Britain in India, 1858–1947 by Lionel Knight

Author:Lionel Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Asia/India and South Asia
ISBN: 9780857282927
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2012-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Source: Sarkar, Modern India, 170.

By 1916 Hardinge thought that the country had been bled ‘absolutely white’.[4] The lower levels of government employment were among the worst hit, as widespread strikes at the war’s end showed. Food grain prices had doubled and in 1917–18, the year after harvest failure across the northern hemisphere, two million tons were exported to Britain and Mesopotamia. For the poor, misery turned to desperation in 1918. The monsoon failed, from June onwards perhaps twenty million succumbed to the flu pandemic, and in early 1919 cholera was killing 800 a day in Bombay.[5]

The war also damaged the prestige that was so important to British rule. Its duration and reports from the battlefields brought home to Indians that Britain was just one power among a number fighting for their lives. Some derived satisfaction from the humbling of their masters. Nehru recalled that ‘There was little sympathy with the British in spite of professions of loyalty. Moderates and Extremists alike learnt with satisfaction of German victories.’ Loss of confidence spread to the ‘masses’ who, in Tagore’s recollection ‘refused to accept as true every news of success of the allies that came to them from the English sources’.[6]

At the same time self-confidence and expectations rose, encouraged by tributes like that of the Times: ‘The Indian Empire has overwhelmed the British nation by the completeness and unanimity of its enthusiastic aid.’ Early in the war Gokhale wrote: ‘I’m not sure that the Indian army won’t do more for us Indians than all the Royal Commissions in the world.’[7] In 1918 Tilak and Gandhi were still supporting recruitment and in their different ways looking for recognition of India’s claims to equality within the empire. As Gandhi wrote to Jinnah: ‘Seek ye first the recruiting office and everything will be added unto you.’[8] Tilak recommended the purchase of war bonds as ‘title deeds of Home Rule’. Britain’s claim to have been fighting to defend the rights of small nations increased the pressure, as did President Wilson’s support for the principle of national self-determination. In 1917 Curzon warned the cabinet that with ‘free talk about liberty, democracy, nationality and self government…we are expected to translate into practice in our own domestic household the sentiments which we have so enthusiastically preached to others. The Russian Revolution has lent an immense momentum to this tide…’[9]

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