Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayl of India

by Walter Reid

An in-depth look at what truly happened when the Great Britain gave India its independence, from the author of Five Days from Defeat.

When India became independent in 1947, the general view, which has prevailed until now, is that Britain had been steadily working for an amicable transfer of power for decades. In this book, Walter Reid argues that nothing could be further from the truth. With reference to a vast amount of documentary material, from private letters to public records and state papers, Reid shows how Britain held back political progress in India for as long as possible--a policy which led to unimaginable chaos and suffering when independence was granted, and which created a legacy of hatred and distrust that continues to this day.

Praise for Keeping the Jewel in the Crown

"A fascinating, robust and provocative version of the sunset of the Raj." --Lawrence James, author of The Making and Unmaking of British India

"A thorough and hard-hitting account . . . presented with clarity and sobriety." --BBC History Magazine (UK)

"An excellent and original work . . . A meticulously researched, pioneering study that will appeal to many in both countries." --The Open (India)

"It is a rare book that will alter the way you look at one of history's pivotal events and one of its greatest tragedies, but this is one of them." --Matt Rubin, Washington Times

Genres: History, India, Asia, Nonfiction, Pakistan, British Literature

425 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 19, 2016

Reviews

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In recent years, many authors have re-examined European colonialism in India, bursting much accepted wisdom and many myths on the subject. Roy Moxham, Shashi Tharoor and Yasmin Khan have made contributions on colonial plunder, exploitation, partition and the role of Indian soldiers in both the world wars. This book by Walter Reid examines the final thirty years of British rule in India, between 1917 and 1947. It explodes yet another myth - that Britain had worked steadily for many decades towards an amicable transfer of power to Indians. Reid’s conclusion is that the available historical documents point exactly in the other direction, that the British Raj acted with deceit, double speak and bad faith on this question. They did everything in their powers to block political progress as long as they could by fostering and exploiting the religious and communal divisions. They carried on with the assumption that any form of limited self-rule would be generations away or never. Hence, when events overtook their policy after World War II, massive chaos and unimaginable suffering ensued. India became independent but Indians were left with a legacy of lingering distrust of the West in general, Britain in particular, that persists even today.

The book recaps what happened in the thirty years prior to independence. We start in 1919, just after the end of WWI. More than a million Indians had fought on the side of the Empire. Some 54000 died and India had contributed £1m (£54 m today) cash as well. Naturally, the expectations were high among Indian nationalists towards independence or at least dominion status after this. But Her Majesty’s Govt (HMG) offered only ‘gradual limited self-government’ under the British yoke. Protests broke out and HMG retaliated with the Rowlatt Act. The Act allowed for political cases to be tried without juries and internment of suspects without trial. It was followed by the horrendous Amritsar massacre, which killed at least 379 people in cold blood. It became open knowledge to everyone now that British rule ultimately depended on nothing but force. Still, the view persisted in London that the Oriental temperament and history disqualified Indians from self-government. In the late 1920s, the Simon Commission was appointed by the British Conservative government to report on the working of the Indian constitution established by the Government of India Act of 1919. The Indian National Congress (INC) boycotted it because it had no Indian representation. The Irwin declaration followed in 1929 promising progress towards dominion status through round table conferences. However, the fine print was that the dominion status wouldn’t be available for a very long time. This was followed by the India Bill which became the 1935 Government of India Act. Suffice to quote author Reid’s conclusion that it is incontrovertible that this Act was meant to preserve British India for at least another generation - perhaps even permanently. It envisaged an all-India Federation of which the princely states would be a part. The princes, Hindus and Muslims were balanced in an equipoise that their relative numbers did not justify. It formalized a divide-and-rule that was meant to exclude the Congress party from effective powers. The 1936 elections gave the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) only 105 seats out of 489 Muslim seats. The IUML did not control a single government in any of the Muslim majority provinces. Still, the British decided that the IUML should be strengthened so as to be on an equal footing with the INC. With the onset of WWII, the entire Congress working committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, were imprisoned for years through the war, while the Muslim League leaders were left free outside to advance their separatist agenda. The Bengal famine in 1943, with its 3 million dead, pushed matters to a point of no return. When the war ended, Britain had become considerably weaker and indebted. With Indians returning from the war effort, matters simply got out of hand for the British authorities to exercise any form of control. The result was independence for India as fait accompli, amidst massive chaos and dislocation.

