Mr.William Phillips, Personal Representative of President Roosevelt in India, to the President 44a
Dear Mr. President: Now that I shall soon be heading for Washington, in accordance with your instructions, I shall try to summarize briefly some generalizations with regard to the situation here as I see it. They do not make a happy picture and I am sorry that I cannot be the bearer of more encouraging views. But, nevertheless, I shall give them to you for whatever they may be worth.
India is suffering from paralysis, the people are discouraged and there is a feeling of growing hopelessness. The political leaders remain hostile to one another, although they maintain that if the British would open the door to negotiation they could manage to pull together on a provisional basis for the duration of the war and to prepare for post-war responsibilities. More and more they realize that constitution making is a serious business and will have to be tackled in a more hopeful atmosphere than the present. Meanwhile, there is very little thought given to the war among Indians. India is in a state of inertia, prostration, divided counsels and helplessness, with growing distrust and dislike for the British, and disappointment and disillusion with regard to Americans. Indians say that while they are in sympathy with the aims of the United Nations, they are not to be allowed to share the benefits of such aims, and they feel, therefore, that they have nothing to fight for. Churchill’s exclusion of India from the principles of the Atlantic Charter is always referred to in this connection.
The British are sitting “pretty”. They have been completely successful in their policy of “keeping the lid on” and in suppressing any movement among the Indians which might be interpreted as a move towards independence. British armies dominate the picture and the fact that large Indian forces have been moved out of the country is a further guarantee of the British power and purpose to dominate [Page 218] the scene, according to their own views. Twenty thousand Congress leaders remain in jail without trial and the influence, therefore, of the Congress Party is diminishing, while that of the Muslim League is growing.
At the same time, the prestige of British justice is on the decline, because of the refusal of the Government to allow the political prisoners to speak in their own defense, which is not the way, Indians believe, that British justice is administered in England.
The British position becomes clear. There is to be no change, no effort to open the door to negotiation among the leaders, no preparation for the future until after the war, and that date is so uncertain that I believe the Indians generally feel there will be no material changes in their favor even after the war. For it will always be easy to find, in this vast country, plenty of justification, if one is looking for excuses, to preserve the status quo now and in the years to come.
The British maintain that the present situation is wholly satisfactory for the conduct of the war, and that the country is comparatively quiet, thanks to their energetic measures. Indian indifference and even hostility, they say, will make no difference, for British forces are able to preserve law and order and crush any movement dangerous to the war effort. It is true that comparative quiet prevails throughout the country, but, in my opinion, it is a quiet pregnant with disturbing potentialities.
But it is hard to discover, either in Delhi or in other parts of India, any pronounced war spirit against Japan, even on the part of the British. Rather, it seems to me, the British feel that their responsibility lies on this side of the Burma-Assam frontier. Presumably they will join us in our efforts in Burma, and during the last month there have been British expeditions into Arakan, which, because of their feebleness, have been checked and routed by the Japanese. As I see it, unless the present atmosphere is changed for the better, we Americans will have to bear the burden of the coming campaign in this part of the world and cannot count on more than token assistance from the British in British India.
As time goes on, Indians are coming more and more to disbelieve in the American gospel of freedom of oppressed peoples. They have long ago lost any confidence in words and phrases, for they have had plenty of such reassuring and friendly comments emanating from high British sources and from agreeably framed speeches in Parliament. To them, America has more recently merely repeated the old British assurances without, however, indicating any willingness to go further, even at moments when the public expected some evidence of willingness to take action in support of the well-known American principles. Again looking at it as always from the Indian point of view, America has allowed such moments to slip by in silence, and [Page 219] this has convinced them the more that America stands solidly with the British in the past, present and future Indian policies of the British Government.
We here ask ourselves, day after day, “Will there be a new Viceroy next autumn, who will bring new hope to the people of India? Will he be a man of human sympathies, whom Indian leaders feel that they can approach, confident of his desire to help them solve their domestic problems?” If this is not to be, then there is no hope of improvement, and the picture will be dark indeed. My own presence here under such conditions might easily be misinterpreted and misunderstood, and would not help our own prestige in India.
In conclusion, may I add one more thought which is expressed without any official confirmation but which nevertheless is constantly in my mind. India and China and Burma have a common meeting ground in their desire for freedom from foreign domination. In spite of all we read in the press about the magnificence of the Chinese military effort, the leadership and forcefulness of the Generalissimo,44b the actual picture as viewed from here is distressing and disturbing. Chinese apathy and lack of leadership and, moreover, Chinese dislike of the British, meet a wholly responsive chord in India, where, as I have said, there is little evidence of war effort and much evidence of anti-British sentiment. Color consciousness is also appearing more and more and under present conditions is bound to develop. We have, therefore, a vast bloc of Oriental peoples who have many things in common, including a growing dislike and distrust of the Occidental.
I see only one remedy to this disturbing situation, and that is, to try with every means in our power to make Indians feel that America is with them and in a position to go beyond mere public assurances of friendship.
It was for this reason that I have laid so much stress on asking the Viceroy for permission to see Gandhi. If the record shows that I have never made a serious effort to obtain the views of the Congress Party from Gandhi, then indeed my future usefulness here is at an end. For it would be assumed that I have not been interested in the picture as a whole and have been satisfied to give my Government a one-sided and incomplete report of the situation. My stock would fall very low indeed, unless it were known that I had, at least, made the effort. I shall, therefore, make my request of the Viceroy when I see him at the end of this week.
May I add that I fully appreciate the position of our Government, in its relation to the British Government and the difficulties involved in carrying out, during the war, such ideas as I have indicated. But I have felt that you would wish me to express my views of the situation, as seen from here.
[Page 220]I need not assure you, Mr. President, that I am eagerly looking forward to my return to Washington, and to my talks with you and the State Department.
Sincerely yours,