Labour Monthly, February 1943
Source: Review, K.S. Shelvankar, Labour Monthly, February 1943, pp. 64;
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.
India’s Fateful Hour by Sir William Barton (John Murray, 5s).
Malayan Postscript by Ian Morrison (Faber & Faber, 8s 6d).
Commonsense About India by Lord Huntingdon (Heinemann, 3s 6d).
India’s Fateful Hour, by a retired official of the Government of India, leaves out most of the relevant facts and obscures all the real issues. It is full of half-truths, misstatements and inconsistencies too numerous to be examined in detail. India is not a nation struggling for freedom.... Congress is an unrepresentative body .... religion is the main element in the creed of the Indian parties ... trade union leaders are “often unscrupulous agitators” ... the peasants were foolish to have voted for Congress ... and so on. It is the same old tedious bureaucratic patter with which people everywhere are getting more and more impatient.
Malayan Postscript is a lucid and objective account of events in Malaya from the date of Japan’s entry into the war to the fall of Singapore. It reminds us that Malaya, too, had its Sir William Bartons – officials about whose thinking “there was a curious atmosphere of unreality.” Mr. Morrison, the author, is The Times correspondent whose despatches from Singapore aroused much interest at the time. Writing with studied restraint, he tells of “considerable defeatism among the troops,” many of whom “failed to see that Malaya ... was a stake worth dying for,” observes that “it was surprising that the morale of the Asiatics was not very much worse than it was,” and notes the total absence of any effort to secure their co-operation until it was too late. Even three days after the siege of Singapore had begun, when General Percival wanted to meet the Press, the officer in charge “forgot completely to inform the editors of all the vernacular Malay, Chinese and Indian papers.”
Mr. Morrison is very sparing in his judgments, but one of them is worth quoting here. “There does not appear to be any such thing,” he says, “as a ‘military nation’ or an ‘unmilitary nation.’ “The only thing that matters is that people should feel that the things which they are fighting and dying for are worth fighting and dying for, and that they should have a minimum of essential equipment.” This is the commonsense view. It knocks the bottom out of the various categories – martial, non-martial, political, unpolitical, etc. – into which “experts” like Sir William Barton are so fond of dividing the people of India.
It is also the view upon which Lord Huntingdon lays special emphasis in his Commonsense About India. “To rally a people of 400 millions to arms, it is necessary to give that people something to fight for.” He points out that the situation to-day is both alarming and fantastic, and urges, on grounds of idealism as well as of practical expediency, that the Government should immediately reach a settlement with the Indian people instead of trying to cow them into temporary submission. We have the choice, as he says, of either winning the friendship they are so willing to give, on fighting on their soil while they remain “apathetically neutral or even hostile to us” – as in Malaya.
Unlike Sir William, who is elaborately evasise and makes it all seem remote and incomprehensible, Lord Huntingdon is clear, persuasive and methodical in his presentation. His object is to dispel misconceptions, not to spread confusion. The situation in India goes from bad to worse, and if it is not to end in calamity, democratically-minded people in Britain must understand the facts – and act. Not the least of the merits of this excellent little book is that it also explains what we can all do now to hasten the solution.
K.S. SHELVANKAR.