your servants, will make a solemn vow to you to make your lives better over the next five years that you have given us. Jai Hind! Vande Mataram!
This is the story of the Indian National Army – the INA, Azad Hind Fauj. Most people have a wildly unrealistic and highly romanticized notion of the INA. It is a romantic story for sure. Equally, it is a tragic story of an attempt to achieve Indian Independence. Contemporary accounts of the INA are either hyper-nationalist in nature or gloss over the actual record of the INA. Objectivity seems to have been abandoned.
When we think of the INA, we think of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He is a hero of modern India, and as the Republic ages, the aura around Bose has only increased. The doubts swirling around whether or not he died in the fatal aircrash on August 18 1945, and the conspiracy theories around it, continue to titillate and occupy the imagination. The romance of his story is captivating – one determined man, anxious to accelerate India’s Independence, decides to take the military route – and fails. The fact that he tried is a matter of great pride for all Indians.
The story of Bose dominates the narrative around the INA and in the process, tends to submerge its history. There is so much that has been said and sung about Bose that very little can be added to it.
This is the story of the Indian National Army as an armed force, of their brave attempts, of their many defeats, of despair, and of neglect.
Understanding this aspect of the INA will help us answer the often-asked question – could the INA have just marched to Delhi and liberated India? The answer is No.
All the INA papers were lost in the Japanese retreat from Rangoon. A lot of fanciful accounts have been written and much of the military history has been glossed over. It is hoped that this attempt will be seen for what it is – an honest reconstruction from reliable sources. These sources are listed in the Bibliography. These are mainly military sources in the UK and in India.
People forget that the INA did not fight the British – they fought the Indian Army. Most of the fighting in Burma between 1941 and 1945 was done by the Indian Army – the sepoy, the rifleman, the tank man and the artillery man. True, they were largely British lead at the start but this changed substantially by 1944.
The INA’s existence in battle made an explosive political statement at the end of the War regardless of its actual military merits. Churchill had been defeated at the General Elections in 1945 and the Attlee Government just wanted to leave India. The trial of INA officers and the Naval Ratings Mutiny in 1946 – and the public outcry during the INA trials must have played a role in convincing the British that leaving was the right thing to do.
There was no question of the British suspecting the loyalties of the Indian Army. By the end of 1945, the Indian Army was a thoroughly competent, battle tested, largely Indian lead (except for the general staff), professional fighting force that would do whatever duty the Government would ask it to do. British officers of the Indian Army had genuine affection for their men and the local culture – there were always exceptions. The behaviour of the Indian Army in battle when confronted with INA forces did not provide any cause for suspecting loyalties. Indeed, in many cases, the ruthlessness of the Indian Army towards their former comrades surprised the British. No, Britain left India because she was too poor, too tired and too much in debt to the United States at the end of the War. It was a hasty departure, a “shameful flight[1]”. It had nothing to do with the Indian Army – or the INA.
The tragedy of the INA can only be understood if we go past the giant figure of Bose and look at their military record. To do so, allow me to recap the history of the INA very briefly. I will provide a synopsis of their military history – a more detailed record is appended at the end of the post for aficionados of such detail.
Prelude to the INA
The Japanese Government was opposed to the presence of Western powers as colonizers in Asia, and had their own plans of substituting themselves for the British, the French and the Dutch. As you may recall, the British had India and most of SE Asia, the French had Indo-China (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) and the Dutch had Indonesia. Historical evidence shows the Japanese interest in Asia was entirely motivated by self-interest – spheres of influence, access to resources, and a protected trading zone very much like the Empire Preference. There was no altruism in their motives – and making a note of this is important as we go further[2].
Japanese intelligence had instructed its operatives to try and make connections with Indian independence activists with a view to destabilizing the British hold over India, well before War began. Major Iwaichi Fujiwara of the Kempeitai was already active in Thailand and Malaya just months before the fighting started, and he did this through an organization called the Hikari Kikan[3]. He would play a key role in the creation of the Indian National Army.
Aggressive Japanese imperialism – on display in the Sino-Japanese War going on since 1932 – alarmed the British. From the mid 1930s the British started taking greater cognizance of a possible Japanese threat to its Asian possessions. Singapore was a British Crown Colony, considered impregnable due to its maritime defences and the presence of the Royal Navy. British Imperial military doctrine depended on the Royal Navy having two Fleets – one in Europe and one in Asia – the Asian one being based in Singapore. The Singapore Fleet would provide protection to the Asian colonies. However the Navy struggled to secure the monies to mount two fleets. There was no expectation that Japanese forces might actually attempt an ambitious landing in Malaya. When France surrendered to the Germans in 1940, the Japanese quickly took possession of French Indo-China. This brought the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy and Airforce within striking distance of Malaya. The independent Thai Kingdom was neutral but leaning towards the Japanese. British military thinking had to take these developments into account. Two Divisions of the Indian Army were rushed to Malaya and told to defend the Malayan coast against a possible Japanese landing. These two Divisions had fresh manpower hastily inducted – but they were poorly trained for the jungles of Malaya.
On December 7 1941, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbour and declared war on the United Kingdom. The next day, Japanese forces landed in Malaya near Kota Bahru. Facing the Japanese Army were the 9th Indian Division and the 11th Indian Division in addition to British and Australian troops. A series of humiliating defeats at the hands of a superbly trained, well-lead, mobile enemy, followed.
For some months prior to the war breaking out, an expatriate Indian in Malaya, Pritam Singh, had been working closely with Major Fujiwara to set up the apparatus for a Fifth Column. The opportunity came when the Indian Army’s 1/14 Punjab was thoroughly defeated and scattered by the Japanese at Jitra in Malaya in mid-December 1941. Fujiwara and Pritam Singh made contact with one of the unit’s Punjabi officers Captain Mohan Singh. Pritam and Fujiwara explained that Japan planned to convert the POWs into an army that would fight the British for an independent India. Mohan Singh agreed. The soldiers hiding in the plantations after the defeat surrendered to the Japanese. In Jitra, the Indian POWs took over law and order functions in the name of the Japanese. The Japanese advance rolled southwards. The Allies lost almost every battle. There was no air support, and the two old but formidable battleships HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales had been sunk by Japanese bombers very early on. The British, Australians and Indians fell back to Singapore.
On February 15 1942, General Sir Arthur Percival, Commander in Chief of the British Forces, surrendered Singapore to General Yamashita of the Imperial Japanese Army at a ceremony in the Ford Factory in Bukit Timah. Nearly 100,000 men, of which 45,000 were Indian soldiers, were taken Prisoners Of War. All the Indian POWs were summoned to a public meeting in Farrer Park. There, Mohan Singh, Pritam Singh and Fujiwara spoke to the POWs and told them Japan would liberate India from the British yoke and asked them to join up. About half of them did. This was the first INA.
Discussions between Mohan Singh (who had by now called himself General Mohan Singh) and the IJA were on going about the state of POWs, the status of the INA, and its role. He was keen to ensure Japanese support, and he wanted a fiery political leader while he would handle all military affairs. He asked the Japanese to get Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was then in Germany, conducting parlays with the Nazi leadership on using captured Indian POWs to be the advance guard of a German Army that would invade India. He had escaped from house arrest in India in 1941 and made his way to Germany. As a Congress politician, and an associate of Gandhi and Nehru, he carried a lot of credibility as a future political leader.
In the meantime Mohan Singh managed to put together the preliminary military organization of the INA. It consisted of one Division organized into Gandhi, Nehru and Azad Brigades. These brigades were styled Guerilla Brigades. The surrendered arms of the British could equip 17,000 men. An Officer Training School was established. Hospital facilities were set up.
Tensions had been building up between Mohan Singh and the Japanese Army. Mohan Singh was quite insistent that the INA be treated as an equal to the IJA. Senior Indian Army officers who had surrendered were also ambivalent about Mohan Singh’s leadership and his self-awarded title of General. There were valid concerns about the state of Indian POWs who had not volunteered – this was nearly 25,000 of the 45,000 who surrendered.
In mid 1942 Mohan Singh was arrested by the Japanese and interned for the rest of the War. The mutual mistrust of motives was the cause; Mohan Singh thought the Japanese just wanted coolies, and the Japanese did not respect Mohan and his comrades. Most important, a number of Japanese officers who lived by the code of Bushido could not respect men who chose surrender over death. The INA languished.
Bose left Germany by U-Boat and landed in Singapore on July 1 1943. By the time Bose got to Singapore, the tide of the war had turned against the Japanese. The United States was beginning to inflict serious damage on the Imperial Japanese Navy, starting with the Battle of Midway in June 1942. American Marines started to attack and occupy islands in the Pacific, to enable American aircraft to mount bombing raids against the Japanese mainland, breaching the Japanese defensive perimeter in the Pacific.
When he arrived, Bose moved quickly to rejuvenate the INA and repair relations with the Japanese. As a politician of stature, he had the respect of the Japanese. He also appealed to the large Indian diaspora in Singapore, Malaya, Thailand and Rangoon for men and money, and started to admit local Indians into the INA. He set up the Arzi Hukumat e Azad e Hind (Azad Hind Government) in the Andamans – a part of Indian territory in Japanese hands – and took personal command of the Indian National Army.
All that he wanted now was to throw the INA into battle against the British.
The INA Goes Into Action
The Japanese advance through Burma, which began in 1942, slowed down once the Indian Army had completed its withdrawal to the North East frontiers of India by June 1942. The supply lines of the attackers were stretched and there was a pause – it was not so much a pause, as it was a series of engagements punctuated by pauses. From Northern Burma, the Chinese Nationalist Army of Gen Chiang Kai Shek engaged the Japanese without much success. In 1943, the Indian Army attempted an invasion of the Arakan region. The invasion did not succeed.
While the British smarted under this huge military setback, the Japanese were doing their best to consolidate their hold over Burma. Burma was declared a part of the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. and Burmese nationalist politicians were technically in charge of Burma.
The Commander in Chief for India Lord Wavell realised that it would be foolish to take on the Japanese unless the Indian Army was re-trained for the jungle, taught new tactics and was provided multi-role air cover – to supply the troops, to clear the jungle of the enemy and to get the wounded to hospital. General William Slim was appointed Commander in Chief of the 14th Army, created to consolidate the British response to the defeat by the Japanese.
The map below would be useful in understanding how the forces stood in 1944.
Military Positions January 1944
The Red Bubbles show the Indian Infantry Divisions and the Blue Bubbles show the Japanese positions.
The War in Burma is a vast subject, but we will only deal with those parts of the War where the INA was involved, with enough battlefield context to ensure the reader is able to form a mental picture. The bibliography will guide the reader to some excellent works on the subject (most notably, Louis Allen’s “Burma: The Longest War”) in case a detailed history of this forgotten war interests him.
The Indian Army was at war with Japan since December 1941. However, it is only in January-February 1944 does the Indian Army report it’s the first encounters with the INA. In early January 1944, reports emerge of INA soldiers asking the Indian armymen to give up, and it appears that in almost every case, the Indian armymen reacted with fury. The derogatory term used by the British for the INA was “JIF” – Japanese Inspired Fifth Column.
In January 1944, Indian Army movements begin anew with renewed focus and fresh Indian divisions – tough, battle-tested ones – in the Arakan (roughly south and east of Bangladesh today). In February 1944 the Japanese managed to trap two Indian Divisions and surround them. (This battle is called the Battle of the Admin Box). To the great surprise of the Japanese, the Indian Divisions withstood the siege and sprung the trap after 28 days. It should have warned the Japanese that the Indian Army may not roll over as easy as they appeared to do in the long retreat, but it did not. Neither did it dismay the Japanese Army a great deal, because their focus was on India.
In February 1944, orders were issued to the Japanese Burma Area Command to attack India. The offensive was to be lead by their 15th Army, commanded by General Mutaguchi – a grizzled veteran of Japan’s wars in China. The objective – to capture Imphal and Kohima before the monsoons began (in late April). The Japanese were supremely confident they could pull this off – after all they had chased the Indian Army out of South East Asia and expected no other outcome.
The Japanese attack plan consisted of a thrust from the South towards Imphal along the Tiddim Road in Burma to draw the British to stop the Japanese. This was a feint, and designed to hide the main attack. The main attack would come from another Japanese Corps that would head north and turn west, crossing the hills to burst upon the Indian Army on the road between Imphal and Kohima. They would attack both Imphal and Kohima, cut the road linking Imphal and Kohima, and proceed to Dimapur, reaching the Brahmaputra Valley. As part of the feint, the IJA 15th Army would mount a three-pronged attack from the South.
The INA was delighted with the decision to attack India and assured the Japanese that once the INA was on Indian soil, the people would rise up in arms and overthrow the British. This was a reasonable expectation – the Quit India Movement had inflamed the country, and Bengal was reeling under famine.
The attack began on March 8 1944. It required the Japanese to quickly surround and eliminate the Indian Army south of Imphal, take their supplies, and reach Imphal in two weeks. Gen Bill Slim, however, became aware of the Japanese plan, and instead of rushing southwards, he asked the Indian Divisions to retreat towards the Imphal plain. Fighting retreats are hard to do, but the Indian Army managed to do just that. To do so they had to stand and fight on the road to Imphal and deny the Japanese the advantage of time. The Battle of Tiddim Road was critical to what happened next in Imphal. INA men were assigned the task of supporting Japanese supply lines in the south. They were not happy about this but they agreed to do their part. They were also assigned to assist in the attack on Imphal from the East, from a town called Tamu which is on the Indo-Burma border.
Initial reports of contacts with the INA are not flattering. The INA men would pretend to be Indian Army troops, and gain tactical advantages here and there. This seems to have angered the Indian Armymen. The first surrenders from the INA ranks start as well by March 1944 on the Tiddim Road – in bits and pieces and in one case, a large number of INA Gurkhas. The Japanese attack very quickly got bogged down on the south thanks to some heroic rearguard actions by the 17th and 23rd Indian Divisions.
The Japanese completed a heroic hike across the hills to approach Imphal from the East. The INA was assigned to the Tamu front, and tasked to capture an airfield called Palel on Indian soil. The INA were delighted at the prospect of marching into the motherland. They went into attack, singing songs and shouting “Dilli Chalo!”. However their noisy and gay approach was spotted by a Indian Army Gorkha patrol. Instead of changing sides the Gorkhas practically gunned down the entire section. The airfield was too heavily defended. The INA men made several attempts to take Palel but failed.
The battle for Imphal and Kohima is now part of modern legend. A survey conducted by the National Army Museum in the UK revealed that the British public consider this the most significant battle fought by British forces in their entire history. It was brutal and violent, and no quarter was given nor asked for. The fighting between the Japanese forces on the one side, and the Indians and British on the other, was hand to hand, face to face. Terms like the Tennis Court in Kohima have passed into legend. The fanatical Japanese were indomitable but ultimately, poor decisions made by their commanders on managing supplies for their troops began to tell. In July 1944, the Japanese called off the attack and ordered a general retreat.
It was the largest military defeat the Japanese have ever encountered, handed to them by a composite army of mainly Indian Army men and British forces to a lesser extent. The INA retreat was hard. A particularly grim description of the aftermath of the retreat to Tamu – which was where the INA was based – can be found in the detailed section on the Military History in this blog post.
The Japanese and INA troops were starving, they had no medical facilities and malaria was rife. Men just dropped to the side, dead or too tired to carry on, and were abandoned. If someone happened to die near a river, they were tipped over into it.
The British and Indian Armies – collectively under an umbrella formation known as the 14th Army – went after the Japanese. In August 1944 the Japanese decided to withdraw to the Irrawaddy River and hold the line there. All hopes of going back to India had faded for the INA. The Indian Army coming after the Japanese was just too strong – it was better armed, better lead and they knew how to fight in the jungle.
By now the INA was pretty much on its own, as the Japanese command structure started to crumble. Surrenders continued at a scale that dismayed the INA command. An engagement would take place that would temporarily stop the advance at a particular point. The very next day the men who stopped the advance, would surrender. Apart from wounds and sickness, the new Royal Indian Air Force flying alongside the RAF and USAF were making life very hard for anything military that moved in the day time. The INA had to retreat at night and hide by day.