The conclusion that Britain acted in bad faith is nothing new to Indian historians. As Reid himself admits, words were spoken with the knowledge that Indians would understand them in one way whereas the British would interpret them differently. In addition, it was the time of social Darwinism. Even serious thinkers of economic, political and anthropological theories advanced arguments which justified opposition to Indian independence on grounds of white supremacy. From the Indian point of view, the biggest betrayal and bad faith of Britain was that they successfully made the IUML the representative of Indian Muslims when Indian muslims had voted decisively in favor of Congress even in Muslim seats and provinces as late as 1936. Britain encouraged the IUML to have Hindu-Muslim parity in the Viceroy’s council when the population ratio was clearly in favor of Hindus. Congress’s right to nominate a Muslim within its share of the Viceroy’s Council was also denied. Funnily, author Reid writes about all this as if it is fair and part of the democratic dispensation of Whitehall. In chapter 4, he writes that ‘eventually the Congress was overwhelmingly Hindu and partisan’, which is another example of his prejudiced views. It looks as though that Reid buys into the tired old cliche of ‘since IUML was a party promoting only Muslim interests, its counterpart - the Congress party - must be one for only the Hindus’. As a historian, he must certainly know that the Congress party was a broad based party which had presidents who were Englishmen, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians and Hindus.

One of the interesting sidelights in the book is the British view of Mahatma Gandhi during those years. Reid says that the British never understood Gandhi and that he made them uncomfortable. In fact, a reading of this book made me feel that even Reid does not have a feel for Gandhi or his weapons of Satyagraha, civil disobedience and nonviolence. The British thought that Gandhi was a hypocrite masquerading as a saint, a Bolshevik, a consummate politician, a religious fanatic (!) and a man with a mental outlook that was quite alien to that which prevails on Earth!. The British PMs and viceroys were constantly consumed by the trivialities that Gandhi had no clothing below the knees and nothing above the waist and that he was a ‘little man who ate little’. The Indians found this pre-occupation amusing even in the 1900s as we still do. Apart from Gandhi, even the Hindu religion seems to have raised their hackles. The British were comfortable with Islam because of the common Abrahamic roots with Christianity and its monotheism. The image of Muslims as a martial race also appealed to a conquering race. On the contrary, Hinduism with its elephant and monkey gods, reeked of paganism and savagery. Its subtleties and ritual casteist purification only made them feel that Hindus are arrogant. Since they associated the Congress party with Hindus, all their hostility towards Hindus were turned against the Congress party as well.

The book makes an interesting contribution in explaining what happened on the British side of the story during the period 1917-1947. All along, we in India, have always known this period only from the viewpoints of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the colonial administration in India. We did not know what happened in London, between the British politicians of the Labor and Tory parties and also their interactions with the Viceroys of India and the Indian Civil Service, which was predominantly manned by Englishmen. One thing that emerges is that there were many opinions in London on granting or not granting self-government or independence to India. There was no consensus on how HMG should proceed either. The Viceroys in India and their superiors in London differed widely on this question as well. Unfortunately, the Congress party did not know much about this discord in order to exploit the diversity of opinions, thereby advancing the cause of independence. In India, we constantly harp on how Britain exploited the religious differences in India through the ‘divide and rule’ policy to delay independence. Author Reid shows that Britain was no monolith either. There were sections of British public opinion, sections of the Labor party and even some Tories who favored devolution of power more favorably to India. The US President, Franklin Roosevelt, strongly favored full Indian independence. Unfortunately, the INC and IUML seem to have been consumed by their own differences so much that they were not even aware of the possibilities of exploiting the conflicting positions on the British side.

Students of recent Indian history would find the book a revealing account of what happened on the British side during the final years of colonial rule in India. Well written and absorbing.

[Ali Hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Indian subcontinent had been subjected to be conquered and plundered by the outsiders for centuries. The last of those tragic episodes of looting and humiliating the Indians was most troubling and devastating not only during its brutish rule but even after its departure because it left behind a legacy of hatred, resentment, looting, feudality and repression. That episode was of the British rule in India.

The most staggering fact given by Walter Reid in this book is not how the British came to India and stole its treasury, which is undoubtedly an interesting story, but it is about how they left India. The writer sketches the political picture of the last thirty years of British India and tries to elaborate his point: how the British betrayed Indian, in a chronicle manner from 1917 to 1947.

Today, being a Pakistani, when I look at the institutional and political structure of the country, it looks me the same as it was under the British, with some exceptions. Suppressing voices of the people by using security forces, making ruses, dividing people for personal interests and destroying valuables of poor masses or looting them are a few examples of that horrible mindset the Pakistani premier/ruling class inherited from their predecessors.

