To mark the end of 75 years since World War II, the National Army Museum held a virtual event “India at War” with the author of the book ‘The Raj at War’ by Yasmin Khan to discuss the war that was a global catastrophe. Yasmine is a writer and an associate professor of History at the University of Oxford. The session was moderated by Shrabani Basu, Sunday Times bestselling author, journalist. Books include Spy Princess, Victoria & Abdul (made into a major film) and For King and Another Country.
Unlike the first World War, the war came to India’s doorstep during World War II.
The city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) took the brunt as American ground infantry and Japanese planes took over.
Yasmin described that there were big industrial projects going on and new aerodromes and factories were being built. Everyone was gearing up the economy for war effort as a passionate and complex national movement was simultaneously going on. Shrabani added that there was political turmoil in 1942 while Gandhi’s Quit India Movement was fueling up. Congress leaders were in jail. Indian troops were fighting the war for the British army. There was a huge dilemma. Yasmine and Shrabani also threw light on how in those days, wars years weren’t really a part of national history because “so many of these leaders were frustratingly behind walls”.
The Bengal Famine had hit meanwhile and all these kinds of other events were happening, hence a new world emerged in 1944-1945.
Her book reminds us that “Britain did not fight the second world war, the British empire did.” In Patrick French’s review of Yasmin’s book ‘ The Raj at War’, he wrote, “Large claims and top-down history are, though, not the purpose of The Raj at War. Its strength lies in the detail.”
Very little is written about Aruna Asaf Ali in the national archives who was an Indian educator, political activist, and publisher. Aa an active participant in the Indian independence movement, she is widely remembered for hoisting the Indian National flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan, Bombay during a Quit India Movement in 1942.
Yasmin explained how Ali went underground, and it was evident that women in the war remained neglected, despite ground level contribution in India in all fields.
“Women like Aruna Asaf Ali aren’t really known about in India. There is no great biographical tradition of women being written about. They were a part of
Quit India Movement and Indian National Army. Women had an auxiliary call in India. They were brought into working environment and public spaces to take
part in poetical acidities, as stenographers or secretaries,” Khan said.
By the 1940s, the younger generation of women was drawn into public life. Khan explained that there are some most extraordinary photographs of women in uniform,
nursing general hospitals, nursing soldiers as a “kind of hidden history there”. Shrabani said, “We don’t necessarily think of asian women being involved in the war, or the extent of Indians who were involved in building fields and roads
migrant labour.”
Yasmine told that many women were working back then as labourers in picking tea in plantations in the North East. One of the reasons of drawing labour into the war effort was to build a big road which was intended to connect China, Burma and India
The labourers worked around giant mountains, difficult jungle terrain and all the work was basically done by manual Asian labour, thousands of labourers including women.
The ladies also discussed how by the end of the 1940s most people were in public life, who might not have been otherwise. There were a lot of women who did social work in helping refugees and children. There were women who were coming out of purdah. There was a big labour shortage and women sort of pushed out of factory work which they had been doing to support and push out. Women are said to have gone underground and dug gold in the 1940s too.
“Prostiution was highest in the war all over the world in Calcutta,” said Yasmin.
Yasmin said that one can find it hard to talk about prositiution in the 18th century but in recent living history it is very different in war time. “It had an impact on manpower and fighting ability of the army which is most evident in military record, very well assessed in medical wings of the army as a problem and issue. Calcutta in particular with so many international troops became magnets for prostitutes,” she said.
There were also mental health issues during the war. Yasmin said,”It is a really complicated picture and people in service were very demoralised. Some of them in ICS (Indian Civil Services) knew they were in the wrong place, lost in South Asia where they wanted to fight in Europe. It was a very strange time for the ruling cadre and it contributed to the consensus that it was time to leave.
By 1946 it was evident that the army wasn’t rock solid or reliable. British in India were finding it really difficult to fight it with Japanese around. Calcutta took the brunt of this. “The Bengal Famine is the kind of tragedy of the 1940s and actually more than twice the number who died in partition during the famine. It was shocking and also strange. It was obvious that a war has these terribly unintended consequences,” Khan said.
She also added that there was no rationing in India, no real protection for peasants and protection. It was a red line while the British ate bacon and butter.
Basu and Khan also spoke about the prisoners of war which are said to be around 80,000. It was incredible how people came back after three to four years of war.
But, how could the cause of freedom be with the simultaneous advances of Britannia? Yasmin explained that there was a real change among British officers and soldiers too. They worked hand inland with Indians. There was a global shift and America was becoming bolder day by day. “I think there is a contradiction because at the same time Britain was in power, it is an imperial colony. There’s no inevitability to it. They saw this as a way of enabling independence,” Khan added.
“Indian politics in 1946 was really fractured. There was this whole conversation of the role of Muslim League, religious contradictions and cosntitution. All religions worked together,” she said,
The wartime hospital has a massive record of 86,000 casualties. Many of them were admitted due not through combat but through disease. The salary for 18 Rs for an average soldier with three meals a day. Earlier it was Rs 11, a pair of uniform and shoes and food.
But the memory of war in India and Pakistan was not necessarily the same as that of the UK. Today, people realise that the diaries of their parents and letters from those days are worth putting in the museum. “Lots of them have never been seen or found,” said Yasmin.