The British Command waited for their armies to be fully ready before unleashing them in a massive assault in January 1945. The Irrawaddy is a wide and deep river. There is a crossing at a point called Nyuangdu. It was also the widest crossing point, and the British were going to cross here, go straight east through Japanese held lands and capture the town of Meiktila. The INA was at its weakest but the Japanese assigned them to defend Nyaungdu, thinking the British and Indian Armies would not cross there.
Which is exactly what they did. At first the INA managed to hold the crossing for day with their meagre resources. The next day, under a more determined attempt by the Indian Army, the INA folded. Large numbers of INA men surrendered without a fight, and some of their reserves refused to fight.
The Indian Army broke through Japanese lines and dashed for Meiktila, capturing it. The Japanese surrounded Meiktila and there ensued another hard-fought battle. The Japanese siege failed. The INA meanwhile was assigned another defensive position at Mount Popa. Here, the INA performed at its best. It used its lightly armed forces extremely well to hold back a British Brigade. Ultimately a large armoured assault accompanied by severe air bombardment forced the INA to retreat along with the remaining Japanese. Again, large numbers of officers and men just switched to the British. INA officers who defected had no problem signing leaflets that were airdropped on the INA urging them to surrender and offering safe passage.
On April 2 1945, the combined British and Indian Divisions began the race for the 300 miles to Rangoon from Meiktila. The INA, retreating southwards, was repeatedly caught in skirmishes. In two instances the INA men fought with grenades and rifles against a better armed Indian Army, and died to a man. For the most part, INA men chose to locate the Indian Army to surrender. The biggest such surrender took place at a place called Toungoo. The town was of interest to the British Command because it had an airfield. An INA Division was stationed there. When the 255 Indian Tank Brigade approached, the INA men surrendered en masse without a fight.
Towards the end of April the INA leadership left Rangoon, leaving 5000 men to keep the peace. In May the Indian Army entered Rangoon. The last of the INA men surrendered.
The INA originally consisted of POWs from the Malaya campaign. Through Bose’s oratory a large number of Tamils had joined up from the plantations in Malaya. Most these Tamils just took off their uniforms and melted away.
The end was near for the Japanese. Massive air attacks and firebombings made life hard for the Japanese on the home islands. On August 6th and 9th, atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and on August 15th the Japanese Emperor announced their surrender.
The War was over.
Aftermath
The key INA officers – Prem Sahgal, G S Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan – were put on trial at Red Fort. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, wanted a public show. Most INA men who were captured were either dismissed or returned to their former regiments depending on how involved they were in the decision to fight the British[25].
The trial hinged on whether the INA was acting for an independent state or were just a Japanese Fifth Column, waging war on the King Emperor. A stellar defence panel consisting of Sir Bhulabhai Desai, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sir Dalip Singh, Sir Tek Chand, Asaf Ali, Dr K N Katju, P K Sen and Rai Bahadur Badri Das defended the men in court martial. The panel recognized the enormous political and emotional significance of the trial, conceded the British right to try them, and asserted their right to defend them.
The defence called key witnesses from the defeated government of Japan – Ota Saburo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Matsumoto Shunichi (former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs), Sawada Renzo (former Ambassador to Burma), Hachiya Teruo (Japanese Minister to the Free India Provisional Government), and Lt Gen Katakura Tadasu of the Burma Area Army of the Imperial Japanese Army. All of them testified that despite how it may have appeared, the Japanese Government dealt with the Arzi Hukumat e Azad e Hind (Azad Hind Government) as an independent ally. A key witness was Major Iwaichi Fujiwara himself. He was greeted warmly by his old comrades and he testified to his role in fomenting the creation of the INA as a precursor to an independent India.
The trial began in November 1945, and public opinion immediately started to get inflamed. Riots broke out in several cities. Calcutta suffered a general strike. After more than a hundred people died in rioting, Nehru had to appeal to the people to calm down. The Naval Ratings Mutiny that broke out in 1946 invoked the name of Bose and INA.
It was probably unwise of Wavell to try the men in Red Fort – the symbolism with the 1857 Mutiny then could not be denied, inflaming public opinion. Whether it was the defence, or that Indian independence was inevitable and the British wanted to leave on a good note – or a combination of all of them – we will never know. All three INA officers had ordered executions of deserters and informers. The two main charges were waging war on the King Emperor, and Murder. They were acquitted of the former and found guilty of the latter. The authorities conveniently sentenced the three to life imprisonment and then commuted the sentences immediately, setting them free. Further INA trials were planned in 1946. By that time Nehru was well on the way to becoming the head of the interim government, and he warned Wavell not to proceed. The matter ended there.
A Question of Loyalty
Who was the real Indian Army. The 700,000 men who fought as a unit under the British Indian ensign against the Japanese and the INA? Or the 45,000 INA men who fought their former comrades under the tricolor?
Was the Indian Army a mercenary outfit? Indian Army officers will bristle at the suggestion. In fact General K S Thimmayya, who was Chief of Army Staff in the late 1950s, responded to this suggestion. His own brother, Lt Col K P Thimmayya, joined the INA when taken prisoner in Singapore in 1942. They took an oath of loyalty to the Army, nominally in the name of the King-Emperor. But their primary loyalties lay with the fine body called the Indian Army.
Talking about the INA, Gen Thimmayya wrote: “It was difficult for us, therefore, to view this action as anything but patriotic. If we accepted the INA men as patriots, however, then we who served the British must be traitors. This conflict was especially difficult for me because I heard my own brother had gone to the INA.” Among his brother officers ‘the consensus was that we should help the British to defeat the Axis powers and deal with the British afterwards.’
This ethos is best explained by John Masters, who was there one sunny morning in April 1945 on the outskirts of Meiktila, when
“ …Bill Slim personally let slip the final advance…the three divisional commanders watched the leading division crash past the start point. The dust thickened under the trees lining the road until the column was motoring into a thunderous yellow tunnel, first the tanks, infantry all over them, then trucks filled with men, then more tanks, going fast, nose to tail, guns, more trucks, more guns – British, Sikhs, Gurkhas, Madrassis, Pathans…This was the old Indian Army going down to the attack, for the last time in its history, exactly two hundred and fifty years after the Honourable East India Company enlisted its first ten sepoys on the Coromandel Coast.[26]”
The INA was derived from the same ethos, the same organizing principle as the Indian Army. The only difference is that they chose to serve a different master. Had the Japanese organized their invasion of India better and had the INA been better armed, would the outcome have been different?
Most of the Indian Armymen who went to the INA chose to surrender to their former comrades. May be it was familiarity with the old system of regimental loyalties, or a deep familiarity with the officer class. The local recruits (mainly Tamils) just melted away back to the plantations and farms in Burma and Malaya. They felt no loyalty to the INA other than as a transactional, mercenary venture. You will enjoy this anecdote that sheds more light on the complex relationship between the Indian Army and her British officer class. This is when the British and Indian Armies had entered Rangoon, and found only the INA maintaining law and order – the Japanese had all fled.
Sub-Lieutenant Russell Spurr RINVR, a PR officer and his padre friend Pat Magee saw a group of soldiers in Japanese uniforms, then realized they were Indians. A smiling Sikh major approached. “Delightful to see you chaps”, he said, “We couldn’t wait to get this surrender business over.” The men crowded around him and murmured their cheerful approval. But when Spurr explained he could not accept, Magee chipped in: “But we’ll accept a drink.” “By Jove, that’s a jolly good idea”, said the Sikh major, and they returned to the INA mess, where the subalterns crowded round for news. “Pink gin suit you?” inquired the Sikh major. He handed me two glasses. Men who had lately been our enemies snapped to attention as the major called, “Gentlemen. The King–Emperor!”[27]
The maturing of the Indian Army during the Second World War was a critical contribution to nation-building[28]. The army’s officer corps, used to taking orders from British officers and for the most part, not senior enough to have British officers reporting to them, found the situation changed almost completely by the end of the war, as this anecdote shows:
The Nehrus and the Gandhis and the Cripps talked in the high chambers of London and New Delhi; and certainly someone had to. But India stood at last independent, proud and incredibly generous to us, on these final battlefields in the Burmese plain. It was all summed up in the voice of an Indian colonel of artillery. The Indian Army had not been allowed to possess any field artillery from the time of the Mutiny (1857) until just before the Second World War. Now the Indian, bending close to an English colonel over a map, straightened and said with a smile, “O.K., George. Thanks, I’ve got it. We’ll take over all tasks at 1800. What about a beer?”.
The noted scholar Joyce Lebar analysed the political impact of the INA on the Indian Army and concluded:
The INA experience was revolutionary, then, on more than one level. First, as a direct revolution against British rule the INA was partially successful through the British response to the Indian atmosphere surrounding the court martial. Second, as an indirect revolution within the context of the Japanese co-operation the (Indian Army) officer corps was transformed[29].
Did we see an Indian officer corps transformed politically, as Prof Lebar believes? I am unable to agree completely with the second conclusion she draws. I believe the perceptions the British had of the INA changed from contempt to grudging respect largely because of the transformation of the Indian Army itself. The treatment of the INA officers prior to the trial was fair and very respectful, almost as though a hard-fought rugby game had just concluded and the players were exchanging jerseys in the tunnel. I am sure it was not just because of impending independence – it was also because of mutual respect.
The Indian Army’s official history makes very few references to the INA. It is almost as though the Indian Army – the inheritor of the ethos that began on the Coromandel Coast some 300 years ago – has a benevolently ambiguous attitude to the INA which is in keeping with its apolitical nature. Maj Gen Partab Narain wrote in the late 50s that politically the mantle of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is important in Bengal for vote gathering but he regards lauding the exploits of the INA against the Indian Army to be highly dangerous. Much misinformation, he says, has been published in India since about the INA’s success[30].
The simple INA jawan has to be admired for picking up a rifle and going to war for Independence. Whether he won or lost is irrelevant. He tried – and for that, he deserves our respect.
Remembering the INA
The INA is far from forgotten, as the TV serial seems to allege after the current fashion these days. It is remembered but without any knowledge of their tragic history. There is an INA Museum in Moirang, in Manipur State. There used to be a memorial in Singapore that was demolished in 1945 by Mountbatten, to discourage the South East Asian colonies from developing notions such as independence. Only a plaque stands now at Esplanade Park, erected in 1995 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The INA’s motto – Unity (Ittehad), Faith (Ittemad), Sacrifice (Qurbani) – was inscribed on the original monument. The words are as relevant to a modern India today as they were then.
More than the romance of the INA, we should feel for those thousands who died in Burma in battle, or of untreated wounds, starvation and sickness. Those who dropped to the road and killed themselves so as not to be a burden. These men died leaving behind a romantic ideal that is cherished by all Indians of all political hues. We need to remember them as those unlucky few who left before their dream of a Free India was indeed realised barely a few years after their passing. They must have died of longing for return, and wondering what was the purpose of their lives – or their deaths.
My choice for an apt epitaph for the INA fallen, would be the words of another Indian, who died in exile in Rangoon longing for his homeland after the first attempt to supplant British rule in India failed in 1858. Here’s the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar,
कितना है बद-नसीब ‘ज़फ़र’ दफ़्न के लिए, दो गज़ ज़मीन भी न मिली कू-ए-यार में
How wretched is your fate, Zafar! That for your burial, you could not get two meagre yards of earth in your beloved land
Bibliography
Allen, Louis (Major): “Burma: The Longest War” Phoenix, 2000
Bayly, Christopher & Harper, Tim: “Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-45” Allen Lane 2004
Bisheshwar Prasad (ed): “Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War” 3 Volumes. Combined Inter-Services Historical Section (India & Pakistan) 1958
Brett-James, Anthony (Lt Col): “Ball of Fire: The Fifth Indian Division in the Second World War”, Gale & Polden 1951
Doulton A J F (Lt Col): “The Fighting Cock: History of the 23rd Indian Division”, Naval & Military Press, 2002
Fay, Peter Ward: “The Forgotten Army” University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, USA 1996
Holland, James: “Burma 44: The Battle That Turned Britain’s War in the East”, Bantam Press, 2016
Kirby, Maj Gen Woodburn (ed): “The War Against Japan: History of the Second World War. United Kingdom Military Series Official Campaign History”, Vols II-V. Naval & Military Press 1958
Latimer, Jon: “Burma – The Forgotten War” Thistle Publishing, 2004
Lebra, Joyce Chapman: “The Indian National Army and Japan” (Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore, 1971).
Lyall, Ian (Major): “Burma – The Turning Point”, Leo Cooper Ltd, Reprinted 2003 Masters, John: “The Road Past Mandalay”, Cassell Military Paperbacks, 1961 (reissued 2012)
Raghavan, Srinath: “India’s War: The Making of South Asia 1939-45” Penguin 2016
Toye, Hugh: “The Springing Tiger: Study of a Revolution”, Jaico Publishing House, Mumbai, India 1959
A DETAILED MILITARY ACCOUNT OF THE INA
Organizing For Battle
The revitalized INA, after Mohan Singh was ejected, is called INA 2, and it was organized as follows:
Lt-Col Bhonsle – Deputy C-in-C and Chief Of Staff.
Lt Col Shah Nawaz Khan – Planning, Operations, Training and Intelligence
Lt Col N S Bhagat – Administration
Lt Col K P Thimayya – Supplies and Equipment
Lt Col A D Loganadan – Medical Services
Lt Col Jahangir – Education and Propaganda
1st INA Division
1st Guerilla Regiment (Subhash Brigade)
2nd Guerilla Regiment (Gandhi Brigade)
3rd Guerilla Regiment (Azad Brigade)
4th Guerilla Regiment (Nehru Brigade)
2nd INA Division
Formed later, consisting of the Hindustan Field Force
3rd INA Division
Mainly local Indians
Rani Jhansi Regiment
Women volunteers
The INA numbered 40,000 men, armed largely with captured weaponry but no independent armour, artillery or transport.
Dilli Chalo!
Come January 1944, Bose and the INA leadership were based in Rangoon, where its large Indian population welcomed him and donated money generously to the INA (as did the planters in Malaya and the traders in Singapore). The INA was consuming 5 million dollars a month in expenses. Bose was getting restless, as indeed were the officers of the INA.
By late 1942, the Japanese had taken Rangoon, Meiktila and Mytkyna. They did not immediately attack India largely because their supply base was still in Thailand. The military action in 1943 involving the Chindits, the Chinese and aggressive skirmishing between the Indian Army and the Japanese are not directly relevant here.
Bose wanted the INA to be at the forefront of any offensive into India. He believed that the moment the INA came into contact with the Indian Army, the Indian Army would refuse to fight, and that the civilian population of India would rise up in revolt against the British.
Military Positions January 1944
In January 1944 the Japanese Burma Area Command tasked the 15th Army to lead the invasion of India. The map above shows positions of the two armies in January 1944. The black line is broadly the front-line. The 17th Indian Division had been in continuous combat against the Japanese from December 1941. It now held positions just south of the road to Imphal. The 5th Indian Division had a distinguished combat record against the Italians and Germans in North Africa, and had been inducted into Burma just a couple of months ago, as had the 7th Indian Division.
In the beginning of 1944, the 5th Indian Division was probing Japanese positions in the Arakan. An offensive in the Arakan – the First Arakan Offensive – had failed. The 7th Indian Division was moving south towards the Japanese. The Allied Command wanted to keep the Japanese on their toes while re-arming and rebuilding.
The first signs that the INA was militarily active came in early January, when the Japanese moved west to occupy a small town called Kalemyo, South-East of Imphal, and there told villagers that a large Indian Army was coming to throw the British out[4]. Very quickly, the 5th ran into the INA. At Nyaunggyaung Wood, during a Japanese attack, the Division reported its first contact with the INA on 17th January 1944.
Here the Japanese gained a footing, and were followed by Sikh Jifs who set fire to the position with a miniature flame-thrower. Just before dawn the Japanese withdrew, after making repeated attacks against ‘D’ Company. The dozen Jifs called out in Punjabi to our Jats to come across and join the Japanese. Their temptations were greeted with indignant bursts of firing. Jifs (Japanese Indian Forces) were Indian soldiers, who, being prisoners of the Japanese, had been forced or cajoled into fighting for their enemy[5].