However, this book is only up to 1947 and doesn't contain the events that happened after the British bade farewell. It is interesting reading for the people who want to know the political policies of the British in India. It also describes how the political parties - Congress and Muslim League - and some stalwart politicians like Gandhi, Jinnah, and the two Nehrus reacted over the British policies and how they contributed to the freedom of India from the British dominance and then its partition into two separate countries, India and Pakistan.

To me, the most interesting question which is answered in this book is why the British, despite having a plan for their departure from India even before thirty years of the date they actually left, had failed in transferring powers to the two newly separated countries and why they left issues unresolved e.g., the distribution of assets and annexation of the princely states like Kashmir, which have become bone of contention between the two countries since then. And Who was responsible for the mass displacement and massacres at the time of the partition?

[Supriyo Chaudhuri · Rating 2 out of 5]

The wise men never bind themselves to fixed dates. That was the insight of FE Smith, Earl of Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India. That insight was forgotten in the story that this book tells - of the final years of British Rule in India - and it's still the story of Brexit Britain.

I gave it two stars for two reasons. First, this is pretend history, a polemical apology for a civilising empire. The author believes the British failed their responsibility to India, something easy to agree with, but this view is informed by a view of India as a divided, childish country, just what the imperialists thought it to be. Historians might have shown that many of those divisions are deliberately engineered by imperial policy, and the empire was, always, an extortionist, corrupting enterprise rather than a civilising mission. There is nothing to be surprised if the British did not have a policy; the author could have read his own book to understand why, instead of being in denial. Indeed, whatever did not fit his narrative, the British failure - possible complicity - in the 1942 famine, Mountbatten's insane hurry and failure to intervene in the violent aftermath of partition, etc, were all summarily dismissed. However, once those are set aside, it becomes hard to understand what the point of the narrative was: A moral failure of an essentially amoral enterprise?

The other problem is the way it's written. Fifty-one short chapters evolve around personalities and incidents - this is very much a great-men view of history which is so quaint- but they go back and forth. Narrative history can be good if the narration is logically arranged and the temptations of telling anecdotes that may jump the story forward twenty years at one go are resisted. But, instead, this was written as a club room gossip, where the story goes back and forth and yet chronology is supposed to hold it together.

So, overall, I am a little surprised that such books are still being written and read. It perhaps panders a particular readership who misses the empire.

[Sajith Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

India's progress from a British colony to full nationhood had not been linear. There was a time when nothing was moving, but towards the middle of the Second World War, it picked up momentum and reached breakneck speed like a body freely falling towards the earth. And fall it did in the aftermath of August 1947. The woeful inadequacy of preparations became painfully evident in the communal riots that ravaged Punjab as part of the forceful exchange of populations. The British and Indian officers were not fully convinced of the magnitude of the events unfolding before their eyes and through which they sleepwalked. Even on the cusp of independence, the bureaucracy and some politicians could not bring themselves to believe that they were performing the last rites of the Raj. The failure of the British in their duty of trusteeship is palpable in all aspects related to the partition, especially the delineation of new boundaries which was carried out in just five weeks and which was not announced until after independence had been granted in order not to upset Britain's last days. This book examines the last thirty years of British rule in the period 1917-1947. What makes it different or unique is the perspective it provides through the prism of politics in Britain and explains the compulsions and decisions of British politicians who doubled as Viceroys and Secretaries of State. Walter Reid studied at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh. He has written a number of acclaimed books on military and political history.

The book starts its narrative from the Montagu Declaration of 1917 which promised increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions. This was with a view to progressive realisation of responsible government in India while keeping it as an integral part of the British Empire. Though couched in lofty rhetoric, the fact was that none of the British politicians had any inclination to vacate from India even in a hundred years’ time. The urgent need of bringing in administrative reforms was prompted by India's heroic effort in the First World War. The initial solid step towards responsible government was taken with the formulation of the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919. It expanded the electorate, and introduced a significant change called diarchy in the provinces. Many departments of the government were brought under Indian ministers who were answerable to the provincial legislatures while all the important offices were kept by British councillors who reported direct to the Governor. At the federal level three out of the seven members in the Viceroy's Council could be Indians, but the Viceroy still retained veto power over their decisions.

