And yet, the same
Army is on its knees in front of the Babus ? ? ? . Please read on :--
When BP Chakravarti was acting as Governor of
West Bengal, Lord Attlee visited India and stayed as his guest for three days
at the Raj Bhavan. Chakravarti asked Attlee about the real grounds for granting
Independence to India . Specifically, his question was, when the Quit India
movement lay in ruins years before 1947, what was the need for the British to
leave in such a hurry. Attlee’s response is most illuminating and important for
history. Here is the Governor’s account of what Attlee told him:
“In reply, Attlee cited several reasons, the
most important were the activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which
weakened the very foundation of the attachment of the Indian land and naval
forces to the British Government. Towards the end, I asked Lord Attlee
about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by
Gandhi’s activities. On hearing this question Attlee’s lips widened in a smile
of disdain and he uttered, slowly, putting emphasis on each single letter mi-ni-mal.”
This ‘unimpeachable’ truth will come as a
shock to most Indians brought up to believe that the Congress movement driven
by the ’spiritual force’ of Mahatma Gandhi forced the British to leave India.
But both the evidence and the logic of
history are against this beautiful but childish fantasy; it was the fear of mutiny by the Indian armed
forces - and not any ‘spiritual force’- that forced the issue of freedom. The
British saw that the sooner they left India the better for themselves, for, at
the end of the war, India had some three million men under arms. Majumdar had reached the same
conclusion years earlier, as far back as 1948 as he records. The most dramatic event after the end of
World War II was the INA Trials at the Red Fort — not any movement by Gandhi or
Nehru. This led directly to the mutiny of the naval ratings, which, more than
anything, helped the British make up their minds to leave India in a hurry. They sensed that it was only a matter
of time before the spirit spread to other sections of the armed forces and the
rest of the Government. None of this would have happened without Subhas Bose
and the INA.
The crucial point to note is that thanks to
Subhas Bose’s activities and the INA, the Armed Forces began to see themselves
as defenders of India rather than upholders of the British Empire. This, more
than anything else, was what led to India’s freedom. This is also the reason
why the British Empire disappeared from the face of the earth within an
astonishingly short space of twenty years. Indian soldiers, who were the main
prop of the Empire, were no longer willing to fight to hold the Empire
together.
Why and How India Became Independent?
by the courtesy of
ATTLEE`S COMMENTS ARE THE TRUE CONCLUSIONS OF THE BRITISH VIEW OF THEIR COLONIES AT THE END OF THE WAR. OF COURSE,MANY IN INDIA AND CONGRESS IN PARTICULAR WOULD LIKE TO ASCRIBE IT TO GANDHI`S IDEOLOGY OF SATYAGRAHA HAVING BROUGHT US FREEDOM.
ReplyDelete