The term “Jif” was a derogatory term used in the Indian Army for the INA – it stands for Japanese Indian Fifth Column.
The Japanese 28th Army reacted to the movements of the 5th Indian and 7th Indian Divisions quite brilliantly. By early February 1944, they had cut off the 5th Divisions supply routes and infiltrated the 7th’ Indian Defensive lines. The 5th was now pushed towards their administrative area around Maungdaw – also called the Administrative Box. The 28th surrounded the Administrative Box and laid siege to it.
The INA participated in the siege. Some of the accounts of INA involvement are not positive to the INA. On February 8 1944 the Japanese attacked a Military Dressing Station. Lt Col Dr Salindra Mohan Basu, who was in charge of the Station, was taken prisoner after the Japanese shot or bayoneted the living and the wounded. He reports an Indian member of the INA who urged Dr Basu to co-operate and offered safe passage to Rangoon. Dr Basu refused – he was shot and dumped in a ditch and survived by playing dead[6]. The INA may or may not have taken part in the bayoneting of officers and wounded at the Station.
News of the entrapment of the 5th and 7th Indian Divisions was greeted with glee by the INA and other Indians in Rangoon. The Greater Asia newspaper in Rangoon screamed the news from its headlines, and Bose was visited by two members of the 15th Army Staff who assured him that the two Indian Divisions would be destroyed[7].
The Battle of the Admin Box is not so well known as the epic struggle for Imphal and Kohima – it was where the Indian Army stopped losing to the Japanese. General Messervy (CO 7th Indian) and Gen Briggs (CO 5th Indian) lead their men superbly; the Jats, Gurkhas, Dogras, Punjabis and Sikhs in these Divisions fought like tigers and the RAF kept the men supplied by air. On February 28th the Japanese 28th Army called off the siege.
The Japanese 15th Army began its invasion of India. The 33rd IJA Division of the 15th Army would advance from the south on both sides of the 17th’s positions and cutting off the Tiddim road behind the Indians. The 15th IJA Division would advance westwards from the Chin mountains towards Imphal. And the 31st IJA Division would reach a long way west to attack Kohima and cut the road between Imphal and Kohima. The aim was to complete the capture of Imphal and Kohima before the monsoon broke. The map below shows the Japanese plan.
Bose was delighted the Japanese were on the attack, however his insistence that that the INA lead the assault was rejected by the Japanese. The Nehru Brigade under Lt Col Shah Nawaz Khan was to participate and was tasked with participating in the 15th IJA Division’s westward run towards Imphal. He was also tasked with protecting the 33rd’ IJA Divisions supply lines south of Tiddim.
Shah Nawaz did not like these defensive duties – he was disappointed and took his case to other Japanese officers, including Fujiwara, to press for the INA to be given a more active role. Nevertheless, he did as ordered. His Brigade made a heroic effort to get to the small town of Falam which was at an altitude of 6000m. They marched 60 miles with their supplies on their back, and got to Falam first and then to Haka further north. A quarter of the men contracted malaria, but still kept on their feet. Sporadic contacts with the Indian Army resulted. When in Haka, they set a trap for a British officer who was known to be fond of guerilla tactics. They failed to capture him but got twenty five prisoners instead.
Sensing the oncoming Japanese attack on Imphal from the South, the Commander in Chief of the British 14th Army, Gen William Slim, asked the 17th and other formations to withdraw towards Imphal to shorten Indian supply lines (and elongate the Japanese lines by implication). The Japanese attacks began on March 8. The CO 17th Indian Division did his best to organize a fighting retreat, while the fresh 23rd Indian Division was asked to ride south to assist the 17th. The INA accompanied the Japanese on these attacks, on the attack on Tongzhan on the Tiddim Road, and also further up on the Tiddim Road.
Records indicate the INA presence. In one case, the crew of two British tanks on the Tiddim Road saw a Gorkha standing on the road waving a message. When the hatch opened, Japanese soldiers hurled grenades inside the tank[8]. This piece of deception upset the Indian Army no end. On March 14th elements from the Jat Machine Gun Regiment went to assist road-builders who were trapped by the Japanese. In the process they encountered elements of the INA and killed them all, including their Company Commander[9]. Elsewhere, a party of Gorkhas from INA surrendered to 1st Batt/7th Gorkhas. They had been waiting to meet fellow Gorkhas. Amidst many smiles, the INA men gave themselves up[10].
The fighting retreat, now called the Battle of Tiddim Road, of the 17th aided by the 23rd Indian Division helped delay the Japanese on the road from Tiddim to Imphal[11]. It gave Slim the breathing space to airlift the 5th Indian Division to Imphal, and put pressure on supplies of the Japanese. The usual Japanese plan was to fight light but capture British supplies – called Churchill’s Supples – by outflanking the Allies. However British tactics had changed. They chose to fight in a box rather than retreat, and whenever they retreated they chose to burn all supplies. The Japanese supply position was greatly weakened by the delay in taking Tiddim Road. The IJA resumed its advance.
The Battle of Imphal and Kohima
The battles for Imphal and Kohima are now the stuff of military history and legend. It was expected to be an easy victory for the Japanese. Unlike what happened in 1942, this time the Indian Army stood fast. The men were trained for the jungle, better armed, better clothed and supplied. They were encouraged to respond to the traditional Japanese outflanking attacks by going into a “box” and relying on the RAF to supply them. The formations facing them were highly experienced and lead from the front by British and Indian officers. They had good air support.
At the start the INA’s four Guerilla Regiments were directed to Tamu, for the road to Imphal lead directly from Tamu in the east via a small town called Palel which had an airfield.
Here the INA went into battle again. When you cross Tamu, you are in Indian territory. The INA volunteered to mount a raid to seize Palel airport along with the Japanese. The thought of entering Indian territory excited them. A Japanese officer recalled[12]
“the image of the INA troops he had passed on his way to Sibong, wild with enthusiasm as they walked on Indian soil, holding their rifles aloft and yelling “Jai Hind! Chalo Delhi!”.
The detachment was lightly armed and had a blanket each. On the way, still in high spirits, with cigarettes in their mouths, they came across a patrol of Gurkhas (from 4th Batt/10th Gorkha Rifles). The Gorkhas waited until they were close, then opened fire. The INA scattered, and then they made the speech to the Gurkhas to ask them to join them. When the Gorkhas refused, the INA charged the patrol. The Gorkhas returned fire and the detachment had to retire with severe casualties.[13].
The detachment reached the outskirts of Palel. They found the airfield heavily defended and decided to attack at night. There were defensive picquets of the Allies around the airfield. One of the INA officers Capt Sadhu Singh was told to take one of the defenders’ picquets. His small team fixed bayonets and charged. The defenders were Indian troops – they were taken by surprise and quickly put up their hands. When one of the INA officers – who happened to be carrying a Naga spear – lunged at two English officers in the picquet, the defenders opened fire and killed their attackers. The attack was discovered and beaten back.
When dawn came, artillery opened up on the INA positions, killing 250 men. The attack on Palel failed. What is worse, the group that was responsible for the attack surrendered and the rest of the INA detachment retired to Tamu. It was probably the first and last time the INA entered the homeland.
From April to July the INA men embedded in the Japanese 15th Army were in the battlefield but did very little relative to the Japanese. Morale was low all over the 15th Army, not least because the troops were literally starving. The monsoons were heavy and malaria was rife. As the Indian 23rd Division began establishing itself east of Imphal they attacked and drove the INA out of one of the towns they were occupied. In many of these engagements, Indian Army sepoys and riflemen had to be told by their commanders not to shoot INA soldiers but to take them prisoner.
Though the INA never participated in the battles around Imphal and Kohima directly, whatever action they saw on the Tamu Road was brutal. I can find no better description of the horrors they went through than what the 23rd Indian Division saw at Tamu, taken from their War Diary, which is normally a dry, factual record:
“The 5th Brigade (23rd Indian Division) .. entered Tamu the next day (August 3). An indescribable scene greeted the victors as they marched into the border town. The streets were deserted. Vehicles and guns littered the squares and courtyards of the quaint little town. The air was heavy with the stench of decomposing bodies. The dead lay everywhere. They sprawled on the streets, lay on the floor in every hut and hamlet, sat at the steering wheels of motionless lorries. Others lay in heaps at the foot of the temple where they had crawled up to die. Then there were the wounded and the sick, with neither medicine nor food, forsaken and uncared, they were too weak to even cry. Some were emaciated beyond belief by starvation so that even a nourishing meal was poison for their withered intestines. More dead than alive, they waited patiently for the mercy of the end. The damp, steamy heat, the slimy mud and the millions of flies completed the picture, so that on August 4, Tamu bore closer resemblance to hell than to any place on this green earth. When next day the Allied troops set fire to every building that had a corpse in it as the quickest method of cleaning up and disinfecting the town, the picture of Dante’s “Inferno” was complete”[14].
As history records, the failure of the Imphal and Kohima assaults was not because the Japanese gave up. Indeed, Slim calls the Japanese fighting man the finest infantry soldier he has ever seen, bar none. The failure of General Mutaguchi to adequately supply his troops, the failure of his Division Commanders to listen to their second line, and most important, the tenacity and bravery shown by the Indian Army, were key to the outcome. Further, the Allied 14th Army had access to air power, and the presence of light tanks made a big difference. All these factors were instrumental in the British and Indian Armies inflicting the largest and most costly military defeat on Japan in their history. When Gen Mutaguchi called off the attack, the Japanese forces had suffered 80,000 dead. Many of them just starved to death.
The defeat gave General Sir William Slim and his Indian Army the chance to avenge the humiliations of the last two years. Once the monsoon ended the 14th Army went on the offensive
The Retreat
The Japanese and the INA fell back first to the Chindwin River. The retreat was marked by surrenders from the INA. In June the 2iC of the 2nd Guerilla Regiment surrendered from the front line, and exhorted his comrades to surrender (by getting leaflets dropped from the air). Officers started to leave. Punjabi Muslim INA started to surrender in such large numbers that they had to be disarmed[15]. The lack of supplies was so acute that a senior INA officer, Major Garwal, appears to have surrendered for one reason alone – hunger.
The retreat was hard – Fujiwara did his Indian friends a favour by giving them a two day head start. Leaving some men with the Japanese, the INA retreated from Tamu to Ahlow, where the Japanese promised boats to help them cross. There were none at Ahlow. With difficulty they managed to procure a couple of boats and they crossed. Once they got to Teraun, they found there was no food and foraging was out of the question – the Japanese had picked the villages clean. Going down on the River Yu towards the plains was impossible in the rain. The men picked up their wounded, starving and weakened, they walked. Soon, Khan asked the men not to carry the sick and wounded – they were just abandoned on the way. Those who could make their way, made it. The others just died.
Fujiwara, who also retreated with the rest of the Japanese, wrote[16]:
“Japanese and INA officers and men, skinny and half-naked, staggered along with the help of canes. Many of us walked on bare feet smeared with mud and blood, and our faces were ashen, swollen with malnutrition and scaly because of skin disease. Along the edge of the jungle on both sides of the road, bodies of fallen soldiers lay in an endless line. Many of them had already decomposed…Sick persons unable to walk but with some strength left, committed suicide lest they be a burden on their fellow soldiers. A number of them, completely drained of energy, were drowned in a muddy river. Bodies of INA soldiers who died near a river were tossed into the water by their comrades according to Hindu rituals. It was painful to watch.”
A fraction of the men made it to INA’s hospitals in Monywa and Maymyo.
Money and material for the INA from the Japanese dried up by September 1944. The Indian population of Rangoon donated generously for medicine, dressings and even uniforms for the men. Bose learnt the true state of affairs in Imphal for the first time. Shah Nawaz Khan also told Bose of the treatment of the INA by the Japanese. In one instance, the Japanese accused ten INA men of spying for the British – they hung them on trees by their hands, bayoneted them and left them to bleed to death.
November 1944. As the British and Indian Armies swept down from the Arakan and the Chindwin Valley in pursuit of the retreating Japanese 28th and 15th Armies, the INA found itself tasked with defensive roles. Bose met the Japanese in Tokyo and lobbied hard for the INA to continue to have an offensive role in the Burmese War. By now, Bose had been disabused of any notion that the INA would enter India, and instead he redirected the effort towards ensuring they fought and died honourably. For what, is not clear.
The INA forces were ordered to Pyinmana (near where the capital Naypidaw is today). They went there by hazardous train journeys that could only be undertaken at night – as the Royal Air Force, the United States Air Force and the new Royal Indian Air Force were hitting anything that moved in the Irrawaddy valley in the daytime. The relatively untouched 4th Regiment moved to Myingyan, further north right on the Irrawaddy and was expected to give a better account of itself.
There were other problems with the 4th. Mutiny, for one. The majority of the INA men in this Regiment were local Tamils from Burma and Malaya. The officer corps were from the Punjab. Ethnic differences and language differences meant that very soon the Tamils refused to obey orders. Bose found a new commander (G S Dhillon) and handed over the Regiment to him. Dhillon quickly took charge. The regiment had not worn a uniform for months and had taken to taking cover in the day time to avoid air attacks, and hence not drilling. Dhillon changed all that. Another INA Regiment, the 5th, was moved from Malaya – this unit was completely untested but very well equipped. They lost their heavy weaponry due to their ship transport being torpedoed. With nothing but their personal arms, this formation was handed over to the charismatic Captain Prem Sahgal – the only one in the INA with significant combat experience as a Kings Commissioned Officer.
Both officers trained their men hard, but the scenario had altered completely. No longer were they expected to descend from the jungles of Burma into the Brahmaputra Valley. Now they were expected to defend Burma, perhaps die there. Any surprise that the thought of desertion was always in the minds of these men?[17]
In January 1945, the 5th Regiment was ordered to Nyaungu, astride the Irrawaddy, near where the 7th Indian Division was expected to cross on the road to Rangoon. The 2nd Regiment was ordered to Prome, by whatever motor transport available. The third arm of the INA was at Pyinmina – severely battered and mauled remains of the failed Imphal offensive. The Japanese plan was to hold Burma at the Irrawaddy as a defence perimeter.
The Allied plan was to land at the North and the South West of Mandalay, which was south of Nyaungu on the river. Meanwhile the 7th Indian Division followed by the 255 Indian Tank Brigade and the 17th Indian Division punch through at Nyaungu, and make a dash for Meiktila, well to the east of the Irrawaddy. Taking Meiktila would threaten Japanese supplies and depots. The strategy was exactly the same as what the Japanese had done so successfully in Malaya, cutting through enemy lines to capture key nodes of the enemy’s fighting ability[18]. It is a playbook the Indian Army used in Bangladesh in 1971.
In the early hours of February 14th, Gen Frank Messervy and his 7th Indian Division came through to Nyaungdu, with a British Regiment (7th South Lancashires) in the lead. They had no idea how thinly it was defended, or how poorly equipped their opponents were. The crossing at Nyaungu has been described as “the longest opposed river crossing attempted in any theatre in the Second World War”[19]. At the point selected for the crossing, the river was almost 2000 yards wide. No artillery support was provided to keep the crossing quiet.
As the first boats drifted diagonally across the Irrawaddy (to avoid sandbanks) one of the INA units opened up with machine guns. The unit, lead by Major Hari Ram, capsized several of the boats. The 7th Indian’s South Lancashires took heavy casualties and retreated. A smaller diversionary crossing by the Sikhs of the 1/11th was also stopped, four miles down at Pagan. Before it started again, a boat with a white flag was seen to approach the Sikhs. In it were two INA officers offering surrender. Altogether 160 men of the INA surrendered.
The crossing was attempted again at Nyaungu – this time the 7th Division’s 25 pounders, the tanks of the 255 Indian Tank Brigade and the RIAF laid down covering fire[20]. This time, the South Lancashires succeeded – promptly, Major Hari Ram and a hundred men surrendered. Dhillon looked for his reserves and they were reluctant to fight, and implored Dhillon to let them surrender. Dhillon let his reserves leave if they wished, and ordered the rest to Mount Popa. Only 400 men were with him from an original strength of 2000.