Reid stresses on the British politicians’ confusion regarding the nature and scope of autonomy they were willing to concede to India. All of them were of one mind regarding the absolute requirement that India must remain within the ambit of the King. Curiously, the Indian politicians were also not clear on what they wanted, as the cry of Purna Swaraj (total independence) was uttered only in 1930. Till that time, they were satisfied with getting the dominion status. This book does not cover the Indian side of the indecision. There was wide divergence of opinion in crucial matters such as how independent a dominion can be. The Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865 served as a dampener on colonies’ ambitions. This law empowered the British Parliament to set aside any colonial legislation which was incompatible with British constitutional practice or English Common Law. The colonies were not allowed to maintain defence forces of their own and the Crown set the foreign policy for them. The Statute of Westminster of 1931 changed the scenario entirely. This stipulated that the British Parliament has no authority to legislate for a dominion unless with its consent and no law passed by a dominion parliament could be invalidated. This ushered in a new phase of imperial relations. The British policy had a curious property of always lagging one step behind the Indian demand. In 1906, the Congress had declared that its object was the attainment of a system of government for India similar to that enjoyed by other self-governing dominions of the British Empire like Australia or Canada. This aim was adopted by the Muslim League in 1916. Even as late as 1928 an All-Parties Conference chaired by Motilal Nehru wanted only a dominion status within the empire, as a Commonwealth of India. By the time the Irwin Declaration promised dominion status without a time frame in 1929, India wanted total Independence.

The book lists out many British politicians who hated the idea of granting freedom to India. Some of them were outright reluctant to face the prospects of dismembering the fabled Empire, while a few others loathed the idea on racial lines. Churchill once remarked that Indians are ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion’ (p.101). In the 1920s Lord Birkenhead, the Secretary of State for India, commented that it was frankly inconceivable that India will ever be fit for self-government. Reid acts like an apologist for Churchill who indirectly seeks readers’ forgiveness for what Churchill had done and said regarding Indian independence, in view of his able and masterly contribution in fighting evil such as fascism. He played an important part, first in his opposition to the 1935 India Bill and blocking any attempt to advance India’s progress in the 1930s. As Prime Minister, he presided over a series of initiatives that included the Cripps Mission and its infamous promises that were touted as a post-dated cheque on a crashing bank. Reid also explains the financial angle in which Britain was heavily indebted to India for the manpower and services provided for executing the war effort.

The book does not go into the nitty gritty of the reform regulations, but provides a good summary that is easily readable. The 1935 Act was designed to rein in Congress by a clever division of seats in the Central Assembly between various communities. There were only 100 general seats out of a total of 350. The federal government was envisaged as a weak one with strong provinces. The federal part did not come into being on account of the outbreak of the Second World War. A lot of proposals and committee deliberations were made during the War under American pressure to grant democratic privileges to India. Many schemes were discussed, such as dominion status, own constitution and groupings of provinces. In the end, partition of the country on religious lines turned out to be the only viable solution acceptable to the Congress and Muslim League. The author accuses Britain of betraying India's trust for the haphazard manner in which the partition was brought about. It eventually led to the death and migration of millions of people.

The colonial British authors looked down upon India, but modern writers unfortunately take the other extreme, by hesitating to denounce Indian leaders even when it is warranted. This demur is not surprising considering the many more times of English readers present in India than in England. Sheer business interests skew objectivity to a considerable extent. For example, King George V is remarked to be ‘only a constitutional monarch and a pretty dim one at that’ (p.91). No such outspoken comments are made at the expense of Indian leaders of the freedom movement. This is especially poignant when the author suggests that Gandhi was regularly fed glucose in water during his fasts, probably unbeknown to him. This amusing suggestion is corroborated by the observation that between 24th February and 2nd March 1943, during his fast, his weight had increased by a pound. This is definitely not feasible by any other way than him possessing the faculty of photosynthesis! However, the author hangs on to the most charitable explanation when anything of this sort surfaces.

The book is a pleasure to read with many chapters that focuses on a tiny aspect of the subject under discussion. The uniqueness of this book is the refreshingly new perspective it provides for the freedom struggle in the arena of British politics.

The book is highly recommended.

[John Allgood · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the book is that the British did their best to try and slow the path to Indian independence. It seems a bit self evident. The book is a useful look at the political maneuvering in the last years of the Raj. If you don’t know the politics of British India, the book is worth reading.

[Navdeep Pundhir · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book belongs to a new revisionist imperial history of colonial India. We were fed with marxist textbooks with reverence and this series comes as a breather. Written entirely from the British prism, it's revealing to read what was going through our erstwhile masters as the jewl in the crown was slowly being detached. Narrative gets a bit slow but a decent read overall.

