The Shiver of 1942

Studies in History

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 81-102

  Kamtekar, Indivar ^a  

^a JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY   (India)

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EID: 61049359634     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764300201800104     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. For example, the Transfer of Power series of documents has two volumes on 1942: the first titled The Cripps Mission, and the second Quit India. Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief), Constitutional Relations Between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power, 1942–47 (henceforth TOP), 12 Vols, London, 1970–83.
2. In the United Provinces 104 railway stations and 250 other government buildings were destroyed or severely damaged and over 400 cases of the destruction of telegraph and telephone communications were reported. Government of the United Provinces, The Congress Rebellion in the United Provinces, 1942, p. 11. R/3/1/359. Archival reference numbers in this article are, unless otherwise stated, to items in the India Office Library and Records, London.
3. United Provinces Police Administration Report, 1942, resolution dated 15 September 1943, p. 1. V/24/3177. Similarly, the report on the administration of the police in the province of Bihar for the year 1942 refers to the ‘influx of refugees and the general unsettlement of the people due to the threat to India from Japan’. V/24/3271, p. 1.
4. ‘The Indian population in Burma according to the 1931 Census was 1,017,825, of whom 630,000 were born outside Burma. This formed 6.9 per cent of the total population….’ These Indians were deeply resented by the local population. Ma Mya Sein, Burma, London, 1943, pp. 24–25.
5. ‘Rangoon is certainly a predominantly Indian town, and the Indian population (as much as 53 per cent of the total) here falls into three main categories, each of them unfortunately competing with Burmese labour: the unskilled port workers and stevedores, the semi-educated shop assistants and clerical employees, and the astute and prospering business man whose hold on the poorer Burmese, both in town and country, is too often a stranglehold.’ N. Gangulee, Indians in the Empire Overseas, London, 1947, p. 138.
6. The number of Indians in Rangoon, about 280,000 in 1941, was drastically reduced by the events of the 1940s, so much so that by 1952 it was less than half the number recorded in 1941. Tin Maung Maung Than, ‘Some aspects of Indians in Rangoon’, in K.S. Sandhu and A. Mani, eds, Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore, 1993, pp. 586, 591.
7. The exact figures are 2,038,000 money orders and 725 lakhs of rupees. The largest amount received, 361.04 lakhs of rupees, was from Burma; next came Malaya with 197.53 lakhs. Report on the Work of the Posts and Telegraphs Department, 1940–41, p. 4. V/24/3381.
8. R.H. Niblett, The Congress Rebellion in Azamgarh, August–September 1942, Allahabad, 1957, p. 2.
9. United Provinces Land Revenue Administration Report for the year ending 30 September 1942, p. 3. V/24/2445.
10. For details, see H. Tinker's superb article, ‘A forgotten Long March: The Indian exodus from Burma, 1942’, Journal of South-East Asian Studies, Vol. 6, 1975, pp. 1–15.
11. It was estimated that nearly 405,000 refugees passed through Calcutta, of whom 335,000 arrived by rail and 70,000 by steamer. The first shipload of 2,000 people arrived on 19 January 1942, after which ships laden with refugees landed almost daily. Marwari Relief Society, Burma Evacuees Relief Works Report, Calcutta, 1943. This pamphlet is available at the National Library, Calcutta.
12. Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, New York, 1982, p. 88.
13. United Provinces Police Administration Report, 1942, p. 3. V/24/3177.
14. Frank Moraes, Witness to an Era: India 1920 to the Present Day, London, 1973, pp. 102–3.
15. Memoirs of J.W. Orr, a district officer in Bihar. MSS.Eur.F.180/22, p. 20. In Ranchi, in the words of General Slim, who was appalled by what he saw, ‘The hospital provision was inadequate. Inadequate in amount, in accommodation, staff, equipment, and in the barest amenities…. Schools and other large buildings were requisitioned, the medical staffs arriving barely ahead of, sometimes indeed after, a swarm of patients.’ William Slim, Defeat into Victory, Dehra Dun, 1981, p. 129.
16. LAVS//37. 4 April 1942, p. 1.
17. Verrier Elwin, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography, Delhi, 1988, p. 171.
18. Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 131.
19. Cited in Partha Sarathi Gupta, ed., Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1943–1944, Part 3, Delhi, 1997, p. 2610.
20. LAVS//433. 13 February 1942.
21. Memoirs of A.H. Kemp. MSS.Eur.F. 180/18.