Coming along just behind the 7th was the 17th Indian Division, bent on extracting revenge for the disasters they suffered from December 1941 to January 1944. It was a very different 17th though, with Sherman tanks, well-trained fresh men to replace those lost in battle and highly experienced Sikhs, Gurkhas, Dogras and Pathans as the core. Within days the 17th took Meiktila. It so happened that Bose was heading towards Meiktila, tommy gun in hand, wanting to be with his troops, and the 17th was not aware that they were just 20 miles behind him. Bose was dissuaded by Shah Nawaz Khan turned and went to Rangoon[21]. The plan for the 7th and the 17th was just the same – get to Meiktila and turn south to Rangoon to get there before the monsoons.
The 2nd INA Brigade was ordered to Mount Popa and told to hold it. Though not on the route to Meiktila, the position had the ability to harass the Allies. Once again, at Mount Popa, five senior INA officers defected, and arranged for a leaflet drop signed by one of the officers asking the men to defect as well. This enraged Bose but there was very little he could do.
The Japanese now tried to throttle the 17th by surrounding them, and thus began yet another of those epic engagements that is legend in the Indian Army.
The Japanese were trying to re-take Nyaungdu to seal any exit for the 17th Indians at Meiktila. At Mount Popa, Dhillon had first to go and round up those who fled – he succeeded partly. Then the INA began aggressive patrolling to give the impression that they were indeed bigger than they were. They had a few successes, and also a disaster at Taungzin[22] – an INA company was surrounded by tanks and armoured cars of the 7th . Fighting with only rifles and bayonets, they were all killed or captured. Attempts were made to play up the psychological significance of Taungzin by the propaganda arm of the INA. Notwithstanding, disaffection was spreading. Five men were executed for trying to desert. In spite of the declining morale, Lt Col Sahgal got the INA to go on the offensive.
On March 28th, the Japanese broke their siege of Meiktila. The Japanese Army had begun to lose its cohesion. The central Burmese plain was now open to the Allies and the race to Rangoon began. The existing Japanese and INA forces now found themselves overwhelmed as a numerically superior enemy surged.
On March 29th the INA Regiment at Mount Popa went on an aggressive patrol on the Kyaukpadaung-Welaung Road that went tangentially to Mount Popa. There they were ambushed by units of the 7th Indian Division. There were casualties in the INA. Sahgal lost his personal papers that showed the plan to attack Pyinbin. Considering that attack compromised, the INA turned towards Legyi in a defensive retreat.
Legyi was on high ground, allowing Sahgal to observe the surroundings with field glasses. There was also a Japanese patrol concealed at a point overlooking the Welaung Road, with whom Sahgal could get and send messages via radio and field telephone. He would observe Indian and British movements, then get the deployed INA elements to ambush, attack or harass. Air raids were common but the INA had learnt to dig in and avoid casualties (even though the mountain terrain was hard to dig in). British infantry advancing would face machine gun fire and they would retire. This happened a few times.
The next day was a shock for Sahgal – three experienced INA men deserted. Sahgal despaired about whether the enemy knew the true position of the INA. Still he held on. Two days later the British mounted a concerted attack with shelling and mortar attacks and managed to break through the INA position. Once again the INA battalion pushed the British back largely because – as Sahgal called it – “poor tactical sense of the British”. The attacks continued – it was a British Brigade that was in action – but the battalion held.
By all accounts the INA had acquitted itself well against a superior foe – but then the battalion’s mortar officer Yasin Khan and other officers and NCOs deserted that night. When Sahgal learnt that his rear echelon had been overwhelmed, he ordered three platoons to attack. All three had deserted. He got other men to clear the rear. But the next day he found that many more officers and men – more than 200 – deserted. He could not trust the remnants to fight. When I read this account I was astonished. This was a formation that could fight and yet at every occasion the INA officers and men chose to desert. All his company commanders were gone, including men like Abdullah Khan and Yasin Khan who were conspicuously brave under fire. They were not cowards who deserted.
On April 8th the Japanese announced a general withdrawal from the area. The INA’s remaining forces began to leave. They only had bullock carts, and could only move at night.
On April 13th Sahgal managed to get his men clear except for one platoon that was trapped on the Legyi-Popaywa road. The Gurkha who commanded that platoon chose to fight to the death than surrender to the Indian Army – the story goes that when asked to surrender he wrote a note saying “Gentlemen, I do not come”. The situation was fluid. Sahgal and his men headed towards Magwe, hiding by day and travelling by night. Near Magwe a Japanese officer told him the Allies were approaching Magwe. The forces split up – Shah Nawaz and the few survivors of the Nehru Brigade towards Prome, and Sahgal towards Natmauk. He split his forces into two so as not to draw attention. Shortly, he lost one of the two forces under one of his ablest commanders – it transpired that the force was trapped by a British tank unit and the battalion died to a man. The remnants wound their way to a river where a a battalion of Gurkhas was sighted. Sahgal sent his battalion commander with a white flag, and surrendered. They could not fight any more.
On April 22, the first tanks of the 7th Cavalry that entered Toungoo overran the Japanese traffic police at the northern outskirts of the town. The 1st INA Division surrendered to the 255 Indian Tank Brigade. They were disarmed by the 5th Indian Division and put to work on repairing the airstrips which made Toungoo of such importance. Rangoon now lay 166 miles away, and Allied fighter aircraft would be able to cover that distance if based on Toungoo.
The rest of the INA disappeared in bits and pieces. Remnants of the 1st Infantry Regiment surrendered at Magwe on April 17th[23]. Shah Nawaz and his men surrendered to the 2nd Battalion/1st Punjab on May 17th. A larger contingent, who had taken refuge in the INA Hospital at Zeyawadi were overrun by the 5th Indians. Many others just shed their uniforms and melted away, especially the plantation Tamils from Malaya. They were never found.
On May 2 the British and Indian armies entered Rangoon. Nearly 5000 men surrendered here – these were the men Bose had asked to stay and maintain law and order in Rangoon. The Japanese had left by then[24].
Bose and his key associates left Rangoon by road, rail and on foot. He managed to disband the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Most of the women escaped back to their homes in Burma and Malaya. Some ten thousand INA men survived from the original 45000.
On August 6th and August 9th atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 15th 1945 the reedy and scratchy voice of Emperor Hirohito could be heard on Tokyo Radio, surrendering the Empire unconditionally to the Allies.
The War was over.
Footnotes
[1] Leader of the Opposition and former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, speaking in Parliament in March 1947, when Clement Attlee (Prime Minister) announced the date for Indian Independence.
[11] One of my relatives, Capt. S Gopalakrishnan, won a Military Cross while serving as Medical Officer for 3rd Bat/5th Royal Gorkha Rifles in the struggle for Tiddim Road in March 1944.
My good friend Ramesh visited a temple on my say so, and I found myself commenting on his blog on some aspects of one of the temples. I was inspired to write this.
The wind was picking up, and clouds darkened the sky, as I stepped into the Nanguneri Temple. The entrance into the temple is via a long corridor. The ceiling is covered by mats knitted and installed there by a philanthropic business family who claim ancestry from the area. As you exit the corridor, the temple’s entrance beckons. I turn right following the tour leader V Sriram. He points out to me what parts of the temple Gopuram are relatively modern and which date back to the Nayaka era some 450 years prior. We make our way to the temple tank to the side. It takes my breath away. We walk to a pavilion of sorts designed to provide access to the tank. Sriram says that it is probably a later addition and asks us to notice its distinctly Islamic aspects. The water body is dry, but even so, its huge. About three-quarters of a kilometre away is a small mandapam which was supposed to be the centre of the tank. The rain starts to spatter about us, and then the skies open up.
Sriram wonders whether we should make a run for the temple but the intensity of the downpour kills that thought dead. Instead we decide to hunker down in the pavilion and Amritha is persuaded to sing. She starts the shruti on her tablet, with that very modern of accessories. No accompaniments, no amplification. Music Unplugged. In the middle of a quickening downpour, as we look out towards the vast and empty temple tank, every one is aware of how much of a benediction this rain it to this parched land, just as Amrita’s voice penetrates the sound of the raindrops.
What could be better than this, I wonder?
A visit to a South Indian temple is always a blissful experience for me. Whether it’s a small, roadside Pillaiyar Koil, or a big affair like Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, there are so many small things that you notice that are in common. The semiotics are comfortingly the same – the kolam drawn on soil wetted with a mixture of cowdung and mud; the stems of banana trees tied at the gates; the passageway to the sanctum sanctorum in a bigger temple lined with pillars; the dhwajastambham (the flagmast); the nandi bull which is big or small depending on the size of the temple and the wealth of its benefactors; the shrines to ancillary deities on the sides, with a priest in attendance ready to do an aarti and collect offerings on the plate; and then the main temple with its garba-griha. The smells of ghee, burning oil, bananas and flowers waft to your nostrils – along with the smell of bats in older and larger temples.
My personal fascination with the Hindu temple began in December 1984. I had been recruited by a large foreign bank as an officer trainee out of business school. Within a week I got turfed out on medical grounds, and after I secured alternate employment I spent a week in Tamil Nadu literally bumming around. One December day I walked into the Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple and was hooked. It was the first time I was going to a temple all by myself. I found that my solitude afforded me the sensation of looking at the architecture, the structures, the idols and the people anew.
My previous religious experiences had all been under the tutelage of my family. I come from a very religious household where my very strict and domineering father managed to convert the house into a puritanical monument to Hinduism, leavened only by his fondness for scotch whisky, mutton curry and Wills Filters. Religion was always a duty. Failure to observe duty was punishable. Carnatic music was good because it was devotional. Through two years in business school, away from home for the first time, I rebelled against all that. And just a year after, the visit to Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple re-introduced me to the world of temples. Luckily enough, some years later I met my wife and married her. One day, I was whistling something and she asked me “Hey that is Karahara Priya!”. I told her I had heard it at home, being played by Nadaswara Vidwan Karaikurichi Arunachalam on Diwali days before the ritual oil bath. She smiled with delight and began my education into Carnatic music which continues to this day, 30 years later. And we both enjoy temples, together.
I am never sure what to ask for or how to pray. I gaze at the idol fiercely hoping that somehow the idol can look through me and understand what it is I am looking for. After all, God is supposed to be omniscient, isn’t He? He knows I want the best for my two girls – Ramya and Daya. That I want my extended family to be well. That I struggle with my company and my business. That I feel like I have underwhelmed the world in the last few years and feel seriously inadequate as a result. I am unable to articulate these feelings. Instead I gaze fervently and hope that I am understood.
I do like the monasticity and quiet of Nanguneri, but equally, I understand why the faithful crowd places like Nellaippar in Tirunelveli, or Madurai Meenakshi Amman in Madurai. Our temples were not intended to be cathedrals. The fact that the temple heaves is a sign of how relevant it is. They were centres of temporal, financial, political, cultural and religious lives. The tall gopurams held records and special chambers held grain stock and seed. Marriages were finalised and conducted there, children prayed for, their first birthdays celebrated there, and every occasion in a person’s life observed there. It was where you went to meet people and if possible to fix a suitable alliance for your son or daughter. You sat in the courtyard and ate a small meal, washing in the temple tank after. You came there and prayed when things went well. It was where you wept at the feet of the Lord when fate treated you unkindly. Kings prayed there in their grandeur, as did the common man in his poverty. It was where life happened. Historians have written eloquently about the relationship between the temple and the king, its role as a banker and a land owner, and as a keeper of records[1].
The transformation of the temple space from curiosity to community centre is evident in the case of the Brihadisvara Temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. The temple was in a rundown state by the early 1990s when the Archaeological Survey of India took it over. Over fifteen years, their skilful restoration brought the temple back to life. The reconstructed walls of the temple enclosed a green space large enough to isolate the temple and yet make it accessible. In a visit in March 2018, I sat there of an evening and watched the crowds stream in, some visiting the temple and some just sitting in the vast spaces, enjoying the breeze and celebrating life.
The closest I have come to a spiritual experience in a temple was in December 2008. We flew to India from Paris and we bundled our one year old little girl into a guest house in Tirupati. We had booked for a darshan at 230am the next day. So we dressed our little one in her pattu pavadai before she went to sleep. We woke up at 145am, bathed and changed. She was fast asleep – I did a diaper check, and I put her on my shoulder. She woke briefly and settled back with a long sigh. As we entered the temple’s inner sanctum, the priests and the few bhaktas there began to recite the Suprabhatam. The tones were solemn and sonorous, the air cold and peaceful and all was quiet except for the sounds of the Suprabhatam that filled the space. I could feel my little girl’s short hair tickle my ears as she or I moved and she slept blissfully, breathing deep and easy and occasionally making a sound with her little mouth. And so it was for the next two hours. I felt uniquely blessed as my daughter slept peacefully all through, until we came back to the guest house. Still unaware and at peace with herself. She was in the moment, close to her inner self, utterly unconscious of all that happened around her. I remember every second of that morning and consider that my divine benediction.
[1] Do read R Champakalakshmi “Religion, Tradition and Ideology in Pre-Colonial South India” and Burton Stein “South Indian Temples – An Analytical Reconsideration”.
The process of rejecting western notions about India has acquired speed, pushing aside anyone who dares to question the intellectual rigour of the new interpretations. This is particularly so in the case of Indian science and how advanced it was in the days before the Islamic conquest began.
Lets take the case of the idol at Somnath. As we know, Mahmud of Ghazni is supposed to have destroyed the famous temple in 1025 CE. He is supposed to have decamped with tons of gold and jewels and put 50,000 people to death.
A friend of mine, known to be a high IQ physics buff and deeply involved in emerging technologies like Internet of Things, sent me a quote that indicated a very deep knowledge of magnetism in ancient India and specifically about the idol at the Somnath temple before it was smashed to pieces allegedly by Mahmud.
When the temple fell, said my friend, “the king directed a person to go and feel all around and above it with a spear, which he did but met with no obstacle. One of the attendants then stated his opinion that the canopy was made of loadstone [a magnetized rock], and that the idol was iron and that the ingenious builder had skillfully contrived that the magnet should not exercise a greater force on any one side — hence the idol was suspended in the middle. When two stones were removed from the summit the idol swerved on one side, when more were taken away it inclined still further, until it rested on the ground.”
This quote has been doing the rounds amongst the Hindu faithful. I asked my friend for attribution. I was surprised to get a response from him that said he did not need some white man to provide validation for knowledge about India, and that there are facts and there are facts. So I did some digging around of my own and this is what I found.
The quote in italics is taken from an obscure work on history by Sir H M Elliott and Prof John Dowson published in London in 1869[1]. The two English gents were Persian and Arabic scholars, and they compiled a reference work of histories of India written by others, especially Arabic and Persian writers. They have translated many Arab writers and compiled it into two volumes. Serious historians know of this work but it is largely unknown to the common man.
The passage cited is taken from Abu Yahya Zakariya’ ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini, an Arab geographer and astronomer. He was born sometime in around 1230 CE or so. He was not a traveller but compiled his work from the works of others. He is mainly known for “ʿAjā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt” (The Wonders of Creation). This is a book on cosmography and was apparently immensely popular the Arab world. In the work under reference, This quote is from a book called Asaru Al Bilad wa Akhbaru-l Ibad (“Monuments of Countries and Memories of Men”) . Qazwini apparently quotes from another work by an earlier Arab writer called Misar Bin Mulalhil in this work.
Everything stated by Qazwini may be true. And then again not. Since he never actually saw any of this, as Ghazni destroyed Somnath in 1025 CE and Qizwani wrote his book in 1263. It is indeed true that the Susruta Samhita does show the ancients knew all about magnetism, and therefore it is entirely possible that the suspension of the idol with magnets may have been done.
I thought about this and wondered how the Somnath phenomenon could be possible. For a huge iron idol to be suspended in mid air would need industrial magnets. A loadstone (which is a naturally occurring weak magnet that was used in compasses of old) would not do the job (unless these loadstones were huge and very powerful). Does it mean our ancients knew how to build industrial magnets, for which they would need access to electrical engineering technology.
Not satisfied, I wrote to Prof Subhash Kak, who is an Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Oklahoma State University and a member of the Indian Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He is also an expert in matters relating to ancient Indian science, and has written extensively about the mathematical knowledge contained in ancient Indian scriptures.
He replied saying the iron idol and its suspension by magnets does not seem likely, but persistent reports of such suspension in Hindu temples in Java could lead us to conclude that perhaps dark ropes were involved. Which I can accept.