[Nate Rabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelf for a couple of years. An attempted start many months ago didn't go well. On the face of it the book is about an intensely boring subject: the political and administrative stonewalling, bungling and screw up-uping (not to mention lying , racism and deceit) undertaken by British upperclass men between 1917 and 1947 to keep India a part of the British Empire.

I am a student of history and have read dozens of books about the subject of modern India, Independence and the Parition of India in 1947. And I am really pleased to have picked up this book again last week and stuck through the first couple of chapters. Because it is a damning story and all the more so because it is told by someone who is not a radical, leftist historian with an ax to grind. Rather Walter Reid appears (if his prose and tone and background are reliable indications) to be someone from the upper classses of Britain himself and one not entirely opposed to the British Raj on historical grounds.

But what he lays out is simple: despite all flowery statements to the contrary, no one in the ruling circles of Britain during the last 30 years of the Raj, Tory or Labour or Liberal, had any real intention of granting India Independence. On the contrary the flowery statements were mirages, uttered out of expediency or desperation but with very little sincerity and almost no precision of definition. They were vague futuristic bromides and platitudes about self government and responsible government which were knowlingly vague.

Ultimately things got out of hand and within a couple of years the 'hard men who had done well out of the first WW' as the ruling elites were described, who refused to countenance Britain leaving India before 1977 or 1987, 'scuttled' out in a matter of months. Leaving in their wake millions of massacred Indians and two bitter enemies (Pakistan and India) that still find it hard to reconcile or cooperate or embrace their common history and culture.

If you are a student of modern Indian history or just interested in an oft-shaded look into the workings of an Imperical government in decline and on the ropes, this is a book worth your time. Fascinating. Depressing. But not surprising.

[Arun K A · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an Indian, there was a lot of new information and more importantly a new perspective: How British Government and politicians viewed the question of winding up the British Raj. Especially the parts about Wavell and Mountbatten's Viceroyship, and about how Government of India Act was debated in detail in British Parliament were all very interesting.

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There is nothing sadder in this story than the way it ended. "

"The story of the last thirty years of the Raj reveals little evidence of goodwill or wholehearted commitment to India’s well-being. On the contrary, it is an unsettling story of deceit and double-speak."

Most of the histories of the Indian subcontinent, have generally been complacent and written by the British. Post independence, a new light was shone on the aspects the British authors had ignored or dismissed as of little consequence. One particular event was described in directly contradictory words: as The Sepoy Mutiny by one set of writers, and as The First War of Independence by another.

Reid's book is among the first to understand British actions in the events leading up to the Independence of India and Pakistan from a purely Indian/Pakistan perspective. Other British writers who have been equally sympathetic are John Keay and William Dalrymple, but theirs are histories more about the East India Company, than about the mind-numbing day-to-day minutiae and frustrations of the last days of the Raj.

It is also necessary to keep in mind that as the shadow in Europe grew darker, it was important to Britain to keep her Empire intact. Britain had already lost one priceless gem, the American colonies, and was fiercely determined never to lose another. India was the first of her overseas possessions to challenge her so directly, and it is hardly surprising that she resisted so bitterly. Should India gain independence, other states would follow - as indeed did Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1948. Thus ‘We were proposing a policy of freedom for India, and in practice opposing every suggestion for a step forward’ (Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets, p. 481.quoting Lord Wavell, cited in Reid's book).

At the end, when Britain was scuttling its Empire, Reid observes, "What was really unforgivable was not partition in itself, but the failure to prepare for the consequences of partition."

Rarely are histories of any subject moving without being maudlin, but Reid has an impressive battery of facts behind every one of his statements, and he is equally dispassionate in his observation of both Indian and British deeds and pronouncements. The result is a factual and yet heartbreaking record of the expectations on one side and the stubborn intransigence on the other.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long history of the efforts by leaders in India and in London to move India's status from colony to something different. The book focused much of discussion on the failures (or opportunities) in the 1920s and 1930s, and then provides an account of how things eventually unfolded in 1947.

[Yogesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good effort to show history.

[Sekhar N Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

Even though I found some minor factual errors, on the whole, it is an honest history. It was a good read .

[Ashwani Gupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A blow by blow account of the last 30 years (1917-1947) of the British Raj in India, from a British perspective. This is must-read history for anyone interested in knowing how and why the British left so precipitously, in effect scuttling India.

The result of that sudden, largely unplanned, departure was terribly disastrous for India - not unlike other infamous scuttling events in history such as the French departure from Haiti and Algeria, the British exodus from Palestine and the American exit from Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Highly recommended.

[Kumud Goel · Rating 2 out of 5]

dissapointing