The impact of World War II

On Sept. 3, 1939, Viceroy Lord Linlithgow (governed 1936-43) informed India's political leaders and populace that they were at war with Germany. For Nehru and the Congress' high command, such unilateral declarations were viewed as more than insensitive British behaviour, for, in undertaking to run most of British India's provinces, the Congress thought of itself as the viceroy's "partner" in administering the raj. What a "betrayal," therefore, this autocratic declaration of war was judged, and how angry it made Nehru and Gandhi feel. Instead of offering loyal support to the British raj, they demanded a prior forthright statement of Britain's postwar "goals and ideals." Neither Linlithgow nor Lord Zetland, his Tory secretary of state, was prepared, however, to pander to the Congress' wishes at Great Britain's darkest hour of national danger. Nehru's outrage helped convince the Congress' high command to call upon all its provincial ministries to resign. Jinnah was overjoyed at this decision and proclaimed Friday, Dec. 22, 1939, a Muslim "Day of Deliverance" from the tyranny of the Congress "raj." Jinnah met regularly with Linlithgow, moreover, and assured the viceroy that he need not fear a lack of support from India's Muslims, so many of whom were active members of Britain's armed services. Throughout World War II, as the Congress moved farther from the British, first with passive and later with active noncooperation, the Muslim League in every possible way quietly supported the war effort.

The first meeting of the league after the outbreak of the war was held in Punjab's ancient capital of Lahore in March 1940. The famous Lahore Resolution, later known as the Pakistan Resolution, was passed by the largest gathering of league delegates just one day after Jinnah informed his followers that "the problem of India is not of an inter-communal but manifestly of an international character." The league resolved, therefore, that any future constitutional plan proposed by the British for India would not be "acceptable to the Muslims" unless it was so designed that the Muslim-majority "areas" of India's "North-Western and Eastern Zones" were "grouped to constitute independent States' in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." Pakistan was not mentioned until the next day's newspapers introduced that word in their headlines, and Jinnah explained that the resolution envisioned the establishment of not two separately administered Muslim countries but rather a single Muslim nation-state--namely, Pakistan.

Gandhi launched his first "individual satyagraha" campaign against the war in October 1940. Vinoba Bhave, the Mahatma's foremost disciple, publically proclaimed his intent to resist the war effort and was subsequently sentenced to three months in jail. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the next to openly disobey British law, was sentenced to four years behind bars. By June 1941 more than 20,000 Congress satyagrahis were in prisons. It was also in 1941 when Bose fled to Germany, where he started broadcasting appeals to India urging the masses to "rise up" against British "tyranny" and to "throw off" their chains. There were, however, few Indians in Germany, and Hitler's advisers urged Bose to go back to Asia by submarine; he was eventually transported to Japan and then to Singapore, where Japan had captured at least 40,000 Indian troops during its takeover of that island fortress in February 1942. These captured soldiers became Netaji ("Leader") Bose's Indian National Army (INA) in 1943 and, a year later, marched behind him to Rangoon. Bose hoped to "liberate" first Imphal and then Bengal from British rule, but the British forces at India's eastern gateways held until the summer monsoon gave them respite enough to be properly reinforced and drove Bose and his army back down the Malay Peninsula. In August 1945 Bose escaped by air from Saigon but died of severe burns after his overloaded plane crashed onto Formosa.