My larger point is this – why do we suspend our scientific faculties just because we wish to reject the unfair characterization of India as a land that did not know science until the white man arrived? The foremost scientific tool we have is Occam’s razor. Unless otherwise proved, reject something fanciful as the explanation for a hypothesis. In this case, clearly Qazwini was making it up.
Is our inferiority complex so deep-rooted that we have to reject in entirety anything Western?
[1]History of India By Its Own Historians Vol I & II. Edited from the posthumous papers of Sir H M Elliott by Prof John Dowson. London, Trubner & Co. 1869
Note: I had to edit this post. Some of the content was found to be deeply offensive to a dear friend. My generic commentary on the unambitious nature of the student community there was followed by my delight at discovering there were pearls in their midst. My regret that this discovery took place 40 years after the college experience did not seem to have convinced this person, nor would my friend accept my thesis that there are exceptions to the generalization as I subsequently discovered.I came across to her as snobbish and conceited. Were you the only person to go to this college unwillingly, she asks. Did you think you were the only person who liked to read and improve themselves? Life’s too short. So here goes with edits.
Meeting people who were part of your life when you were very young, after a very long time, is like watching a movie of yourself made on Super 8mm film that’s been dug from the mud and replayed. The film has not been preserved well but it runs. The images are jerky and grainy, the colour has not held true, and the cuts are abrupt wherever faulty film had to be cut out and spliced. Large portions are just grayed out.
And yet a picture emerges of yourself as you once were, perhaps as others saw you, and the self-awareness (if any) that you had at that time comes flooding back into memory. You wonder how that person then became the person you are now and how much of that person remains today.
Last week I attended the reunion of my undergraduate class. My undergraduate college was an unknown government institution in a small town. It was most unremarkable in every way. Admissions were not selective, so pretty much anyone who had scraped through the rather easy State Matriculation exams could get a place. There was no hoary academic history attached to the place or the institution, and that lack of history perpetuated itself into the present that I encountered. Rather, it appeared to be the kind of place to spend the minimum amount of time needed to acquire a BA degree which would make you eligible to take a government job as a clerk. Or, if you were a female student, until you got married. It was not a place for the academically ambitious.
I had rather imagined myself to be exactly that. I did not want to go to this college – I wanted to study at a prestigious engineering college with a tough entrance exam. Without much of the rigorous preparation that is needed for such exams, I went ahead and attempted the entrance test, with predictable results. My father told me he was not willing to countenance another attempt and I was told to go do this degree.
I was angry and resentful the moment I came into class the first day. I found myself in a class with some of the worst behaved youth I had ever come across. I felt as though none of them would share any of my interests in reading and such-like. It appeared as though most students did not aspire to anything more than doing the bare minimum to get a degree – I am sure exceptions existed, and invariably, these were amongst the poorest of students who were often the first to go to college in their families. Attendance in classes was an optional extra. The teachers for the most part reflected this approach to life – do the minimum, and check out for the rest of the day. And I would not blame them for adopting this strategy for one had to be a very brave person to insist on academic discipline.
The situation was not helped by the fact that my sister was in the same college. She happened to have been born in the United States and was a resident alien in India. That and the fact that she was quite good looking meant she was a target for abuse from the very first day. She was also quite aloof and that did not help. She was the subject of catcalls and abuse almost on a daily basis. Some of my classmates were participants.
I was unable to stop the abuse. Something that rankles to this day. A lot of girls in the college stoically withstood the abuse but my sister took it very hard. Some of my nicer classmates used to congregate around two of the culprits. My die was cast. I never associated with any of them socially. It did appear that there were aspirational students. I used to talk to people and interact in class but never outside. This pattern that I set in the very first year, combined with the resentment I felt at being in this place, meant that I had a very lonely three years. Since I had closed my mind to any form of experience I did not ask myself if there were other people there with similar feelings to mine. I mitigated that loneliness by learning to live within myself, by developing an inner life that has ended up so rich that sometimes I thank my stars for those years. When I finished my three year sentence I did not as much as stop to say goodbye to anyone. There were no farewells. I just moved on.
So how did I end up at this reunion nearly 40 years later? One of the two guys who used to catcall my sister became my classmate in business school. Apologies took place and we ended up friends. Over the years he visited us and we visited him. A year or so ago he put me in touch with all these people again and the culmination was what I attended this last weekend.
I met some amazing people. One girl was indeed someone who got a degree so that she could marry. But the marriage became a very difficult one because of the family she married into. So she walked out with her husband in tow, qualified in law and built a legal practice that is thriving. She looked after her husband during final stages of cancer. Another guy married the woman of his dreams but waited six years for her to get round to leaving her home for him. Another went to France, joined the army, toughed it out and made a life for himself there. Supremely happy man. Everyone seemed to have encountered adversity and overcome it.
Did I judge them too harshly then on their behavior? May be I did. All of us were unformed human beings then. If I was immature in passing out harsh judgements, then may be they were immature in their behavior. I think my judgement was the right one – there are lines that cannot be crossed. And yet they were kids too. Clearly most of them also had no choice in terms of which college to attend. They were either too poor, or not very well informed, or came from conservative families. I tested them all on my lofty standards and found all of them wanting.
The reunion was great. All of them were very kind and very nice to me. Despite the gulf of forty years we all connected and the years rolled away. I regret very much that I could not enrich my life in those years with the kind of thrills and escapades that young people have. At the same time I do not regret the reasons why I would not partake. But something was lost.
The picture I saw of myself over the weekend was this studious, bookish person who is a little uncomfortable with the ordinary. That I may actually be snobbish and elitist in my tastes. But then, that’s me. Everyone was affectionate, some more so than others. It was just a short reunion, and hence I do not think I got close to anyone but everyone knew me better than they did 40 years ago. And the stage is set for renewal and refreshment of old relationships. I can only wish all of them well and be a friend to them.
I saw that the anger and resentment I felt at that time was ultimately channeled into making something of myself – a steely determination that this was not what I was intended for. My lack of self confidence arose from other factors, mainly a domineering father. The anger mixed with genuine helplessness and a lack of self-confidence made me a very lonely person.
The years since have been very kind to me. Lots of friends, the opportunity to do interesting work, live in several countries, marry a good woman and have a lovely daughter. And I am known among friends as good company, a raconteur and entertainer. I have tried to be a good man.
I am very happy in my own skin. I learnt to be like that in order to deal with loneliness. I think its a huge gift from those years but I would not want to pay such a price again.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The requiem for the imminent breakup of the United Kingdom could only have been written by William Butler Yeats. For it is largely on the shores of the Emerald Isle that the rabid dreams of the Brexiter Brigade have run aground. The groans you hear are the sounds of the ship of state as she slides into the choppy waters of the Irish Sea, breaking into pieces, each adrift in an increasingly uncertain world of darkness.
The farce of Brexit carries on. As we speak, on Saturday the 19th of October, Parliament sat on a Saturday – which it very rarely does. The Prime Minister presented his deal. On the order paper for the day was an Amendment proposed by Sir Oliver Letwin, one of the former Conservative MPs expelled by the Tories for voting against it. The Amendment says that unless the enabling legislation required for actually implementing the Deal is passed, the House will withhold approval for the meaningful vote to be cast today – Meaningful vote being the term used to distinguish this vote from a No Confidence vote, and hence a vote the Government can lose without being obligated to resign.
MP after MP made the same set speeches until the Letwin Amendment was first put to vote. It passed 322-306 – anothe defeat for the Government. Seeing this, the Government refused to present the Deal for a meaningful vote. Despite an Act of Parliament obligating the PM to ask for a delay, the Prime Minister left making threatening noises as to how he will disobey the law. Last night he sent a letter to the EU – unsigned! – asking for a delay to comply with the instructions of Parliament. Jean-Claude Juncker testily told the Press immediately that he will not support any further delay.
Brexit as the fantasists wanted it, was always going to be undeliverable. The key was how Northern Ireland was going to be handled. In the end the Unionists in Northern Ireland saw that this bunch of extremists who run HMG were willing to countenance Northern Ireland potentially rejoining the Irish Republic in order to get their deal. They were aghast and will now vote against Brexit. Why it took them three years to come to this realisation, God alone knows.
Northern Ireland voted to Remain in the EU during the Referendum. The right wing Protestant Democratic Unionist Party took sops worth a billion pounds to prop up the minority Conservative Government, believing that somehow the EU will sacrifice the Republic of Ireland and allow Northern Ireland to keep its status quo while remaining part of the UK. They made the mistake of trusting Boris Johnson to do this – and he has just shafted them. They will vote against the Government. Sinn Fein have welcomed this deal as have the Irish – it is very clear that the only way ahead is to rejoin the Republic of Ireland – close to a hundred years after the Island was partitioned after the Irish War of Independence.
Meanwhile about 300,000 people marched in Trafalgar Square in favour of staying in the EU. Such marches have taken place at least half a dozen times. While the Remain marches have been peaceful, the marches led by the Leave side have been thuggish and xenophobic.
The new deal is disastrous – worse than the one Theresa May presented. It has made the wooden Theresa May appear like a stateswoman in contrast.
As part of the Agreement, Britain will leave the Single Market and the Customs Union. This is a disastrous, self-inflicted wound. It means tariffs will apply on all British goods entering the EU. And vice versa of course, but EU absorbs a very large part of British manufacture and services.
Since Northern Ireland has a land border with the Republic of Ireland, and since the Good Friday Agreement hinges on an open border between the Catholic south and the Protestant north, the deal guarantees that Northern Ireland will be part of the Single Market and the Customs Union. However, the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union border will now lie in the Irish Sea.
Think about it. How would we react if – say – Arunachal Pradesh stays a part of India but it functions as a unit of the Chinese economy, such that any goods moving from Guwahati to Tezu (and vice versa) are subject to the Trade Agreements between India and China?
British
businesses have already warned the Government that losing market access means
they will have to relocate to the continent. Among the most upset are the Japanese.
In the early 1980s the then Japanese Prime Minister met Mrs Thatcher who
encouraged Japanese investment in the UK as the British were driving the
creation of the Single Market and hence would facilitate easy export of
Japanese goods into Europe. The Japanese
consider this a long term commitment that served the national interests of both
countries and do not understand how Britain can sacrifice its own national interest.
The biggest casualty will be Scotland. The Leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party in Westminster, Ian Blackford, spoke with passion and emotion, to urge Parliament not to vote in a deal that cuts Scotland off from the EU. Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU. He said “If this deal passes there is only way for Scotland – independence. I would ask the EU to leave a light on for Scotland”. It is very likely that Scotland will call a new referendum – whether or not it has sanction in Westminster – and will leave the UK. After all the Union of 1707 was voluntary. Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party have taken Scotland for granted and the UK will pay the price.
Even tiny Wales, which desperately wants to stay in the EU, now has a strong independence movement. Wales disappeared into the United Kingdom 700 years ago!
If the Deal passes, in a very short while, the United Kingdom will cease to exist. We will go back to the days prior to 1707. This is what the Conservative and Unionist Party – the party of Empire, economic good sense and values – would have accomplished, aided and abetted by a Marxist Labour Party, assisted by a strange sense of Constitutional reticence by the Queen as Head of State who helplessly watches her beloved United Kingdom implode under the weight of contradictions created by Brexit.
Brexiters
have successfully labelled a badly designed advisory Referendum, that was
narrowly won by the Leave Campaign, as
an overwhelming mandate from the people. The mistake was to leave such an
important question to the public without laying out the options or spelling out
the consequences. The second mistake was,
once the Referendum was won by the Leave side, the tin-eared successor to David
Cameron, Theresa May, made no attempt to genuinely explain what the options
were and to try and generate a cross-party consensus to present some options to
the EU before triggering the letter (under Article 50 of the EU Constitution) to
leave the EU. Instead she put out four Red Lines before the negotiations even
began, thereby painting herself into a negotiating position she was never going
to be able to achieve.
If you
thought that the Leader of the Opposition should have been able to stop it,
think again. The Labour Party have wasted their time indulging in puerile
debates about Marxism, anti Semitism, nationalising state industries and some
repetitive, dull wittering about “Jobs First Brexit” – whatever that means. The
Left and the Right are united in one thing – they dislike the EU for different reasons.
The Leader of the Opposition could have pinned the Tories to the mat. But he
has been ineffective and is unelectable.
Even if
the vote does take place and the Prime Minister wins, it is not the end of the story.
Britain has to negotiate a new Free Trade Agreement with the EU in an attempt
to gain access to the market – having just voluntarily given it up. If they
fail to get such an agreement in one year – an unrealistically short period of
time – then Britain leaves without an FTA. Most members of the hard-line
European Research Group (of which Jacob Rees Mogg is the leader) want this deal
because this is the desired endgame.
The EU is
sick of Britain, sick of the Conservatives, and they just want the UK to go.
The older and wiser Angela Merkel is more emollient and would like to give the
UK more time but the French President Francois Macron is very clear – the UK
leaves on October 31 if this vote is won.
The deal will be presented again and it is, however, very likely it will get passed – even though it leaves Britain worse off than in the case of all other proposals.
The deal when it is passed, will be by a fearful bunch of MPs more worried about getting re-elected from their constituencies in the General Election that is imminent, despite their personal beliefs and convictions to the contrary.
It will be passed by a set of very wealthy MPs who sit on estates both in and outside the United Kingdom, who see this disastrous deal as nothing more than the buying opportunity of a century while they place their bets to short the Pound.
The warriors for the cause are MPs who fervently believe that Britain is exactly where it was in 1939, alone and vulnerable, battling the world alone while the fearsome Hun threaten our shores.
The buglers are a few members who believe in an ultra-libertarian world bereft of international obligations and treaties, that will return England to those heady days of 1599, when Thomas Smythe created the East India Company and Britannia ruled the waves.
And there are those wish nothing more than a return to the Enid Blyton world of a white England without all these black, brown and foreign people chattering in our buses and polluting our clean English air with the smell of their curries and pirozhkis.
The General leading the charge? Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. A serial liar, a man bereft of convictions, fired from three previous jobs on ethics charges, father of two illegitimate children, a man who months before the Referendum passionately declared his belief in the EU only to change sides, elected by Conservative Party members who are about 70,000 people above the age of 70, who has consistently behaved on the principle that what would be best for Boris is best for Britain.
There is no blood-dimmed tide yet. But all the other warnings that Yeats sounded in “The Second Coming” are coming true. Britain today is run by politicians of little character, little conviction and no vision.
William
Dalrymple says that the British have never – to paraphrase Robert Burns – “seen
ourselves as others see us”. Ideas of British
exceptionalism have been fed by hagiographies of Empire which portray the British
as an adventurous, highly moral race who fought long odds and brought
civilisation and modernity to the heaving masses of India and Africa. This has
created a class of people who are hugely ignorant of their own history. This is
the creation of an education system that seems to pander to low level skill
creation, and to cultivating the cult of the individual, rewarding elegant
expression over integrity of thought.
Only elder statesmen like John Major, Michael Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke and Tony Blair point to the fact that Britain is looking to give up a place at the top table of politics – an inexcusable political act. But no one is listening to them.
The country’s belief in Brexit is like a panacea to solve all its problems. For many, this is the Second Coming. Perhaps I should leave you with the concluding lines from Yeats.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The United Kingdom is in freefall, and only the Queen can stop it.
Every system of government is governed by rules. Most modern states have written Constitutions that lay down the powers, boundaries and rules for people in government – elected or not. Even China has a written Constitution. However the character of the individual occupying constitutional office redeems or devalues the office. Where the individual falls below ethical or other standards constitutions have rules to take care of such cases.
Britain, blessed with a continuous political history going back a thousand years, where the last foreign invader was the Normans in 1066 CE, has never written a Constitution. It has operated on the basis of precedents and rules observed over the years that have evolved into a code of practice.
The system relies on a monarch who is the Head of State and in whose name the Prime Minister rules. The monarch wields no political power and is a figurehead. The Prime Ministers over the last three years have taken the country to a point where a “hard Brexit” stares us in the face. It will ruin the country and reduce the United Kingdom to a rump.
