The Last Phase (3)

World War II The Congress Develops a Foreign Policy

The National Congress, like all other political organizations in India, was for long entirely engrossed in internal politics and paid little attention to foreign developments. In the 1920s it began to take some interest in foreign affairs. No other organization did so except the small groups of socialists and communists. Muslim organizations were interested in Palestine and occasionally passed resolutions of sympathy for the Muslim Arabs there. The intense nationalism of Turkey, Egypt, and Iran was watched by them but not without some apprehension, as it was secular, and was leading to reforms which were not wholly in keeping with their ideas of Islamic traditions. The Congress gradually developed a foreign policy which was based on the elimination of political and economic imperialism everywhere and the co-operation of free nations. This fitted in with the demand for Indian independence. As early as 1920 a resolution on foreign policy was passed by the Congress, in which our desire to co-operate with other nations and especially to develop friendly relations with all our neighbouring countries, was emphasized. The possibility of another large-scale war was later considered, and in 1927, twelve years before World War II actually started, the Congress first declared its policy in regard to it.

This was five or six years before Hitler came into power and before Japanese aggression in Manchuria had begun. Mussolini was consolidating himself in Italy but did not then appear as a major threat to world peace. Fascist Italy was on friendly terms with England and British statesmen expressed their admiration for the Duce. There were a number of petty dictators in Europe, also usually on good terms with the British Government. Between England and Soviet Russia, however, there was a complete breach; there had been the Arcos raid and withdrawal of diplomatic representatives. In the League of Nations and the International Labour Office, British and French policy was definitely conservative. In the interminable discussions on disarmament, when every other country represented in the League, as well as the U.S.A., were in favour of the total abolition of aerial bombardment, Britain made some vital reservations. For many years the British Government had used aircraft, for ‘police purposes’ it was called, for bombing towns and villages in Iraq and the North-West Frontier of India. This ‘right’ was insisted upon, thus preventing any general agreement on this subject in the League and later in the Disarmament Conference.

Germany—the Weimar republican Germany—had become a full member of the League of Nations, and Locarno had been hailed as a forerunner of perpetual peace in Europe and a triumph of British policy. Another view of all these developments was that Soviet Russia was being isolated and a joint front against her was being created in Europe. Russia had just celebrated the tenth anniversary of her revolution and had developed friendly ties with various eastern countries—Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mongolia.

The Chinese revolution had also advanced with great strides and the nationalist armies had taken possession of half of China, coming into conflict with foreign, and especially British, interests in the port towns and the interior. Subsequently there had been internal trouble and a break-up of the Kuomintang into rival groups.

The world situation seemed to be drifting towards a major conflict, with England and France as heads of a European group of nations and Soviet Russia associated with some eastern nations. The United States of America held aloof from both these groups; their intense dislike of communism kept them away from Russia, and their distrust of British policy and competition with British finance and industry, preventing them from associating themselves with the British group. Over and above these considerations was the isolationist sentiment of America and the fear of being embroded in European quarrels.

In this setting Indian opinion inevitably sided with Soviet Russia and the eastern nations. This did not mean any widespread approval of communism, though a growing number were attracted to socialist thought. The triumphs of the Chinese revolution were hailed with enthusiasm as portents of the approaching freedom of India and of the elimination of European aggression in Asia. We developed an interest in nationalist movements in the Dutch East Indies and Indo-China, as well as the western Asiatic countries and Egypt. The conversion of Singapore into a great naval base and the development of Trincomalee harbour in Ceylon appeared as parts of the general preparations for the coming war, in which Britain would try to consolidate and strengthen her imperialist position and crush Soviet Russia and the rising nationalist movements of the east.

It was with this background that the National Congress began to develop its foreign policy in 1927. It declared that India could be no party to an imperialist war, and in no event should India be made to join any war without the consent of her people being obtained. In the years that followed, this declaration was frequently repeated and widespread propaganda was carried on in accordance with it. It became one of the foundations of Congress policy and, it was generally accepted, of Indian policy. No individual or organization in India opposed it.

Meanwhile changes were taking place in Europe, and Hitler and nazism had risen. The Congress immediately reacted against these changes and denounced them, for Hitler and his creed seemed the very embodiment and intensification of the imperialism and racialism against which the Congress was struggling. Japanese aggression in Manchuria produced even stronger reactions because of sympathy for China. Abyssinia, Spain, the Sino-Japanese war, Czechoslovakia, and Munich, added to this strength of feeling and the tension of approaching war.

But this coming war was likely to be different from the one that had been envisaged before Hitler had arisen. Even so, British policy had been almost continuously pro-fascist and pro-nazi and it was difficult to believe that it would suddenly change overnight and champion freedom and democracy. Its dominant imperialist outlook and desire to hold on