22. Did the rumours resemble any echoes from the past? In 1670 the Marathas under Shivaji looted the port of Surat. Commenting on the period, Jadunath Sarkar wrote: ‘For several years after Shivaji's withdrawal from it, the town used to throb with panic every now and then, whenever any Maratha force came within a few days' march of it, or even at false alarms of their coming’. Jadunath Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzib, 1618–1707, second edition, Calcutta, 1954, p. 210.
23. ‘One area reported public consternation’ due to the activities of this extraordinary parachutist. Monthly military intelligence summary dated 4 May 1942, p. 1. LAVS/1/317.
24. Major R.P. Varma, ‘Civil defence in India’, Journal of the United Services Institution, July–September 1955, pp. 232–33.
25. Renuka Ray, My Reminiscences, Delhi, 1982, pp. 104–5.
26. The concerns of the rich added to the worries of the poor. One of the submerged stories, which can only be guessed at, is of the beggars of Calcutta. ‘Calcutta, under the threat of Japanese raids, attempted to remove its beggars outside the city limits and take charge of them. The attempt was admittedly a failure.’ S. Natarajan, Social Problems, third edition, Bombay, 1944, p. 27.
27. Jadunath Sarkar to G.S. Sardesai, 28 December 1941, in H.R. Gupta, ed., Life and Letters of Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Hoshiarpur, 1957, pp. 229–30.
28. Arun Joshi, Lala Shri Ram, Delhi, 1975, p. 348.
29. Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 136.
30. Interview with Ananda Shankar Roy, Calcutta, 3 January 1999.
31. Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey, Calcutta, 2001, pp. 61, 69. Though data are unavailable, one may suspect, amid the prayers to the goddess Kali, a spurt in the sales of that soothing homeopathic remedy, Kalium Phosphoricum.
32. They were brought back to Madras in 1943, when the Japanese threat to the city had receded. Ranganathan Yogeshwar, S.R. Ranganathan: Pragmatic Philosopher of Information Science, Bombay, 2001, p. 66.
33. M.A. Sreenivasan, Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me, Delhi, 1991, p. 164.
34. R.K. Narayan, My Days: An Autobiography, Delhi, 1986, pp. 156–57.
35. Raj Chatterjee, ‘The boys came later’, The Times of India, 18 October 1997.
36. In Britain, where there were official evacuation schemes, the whole process was, despite its limitations, much more under the control of the state than in India. See Arthur Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace and Social Change 1900–1967, London, 1968, pp. 264–65.
37. Interview with Balbir Singh Grewal, Delhi, 20 October 1996.
38. Mohan Nadkarni, Bhimsen Joshi: A Biography, Delhi, 1994, p. 85.
39. Government of India, Proposals for the Post-War Development of the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department, Simla, December 1945, p. 8.
40. Also see the Report on the Work of the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department for the Year 1945–46, p. 47.
41. ‘News from India’. A cyclostyled sheet dated 6 November 1944. L/F/7/1166.
42. A history of the police in Bihar notes that ‘In Bihar a number of persons were purchasing land and buildings as a precaution against devaluation of the currency and withdrawals from the banks during the first three weeks of February 1942 were nearly double of those in the corresponding weeks in the preceding years.’ Sudhir Kumar Jha, Raj to Swaraj: Changing Contours of Police, Delhi, 1995, p. 376.
43. S.K. Chettur, The Steel Frame and I, Bombay, 1962, p. 89.
44. Philip Mason, A Shaft of Sunlight: Memories of a Varied Life, London, 1978, p. 166.
45. Khub Chand, ‘Administration: Backbone of a nation’, in Raj K. Nigam, ed., Memoirs of Old Mandarins of India, Delhi, 1985, p. 143.
46. Slim, Defeat into Victory, pp. 132–34, 151.
47. Trilok Nath, Forty Years of Indian Police, Delhi, 1981, p. 56.
48. Never a man to mince words, he went on to say that ‘this gave rise to the most abject and cowardly panic’. He was unusual in not being frightened, as ‘those who could run away did so; those who could not, hoarded’. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch! India 1921–1952, Delhi, 1987, pp. 592–93.
49. Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 136.
50. A.D. Gorwala, The Role of the Administrator: Past, Present and Future, Poona, 1952, p. 8.
51. Written in 1936, this is reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1, London, 1968, pp. 235–42.
52. Home Department War History, pp. 33–34. L/R/5/289.
53. Nath, Forty Years of Indian Police, p. 54.
54. Frank Anthony, Britain's Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo-Indian Community, Delhi, 1969, p. 146
55. Sreenivasan, Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me, p. 164.
56. O. Pulla Reddi, Autumn Leaves, Bombay, 1978, pp. 55–56. Born in 1902, Pulla Reddi was an ICS officer who later became the first Indian Home Secretary of the Madras Government, and eventually the Defence Secretary of the Government of India.