If the Prime Minister and his band of extremists have their way, we will see an immediate and precipitous decline in British living standards. It is highly probable Scotland will unilaterally declare Independence while staying subjects of the Queen – a la Australia, Canada and New Zealand. During the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales in 1998, and when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the membership of the EU was taken as a given. A hard Brexit – or indeed any Brexit – will see Northern Ireland rejoin Ireland.
Things are moving quickly and there may not be much of the United Kingdom to save. The Queen has enormous political goodwill in the country. She is in her 90s. She should not have to see the United Kingdom she so carefully nurtured from Empire to Nation fall to pieces because of unscrupulous politicians in her lifetime. Her son the heir, Prince Charles, does not carry the same moral authority.
The state of affairs is appalling. Here’s a brief summary:
The simplistic referendum of 2016 asked a simple question – Yes to Leave, No to Remain. A small majority voted for Yes to Leave. How this was to be operationalised was never defined. Instead a new Prime Minister (Theresa May) drew up needlessly rigid negotiating positions without consulting opinion in the country.
No one in the Conservative Party, when campaigning for Brexit, had even bothered to read the Good Friday Agreement with Ireland that brought peace to Northern Ireland – in particular how dependent it was on NOT having a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Since the red lines involved leaving the Single Market and Customs Union, it requires a hard border with the EU at the Northern Ireland frontier.
Scotland was the first to protest these red lines. Scotland does not suffer from the scourge of anti-Europeanism. Being part of the EU was very much part of the attraction of being with the UK. Almost immediately the SNP raised the bogey of Independence. Of late even Wales, which has been part of the United Kingdom since the 14th century, has started to talk of Independence.
A hard border in Northern Ireland invalidates the GFA. To square this circle a complicated Withdrawal Agreement was drawn up which preserves the Customs Union and Single Market until such time as the Irish (both Republic of Ireland and their Northern cousins) agree on a solution. Effectively kicking the can down the road.
But this does not meet with the extremist views of the English Right Wing, who hanker for the days of Empire and think British membership of the EU is a surrender of sovereignty. It is not. Its a voluntary pooling of sovereignty on common economic matters. Its regulatory heft sets global standards, its economic heft gives it a huge advantage in trade negotiations. None of them seem to be aware of critical Britain is to the EU and how valued the UK is to the EU. Instead the less read and the well read among them, lead by poisonous papers like the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, have propagated this myth.
The Withdrawal Agreement was accepted by all members of the Theresa May cabinet. The British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab were part and parcel of the negotiating team. Under the principle of Collective Responsibility all Cabinet Ministers signed on to it.
The next day both Ministers resigned disavowing the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Agreement was put to vote in Parliament three times, and defeated three times. Members of the Conservative Right Wing voted en masse against it.
The Prime Minister stepped down. The EU, recognizing the mess, extended the deadline for leaving to October 31st, accompanied by a stern warning from the EU President Donald Tusk not to waste this time.
Boris Johnson was elected Prime Minister by 76,000 people in the UK who are members of the Party. He promptly put together a Cabinet of all the right wingers who had voted against the previous Prime Minister. And of course, spent most of July and August wasting time.
He first disavowed the Withdrawal Agreement and asked the EU to drop the Irish “backstop”. He asked the Irish to merge with the UK, then denied it, then told the Irish to tell the EU to drop the backstop.
He met the German Chancellor. In an idiotic display he misunderstood what Angela Merkel told him – that if a solution can be found in 30 days when it could not be found in 2 years (to the Irish backstop) then of course the EU will reopen. His spin doctors duly told the Press that we had 30 days. After much ridicule from the German press this piece of spin was quietly retired.
He then shifted to telling the EU and the British public that the 2016 vote was actually about leaving without an Agreement. This means Britain will instantly lose access to the Common Market, lose all preferential access, be cut off from all European supply chains, lose the benefit of highly advantageous Free Trade Agreements the EU has concluded, and make all UK citizens living in the EU foreigners, and vice versa for EU citizens living in the UK. Further a Government Assessment drawn up in August 2019 documents that this would be an economic disaster. Knowing all this, the PM has staked his political future on crashing out.
Shortly after that, after denying strenuously that he will not close Parliament down before October 31, he did. Parliament is prorogued for about a month from the middle of September to the middle of October. Proroguing the Parliament is a device for the Prime Minister to close the Parliament with the view to asking the Queen to re-open it with a new legislative program. Johnson told the Queen there is a new program. But actually he was doing this to stop Parliament having the time to debate his Brexit plans and instead, be able to simply force an exit on October 31.
The uproar caused by this move galvanized the Opposition to quickly put together a Bill to delay Brexit. Aided by the Speaker who bent procedural rules here and there, the Queen provided her assent to an Opposition Bill obligating the Prime Minister to ask the EU for a delay upto January 31 2020. The bill came into effect on September 7.
The Conservatives broke ranks and 22 MPs – including the Father of the House Kenneth Clarke – voted with the Opposition. All of them were expelled from the Party. The PM’s brother and another Cabinet Minister also quit the Party. Jo Johnson, the Prime Minister’s brother said he could not put family loyalty above the national interest.
The PM then made speeches stating he will disregard this law. Immediately the legal fraternity warned the PM that he will go to jail if he does that, and risk immediate disqualification from the House. He is being egged on by the extremists and indeed may do just this.
A few minutes ago, an exasperated EU warned the UK that they see no seriousness, no proposals and no intent – and to avoid a moral hazard of rewarding this lack of purpose they may just not grant an extension. And the PM’s men tell every channel that while they intend to obey the law, they also intend to break it.
The United Kingdom is in grave danger from its own political class. Until galvanized by the twin threats of a No Deal Brexit and a prorogued Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition was countenancing a disastrous Brexit cooked up by the Conservatives while pretending to oppose it, and all the time floating schemes to return to the leftist politics of the 70s. The PM on the other hand, is behaving like a charlatan, a spoilt child, intent on ruining the credit of the United Kingdom in all respects.
The choice between the British is between two futures – the Central African Republic of the United Kingdom, and the Socialist People’s Democratic Republic of the United Kingdom. If there is a United Kingdom left.
On October 19th the PM is under compulsion to ask the EU for an extension. If he refuses and resigns, another Conservative PM could be elected to ask for such an extension. It is quite likely that the EU will grant this extension. Even then if the EU provides some changes to the May Withdrawal Agreement (highly unlikely) the PM can put this to vote in Westminster. The chances of this WA passing with the backstop intact are remote.
Of course the Political Declaration that accompanies the Withdrawal Agreement (that sets out the future relationship between the EU and the UK but is not binding in nature) has also been amended as part of the recent Bill and that may enable some Labour MPs to vote for the Withdrawal Agreement. It is also possible that the backstop only covers Northern Ireland – hence putting the Customs Border in the Irish Sea. Doing so will ensure a much closer embrace between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and in that case Irish reunification is not far away.
No one knows the sense of the country. It is clear that any form of Brexit will divide the United Kingdom, and yet Brexit has become the poster-child of English nationalism. As Tony Blair puts it so passionately, there are only two forms of Brexit – a pointless one and a disastrous one. The pointless one – as exemplified by the Withdrawal Agreement – binds us to the EU for a period of time without any influence on the rules. The disastrous one is to leave severing all links to the biggest trading and political bloc in the world which Britain did so much to shape.
There is no way to satisfy all these partisan demands that have arisen on the basis of one flawed Referendum.
Only the Queen can tell the nation to pause Brexit, and think it over. The nation can hold a second referendum detailing the terms of each Brexit option, its pros and cons, and then act on it. She can either convey this to the PM in her weekly audience with him, or choose some other way of talking directly to the people. It is her right to do so. After all she is also British, and a highly respected fellow citizen.
It is also possible for the Queen to ask the PM to make way for a respected leader from the House to lead a Government of National Unity to guide the country. She can suggest to the Leader of the Opposition to participate in such a move. It has been done before – in the Second World War.
What is the point of the Queen obeying constitutional propriety when a gang of unscrupulous politicians are flouting them? She is the only adult left in the United Kingdom who can potentially stop the free fall. She has one chance to stop the madness.
Discussing the British Television Mini Series “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” recently on the 40th anniversary of its screening, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper remarked “It depicts a country wearing its decline on its sleeve.” The world of George Smiley and the Circus in the 1970s is so redolent of a tired Britain and its ruling class. Empire gone, wealth gone, influence diminished. All they have are imperial memories and a reputation for getting things done in the past. Weariness pervades the atmosphere. “A country wearing decline on its sleeve”. How beautiful, I thought.
The world that John Le Carre inhabited ended with the fall of the Soviet Union. Until then, in language so sublime, he depicted the Manichaean world of the struggle between the West and the Soviet Union without the reader ever being sure of who was right and who was wrong. He saw corruption in the morality tale of a Christian West led by the brash new power of the United States, championing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness while doing so much to stifle that individuality and refusing to admit grey areas,. He documents the Cold War struggle among spies to battle the awesome power of the ideology of the Soviet Union backed by its totalitarian insistence on the suppression of the individual. He sees morality in immorality, evil in nobility. And above all his superb description of Britain in the 60s and 70s – Great no longer, bereft of imperial power, the Pound no longer the dominant currency – but heavy with all the knowledge and background of having once run a global empire, trying to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.
I came across Le Carre in the public library of the small town I grew up in. The publishing sensation of that time, according to TIME magazine, was “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” by a writer with an exotic name. – John Le Carre. Almost by accident I found a copy of “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”. I took it home and started on it right after lunch. I put it down four hours later, shaking with excitement. I remember the last scene where Alec Leamas – a British spy, world weary, cynical, unsure of the rightness of his cause – is trying to cross the Berlin Wall with his lover Liz whom he has rescued as part of the mission. He climbs and reaches for her – when the East German Volkspolizei shoot her dead. Unsure of stepping back into the free world without Liz to give him the ability to be free of himself, he climbs down from the Wall and stands over her lifeless body. After a brief hesitation, they gun him down as “he stood glaring around him like a blinded bull in the arena”. The romance of it all!
“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” – the title derived from a children’s skipping rope rhyme – chronicles the search for a Soviet mole within the British Secret Service. The search is led by George Smiley, short, podgy, bespectacled, fond of wiping his glasses on his tie end, husband to the lovely Ann, devotee of Goethe and German poetry, a most unlikely spymaster. In musty backrooms, in dank University libraries, the search goes on to find the trail of an insider who has frustrated the service, by looking at operations that have inexplicably failed. The trail of treachery and betrayal gradually uncovered in the service is complicated by the slow realization on the part of Smiley that his own marriage is being betrayed by infidelity.
As the threads weave themselves into a fabric of treachery, Smiley is dismayed to find that his wife is in fact in the arms of a fellow member of the service – a friend. In the upper class world that he inhabits, an academic cat and mouse game is played out amidst the shambles of the Service that Smiley loves, and his own personal life. The action is slow, practically non-existent; but like the slow coiling of a python around its victim, the vast intellect of Smiley and the persistence of his acolytes – Peter Guillam, Toby Esterhaze, Jim Prideaux, George Mendel – tightens its holds on the traitor. It is fascinating to watch; you lose yourself in the maze of a Service in denial of its betrayal by one of England’s very own, someone from the dreaming spires of its aristocratic echelons. The book was written at a time when Anthony Blunt was unmasked as a Soviet Spy for 40 years. He was Curator of the Queen’s Art Gallery no less. And he found it so easy – as does Smiley’s prey – to be comfortable in the English world of Court, Tradition and Duty and at the same time owe loyalty to the Communist cause. A dichotomy never fully understood by the Americans.
The tragic life of the Hon Jerry Westerby illuminates the dark world of “The Honourable Schoolboy”. A floppy haired public schoolboy with a moral code, he is recalled from a bucolic semi-retirement in Tuscany to London to execute an assignment in Hong Kong. The traitor, in “Tinker Tailor” has been found – a high level upper class English aristocrat. But the Service is in the doghouse in the eyes of the Cousins (the Service slang for the CIA). A rich Chinese businessman is suspected of being a spy for the Russians. Smiley wants to get him as a coup to recover the lost prestige of the Service. The battle – fought in a Whitehall conference room! – between the Service, the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office responsible for Hong Kong for the right to go after a wealthy colonial subject is memorable. It is one of my favourite parts of the book – an excerpt:
The conference table was covered in a ripped green baize like a billiards table in a youth club. The Foreign Office sat one end, the Colonial Office at the other. The separation was visceral rather than legal. For six years the two departments had been formally married under the grandiose awnings of the Diplomatic Service, but no one in his right mind took the union seriously. Guillam and Smiley sat at the centre, shoulder to shoulder, each with empty chairs to the other side of him. Examining the cast, Guillam was absurdly aware of costume. The Foreign Office had come sharply dressed in charcoal suits and the secret plumage of privilege: both Enderby and Martindale wore Old Etonian ties. The Colonialists had the homeweave look of country people come to town, and the best they could offer in the way of ties was one Royal Artillery-man: honest Wilbraham.
The other memorable character in the book is Craw – the crusty, foul-mouthed Australian journalist, and British spy. The character is based on a real-life Australian journalist Richard Hughes who lived and worked in Hong Kong for years. Craw specialises in using the language of Catholic priests to talk to people. It is true that Hughes held court in a corner of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel coffee shop, and it is widely rumoured Hughes was a British spy. The story goes into the detail of this Chinese businessman and his payments from a Russian slush fund, tracing the travels of Westerby through Thailand, Laos and Hong Kong. Betrayal looms large. Westerby cannot countenance the betrayal that the businessman is about to connive in. And the last minute the British are themselves betrayed to the Americans by one of their own.
It is a book you can read again and again, and still be moved. One of the finest novels of the 20th Century.
The other Le Carre book that I absolutely loved was “A Perfect Spy”. Written around the time of perestroika and glasnost, the story is based largely on Le Carre’s own background. His father was a bit of con artist and part time impressario, who insisted on his son going to public school even if he could not always pay the fees on time! And like the author, Magnus Pym becomes an upper class Englishman clad in pin stripes, fluent in German, but constantly aware of his hidden side based on trickery and deceit. He joins the British Secret Service due to his fluency in German – just like the real life Le Carre did. And then, unsure of his own beliefs, Magnus is recruited as a spy by the East German Secret Service. His existence as a double agent is easy at first but increasingly more intense. His East German case officer, conscience keeper, interlocutor and friend is Axel. He describes Magnus in the following passage.
Then Axel began speaking, kindly and gently without irony or bitterness, and it seems to me that he spoke for about thirty years because his words are as loud in my ear now as they ever were in Pym’s then, never mind the din of the cicadas and the cheeping of the bats.
‘Sir Magnus, you have in the past betrayed me but, more important, you have betrayed yourself. Even when you are telling the truth, you lie. You have loyalty and you have affection. But to what? To whom? I don’t know all the reasons for this. Your great father. Your aristocratic mother. One day maybe you will tell me. And maybe you have put your love in some bad places now and then.’ He leaned forward and there was a kindly, true affection in his face and a warm long-suffering smile in his eyes. ‘Yet you also have morality. You search. What I am saying is, Sir Magnus: for once nature has produced a perfect match. You are a perfect spy. All you need is a cause. I have it. I know that our revolution is young and that sometimes the wrong people are running it. In the pursuit of peace we are making too much war. In the pursuit of freedom we are building too many prisons. But in the long run I don’t mind. Because I know this. All the junk that made you what you are: the privileges, the snobbery, the hypocrisy, the churches, the schools, the fathers, the class systems, the historical lies, the little lords of the countryside, the little lords of big business, and all the greedy wars that result from them, we are sweeping that away for ever. For your sake. Because we are making a society that will never produce such sad little fellows as Sir Magnus.’ He held out his hand. ‘So. I’ve said it. You are a good man and I love you.’
And I remember that touch always. I can see it any time by looking into my own palm: dry and decent and forgiving. And the laughter: from the heart as it always was, once he had ceased to be tactical and become my friend again.
I found this passage very moving. It describes a part of all of us, doesn’t it?
