The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
The Indian war effort DR CHANDRIKA KAUL,
The Second World War was a military and political watershed for the British in South Asia. As in the First World War, so too during 1939-45, the Indian Army played a critical role in Allied success. In turn, the Second World War proved to be the making of the Indian Army
India contributed very substantially in men, materials and services, such that by the end of the war, Britain owed India £1,300 million, equivalent to about half her GDP, on account of the cost of Indian Army campaigns overseas which had to be paid for by the British Exchequer. The Indian economy was put on a war footing. Though conscription was never introduced during either of the world wars, thousands were recruited to fight – and die – for the British Raj, often compelled by economic hardship and unemployment to sign up. The Indian Army rose from around 200,000 in 1939 to around 2.5 million by the war’s end and was transformed from poorlytrained and under-equipped into elite fighting units, such as those who served in the Mediterranean zone of conflict. Indians could now hold commissions, and so under a quarter of the officer corps were also Indians. Early in the war, the Indian Army distinguished itself in Eritrea and Egypt against Italy under the command
of General Wavell (later to become Viceroy) and they also took control of the oilfields in Syria, Persia and Iraq under General Auchinleck. They were also part of the BEF in France. However, India itself was denuded of military firepower, the Allies miscalculating that the threat of an invasion from the east was virtually non-existent. In this, they, like the US with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, were in for a rude awakening. The war came to India’s door with the rapid Japanese defeat of Britain in Malaya, Singapore and Burma with the fall of Rangoon in March 1942. Over the next three years, India became transformed into an Allied war zone. Significant American and British forces worked with the Indian troops to assist China in their fight against imperial Japan and also, eventually, to defeat the invading Japanese in Burma under very difficult fighting conditions. A scorched earth policy was followed (which had serious consequences for the famine-prone region of Bengal) with a desperate call from Prime Minister Winston Churchill to fight to the finish. The Second World War was now also a war to save the British Raj.