57. C.D. Deshmukh, The Course of My Life, Delhi, 1974, p. 113.
58. In 1943, 911 were killed and 1,382 wounded. The total number of Indian civilians killed in air-raids during the war was 1,429 and the number wounded was 2,089. Government of India, Statistics Relating to India's War Effort, Delhi, 1947, p. 6. About three million deaths did occur, but these were due to famine, not bombing.
59. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Indian Science Congress, Calcutta, 1943, p. 18.
60. A useful collection of essays on the Quit India movement is Gyanendra Pandey, ed., The Indian Nation in 1942. Calcutta, 1988.
61. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, Bombay, 1961, p. 504.
62. Rajendra Prasad, Autobiography, Delhi, 1994, p. 531. The first edition of this book was published in Bombay in 1957.
63. Hallett to Linlithgow, 31 May 1942. TOP, Vol. 2: 113.
64. Harijan, 26 April and 3 May 1942.
65. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 76, pp. 49, 67, 28.
66. Government of the United Provinces, The Congress Rebellion in the United Provinces, 1942, p. 12. R/3/1/359.
67. Mason, A Shaft of Sunlight, p. 166.
68. The Governor of Madras felt that refugees from Burma may have been taking a prominent part in the disturbances. TOP, Vol. 2: 607.
69. This is more convincing than an economic explanation for the Quit India movement. We may note in passing that many problems are sought to be solved by Poverty, the historian's deus ex machina. In this view, the misery of the First World War precipitates the non-co-operation movement; the misery of the Great Depression is responsible for the Civil Disobedience movement; and the misery of the Second World War permits Quit India. In the case of Quit India there are only perfunctory genuflexions, as a general increase of poverty is difficult to prove. Yet the official historian of Indian nationalism does mumble (although mechanically): ‘The rise in prices added to the miseries of the half-starved masses.’ Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. 4, Delhi, 1972, p. 367.
70. Francis Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India, Princeton, 1967.
71. Gautam Bhadra, ‘Four rebels of eighteen-fifty-seven’, in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies, Vol. 4, Delhi, 1985, esp. pp. 238, 252, 260, 267.
72. Shahid Amin, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur district, eastern UP, 1921–22’, in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies, Vol. 3, Delhi, 1984, esp. pp. 6, 22–23, 26, 49, 52–53.
73. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, Delhi, 1983, p. 154.
74. David Hardiman, ‘Power in the forest: The Dangs, 1820–1940’, in David Arnold and David Hardiman, eds, Subaltern Studies, Vol. 8, Delhi, 1994, p. 140.
75. David Gilmartin. Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan, Delhi, 1989, p. 124.
76. In Sumit Sarkar's textbook, what I have here called ‘The Shiver of 1942’ is dealt with as one of the ‘Roots of Rebellion’: the events described in this article are swallowed and digested as a part of the ‘Quit India’ menu or rubric. Modern India, pp. 388–93. The contrast highlighted in this paragraph—between a heroic fight for freedom and a fearful flight to safety—is thereby clouded.
77. The Governor of the United Provinces later confessed sheepishly: ‘I anticipated a somewhat fatuous attempt at the forms of civil disobedience which have taken place during previous years’. Hallett to Linlithgow, 18 August 1942. Fortnightly reports, L/PJ/5/271. Later he wrote to the Viceroy: ‘I admit that I only apprehended comparatively childish demonstrations, with which the movement indeed started.’ Hallett to Linlithgow, 9 September 1942. Hallett Papers. MSS.Eur.E.251/38. See also TOP, Vol. 2: 304, Linlithgow to Amery, 22 July 1942.
78. In 1942, the grand aim of Reginald Maxwell, of the state's home department, was ‘not merely to reduce the Congress to a condition in which they will be prepared to make terms but to crush the Congress finally as a political organization’. G. Rizvi, ‘The Congress revolt of 1942: A historical revision’, Indo-British Review, Vol. 11: 1, December 1984, pp. 39–10. In the light of the misjudgements of better-known people, Maxwell's mistake seems less spectacular.
79. ‘Work as a Magistrate had to be almost completely abandoned in favour of new burdens’, recalled one officer, who found that ‘touring had to be cut down to a series of lightning forays, often to track down and requisition stocks of hoarded rice’. Memoirs of R. S. Swann. MSS.Eur.F. 180/25, p. 4.
80. Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789, translated from the French by Joan White, London, 1973.
81. The most extraordinary chapter is ‘The Currents of the Great Fear’, pp. 169–97.