The Bible tells the story of Simeon, who was a devout Jew, who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to Jerusalem, Simeon sees the baby and utters words of gratitude that form the beautiful Nunc Dimittis. The translation in the Book of Common Prayer is as follows:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
Is there redemption in life? Are there any moral or ideological certainties that we can all aspire to be guided by? Smiley is not so sure. His own Messiah is his intellect and the pursuit of reason, guided by an understanding of his and everyone’s own imperfect humanity. I first read Le Carre when I was seventeen, and forty years on, I think I am just beginning to understand. So when the day is done and the task accomplished, is it not fair to ask the Lord to let his servant depart in peace? Even if there is no Messiah to witness?
Here are the closing titles of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” with a beautiful rendition of Nunc Dimittis. I hope you like it.
It’s now almost four weeks since the Government of India took a hatchet to Article 370 of the Constitution of India, through a simple Presidential Order. Parliament then passed an Act to bifurcate the State into two Union Territories.
Jammu and Kashmir demands something be done about it. The fact that it is a Muslim-majority State is totemic to our secular constitution; the fact that three wars (four, if you include Kargil) have been fought over it is a symbol of our heroism and resolve; the fact that since 1990 some 45,000 people have died or been displaced in ongoing violence is a festering sore; the fact that the Indian Union let Kashmiri Hindus be chased out of their homes in 1990 by Kashmiri Jihadis is a disgrace.
Is it all Nehru’s fault?
During the Parliamentary debate – or what passes for it – allegations were freely made that it was all the fault of Nehru.
Nehru is not the culprit here – that’s for sure. If anything, the true believers in an independent Kashmir blame Nehru for ensuring Kashmir did not end up choosing its own destiny and have nothing but contempt for him. Pakistan was in that category until very recently, when Imran Khan suddenly seems to have developed a touching faith in India’s Founding Fathers.
Nor is it the case that Patel had nothing to do with it. The formulation of India’s Constitutional structure had all the hallmarks of Patel’s astute thinking, and he very much was involved in formulating Article 370 as a reviewer if not as the creator.
Nor is it the case that Ambedkar washed his hands of the whole affair. An article by a Central Minister in the Indian Express said as much recently, but if the Hon Minister had taken two minutes to check his facts, he would have discovered that Ambedkar actually was very much in favour of partitioning Kashmir.
The Events of 1947 up to the Cease Fire of January 1949
In 1947 the State of Jammu and Kashmir signed a Standstill Agreement under the Indian Independence Act delaying the Accession decision in favour of either India or Pakistan. The State was one of two major princely states trying to negotiate their entry into the two new Dominions – the other was Hyderabad. Sardar Patel was very keen on Hyderabad’s accession. In fact until after Independence Patel was relatively indifferent to Kashmir, and more keen on resolving the situation in Junagadh. Junagadh was a Hindu majority state with a Muslim ruler, who signed the Instrument of Accession to Pakistan. When the Hindus in the State protested, the Nawab fled the State when armed forces were positioned at his border.
It is worthwhile noting here, that things had been tense in the Valley for some time. By August 1947 the Poonch area – which was full of discharged soldiers – was in rebellion. The Maharaja’s reaction was very harsh – it is estimated his Dogra killed Muslim men and women in their thousands. The situation was such that Pakistan was now keenly interested in forcing the Maharaja’s hand to accede to Pakistan. The Prime Minister of Kashmir State was Ram Chandra Kak, who was sure the State was going to accede to Pakistan and he was absolutely against the Congress. Sensing this, the Maharaja dismissed Kak.
Maharaja Hari Singh has been described as a weak and vacillating man, who personally did not want Kashmir to go Pakistan but was not sure of acceding to India as well. He was being wooed by both sides. As tensions escalated, Patel and Nehru too were concerned about the situation in the State.
In September 1947 the Sardar pressed Justice Meher Chand Mahajan, a Justice of the Punjab High Court, to accept the Kashmir Maharaja’s invitation to become the new Prime Minister of the Kashmir State. The Maharaja’s great foe was Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of the Muslim Conference, who had a history of fighting for the rights of Muslims in the Hindu State. Abdullah was then in prison. The Indian Government took the precaution of laying telephone and telegraph lines between Jammu and Pathankot.
By end September the Indian Government received intelligence reports of Pakistani forces dressed as irregulars making preparations to infiltrate Kashmir. Patel made moves to induce a rapprochement between Sheikh Abdullah and the Maharaja. Before any concrete moves could take place, on October 22 1947, about 12,000 Pashtun tribesmen, armed and supplied by the Pakistan Army and lead by former officers of the Indian National Army attacked Kashmir. Elements of the regular Pakistan Army, like the 7th Infantry Division and the Prince Albert Victor’s Own Cavalry participated in the attacks but leaving the tribesmen to take the credit. In two days they routed the State Forces – of whose Muslim members many deserted to the other side – and stood at Baramulla, 40 miles from the capital. A panic-stricken Maharaja pleaded with the Government of India for help.
On October 25, VP Menon was despatched by the Defence Committee of the Indian Cabinet to Srinagar to assess the situation. He saw a state of chaos and confusion. He flew back on October 26th with Mahajan to Delhi. A meeting took place on October 26th at Nehru’s house with Abdullah, Mountbatten, Patel, Mahajan and Menon. Mountbatten demurred from involving the Army but Patel and Nehru were keen to provide military assistance. In deference to Mountbatten – and also because most of the senior serving officers in the Indian Army were British – they agreed to obtaining the Maharaja’s accession first. Patel also agreed with Nehru that Abdullah should rightfully lead any Kashmiri Government because only he could inspire loyalty among the State’s Muslims.
On October 26, V P Menon met the Maharaja in Jammu and presented their demands. The Maharaja agreed at once, and signed the Instrument. Immediately, the Indian Army and a team led by H M Patel (the Defence Secretary) set about getting an infantry battalion together. They assembled an armada of more than a 100 planes from the army and from private sources.
On October 27 morning, 329 men of the 1st Battalion, 1st Sikh Regiment, led by Lt Col Ranjit Rai, landed at Srinagar and secured the airport, and immediately deployed to the battlefield, – Col Rai was to be tragically killed in action hours after landing and was replaced by Lt Col Lionel “Bogey” Sen. Plane after plane landed bring arms and men to the campaign. Jinnah had been waiting in Lahore for the news to arrive that the “tribesmen” had captured Srinagar, so that he could make a triumphal entry there. As soon as he heard that the Indian Army had landed, he was disappointed. He asked the Pakistani Army to formally intervene. As more Indian reinforcements arrived, the enemy was first checked, and then pushed back until Srinagar was no longer in danger.
Even at this stage, it appears that Patel (more so) and Nehru (less so) were anxious to settle Kashmir with Pakistan, since for Patel, the main prize was still Hyderabad. Discussions on Hyderabad were ongoing with the Nizam, his interlocutors (Laik Ali and Sir Monckton) and Mountbatten (for whom Hyderabad mattered thanks to his royal connections). Well after the Indian Army was engaged in Kashmir, he was open to accession to Pakistan if the Pakistanis would help with Hyderabad. To quote Srinath Raghavan:
“Until late 1947, he was open to allowing Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan if the Pakistanis would tell the Nizam of Hyderabad to fall in line and join India. As he told Pakistan’s Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, “Why do you compare Junagadh with Kashmir? Talk of Hyderabad and Kashmir and we could reach an agreement”. Patel even stated this publicly after the occupation of Junagadh on 11 November 1947: “Our reply was that one could agree on Kashmir if they could agree on Hyderabad”. At another meeting with Liaquat on 28 November, Patel offered to pull Indian troops out of Poonch if it would help pave the way for a diplomatic settlement. But Nehru opposed this course.
Let us also address here the question of the famous rift that people allege took place after which Patel stayed out of the Kashmir issue.
Nehru and Patel had a close personal equation. There was not a day when, if both of them were in Delhi, that Nehru did not walk over to Patel’s house on York Road or Patel to Nehru’s on Aurangzeb Road. It was not uncommon for them them to disagree. Abdullah was back as a de facto Premier, intent on making life difficult for Mahajan, the actual Premier. And he and the Maharaja did not get along. Nehru, however, saw Abdullah as critical to the Kashmir story. To be fair to Nehru, he believed Patel was close to the Maharaja in sympathies. Correctly assessing that Abdullah was more important to resolving Kashmir than an increasingly marginal Maharaja, he took over the handling of Kashmir and insisted to the Maharaja that Abdullah become the formal Premier of the State. Nehru also appointed Sir Gopalaswamy Ayyangar as the interlocutor between Srinagar and Delhi, bypassing Patel. Ayyangar had great credentials – he was a Civil Service officer, was awarded the Diwan Bahadur title and further, made a Knight Commander of the Indian Empire. He had moreover served as Diwan of Jammu and Kashmir. But this annoyed Patel, and lead to an exchange of angry notes between the two men on Christmas Eve 1947, with Patel actually sending in his resignation. Nehru apologised and returned it but insisted he would deal with Kashmir, and Patel agreed to support Nehru to the hilt. There is no record of any further discord over Kashmir between the two.
In January 1948 Nehru took the Kashmir issue to the new United Nations. It was winter, and the fighting had died down. In response to the Indian Army entering the war on the side of the Maharaja, Pakistan had also entered the war formally. It was difficult terrain, and both were well-trained armies fresh from the Second World War. Gilgit-Baltistan, under the command of its British officers, had already been taken by Pakistan in August 1947 itself. What was left was the Valley’s western portion in Pakistan’s hands and the rest of the kingdom in India’s control.
Finding a resolution to the military and political stalemate was the most important task before the new Government. Politically, Mountbatten was keen the two new Dominions not go to war especially since British officers were still largely in command of units in both forces, and both commanders of the Indian and Pakistani Armies were British. Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel openly discussed the idea of a partition of Kashmir, an idea that Ambedkar seems to have been in agreement with, There were plans to discuss this formally with the Pakistan Prime Minister Liaquat Ali, but the meeting never took place. A Ceasefire was finally agreed and went into force in January 1949.
Once the Ceasefire went into effect, the UN Security Council passed a Resolution requiring the following actions to be performed in sequence and to the satisfaction of the UN:
Pakistan to withdraw all forces back to the line existing on August 15 1947 including in Gilgit-Baltistan.
India was to withdraw all forces keeping in place only those men needed to police the state and maintain law and order
A plebiscite was then to be held to allow the Kashmiris to decide to accede to Pakistan or to India.
Since the first condition was never fulfilled, the other two conditions have also not been executed.
The Creation of Article370
We should note that J&K and India were entering into an agreement as two independent States. India was willing to consider special provisions for obtaining accession to India – in fact the provisions extended to Hyderabad (before the Nizam foolishly rejected them) would have surprised today’s nationalists.
The first major meeting on the terms of Kashmir’s Accession to India took place at the residence of Sardar Patel on May 15-16 1949. The meeting was attended by Sheikh Abdullah, Sardar Patel, Nehru, V P Menon, Gopalaswami Ayyangar and Baldev Singh at the very least. The discussion was memorialized in the form of a letter from Nehru to Abdullah, drafted by Ayyangar and approved by Patel. You can find this correspondence in the Collected Letters of both Nehru and Patel. The contents are key:
Both Patel and Nehru concede that J&K will have its own Constituent Assembly to form its own Constitution under the Instrument of Accession
That the accession of J&K to India into the Indian Union is final.
That the Constituent Assembly of J&K will decide what subjects the State will exclusively legislate on and what the Union will have jurisdiction over.
That the J&K State Forces are now under full operational and budgetary control of the Indian Army.
This is a key document and a key meeting, and this letter essentially lays the foundation for what was eventually to become Article 370. It first saw light of day as Article 306A. There is no way Sardar Patel did not know of the impending “special status” of the new State of Jammu and Kashmir.
In May 1949 representatives of the State of J&K became members of the Indian Constituent Assembly. In his remarks to the Constituent Assembly, Ayyangar said “Now the correct position is this. The accession is complete. No doubt, we have offered to have a plebiscite when the conditions are created for the holding of a proper, fair and impartial plebiscite. But that plebiscite is merely for the purpose of giving the people of the State to….ratify the accession that has already taken place….but if the plebiscite produces a verdict which is against the … accession…then we shall not stand in the way of Kashmir separating herself away from India”. Clear as day. The spirit in which the Constituent Assembly was approaching the accession was in the nature of an agreement between two states.
By this time, a draft Article (then called 306A) was in circulation. A proposal from the State of J&K was with the Indian Ministry of States, who put the draft into circulation. The draft was explained before the Constituent Assembly by Ayyangar:
The State of J&K is deemed to have acceded to the Indian Union.
Article 211A of the Constitution – which applies the Constitution to all the Indian States – shall not apply to J&K.
The Instrument of Accession had other items, other than the three major items (Foreign Affairs, Defence and Communications) on which the Union had jurisdiction. This list could be extended by the President in consultation with the Government of the State of J&K.
If any other provisions need to be extended, the concurrence of the State of J&K was needed.
The concurrence was strictly provisional and had to be ratified by the Constituent Assembly of the State of J&K.
But even this was provisional, until the Constituent Assembly of the State met and agreed on a final list of what powers were to be retained by the State and what was to be done at the Union. Once this is done the President’s powers would cease.
The President can abrogate or amend this Article but only with the concurrence of the State Government via its Constituent Assembly.
The Assembly adopted Article 306A (now known as Article 370) without a vote on October 17 1949. Soon after the vote was taken, a visibly shaken Abdullah and other members of the Constituent Assembly of the J&K State had a heated discussion with Ayyangar in the lobby of the House. Ayyangar changed one crucial part of the draft agreed with the J&K representatives and got it passed by the Constituent Assembly. This change was made after consultations with Sardar Patel and others. Instead of the words “Council of Ministers appointed under the Maharaja’s Proclamation dated March 5 1948”, Ayyangar substituted the phrase “Council of Ministers for the time being in office under the Maharaja’s Proclamation dated March 5 1948”. An incensed Abdullah accused Ayyangar of bad faith in writing and threatened to resign from the Constituent Assembly.
Patel, Nehru, Ayyangar and Abdullah were wily men and they knew the implication of this innocuous modification. Under the original wording, only those who were in office on March 5 1948 could advise on applicability of the Indian Constitution to the President. The “trivial change” as Ayyangar termed it, made it possible for anyone in office at a particular time to advise the President. It did not enshrine a permanent role for Abdullah in the process. It caused a lot of bad blood, but the door was now open for the Indian Union to take control of the J&K Constitutional process through a small chink. It is what lead to the dismissal of Abdullah and his incarceration in 1953.
The renamed Article 370 was then incorporated into the Constitution, and the Constitution was adopted in November 1949. The new Constitution was then adopted by the new Maharaja Karan Singh on November 25 1949. When India became a Republic, the very first Order passed by President Rajendra Prasad was under Article 370 applying the Constitution to the new State of J&K. The First Schedule was the Union List and the Second Schedule other items of the new Constitution.
In 1951 the J&K Constituent Assembly was formed. While it began its deliberations, the J&K leadership and the Indian Government agreed on a set of principles to govern how the two entities would work. This is the 1952 Delhi Agreement. You can read it for historical value, but the key parts are that the Government of India allowed residuary powers of decision making to rest with the State, allowed the Head of the State to be appointed by the President only after it was recommended by the State, and to give effect to Maharaja-era rules on who can settle in the State.
But disquiet had begun to creep into the relationship. Abdullah was keen to include Pakistan in the future of the State, whereas Nehru’s wish was to make the State take steps closer to integration with India. Nehru was keen to use Article 370 to further extend the new provisions of the Constitution to J&K State. The President had his doubts on the legality of doing so and wrote to Nehru as such. Nevertheless he yielded to Nehru’s pressure and made an Order on November 15 1952 extending the Constitution. Matters came to a head, and in 1953 Sheikh Abdullah was arrested and his deputy Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed became the Prime Minister of J&K State. The J&K Constituent Assembly continued to debate its own constitution and never addressed the link between India and Kashmir other than acknowledge the accession and applicability of the Indian Constitution. In 1954 the President made another Order under 370.
The J&K Constituent Assembly adopted the State Constitution and adjourned in 1956. The Preamble to the State Constitution affirms the State’s accession to India. Article 370, intended to be a temporary provision, was left unchanged and intact.
And so the situation stood from then until August 5 2019.
