|
Page < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 >
World
War I and Hindu Soldiers
Gandhi, the idealist, did not
realize that the subjection of India was one root of the War; that this had for
a century determined the British policy, and the size of the British navy, as
well as the size of all the navies in the world. Instead, Gandhi saw the War as
an opportunity for securing Home Rule by proving the absolute loyalty of India
to England. From the beginning to the end the Great Madness he supported the
Allies, and India followed him. She contributed at once $500,000,000 to the fund
for prosecuting the War; she contributed $7,000,000,000 later in subscriptions
to war loans; and she sent to the Allies various products to the value of $
1,250,000,000. The total number of Hindus who were persuaded, often by means
amounting to compulsion, to fight for England in the war, was 1,338,620, being
178,000 more than all the troops contributed by the combined Dominions of
Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
None of the Hindu soldiers were
granted a commission, however, brave he might have proved himself to be. Yet
they gave a good account of themselves in France, in Palestine, in Syria and
Mesopotamia; a British historian speaks of "the brilliant performances of
the Indian contingent sent to France in 1914 at a critical time in the Great
War"; and some say that it was the Hindu troops who first turned back the
Germans at the Marne. It has been one of the many misfortunes of the Hindus, who
are called unfit for self-defense, that they have been considered admirable
military material to fight for any others except themselves.
 Never had a colony or a
possession made so a great sacrifice for the master country. Every Hindu
conscious of India looked forward hopefully now, as a reward for this bloody
loyalty, to the admission of his country into the fellowship of free dominions
under the English flag. After the war, Lloyd George, then Premier, declared with
unstatesmanlike, clarity that Britain intended always to rule India, that there
must always, remain in India "a steel frame" of British power and
British dominance. This was the best traditions of imperialistic hypocrisy. The
Montagu-Chelmsform reform fell short of promises. Dr. Rutherford, a Member of
Parliament, wrote: "Never in the history of the world was such a hoax
perpetrated upon a great people as England perpetrated upon India, when in
return for India's invaluable service during the War, we gave to the Indian
nation such a discreditable, disgraceful, undemocratic, tyrannical constitution.
(source:
The
Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster,
New York. 1930 p. 123-128).
'British
military tested poison gas on Indian soldiers'
Are British War Criminals like Saddam Hussein?
British
military scientists sent hundreds of Indian soldiers into gas
chambers to test mustard gas during more than a decade of experiments
that began before World War II, a media report said. British military did not
check up on the Indian soldiers after the experiments to see if they developed
any illnesses. It is now recognised that mustard gas can cause cancer and other
diseases. The experiments began in the early 1930s and lasted more than 10 years
at a military site. The experiments in
Rawalpindi
were part of a much larger programme intended to test the effects of chemical
weapons on humans, the paper reported.
(source:
'British
military tested poison gas on Indian soldiers'
-
rediff.com
and
The
GuardiBut the turning point came on 3
September 1939. Within hours of Neville Chamberlain declaring war in Germany, Lord
Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, without consulting a single Indian, declared India
at war with Germany. Though in regional governments there had been a
very limited form of self-rule, the Indians felt that on the real issues they
were still going to be treated like children. While Indians - and West Indians
and Africans - in their millions fought for the Empire, they
began to realize they were fighting not, as advertised, for freedom but for
preserving their master's empire.
(source:
Tell
us the truth of the Empire - By Mihir
Bose
-
Guardian).
Refer to
Britain's
WWII Field Marshal Montgomery liked young boys -
shadow
warrior
Lord
Linlithgow and Nehru
In
his book, The Discovery of India,
Nehru
wrote on Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India during the Second
World War:
"Over
the top of the imperial structure sat the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, surrounded
by all the pomp and ceremony befitting his high position. Heavy of body and slow
of mind, solid as a rock, and with almost a rock's lack of awareness, possessing
the qualities and failings of an old-fashioned British aristocrat........But his
limitations were too many; his mind worked in the old groove and shrank back
from innovations; his vision was limited by the traditions of the ruling class
out of which he came...he disliked those who did not show a becoming
appreciation of the high mission of the British Empire and its chief
representative in India."
The
person who counted most was Winston Churchill.
His views on Indian freedom were clear and definite and had been frequently
repeated. He stood out as an uncompromising opponent of that freedom.
In
January, 1930, he said:
"Sooner
or later you will have to crush Gandhi
and the Indian Congress and all they
stand for." "The British nation has no intention whatever of
relinquishing control of Indian life and progress....We have no intention of
casting away that most truly bright and precious jewel
in the crown of the King, which, more than all our dominions and
dependencies, constitutes the glory and strength of the British
Empire." "....England, apart from her empire in India, ceases
for ever to exist as a great power." That was the crux of the question.
India was the empire, it was her possession and
exploitation that gave glory and strength to England and made her a
great power.
(source:
The
Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru p. 437-438).
The parting shot on the Indian
Subcontinent by the British Empire in 1947 was to break it up into two countries
-
India
and
Pakistan
. The division, which followed rivers of blood unleashed by the ruling British
to prevent the birth of a single nation, was carried out on the basis of
religious divisions.
Subhash
Chandra Bose (1897-1945) attempted to overthrow British rule by force.
A
Japanese leaflet issued on behalf of Bose's Indian National Army during the
Second World War.
"By
the end of the War the Indian army was 2.5 million strong and during the
conflict the Indian armed forces suffered over 30,000 men killed fighting for
the
British Empire
."
-
N B Bonarjee, author
of the book, Under Two Masters, p. 294.
(image source: British India: 1772-1947 - By Michael
Edwardes).
Page < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 >
|
