Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom by Ramachandra Guha

Author:Ramachandra Guha [Guha, Ramachandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008498788
Google: Wvo4EAAAQBAJ
Published: 2022-01-20T18:17:26+00:00

IV

In May 1942, seeking perhaps to divert her attention from Prithvi Singh, Gandhi asked Mira to tour the eastern province of Orissa. The Japanese were advancing rapidly through South East Asia. The British territories of Malaya and Singapore had been conquered, and Burma was soon to fall into their hands. If the Japanese now decided to invade the east coast of India, how should Indians respond?

It was to seek an answer to this question that Mira went to Orissa at Gandhi’s behest. After travelling around the coastal villages she wrote Gandhi a long letter describing the likely scenario if the Japanese invaded India. In Orissa, she found that, for the most part,

the villagers ready to take up the position of neutrality. That is to say they would leave the Japanese to pass over their fields and villages, and try as far as possible not to come into contact with them. They would hide their foodstuffs and their money, and decline to serve the Japanese. But even that much resistance would be difficult to obtain in some parts, the dislike of the British Raj being so great, that anything anti-British will be welcomed with open arms.

Although by now Indian in spirit, Mira was British by birth. She certainly did not want the Japanese to conquer India. So Mira suggested that the Congress in Orissa advise the villagers to:

1. To resist formally, mostly non-violently, the commandeering by the Japanese of any land, houses, or movable property.

2. To render no forced labour to the Japanese.

3. Not to take up any sort of administrative service under the Japanese. (This may be hard to control in connection with some type of city people, Government opportunists, and Indians brought in from other parts.)

4. To buy nothing from the Japanese.

5. To refuse their currency and any efforts on their part at setting up a Raj.

After outlining a plan for resistance, Mira came to the problems in executing it. What if the Japanese paid for labour, food and materials in British currency, and offered a decent price? What if the Japanese asked for assistance in rebuilding canals/bridges blown up by a retreating British Army? What if the Japanese came accompanied by Indian soldiers they had taken prisoner in Singapore and Burma? ‘Should we treat them [these Indian soldiers] with the same aloofness as we are to show the Japanese’, asked Mira, ‘or should we not try to win them over to our way of thinking?’ And what to do with the dead and wounded in battle? Regardless of their nationality, Mira thought ‘it will be our sacred duty to attend to them’, by giving them a decent burial or cremation as the case may be.[22]

While bracing themselves for a possible Japanese invasion, some villagers in Orissa were deeply resentful of the foreigners who currently colonized them. The British were building an aerodrome in the hinterland of the province, seizing fields and farms to do so. Mira visited the villages that were facing evacuation because of the aerodrome. She

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