The State suffered misgovernment right from the time Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed took over, until in 1963 he was censured by the Rajagopala Ayyangar Commission on charges of corruption. After the 1971 War, Mrs Gandhi released Sheikh Abdullah and he took charge of J&K after an accord between India and the National Congress. He was by now an old man, and he died in 1982. His son Farooq Abdullah took over his political mantle but he was clearly not cut from the same cloth as his father.
The Source of the Recent Troubles
Jammu and Kashmir continued to be a flashpoint between Pakistan and India but that was not because of Article 370. Pakistan continued to and continues to this day, to regard Kashmir as the unfinished agenda of Partition. It is natural for them to say so, because the Pakistani State has chosen to define itself in terms of India. In 1965, 1971 and 1999 Pakistan tried to change the facts on the ground through armed force, and failed.
The present troubles date from 1990. In 1987, the National Conference in cahoots with the Congress shamelessly rigged the elections to stop the Muslim United Front from winning. In some constituencies, votes were counted and recounted until the MUF candidate lost. The government of Farooq Abdullah therefore lacked legitimacy – he was more showman and not at all a good administrator. Riots broke out over electricity tariffs, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front set off some bomb blasts, and by 1990 Central Rule had been imposed. As violent Islamic jihadis took control of the street, the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits were cleansed out of the place by mobs with the State Government powerless to do anything. A shameful episode in our history.
Since then the Valley has been through various governments alternating with Central Rule, and close to half a million armed men battle jihadists and so-called freedom fighters. Pakistan, of course, was delighted when this insurgency began. With the help of its own home-grown jihadists and Taliban fighters, it has given India a massive headache. Its Kargil adventure was a good example of the thinking that asymmetric warfare will make the Indian Army bleed. A series of IEDs, bombings, shootings and terrorist action have forced strong responses from the Army. Some of the responses have been over the top and clearly excessive. All of the above have kept a whole generation of Kashmiris angry and resentful.
Article 370 is not the issue, and neither is Nehru
Was Article 370 and the special status of Jammu & Kashmir the real issue? The nationalist loathing for Article 370 is not new. The newly minted Minister for Industry in the Nehru Government, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, chose to resign and leave the Congress over this. He founded the Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1952 over the issue. The BJS is the forefather of the BJP, and erasing Article 370 has been part of their manifesto for a long time.
In 1947, an independent State of Jammu & Kashmir negotiated its accession to the Indian Union. The basis for such accession is enshrined in Article 370 and the State of J&K Constitution. The State was very much a part of India, and since there is no way Pakistan can ask for a plebiscite under the UN Resolution, there is no way the State can vote on its accession to India.
As a nation we need to respect and recognise that diversity in the way regions establish their relationship with the Union at large is perfectly acceptable. Indeed, the Indian Union was a legal entity that evolved from the transfer of British power to India and the accession of independent princely states to the Union under a formal legal process. It is what gives the Constitution its legal aura and its sanctity. In the last 70 years the Union has not had a problem with negotiating with States who wanted to renegotiate their relationships. We have had accords with Assam, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. Given the finality of J&K’s accession, there was no need to tamper with this.
The mess in J&K is as much a creation of the BJP as it is of the Congress, the PDP and the NC. And the present situation dates from 1990 to be very precise. It is a complete failure of law and order, and of administration. In the meantime the defiance in the State has morphed from being an independence struggle to a case for an Islamic Jihadic State a la ISIS. All these are huge problems but these have nothing to do with Article 370. And you can certainly not blame Nehru for it.
Regarding the plebiscite, Nehru gets a lot of stick for double-dealing. Writers like H V Hodson and A G Noorani allege that Nehru was not entirely straight with the Kashmiris on this. Hodson further taped an interview with VP Menon in 1964 where Menon said that “As for plebiscite, we were absolutely, absolutely dishonest.” Nehru overrode Babu Rajendra Prasad’s objections and asked him to issue not one but several Presidential Orders under Article 370. If anything the nationalists today who abuse Nehru should applaud him if the allegation of double-dealing is indeed accurate. I am strongly inclined to think this is the case. By the time Parliament debated abrogation in 1964 so much of the Constitution had been extended to Kashmir that Gulzari Lal Nanda (then the Union Home Minister) described Article 370 as a tunnel that joins India to Kashmir, referring to how much this temporary article had been hollowed out by none other than Nehru. If we wish to hold Nehru and Patel to account, we should also accept that Nehru and Patel can be excused on the basis that they were battling with taking over from the British, setting up a new administration, the aftermath of Partition – and may be they just wanted to get the job done.
What is needed now?
The longer the clampdown in Kashmir exists, the more the impression being created is that India has somehow captured the State. This is clearly absurd. The accession of J&K is a matter of fact and Kashmiris are fellow citizens.
The clampdown needs to be lifted and the formation of a civil society needs to be encouraged. There is bound to be an aftermath. I just hope more thought has gone into how to deal with the fallout.
The Prime Minister has promised to make the new Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir a paradise of jobs, peace, tourism and stability. There are serious doubts about how this will come about in the face of a sullen population. The glee with which the August 5 2019 action was greeted indicates that the public wanted something to be done about this, but equally, it is seen as a victory of the Hindu position. The latter is unfortunate because it threatens the very fabric of the Indian state. It is not clear if the rumours of military excesses are true – I suspect they are not. Whatever be the case, the government must move to include the 8 million people of the new Union Territory as citizens of India in the real sense.
I also hope the Prime Minister allays fears that the Valley will be resettled by Hindus. This would be right from the playbook of Sheldon Adelson and the Israeli extreme right wing in the Palestinian West Bank. It would be very costly and highly damaging to the nature of the Indian state – and to the very gentle but strong nature of Hinduism.
China gets away with gross abuse of the Muslims in Xinjiang. This can hardly be a model for India to follow. We will need another generation to match China in economic strength, and until then, good relations with our friends in the Arab world are absolutely key. The Prime Minister takes pains to be in personal touch with the leaders of the Arab world. Our people who run their institutions are well regarded and respected, and our growing economic clout is recognised and respected. They also value the fact that we do the best we can for our large Muslim minority. We should not devalue that trust.
Bibliography
A G Noorani: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Rajmohan Gandhi: Patel: A Life, Navajivan Press, 1991.
Lok Sabha: Debates of the Constituent Assembly of India 1949, Web Resource.
V P Menon: The Transfer of Power in India, Orient Blackswan, 1957
H V Hodson: The Great Divide, Hutchinson of London, 1969
Judith M Brown: Nehru, Yale University Press, 2003.
Srinath Raghavan: BJP wants to revoke Article 370, ironically Sardar Patel was its architect. The Print, June 26 2018
Notes: These are remarks I made at the SKOCH Conference on 5 Trillion Dollar Economy held in New Delhi on August 29 2019. The focus was on technology. I am tired of people touting a piece of technology to solve the world’s problems – like saying using Blockchain will make us all happier human beings, or whatever. Technologists are guilty of the “If all I have is a hammer, all I see is a nail” approach to problem solving. Please read with this as the context. Thank you.
Five trillion dollars is a big goal – especially seeing as how we are now facing an economic slowdown. Why talk of it? I take inspiration from two great quotations – one from the old world and one from the new.
The first is the great Tamil saint and poet Thiruvalluvar. He wrote these lines sometime in the 4th century BCE.
deyvaththaan aahaa theninum muyaRchidhan
meyvaruththak kooli tharum
When faced with a huge task, which seems impossible even for the Gods, your selfless effort will produce rewards equal to what you put in.
The second is President John F Kennedy. Speaking about the US Space Program, on September 12 1962, he said:
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
Inspiring words.
I am glad we are talking of how to get to the 5 trillion magic mark in the next 5-8 years. India is a blessed civilization. Our people are hard-working, they are big savers, they invest in their social networks – and they are big, big risk takers. We constituted ourselves as a democratic republic out of the chaos of colonial rule and partition. For 70 years we have taken this system and made it our own. Except for 1975, there has been no threat to our form of government.
After liberalizing the economy in 1991, we have lifted millions out of poverty and changed the lives of people without doing anything destabilizing. And there has been a sense of gradualism – for example the share of PSU banking in terms of assets has come down from nearly 100% in 1991 to about 65% today without resorting to any Boris Yeltsin style privatizations. This is a solid foundation on which to build.
If only we could now unleash the animal spirits that lurks in each of us, we will be well on our way towards this goal. To do so, government needs to withdraw from participating in the economy except as a consumer, a lawmaker and regulator, and instead focus on building the social and political equity that leads to the creation of economic equity.
The single most important imperative is to create and strengthen equity. Equity can be seen in three dimensions – Political equity, Social equity and Economic equity. In each area, the role of technology as enabler can be profound.
Bullding Political Equity
We need to build a political consensus that crosses party boundaries around the agenda for reaching this target. It requires bridge building across the country to make sure that politics are aligned towards development. It involves creating systems of government that generate greater trust and greater accountability to the public. The huge majority won by the BJP in 2019 makes me confident that a platform exists to create this Political Equity.
It is so important to harness technology to build the political equity needed to grow the country. To cite a few examples:
Using Twitter/Whatsapp/SMS to talk directly to people. The Aadhaar ecosystem can be put to benign use by using it to engage people directly on matters of policy. They could be local issues or national issues. As India becomes more and more an integrated republic, we can strengthen our democracy this way. A small example – the white elephant that is the Mumbai monorail could have been avoided if they had bothered to engage people directly on their travel patterns. Ten years and billions of dollars later, it is now a visible waste of public resources. China is great for using its ID and phone system for surveillance. Why don’t we use it to bring people into policy making in a direct manner?
Use Twitter/Whatsapp/SMS to engage with civic services: Mumbai Police today encourages people to communicate with it on Twitter. They respond immediately. Why don’t we make this a formal system? It will be impossible to change the Indian Police Act, but we can make police more accountable this way?
Rather than push the BHIM App, I wish the government had made it mandatory for every municipal ward and taluk to build an app in the local vernacular to enable citizens to request for services, register complaints or keep people informed. Sure – everyone does not have a smart phone but that is changing. Civic engagement has to start somewhere.
India talks digital but does not do anything digital. We need to change that so that we can effect lasting change in our political system. So that development and civic virtues do not become a political football.
Bullding Social Equity
This is the most important aspect of equity, and in my opinion, most government expenditure and effort should go into this. Without social equity, unlocking economic equity is restricted to the wealthy, the tax payer and the upper middle class. Health care, primary and secondary education, availability of clean drinking water, good roads, decent civic infrastructure, public transport, law and order, and justice ideally should be available to all. And at a price level that makes it affordable for the common man, and at a quality level that removes the incentives to make private arrangements. Indians invest in their family networks today not just as a cultural preference but also to make sure they have a social safety net. We need to minimize the economic imperative of protecting the downside to making this the friends and family network that promotes risk taking.
There are so many ways technology can be harnessed to promote social equity. A few examples from healthcare come to mind.
Disease Surveillance: Collection of field data on specific parameters is essential to form a picture of hotspots. This takes place informally today. Formalising this helps concentrate disease control action where needed quickly and expeditiously. It also helps allocate Primary Health Care resources for triaging. As a tropical country India is fecund for vector borne diseases. Creating the mechanism for collecting vector data, consolidating them and creating district and state level alerts would greatly help. Additionally this data could also drive civic action. An example – a malaria outbreak should initiate civic action to unclog drains, remove stagnant water pools and educate the public. If citizens can be reached directly it enables them to take action quickly based on authoritative government inputs than based on rumours.
Specialised medical networks: Industry bodies like, say the Indian Association of Paediatrics, hold events regularly for exchange of information. Portals and Information Exchanges that doctors can update and consult for tricky cases, linking doctors via Whatsapp and social media to an expert formally rather than informally.
Formalising Primary Health Care for Infant Children: A uniform Child Book – like the Red Book in the UK – supported by an App or SMS based system – to provide milestone alerts, vaccination alerts and warnings. Such apps can be built by third parties but based upon a set of APIs or Data Sets available from the hospital to national standards. A fully commercial model, where the app is paid for and run by private parties under government supervision.
Edutech: Strengthening delivery in classrooms, supplementing the teacher. Rather than selling iPads or lessons to kids I would prefer to see the government make use of their capabilities in service delivery in addition to the Edutechs evolving business models of their own right.
Assisting in Creating Economic Equity
This is equity in the financial sense. Encouraging domestic capital formation by mobilizing domestic savings is the one of the most important factors in achieving the magic 5 trillion number. Recall that Indians are great savers. But since for most Indians, there is no safety net available to catch them on the downside, we tend to protect our own downside by putting money in liability products of FIs, or in gold, or in land. Money loaned to FIs then goes into equity. The FI gets all the benefits (and the downsides) of equity investment. The saver gets his 6%. Even taking portfolio choices into account, the percentage going into equity investment is quite low. Indians are risk takers. But the willingness to take risks is constrained by the lack of a safety net.\
Government must focus on political and social equity and cut back its role in the economy. The most essential economic role government can play is in ensuring a level playing field, a clear regulatory and legislative environment that is predictable and fair, and act to facilitate private investment than replace it or crowd it out. Indians can be found building and running businesses in all parts of the world. Why not at home here?
We are subject to two major external economic forces for the time being. One, Global macro conditions like interest rates in the US, which decides how much of private capital flows to India. Two, the price of oil. We cannot do much about the latter in the short term, since we are net oil consumer. But in the interest of economic and social equity, long term technology planning to reduce and replace oil in the economy is a national priority.
As for the first, US interest rates – it matters because we are net importers of capital. As long as domestic private capital formation lags, we have to rely on either government investment or external capital. The goal of building up economic equity is to promote domestic private investment. A healthy domestic investment thesis makes foreign investments easier. Our goal is to expand the investor base and increase the propensity of Indian businesses to make investments. Social equity and Technology can play a big role in the former. In the latter, government has a big role in playing the role of a facilitator rather than a market participant.
If we accept that government should focus on Social and Political Equity and restrict its role in the economy to supervision and legislation, then some of their recent policy moves are questionable. Cutting the MDR on debit card payments to zero, for example. Simply hurts certain businesses and does not do anything for the economy. Digital is not a goal, it’s a means to an end. By the same token, the “shock” of demonetization would also not have happened. It failed in all its stated objectives and instead caused a GDP and investment decline that has hurt the economy.
Manufacturing is technology. Revitalising manufacturing and making India a manufacturing powerhouse was part of Make In India. It has not worked because we have not managed the environment in which manufacturing operates. The failure of “Make In India” has received a lot of attention. Much of it has to with economic policy. But let us not forget agriculture. The fall in agricultural prices combined with reduction in land monetization opportunities has caused severe economic pressure which has resulted in a fall in demand. We should not apply shocks to change this. But we need sustained investment in the sector and in rural areas to create employment.
What can we do in terms of technology for agriculture?
Reducing climate and weather uncertainty – Using satellite and drone technology to map micro-climate patterns, soil characteristics, plant growth, pest and disease monitoring. This is at incipient stages today – very interesting satellite and drone technology being used to help agriculturists. Tying in satellite weather reports to local climate conditions to help predict local climate conditions. A lot of interesting work was show-cased at the IOT Seminar on Agriculture in Bangalore a few months back. The business model was to get the technologies paid for Financial Institutions providing products as a mechanism to assess and monitor exposure.
Hydroponics and Crop Planning – India has 16% of the world’s population and 4% of the world’s water. We have to change the way we manage water use. Political will is required in ending rice cultivation in dry areas where ground water is used – a non-replenishable resource when used in such quantities as Punjab has found out. We need to move to crops that do not need so much of water. Businesses and governments can help – government in reeducation and businesses in packaging traditional dryland crops to the general public. Hydroponics requires intelligent measurement, monitoring and dispensing systems. This is not easy. Facing a distressed rural economy we need to be careful with how we go about it.
Fintech in agricultural finance: Easy loan origination, tied in to crop progress, with cash repayment and electronic repayment options. The Fintech ecosystem has not expanded into rural areas. Rural finance requires an assisted approach that marries savings with loans.
I have limited my remarks to the overall objectives that technology should achieve in the context of the overall macro-economic and socio-political framework. We have to work back from the overall goal and make opportunities available for technologists to create applications in these areas. It has to be on a sound commercial model. If we pull together the goal is certainly achievable.
