Stories of Indians during WWII are few, unlike when compared to WWI or Partition. Yasmin Khan fills the chasm in her monumental archive, says ANANYA BORGOHAIN
It is a little surprising that while we have innumerable accounts of the First World War and frequent literary investigations of the Partition, similar vigour in scrutinising India’s participation in World War II has long been betrayed. Award-winning historian Yasmin Khan, who is also an author and Associate Professor of History at Oxford University, does the needful in her grand archival project, The Raj at War. In this monumental work, Khan traverses through assorted facets of colonial India and strings together the pressing concerns that determined India’s role in WWII. Khan’s methodical precision merged with ample compassion towards her subject makes this book for not only an enlightening commentary highlighting hitherto unknown facts, but also urges the readers to indulge in a furthered discourse on the same. What makes it more compelling and complete, so to say, is that this detailed study encompasses the stories of the common Indian people at the time of the war.
She recounts the perspectives of farmers, mothers, cooks at army boats, love letters from soldiers, accounts from the brothel houses, and much more, and thus devises ‘a people’s history’, as the subtitle underlines. Soldiers from North India had always been recruited to British royalty during the colonial era, but in the beginning of the 1940s, British officers came all the way to Punjab, Rajasthan, and the southernmost parts of the country to engage Indian troops in graver concerns. In fact, many of them were also employed to fight Germany, Italy and their allies in the Middle East and Africa, and also to fight the Japanese in the Far East.
And then there were also the Gurungs, Rais, limbus, all collectively called the Gurkhas, who played a distinctive role in Asia’s military history. But what makes the accounts of the war also fascinating is that this book projects the Indian soldiers as willing participants at many points, amidst being forced to fight for an empire that was oppressing their country. like Khan suggests, reasons for joining the war were diverse and depended on individual circumstances. If some joined out of poverty, some saw it as a venerable family occupation. If many were unwilling partakers, many others saw in it their moment of patriotic glory. But within this structure, Khan writes that the greatest resistance came from the mothers who hid their sons and left no stone unturned in protecting them. A large number of mothers grieve how their sons were simply grabbed by officers and that was the last they saw of them; many newly married brides never got to know their husbands as well.
There is also a strong examination of the War Fund, which was more of an imposition than obligation and took a toll on the poor lot. Contribution to the War Fund became a compulsion every time one needed the smallest of favours from the officials. This made things worse for the poor peasants who were already victimised by inflation and price hikes in clothes and wheat. Royalty in India, too, chose to be blind to their woes in return of the promise of protection from the British, should there be instances of rebellions from the subjects. Khan writes that the British failed to understand that Indians resisted recruitment and War Fund because of their financial and political subjugation, and instead blamed it on Indians being “too backward, irrational, underdeveloped, uneducated, superstitious or unable to see the international picture”.
Although there is also the mention of British officers who shared the sentiments of the resisting Indians’ nationalist aspirations as well; a British sergeant of the Sudan Ordnance Corps wrote home from the Middle East, “I have met scores of the Indian troops in Cairo and have had drinks with many of them and would do so again. If India was composed chiefly of these kind of blokes I would say they deserve Home Rule and be glad to see them get it.” Nonetheless, differential treatment between the Indian and British troops and racism were widely prevalent. In fact, it is only in the middle of the war that Indian officers were allowed to sit on the court martials of the British officers. Needless to say, pay and other conditions varied as well.
There are also fascinating depictions of the social world of the soldiers: “Men in uniform filled local cinemas like the Regal and the Eros playing The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca and Gone With The Wind... As everyone waited for the next chess move in the war, men took every chance they could to go sightseeing, to visit shops and markets, cinemas, dances and bars… Chinese restaurants gained popularity… dances and parties promised ‘girls galore’ and ‘louis Jazz Band’ played in Delhi ‘in good old Yankee “Jumpin’ Jive” style’… The Grand Hotel in Calcutta was a place where you could ‘Forget the War!’ with Teddy Weatherford at the piano in the American Cocktail bar, Chinese jugglers, raffles, quizzes and ‘hand-picked dance hostesses’. Markers of modern living were further reinforced by “Hollywood and Bollywood competing for Indian audiences since the 1930s. Now posters and magazine showed curvy ladies with puckered lips”. Cinema was thus used as an instrument of power to mobilise mass support.
But of everything else, soldiers missed their women. It was a time of ruptured associations, and everyone longed for a sense of belonging, and the sentiment prevailed all over the world. As lara Feigl had pointed out in The love Charm of Bombs, this was a peculiarly exciting time when london too had become “a setting for intense love affairs and surreal beauty”.
The Raj at War has a delightful and thoughtful cover that makes it look like a persuasive reading, credited to Haitenlo Semy and Neeraj Nath, with two women volunteers of an ambulance service with a vague smile on their faces. The book has a charming gallery of photos from the time, more strikingly, of women from the time. There are photos of Parsi women’s precaution training, women protesting during the Quit India Movement, of a female aircraft plotter, construction workers, anglo-Indian policewomen, and so on. There is also a photo of Aruna Asaf Ali, leader of the underground movement during the Quit India campaign and later a political leader of independent India, whom Khan mentions in detail. At the same time, it would also have been rather captivating if accounts could be incorporated of living people who have actually endured that piece of history.
This book, one hopes, will be duly acknowledged and consumed by students for its colossal archiving and engaging way of writing. The kind of research, sensitivity and labour that has been put in it gives a channel to the unheard voices and stories to be heard, which they justifiably deserve.
The Raj at War written by Yasmin Khan and published by Penguin Random House, Rs699